It has been a very long time since I read GGS, but I can tell you haven't yet... and judging from this comment I bet you would find it fascinating.
To give a top-of-my-foggy-memory answer to your question about industrialization, here are some of the contributing factors as I recall:
- Head-start: agricultural settlements started in Mesopotamia about 10k BCE, and branched out from there. That's the earliest record we have anywhere in the world of a farming culture which allowed specialized classes to emerge (builders, rulers, administrators, inventors, etc etc) and the basis for emerging technology. e.g. in the Americas it looks like this happened 5k years later.
- More wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication. Only a small % of wild plants and animals are suitable and useful for domestication, and they were overwhelmingly concentrated in Europe. Wheat, barley, and beans were farmed earlier and are easier to farm than rice (East Asia) and potatoes/corn (Americas). There are no African or American animals with the capacity for burden and domesticability of european horses, donkeys, and oxen, and we haven't even talked about cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, etc.
- the mix of small arable geographical area and concentrated population centers led to constant war in Europe, which drove a lot of technological innovation, especially in metallurgy. Europe is also particularly rich in iron and coal, which gave another advantage to pre-industrial tech branches (to use a Civilization analogy). In contrast, China was extremely politically stable and had less need for tools of war like hardened steel.
- The relatively limited available land and population also motivated invention in European farming methods, which was not the case in e.g. China, where human labor is in many places still cheaper than technological efficiency. Human labor intensive farming methods from the 6th century are still in use in many parts of China, because that's just more effective than the alternative.
- Constant war improved infrastructure between cities, too (thank you Roman empire). Hundreds of years later this accelerated trade beween population centers, contributing to many features that characterize industrialization as it happened in Europe. Including: a merchant class, production geogrpahically separated from sale, etc.
- Early advantages were determining factors in colonialism and wealth extraction from other continents. i.e. because Europe had better guns, more germs, and better steel (ha), when they arrived in the Americas they wiped out the indigenous populations.
Please don't take this as a unilateral endorsement of the ideas in the book - I'm not qualified! If nothing else the whole question is post-hoc... "why did Europe achieve European-defined success before any other continent achieved European-defined success?" In any case the ideas are interesting and I bet you would enjoy thinking about them, as I did.
OK maybe I'm dull here but it seems to me most of these ideas where well understood, so I don't think I would be incredibly impressed since they are mainly what I understand to be the case.
That they had more germs not sure about, my take on the germs part has always been the same thing you have with any invasive species in a new environment. It is mathematically easier for them to spread their germs to indigenous population .
So it seems like the book is mainly a condensation of the widely understood historical narrative (although maybe my knowledge of what is understood is out of date as I have not read so much history in the last 20 years, most of my history reading having been in my teens)
However, while I agree that geography is an important contributor to success in endeavors it is imho not a determinant. It seems to me that industrialism could have arisen a few places and times in the history of the world but it didn't, that it did in Britain, sure, the environment was favorable, but a lot of things led into it. So many things that it becomes in many ways a clever Connections type discussion where you connect one thing you would not think was connected to the outcome - for example does this guy talk about the Black Plagues influence on Industrialization? https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/black-death-and-industrialisa...
probably it's a pretty easy connection to make but still almost everything can be connected and when the thing comes about you say HAH all these things here together made it, the perfect soup! But there were all sorts of soups in the past that did not achieve perfection, and I don't think there is a convincing argument why that is.
on edit: tldr - I don't think the Industrial revolution was destined to start in Britain in the mid 1700s because of some combination of Geographical factors. If it hadn't started there it would have started somewhere else later - probably in the U.S. Or it could have started much earlier, but many factors did not pan out in just the right way in the past when it was possible for Industrialism to start.
That they had more germs not sure about, my take on the germs part has always been the same thing you have with any invasive species in a new environment. It is mathematically easier for them to spread their germs to indigenous population
There was one major disease Europeans brought back from the Americas: syphilis.
Otherwise, the raft of diseases Europeans brought to the Americas (which devastated the indigenous populations) can be specifically traced back to animal husbandry. The intensity of Europeans’ relationship to domestic animals plus all of the wild animals living in urban areas in close proximity to humans (such as rats) is what led to Europeans being potential carriers of so many diseases. You simply get way more disease exposure from farming (cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, poultry) and living in cities (rats, mice, cats, dogs, bats, insects) than you do in small hunting or fishing villages.
So the germs axis is part of Diamond’s geography argument. Proximity to domesticable animals and cereal grains leads to more exposure to disease, greater concentrations of population, and therefore devastating plagues. Those who survived the plagues had the potential to be asymptomatic carriers who would eventually bring destruction to the indigenous people of the Americas.
yes, that is exactly the topic discussed in the book. To what extent is this narrative, and to what extent determinism, is exactly the discussion _around_ the book. Seems like an area of interest for you which is why I recommended it. Definitely geared towards a popular audience but well-researched, engaging, and thought/discussion provoking .
To give a top-of-my-foggy-memory answer to your question about industrialization, here are some of the contributing factors as I recall:
- Head-start: agricultural settlements started in Mesopotamia about 10k BCE, and branched out from there. That's the earliest record we have anywhere in the world of a farming culture which allowed specialized classes to emerge (builders, rulers, administrators, inventors, etc etc) and the basis for emerging technology. e.g. in the Americas it looks like this happened 5k years later.
- More wild plant and animal species suitable for domestication. Only a small % of wild plants and animals are suitable and useful for domestication, and they were overwhelmingly concentrated in Europe. Wheat, barley, and beans were farmed earlier and are easier to farm than rice (East Asia) and potatoes/corn (Americas). There are no African or American animals with the capacity for burden and domesticability of european horses, donkeys, and oxen, and we haven't even talked about cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, etc.
- the mix of small arable geographical area and concentrated population centers led to constant war in Europe, which drove a lot of technological innovation, especially in metallurgy. Europe is also particularly rich in iron and coal, which gave another advantage to pre-industrial tech branches (to use a Civilization analogy). In contrast, China was extremely politically stable and had less need for tools of war like hardened steel.
- The relatively limited available land and population also motivated invention in European farming methods, which was not the case in e.g. China, where human labor is in many places still cheaper than technological efficiency. Human labor intensive farming methods from the 6th century are still in use in many parts of China, because that's just more effective than the alternative.
- Constant war improved infrastructure between cities, too (thank you Roman empire). Hundreds of years later this accelerated trade beween population centers, contributing to many features that characterize industrialization as it happened in Europe. Including: a merchant class, production geogrpahically separated from sale, etc.
- Early advantages were determining factors in colonialism and wealth extraction from other continents. i.e. because Europe had better guns, more germs, and better steel (ha), when they arrived in the Americas they wiped out the indigenous populations.
Please don't take this as a unilateral endorsement of the ideas in the book - I'm not qualified! If nothing else the whole question is post-hoc... "why did Europe achieve European-defined success before any other continent achieved European-defined success?" In any case the ideas are interesting and I bet you would enjoy thinking about them, as I did.