Map of Africa by John Thomson, 1813. Much of the continent is simply labeled "unknown parts". The map details the mythical Mountains of the Moon, which were first postulated by Ptolemy to be the source of the Nile and remained on maps until the mid 19th century explorations of Burton, Speke, and Livingstone.

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2008)

European exploration of Africa began with Ancient Greeks and Romans, who explored and established settlements in North Africa. Fifteenth century Portugal, especially under Henry the Navigator probed along the West African coast. Scientific curiosity and Christian missionary spirit soon were subordinated to mercantile considerations, including lucrative trafficking in enslaved persons. Others (Dutch, Spanish, French, English, etc.) joined in African trading, though for centuries European knowledge of Africa's interior was very vague. Much of the blank map was filled in by arduous, often fatal, expeditions in the Nineteenth Century.

Prehistoric links between Europe and Africa[link]

The connection between Europe and North Africa is older than recorded history. It seems clear that cultural influences crossed the Mediterranean barrier during the late Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages.^{[citation needed]} Hence, the late Palaeolithic Aterian industry and Capsian culture, both from North Africa, are connected with Europe. Some early Neolithic influences may also have arrived to Europe via North Africa. Additionally, the Megalithic phenomenon of the Chalcolithic period is found on both shores of the Mediterranean.

Early historical exploration of Africa[link]

reconstruction of Hecataeus' map of the world

Africa is named for the Afri people who settled in the area of current-day Tunisia. The Africa Province of the Roman Empire spanned the Mediterranean coast of what is now Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. The parts of North Africa north of the Sahara were well known in antiquity. Prior to the 2nd century BC, however, Greek geographers were unaware that the land mass then known as Libya expanded south of the Sahara, assuming that the desert bounded on the outer Ocean. Indeed, Alexander the Great, according to Plutarchus' Lives, considered sailing from the mouths of the Indus back to Macedonia passing south of Africa as a shortcut compared to the land route. Even Eratosthenes around 200 BC still assumed an extent of the landmass no further south than the Horn of Africa. It was only in Ptolemy's world map (2nd century AD) that the realization that the southward extent of Africa was not in fact known at the time was made explicit.

As for early exploration of Sub-Saharan Africa, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus ^[1] describes how the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II sent out an expedition manned by Phoenician sailors about 600 BC which in three years circumnavigated Africa. They sailed south, rounded the Cape heading west, made their way north to the Mediterranean and then returned home. He states that they paused each year to sow and harvest grain. They reported that as they sailed around the southern end of the continent they had the sun to their north, which Herodotus found unbelievable. The Egyptologist Alan Lloyd suggests that the Greeks at this time understood that anyone going south far enough and then turning west would have the sun on their right but found it unbelievable that Africa reached so far south. He suggests that "It is extremely unlikely that an Egyptian king would, or could, have acted as Necho is depicted as doing" and that the story might have been triggered by the failure of Sataspes attempt to circumnavigate Africa under Xerxes the Great.^[2]

The Phoenicians explored North Africa, establishing a number of colonies, the most prominent of which was Carthage. Carthage itself conducted exploration of West Africa. Donald Harden ^[3] describes the journey of Hanno the Navigator which Harden dates to c. 425 BC and even quotes in translation the surviving Greek account (about two pages long) of this expedition. There is some uncertainty as to how far precisely Hanno reached, "Some taking Hanno to the Cameroons, or even Gabon, while others say he stopped at Sierre Leone.".^[4] In 146 BC the Romans had conquered the African coasts, part of Numidia and Mauretania and started to explore that land. It was later subdivided into Mauretania Tingitana, Mauretania Caesariensis, Numidia, and Africa Proconsularis also known as Vetus or Africa Nova. They remained a part of the Roman Empire until the 5th century AD.

Europeans in the Middle Ages[link]

Detail of the Catalan Atlas by Abraham and Jehuda Cresques

With the expansion of Islam in the Middle Ages, North Africa was culturally cut off from non-Muslim Europe. The Islamic Empire created a barrier between Europe and the rest of the world, with European traders paying heavy tributes to obtain prized commodities like West African gold, East Asian spices and silk. The Italian republics of Venice and Genoa, among others, specialized in this trade.

In addition, the Jews of modern Spain, Portugal, and Morocco were allowed to trade in both cultural regions. Among them were Abraham Cresques and his son Jehuda, whose 1375 Catalan Atlas improved European knowledge of Africa and other regions, with a good deal of Muslim geographical knowledge and some educated guesses and imagination to fill in the blanks. This atlas details the Catalan expedition of Jaume Ferrer to the Gold River in 1346, which according to the map went south of Cape Bojador and to what is called West Africa Finisterrae.

The Genoese were also interested in circumventing the Muslim monopoly on Asian trade. In 1291, Tedisio Doria ordered Vandino and Ugolino Vivaldi to reach India via the Atlantic Ocean. When the expedition was lost, Doria sent ambassadors to Mogadishu to find out their fate.

Another interesting factor motivating European exploration was rumours of a powerful Christian kingdom, ruled by a priest-king known as Prester John, located somewhere in the eastern portion of Africa. Prester John was often identified as a Christian king who was a descendant of the Three Magi. Europeans sought his aid to defeat the Muslim nations that separated them from the Orient, or at least help them circumvent the Muslim monopoly.

Naval charts of 1339 show that the Canary Islands were already known to Europeans. In 1341, Portuguese and Italian explorers prepared a joint expedition. In 1342 the Catalans organized an expedition captained by Francesc Desvalers to the Canary Islands that set sail from Majorca. In 1344, Pope Clement VI named French admiral Luis de la Cerda Prince of Fortune, and sent him to conquer the Canaries.

In 1402, Jean de Bethencourt and Gadifer de la Salle sailed to conquer the Canary Islands but found them already plundered by the Castilians. Although they did conquer the isles, Bethencourt's nephew was forced to cede them to Castile in 1418.

In 1455 and 1456 two Italian explorers Alvise Cadamosto from Venice and Antoniotto Usodimare from Genoa, working for the king of Portugal, followed the Gambia river, visiting the land of Senegal, while another Italian sailor, Antonio da Noli from Genoa explored Cabo Verde and the Bijagos islands.

Portuguese expeditions[link]

Henry the Navigator in 15th century triptych of St. Vincent, by Nuno Gonçalves

Portuguese explorer Prince Henry, known as the Navigator, was the first European to methodically explore Africa and the oceanic route to the Indies. From his residence in the Algarve region of southern Portugal, he directed successive expeditions to circumnavigate Africa and reach India. In 1420, Henry sent an expedition to secure the uninhabited but strategic island of Madeira. In 1425, he tried to secure the Canary Islands as well, but these were already under firm Castilian control. In 1431, another Portuguese expedition reached and annexed the Azores.

Along the western and eastern coasts of Africa, progress was also steady; Portuguese sailors reached Cape Bojador in 1434 and Cape Blanco in 1441. In 1433, they built a fortress on the island of Arguin, in modern day Mauritania, trading European wheat and cloth for African gold and slaves. It was the first time that the semi-mythic gold of the Sudan reached Europe without Muslim mediation. Most of the slaves were sent to Madeira, which became, after thorough deforestation, the first European plantation colony. Between 1444 and 1447, the Portuguese explored the coasts of Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea. In 1456, a Venetian captain under Portuguese command explored the islands of Cape Verde. In 1462, two years after Prince Henry's death, Portuguese sailors explored the Bissau islands and named Sierra Leoa (Lion Range).

16th century map of Western Africa, showing São Jorge da Mina (Elmina castle) fortified factory

In 1469, Fernão Gomes rented the rights of African exploration for five years. Under his direction, in 1471, the Portuguese reached modern Ghana and settled in La Mina (the mine), later renamed Elmina. They had finally reached a country with an abundance of gold, hence the historical name of "Gold Coast" that Elmina would eventually receive.

In 1472, Fernão do Pó discovered the island that would bear his name for centuries (now Bioko) and an estuary abundant in shrimp (Portuguese: camarão,), giving its name to Cameroon.

Soon after, the equator was crossed by Europeans . Portugal established a base in Sāo Tomé that, after 1485, was settled with criminals. After 1497, expelled Spanish and Portuguese Jews also found a safe haven there.

In 1482, Diogo Cão found the mouth of a large river and learned of the existence of a great kingdom, Kongo. In 1485, he explored the river upstream as well.

But the Portuguese wanted, above anything else, to find a route to India and kept trying to circumnavigate Africa. In 1485, the expedition of João Afonso d'Aveiros, with the German astronomer Martin of Behaim as part of the crew, explored the Bight of Benin, returning information about African king Ogane.

In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias and his pilot Pêro de Alenquer, after putting down a mutiny, turned a cape where they were caught by a storm, naming it Cape of Storms. They followed the coast for a while realizing that it kept going eastward with even some tendency to the north. Lacking supplies, they turned around with the conviction that the far end of Africa had finally been reached. Upon their return to Portugal the promising cape was renamed Cape of Good Hope.

Some years later, Christopher Columbus landed in America under rival Castilian command. Pope Alexander VI decreed the Inter caetera bull, dividing the non-Christian parts of the world between the two rival Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal.

Finally, in the years 1497 to 1498, Vasco da Gama, again with Alenquer as pilot, took a direct route to Cape of Good Hope, via St. Helena. He went beyond the farthest point reached by Dias and named the country Natal. Then he sailed northward, making land at Quelimane (Mozambique) and Mombasa, where he found Chinese traders, and Malindi (both in modern Kenya). In this town, he recruited an Arab pilot and set sail directly to Calicut. On August 28, 1498, King Manuel of Portugal informed the Pope of the good news that Portugal had reached India.

Egypt and Venice reacted to this news with hostility; from the Red Sea, they jointly attacked the Portuguese ships that traded with India. The Portuguese defeated these ships near Diu in 1509. The Ottoman Empire's indifferent reaction to Portuguese exploration left Portugal in almost exclusive control of trade through the Indian Ocean. They established many bases along the eastern coast of Africa, from Mozambique to Somalia, and captured Aden in 1513.

In 1500, a Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, which followed the route just opened by Vasco da Gama to India, was dispersed by a storm in the Indian Ocean.^{[citation needed]} One of the ships under command of Diogo Dias arrived to a coast that wasn't in East Africa. Two years later, a chart already showed an elongated island east of Africa that bore the name Madagascar. But only a century later, between 1613 and 1619, did the Portuguese explore the island in detail. They signed treaties with local chieftains and sent the first missionaries, who found it impossible to make locals believe in Hell, and were eventually expelled.

Portugal and the native states of equatorial Africa[link]

17th century Crucifix, copper alloy, by Kongo peoples, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Portuguese colonization of some parts of Africa would have a very negative impact in some of the existing civilizations. By 1583, they had destroyed the Afro-Muslim Zendj civilization of East Africa that competed with them for the African trade. Two other important African kingdoms, the Kongo and the Monomotapa, would also be destroyed by the Portuguese conquerors. Relations with the Kongo were initially good: Congolese kings embraced Catholicism and welcomed Portuguese missionaries and merchants. But the slave trade eventually became a major issue of dispute in the region. The Portuguese (and later also the Dutch) supported the enslaving warrior state of the Jaggas, who sacked the Kongo repeatedly.

Queen Nzinga in peace negotiations with the Portuguese governor in Luanda, 1657

They also used the Kongo to weaken the neighbour realm of Ndongo, where Queen Nzinga put a fierce but eventually doomed resistance to Portuguese and Jagga ambitions. Portugal intervened militarily in these conflicts, creating the basis for their colony of Angola. In 1663, after another conflict, the royal crown of Kongo was sent to Lisbon. Nevertheless, a diminished Kongo Kingdom would still exist until 1885, when the last Manicongo, Pedro V, ceded his almost non-existent domain to Portugal.

The Portuguese dealt with the other major state of Southern Africa, the Monomotapa (in modern Zimbabwe), in a similar manner: Portugal intervened in a local war hoping to get abundant mineral riches, imposing a protectorate. But with the authority of the Monomotapa diminished by the foreign presence, anarchy took over. The local miners migrated and even buried the mines to prevent them from falling into Portuguese hands. When in 1693 the neighbouring Cangamires invaded the country, the Portuguese accepted their failure and retreated to the coast.

Dutch intervention[link]

Beginning in the 17th century, the Netherlands began exploring and colonizing Africa. While the Dutch were waging a long war of independence against Spain, Portugal had temporarily united with Spain, starting in 1580 and ending in 1640. As a result, the growing colonial ambitions of the Netherlands were mostly directed against Portugal.

For this purpose, two Dutch companies were founded: the West Indies Company, with power over all the Atlantic Ocean, and the East Indies Company, with power over the Indian Ocean.

The West India Company conquered Elmina in 1637 and Luanda in 1640. In 1648, they were expelled from Luanda by the Portuguese. Overall the Dutch built 16 forts in different places, including Gorée in Senegal, partly overtaking Portugal as the main slave-trading power.

The Dutch left a lasting impact in South Africa, a region ignored by Portugal that the Dutch eventually decided to use as station in their route to East Asia. Jan van Riebeeck founded Cape Town in 1652, starting the European exploration and colonization of South Africa.

Other early European presence in Africa[link]

Map of Fort James (Gambia), the first English possession in Africa

Almost at the same time as the Dutch, other European powers attempted to create their own outposts for the African slave trade.

As early as 1530, English merchant adventurers started trading in West Africa, coming into conflict with Portuguese troops. In 1581, Francis Drake reached the Cape of Good Hope. In 1663, the English built Fort James in Gambia. One year later, another English colonial expedition attempted to settle southern Madagascar, resulting in the death of most of the colonists. The English forts on the West African coast were eventually taken by the Dutch.

In 1626, the French Compagnie de l'Occident was created. This company expelled the Dutch from Senegal, making it the first French domain in Africa.

France also put her eyes in Madagascar, the island that had been used since 1527 as a stop in travels to India. In 1642, the French East India Company founded a settlement in southern Madagascar called Fort Dauphin. The commercial results of this settlement were scarce and, again, most of the settlers died. One of the survivors, Etienne de Flacourt, published a History of the Great Island of Madagascar and Relations, which was for a long time the main European source of information about the island. Further settlement attempts had no more success but, in 1667, François Martin led the first expedition to the Malgassy heartland, reaching Lake Alaotra. In 1665, France officially claimed Madagascar, under the name of Île Dauphine. However, little colonial activity would take place in Madagascar until the 19th century.

In 1657, Swedish merchants founded Cape Coast in modern Ghana, but were soon displaced by the Danish, who founded Fort Christiansborg near modern day Accra.

In 1677, King Frederick William I of Prussia sent an expedition to the western coast of Africa. The commander of the expedition, Captain Blonk, signed agreements with the chieftains of the Gold Coast. There, the Prussians built a fort named Gross Friederichsburg and restored the abandoned Portuguese fort of Arguin. But in 1720, the king decided to sell these bases to the Netherlands for 7,000 ducats and 12 slaves, six of them chained with pure gold chains.

Overall, European exploration of Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries was very limited. Instead they were focused on the slave trade, which only required coastal bases and items to trade. The real exploration of the African interior would start well into the 19th century.

19th century[link]

Although the Napoleonic Wars distracted the attention of Europe from exploratory work in Africa, those wars nevertheless exercised great influence on the future of the continent, both in Egypt and South Africa. The occupation of Egypt (1798–1803), first by France and then by Great Britain, resulted in an effort by the Ottoman Empire to regain direct control over that country. In 1811, Mehemet Ali established an almost independent state, and from 1820 onward established Egyptian rule over the eastern Sudan. In South Africa, the struggle with Napoleon caused the United Kingdom to take possession of the Dutch settlements at the Cape. In 1814, Cape Colony, which had been continuously occupied by British troops since 1806, was formally ceded to the British crown.

Meanwhile, considerable changes had been made in other parts of the continent. The occupation of Algiers by France in 1830 put an end to the piracy of the Barbary states. Egyptian authority continued to expand southward, with the consequent additions to knowledge of the Nile. The city of Zanzibar, on the island of that name, rapidly attained importance. Accounts of a vast inland sea, and the discovery of the snow-clad mountains of Kilimanjaro in 1840–1848, stimulated the desire for further knowledge about Africa in Europe.

In the mid-19th century, Protestant missions were carrying on active missionary work on the Guinea coast, in South Africa and in the Zanzibar dominions. Missionaries visited little-known regions and peoples, and in many instances became explorers and pioneers of trade and empire. David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary, had been engaged since 1840 in work north of the Orange River. In 1849, Livingstone crossed the Kalahari Desert from south to north and reached Lake Ngami. Between 1851 and 1856, he traversed the continent from west to east, discovering the great waterways of the upper Zambezi River. In November 1855, Livingstone became the first European to see the famous Victoria Falls, named after the Queen of the United Kingdom. From 1858 to 1864, the lower Zambezi, the Shire River and Lake Nyasa were explored by Livingstone. Nyasa had been first reached by the confidential slave of António da Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader established at Bié in Angola, who crossed Africa during 1853–1856 from Benguella to the mouth of the Rovuma. A prime goal for explorers was to locate the source of the River Nile. Expeditions by Burton and Speke (1857–1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) located Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. It was eventually proved to be the latter from which the Nile flowed.

Henry Morton Stanley, who had in 1871 succeeded in finding and succouring Livingstone (originating the famous line "Dr. Livingstone, I presume"), started again for Zanzibar in 1874. In one of the most memorable of all exploring expeditions in Africa, Stanley circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza (Lake Victoria) and Lake Tanganyika. Striking farther inland to the Lualaba, he followed that river down to the Atlantic Ocean—which he reached in August 1877—and proved it to be the Congo.

Explorers were also active in other parts of the continent. Southern Morocco, the Sahara and the Sudan were traversed in many directions between 1860 and 1875 by Gerard Way^{[citation needed]}, Georg Schweinfurth and Gustav Nachtigal. These travellers not only added considerably to geographical knowledge, but obtained invaluable information concerning the people, languages and natural history of the countries in which they sojourned. Among the discoveries of Schweinfurth was one that confirmed Greek legends of the existence beyond Egypt of a "pygmy race". But the first western discoverer of the pygmies of Central Africa was Paul du Chaillu, who found them in the Ogowe district of the west coast in 1865, five years before Schweinfurth's first meeting with them. Du Chaillu had previously, through journeys in the Gabon region between 1855 and 1859, made popular in Europe the knowledge of the existence of the gorilla, whose existence was thought to be as legendary as that of the Pygmies of Aristotle.

Portuguese explorers[link]

15th century - African coast[link]

• Diogo Cão
• Diogo de Azambuja
• Bartolomeu Dias
• Pêro de Alenquer
• João Infante
• João Grego
• Álvaro Martins
• Pêro Dias
• Gil Eanes
• Nuno Tristão
• Antão Gonçalves
• Dinis Dias
• Álvaro Fernandes
• Pêro de Sintra
• Fernão do Pó

15th century - Atlantic islands and African coast[link]

• Alvise Cadamosto
• António Noli
• Álvaro Caminha
• João de Santarém
• Pedro Escobar
• Duarte Pacheco Pereira
• Diogo Dias (and Indian Ocean, discovered Madagascar)
• Lopes Gonçalves (and Atlantic Ocean)
• Vasco da Gama (and discovered sea route to India)

15th century - Other[link]

• Paulo Dias de Novais (Colonizer of Africa)

16th century[link]

• Pêro da Covilhã (15th/16th century diplomat and explorer in Ethiopia)
• Pedro Álvares Cabral (discovered Brazil, explored India along the African coast)
• Sancho de Tovar and Vicente Pegado among others (the first Europeans ever to contemplate and to describe the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, then referred to by the Portuguese as Monomotapa).
• Lourenço Marques (trader and explorer in East Africa)
• Francisco Álvares (missionary and explorer in Ethiopia)
• Gonçalo da Silveira (jesuit missionary, travalled up the Zambezi River to the capital of the Monomotapa which appears to have been the N'Pande kraal, close by the M'Zingesi River, a southern tributary of the Zambezi)

18th century[link]

• Francisco de Lacerda (explorer in Zambia)

19th century[link]

• Candido José da Costa Cardoso (visited Lake Malawi [also known as Lake Nyasa or Lake Niassa] in 1846)
• António da Silva Porto
• Serpa Pinto (soldier and colonizer of Africa)
• Hermenegildo Capelo and Roberto Ivens

British explorers[link]

19th century[link]

• Richard Francis Burton(1821–1890) (African Great Lakes)
• Hugh Clapperton (1788–1827), explored west and central Africa
• Dixon Denham (1786–1828), explored west central Africa.
• James Frederic Elton (1840–1877)
• Alexander Gordon Laing (1793–1826)
• Richard Lemon Lander (1804–1834)
• David Livingstone (1813–1873)
• Frederick Lugard (1858–1945)
• Mungo Park (explorer) (1771–1806)
• Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904)
• John Hanning Speke (1827–1864) (discovered the source of the Nile)
• James Kingston Tuckey (1776–1816)

Other European explorers[link]

19th century[link]

• Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
• René Caillé
• Heinrich Barth
• Gustav Nachtigal
• Georg Schweinfurth
• Paul du Chaillu
• Emil Holub
• Victor de Compiègne

See also[link]

• List of Russian explorers
• Saharan explorers

References[link]

1. ^ Herodotus, Histories IV: 37
2. ^ Lloyd, Alan B. "Necho and the Red Sea: Some Considerations Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 63, (1977), pp. 142-155
3. ^ Donald Harden, The Phoenicians, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971 (1962)p. 162f
4. ^ Harden, op. cit. p. 169

Bibliography[link]

• Michael Crowder, The Story of Nigeria, Faber and Faber, London, 1978 (1962)
• Basil Davidson, The African Past, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966 (1964)
• Donald Harden, The Phoenicians, Penguin, Harmonsworth, 1971 (1962)
• Herodotus, transl. Aubrey de Selincourt, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1968 (1954)
• Historia Universal Siglo XXI. Africa: desde la prehistoria hasta los años sesenta. Pierre Bertaux, 1972. Siglo XXI Editores S.A. ISBN 84-323-0069-1
• Vincent B. Khapoya, The African Experience, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 1998 (1994)
• Louise Levanthes, When China Ruled the Seas, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1994
• Kevin Shillington, History of Africa, St Martin's Press, New York, 1995 (1989)

Zheng He
Statue from a modern monument to Zheng He at the Stadthuys Museum in Malacca Town, Malaysia.
Born	1371 Yunnan, China
Died	1433
Other names	Chinese: 馬三寶
Occupation	Asian explorer
Title	Admiral of the Ocean Sea
Religion	Islam

Zheng He (1371–1433; simplified Chinese: 郑和; traditional Chinese: 鄭和; pinyin: Zhèng Hé), also known as Ma Sanbao (simplified Chinese: 马三宝; traditional Chinese: 馬三寶) and Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin (Arabic: حاجي محمود شمس الدين‎) was a Hui-Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and the Horn of Africa collectively referred to as the Voyages of Zheng He or Voyages of Cheng Ho from 1405 to 1433.

Life[link]

The route of the 7th voyage of Zheng He's fleet. Solid line: main fleet; dashed line: a possible route of Hong Bao's squadron; dotted line: a trip of seven Chinese sailors, including Ma Huan, from Calicut to Mecca on a native ship. Cities visited by Zheng He's fleet or its squadron on the 7th or any of the previous voyages are shown in red.

Zheng, born as Ma He^[1] (馬和 / 马和), was the second son of a Muslim family which also had four daughters, from Kunyang, present day Jinning, just south of Kunming near the southwest corner of Lake Dian in Yunnan.^[2][3][4]

He was the great great great grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who served in the administration of the Mongolian Empire and was appointed governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynasty.^[5][6] Both his grandfather and great-grandfather carried the title of Hajji, which indicates they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. His great-grandfather was named Bayan and may have been a member of a Mongol garrison in Yunnan.^[2]

In 1381, the year his father was killed, following the defeat of the Northern Yuan, a Ming army was dispatched to Yunnan to put down the army of the Mongol Yuan loyalist Basalawarmi during the Ming conquest of Yunnan. Ma He, then only eleven years old, was captured by the Ming Muslim troops of Lan Yu and Fu Youde and made a eunuch. He was sent to the court of one the emperor's son, Zhu Di the Prince of Yan, where he was called San Bao (三寶/三宝, or 三保^[7]) meaning 'Three Jewels.' The young eunuch eventually became a trusted adviser of the Prince of Yan, and assisted the prince in his insurrection against his nephew the Jianwen Emperor. For his valor in this war, the eunuch received the name Zheng He from his master. Once Zhu Di deposed Jianwen and became crowned as Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1424), Zheng He continued serving in his court as a Eunuch Grand Director (太監, taijian).^[2][4][8] It was during the Yongle era that Zheng He, with the rank of Chief Envoy (正使, zheng shi) carried his first of six overseas missions.

In 1425 Yongle's successor the Hongxi Emperor appointed Zheng He to be Defender of Nanjing. In 1428 the Xuande Emperor ordered him to complete the construction of the magnificent Buddhist nine-storied Da Baoen Temple in Nanjing, and in 1430 appointed him to lead the seventh and final expedition to the "Western Ocean".^[9] It is commonly believed that Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage, on the returning trip after the fleet reached Hormuz in 1433.

Expeditions[link]

Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming government sponsored seven naval expeditions. The Yongle emperor designed them to establish a Chinese presence, impose imperial control over trade, impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin and extend the empire's tributary system. It has also been claimed, on the basis of later texts, that the voyages also presented an opportunity to seek out Zhu Yunwen (the previous emperor whom the Yongle emperor had usurped and who was rumored to have fled into exile) – possibly the "largest scale manhunt on water in the history of China".^[10]

Zheng He was placed as the admiral in control of the huge fleet and armed forces that undertook these expeditions. Wang Jinghong was appointed his second in command. Zheng He's first voyage, which departed July 11, 1405, from Suzhou,^[11]:203 consisted of a fleet of 317 ships^[12][13][14] (other sources say 200 ships) holding almost 28,000 crewmen (each ship housing up to 500 men).^[12]

One of a set of maps of Zheng He's missions (郑和航海图), also known as the Mao Kun maps, 1628.

Zheng He's fleets visited Arabia, Brunei, the Horn of Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Thailand, dispensing and receiving goods along the way.^[14] Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain and silk; in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory and a giraffe from the Swahili.^{[15][11]:206[14][16][17]}

While Zheng He's fleet was unprecedented (compared to previous voyages from China to the east Indian Ocean), the routes were not. Zheng He's fleet was following long-established, well-mapped routes. Sea-based trade links had existed between China and the Arabian peninsula since the Han Dynasty (there being trade with the Roman Empire at that time.) During the Three Kingdoms, the king of Wu sent a diplomatic mission along the coast of Asia, reaching as far as the Eastern Roman Empire. During the Song Dynasty, there was large scale maritime trade from China reaching as far as the Arabian peninsula and East Africa.^[18]

Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission. But a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger" and did not shrink from violence when he considered it necessary to impress foreign peoples with China's military might.^[19] He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. For example, he would defeat Chen Zuyi, one of the most feared and respected pirate captains, and return him back to China for execution.^[20] He also waged a land war against the Kingdom of Kotte in Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.

In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (reigned 1424–1425), decided to stop the voyages during his short reign. Zheng He made one more voyage during the reign of Hongxi's son Xuande Emperor (reigned 1426–1435), but after that the voyages of the Chinese treasure ship fleets were ended. Xuande believed his father's decision to halt the voyages meritorious, and thus "there would be no need to make a detailed description of his grandfather’s sending Zheng He to the Western Oceans."^[21] This, and the fact that the voyages "were contrary to the rules stipulated in the Huangming zuxun, Ancestral Injunctions of the August Ming,"^[21] the royal founding documents laid down by the Hongwu Emperor, account for the Ming "neglect" of Zheng He in official accounts and the scant records of the voyages available for later historians.^[21]

Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals, buried at sea.^[22]

Voyages[link]

The Kangnido map (1402) predates Zheng's voyages and suggests that he had quite detailed geographical information on much of the Old World.

Zheng He led seven expeditions to what the Chinese called "the Western Ocean" (Indian Ocean). He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms – including King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor.

Detail of the Fra Mauro map relating the travels of a junk into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. The ship also is illustrated above the text.

There are speculations that some of Zheng's ships may have traveled beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro describes in his 1459 Fra Mauro map the travels of a huge "junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. What Fra Mauro meant by 'India' is not known and some scholars believe he meant an Arab ship.^[27] However, Professor Su Ming-Yang thinks "the ship is European, as it is fitted with a crow’s nest, or lookout post, at the masthead, and has sails fitted to the yards, unlike the batten sails of Chinese ships."^[28]

Zheng himself wrote of his travels:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers or 30,000 miles) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare… — Tablet erected by Zheng He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes

Sailing charts[link]

Part of the chart showing India at top, Ceylon upper right and Africa along the bottom

Ming dynasty 24 point compass

Zheng He's sailing charts were published in a book entitled Wubei Zhi (Treatise on Armament Technology) written in 1621 and published in 1628 but traced back to Zheng He's and earlier voyages.^[29] It was originally a strip map 20.5 cm by 560 cm that could be rolled up, but was divided into 40 pages which vary in scale from 7 miles/inch in the Nanjing area to 215 miles/inch in parts of the African coast.^[30]

There is little attempt to provide an accurate 2-D representation; instead the sailing instructions are given using a 24 point compass system with a Chinese symbol for each point, together with a sailing time/distance, which takes account of the local currents and winds. Sometimes depth soundings are also provided. It also shows bays, estuaries, capes and islands, ports and mountains along the coast, important landmarks (pagodas, temples) and shoal rocks. Of 300 named places outside China, more than 80% can be confidently located. There are also fifty observations of stellar altitude.

Size of the ships[link]

Early 17th century Chinese woodblock print, thought to represent Zheng He's ships.^{[citation needed]}

Traditional and popular accounts of Zheng He's voyages have described a great fleet of gigantic ships, far larger than any other wooden ships in history. Some modern scholars consider these descriptions to be exaggerated.

Chinese records^[31] assert that Zheng He's fleet sailed as far as East Africa. According to medieval Chinese sources, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions. The 1405 expedition consisted of 27,800 men and a fleet of 62 treasure ships supported by approximately 190 smaller ships.^[32][33] The fleet included:

• Treasure ships (Chinese:宝船), used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 126.73 metres (416 ft) long and 51.84 metres (170 ft) wide), according to later writers^{[citation needed]}. This is more or less the size and shape of a football field.^[34][35]
• Equine ships (Chinese:馬船), carrying horses and tribute goods and repair material for the fleet (eight-masted, about 103 m (339 ft) long and 42 m (138 ft) wide).^[34]
• Supply ships (Chinese:粮船), containing staple for the crew (seven-masted, about 78 m (257 ft) long and 35 m (115 ft) wide).^[34]
• Troop transports (Chinese:兵船), six-masted, about 67 m (220 ft) long and 25 m (83 ft) wide.^[34]
• Fuchuan warships (Chinese:福船), five-masted, about 50 m (165 ft) long.^[34]
• Patrol boats (Chinese:坐船), eight-oared, about 37 m (120 ft) long.^[34]
• Water tankers (Chinese:水船), with 1 month's supply of fresh water.^[34]

Six more expeditions took place, from 1407 to 1433, with fleets of comparable size.^[36]

If the accounts can be taken as factual, Zheng He's treasure ships were mammoth ships with nine masts, four decks, and were capable of accommodating more than 500 passengers, as well as a massive amount of cargo. Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both described multi-masted ships carrying 500 to 1000 passengers in their translated accounts.^[37] Niccolò Da Conti, a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen 5 masted junks weighing about 2000 tons.^[38] There are even some sources that claim some of the treasure ships might have been as long as 600 feet.^[39][40] On the ships were navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers along with the translator and diarist Gong Zhen.

The largest ships in the fleet, the treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles, would have been several times larger than any wooden ship ever recorded in history, surpassing l'Orient (65 m/213.3 ft long) which was built in the late 18th century. The first ships to attain 126 m (413.4 ft) long were 19th century steamers with iron hulls. Some scholars argue that it is highly unlikely that Zheng He's ship was 450 feet (137.2 m) in length, some estimating that they were 390–408 feet (118.9–124.4 m) long and 160–166 feet (48.8–50.6 m) wide instead^[41] while others put them as small as 200–250 feet (61.0–76.2 m) in length, which would make them smaller than the equine, supply, and troop ships in the fleet.^[42]

One explanation for the seemingly inefficient size of these colossal ships was that the largest 44 Zhang treasure ships were merely used by the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the Yangtze for court business, including reviewing Zheng He's expedition fleet. The Yangtze river, with its calmer waters, may have been navigable by these treasure ships. Zheng He, a court eunuch, would not have had the privilege in rank to command the largest of these ships, seaworthy or not. The main ships of Zheng He's fleet were instead 6 masted 2000-liao ships.^[43][44]

South and Southeast Asia[link]

In his book 'The Overall Survey of the Ocean Shores' (Chinese: 瀛涯勝覽) written in 1416, Ma Huan, one of Zheng He's chroniclers and interpreters, gave very detailed accounts of his observations of the peoples' customs and lives in ports they visited.^[45]

The Galle Trilingual Inscription stone tablet, erected by Zheng He around 1410 in Sri Lanka, records details about contributions of gold, silver, and silk that Zheng He made on behalf of the emperor at a Buddhist mountain temple.^[46][47] Also, a commemorative pillar at the temple of the Taoist goddess Tian Fei, the Celestial Spouse, in Fujian province records details about his voyages.^[48] It has the inscription:

We have traversed more than 100,000 li (50,000 kilometers) of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course [as rapidly] as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…

—Erected by Zheng He, Changle, Fujian, 1432. Louise Levathes

In Malacca[link]

San Bao Temple in Malacaa

At the time when his fleet first arrived in Malacca, Chinese people were already living there. Ma Huan refers to them as tángrén (Chinese: 唐人). Ming China found Malacca to be a useful transit centre for replenishment of fleet supplies, and received valuable gifts from Zheng He's fleet. The sultan and sultana of Malacca at the time visited China at the head of over 540 of their subjects and ample tribute. Sultan Mansur Shah (ruled 1459–1477) later dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to China, carrying a letter from the sultan to the Ming emperor. The letter requested the hand of an imperial daughter in marriage. In the year 1459, a princess (Hang Li Po or Hang Liu), was sent by the Ming emperor to marry the sultan. The princess came with 500 sons of ministers and a few hundred handmaidens as her entourage. They eventually settled in Bukit Cina, Malacca. It is believed that a significant number of them married into the local populace.^[49] The descendants of these mixed marriages are locally known today as Peranakan and still use the honorifics Baba (male title) and Nyonya (female title).

In Malaysia today, many people believe that Admiral Zheng He (who died in 1433) sent princess Hang Li Po to Malacca in the year 1459. However there is no record of Hang Li Po (or Hang Liu) in Ming history. She is mentioned only within Malaccan folklore and in the Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals.

Islam[link]

Islam in China
History History Tang Dynasty • Song Dynasty Yuan Dynasty • Ming Dynasty Qing Dynasty • Dungan revolts (1862-1877, 1895-1896) Panthay rebellion • 1911-Present
Major figures Chang Yuchun • Hu Dahai • Mu Ying • Lan Yu • Yeheidie'erding Hui Liangyu • Ma Bufang Zheng He • Liu Zhi Haji Noor • Yusuf Ma Dexin Ma Hualong
Culture Cuisine • Martial arts Chinese mosques • Sini Islamic Association of China
Cities/Regions Hong Kong • Kashgar • Linxia Ningxia • Taiwan • Xinjiang
Groups Hui • Uyhgurs Kazakhs • Dongxiang Kyrgyz • Salar Bonan • Tajiks Uzbeks • Tatars Utsul • Tibetans
v t e

Accounts contemporary to Zheng He's era suggest he may have been a Muslim; these include the writings of the Muslim Ma Huan.

Indonesian religious leader and Islamic scholar Hamka (1908–1981) wrote in 1961: "The development of Islam in Indonesia and Malaya is intimately related to a Chinese Muslim, Admiral Zheng He."^[50] In Malacca he built granaries, warehouses and a stockade. Indonesian scholar Slamet Muljana writes: "Zheng He built Chinese Muslim communities first in Palembang, then in San Fa (West Kalimantan), subsequently he founded similar communities along the shores of Java, the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines. They preached Islam according to the Hanafi school of thought and in Chinese language."^{[citation needed]}

Li Tong Cai, in his book 'Indonesia – Legends and Facts', writes: "in 1430, Zheng He had already successfully established the foundations of the Hui religion Islam. After his death in 1434, Hajji Yan Ying Yu became the force behind the Chinese Muslim community, and he delegated a few local Chinese as leaders, such as trader Sun Long from Semarang, Peng Rui He and Hajji Peng De Qin. Sun Long and Peng Rui He actively urged the Chinese community to 'Javanise'. They encouraged the younger Chinese generation to assimilate with the Javanese society, to take on Javanese names and their way of life. Sun Long's adopted son Chen Wen, also known as Radin Pada (Raden Patah), is the son of King Majapahit and his Chinese wife."^[51]

The Hanafi Islam that some from the fleet may have propagated lost almost all contact with its parent in China, and gradually was totally absorbed by the local Shafi’i school of thought. Long before 600 years had elapsed, the presence of ethnic Chinese Muslims had declined to almost nil.^[52]

Connection to the history of Late Imperial China[link]

A giraffe brought from Medieval Somalia^{[53][54][55][56]} in the twelfth year of Yongle (AD 1415).

In the 1950s, historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized the idea that after Zheng He's voyages China turned away from the seas due to the Hai jin edict and was isolated from European technological advancements. Modern historians point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not totally stop after Zheng He, that Chinese ships continued to dominate Southeast Asian commerce until the 19th century and that active Chinese trading with India and East Africa continued long after the time of Zheng. The travels of the Chinese Junk Keying to the United States and England between 1846 and 1848 testify to the power of Chinese shipping until the 19th century. Moreover revisionist historians such as Jack Goldstone argue that the Zheng He voyages ended for practical reasons that did not reflect the technological level of China.^[57]

Although the Ming Dynasty did ban shipping with the Hai jin edict, they eventually lifted this ban. By banning oceangoing shipping, the Ming (and later Qing) dynasties had forced countless numbers of people into black market smuggling. This reduced government tax revenue and increased piracy. The lack of an oceangoing navy then left China highly vulnerable to the Wokou pirates that ravaged China in the 16th century.^{[citation needed]}

Richard von Glahn (University of California, Los Angeles Professor of History and a specialist in Chinese history) commented that a majority of school history texts present Zheng He wrongly; they "offer counterfactual arguments", and "emphasize China's missed opportunity." The "narrative emphasizes the failure" instead of Zheng He's accomplishments. He goes on to claim that "Zheng He reshaped Asia." According to him, maritime history in the fifteenth century is essentially the Zheng He story and the effects of Zheng He's voyages.

A giraffe brought from Malindi, Kenya,^[17] by the fleets of Zheng He.

Von Glahn claims that Zheng He's influence lasted beyond his age, may be seen as the tip of an iceberg, and there is much more to the story of maritime trade and other relationships in Asia in the fifteenth century and beyond.^[58]

State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced increasing pressure from resurgent Mongolian tribes from the north. In recognition of this threat and possibly to move closer to his family's historical geographic power base, in 1421 the emperor Yongle moved the capital north from Nanjing to present-day Beijing. From the new capital he could apply greater imperial supervision to the effort to defend the northern borders. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for these land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions.

In 1449 Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the emperor Zhengtong less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. In the Battle of Tumu Fortress the Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor. This battle had two salient effects. First, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads. Second, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released Zhengtong after his half-brother had proclaimed himself the new Jingtai emperor. Not until 1457 did political stability return when Zhengtong recovered the throne. Upon his return to power China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In this environment, funding for naval expeditions simply did not happen.

Cultural Influence[link]

In the decades after the last voyage, Imperial officials sought to eliminate memories of the voyages.^[59] However, the adventures of the fleet captured the imagination of the Chinese, and novelizations of the voyages flourished.^[60] An author from far inland Shaanxi would in 1597 write the grandest of the epics, Romance of the Three-Jeweled Eunuch, the distance from the coast and time gap since the last voyage attest to continued cultural power.^[61]

In modern times, he is the continued subject of interest and a cultural reference. In Vernor Vinge's science fiction novel A Deepness in the Sky published in 1999, Qeng Ho, named after Zheng He, are the commercial traders in human space. The expeditions of Zheng He were featured in the 2005 novel "The Map Thief" by Heather Terrell. In 2009, China's CCTV released Zheng He Xia Xiyang, a television series specially produced in 2005 to mark the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's voyages. Gallen Lo starred as Zheng He.

Relics[link]

Nanjing Tianfeigong (南京天妃宫)

Zheng He built Tianfeigong (天妃宫, Tianfei palace) in Nanjing after the fleet returned from its first western voyage in 1407.

Stele of Tongfan Deed (通番事跡碑)

The stele of Tongfan Deed (通番事跡, deed of foreign connection and exchange) is located in the Tianfeigong in Taicang, where they started their journey. It was submerged and disappeared, but has been rebuilt.

Stele of Record of Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power (天妃靈應之記碑)

In order to thank Tianfei for her blessings, Zheng He and his colleagues rebuilt Tianfeigong in Nanshan, Changle County, Fujian province before their seventh western voyage. They also raised a stele with the inscription Tian Fei Ling Ying Zhi Ji (天妃靈應之記, Record of Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power), which tells about their voyages.

Zheng He Stele in Sri Lanka

The Galle Trilingual Inscription in Sri Lanka was discovered in the city of Galle in 1911 and is preserved in the National Museum of Colombo. Three languages were used for the inscription: Chinese, Tamil and Persian. The inscription gives praise to Buddha and describes the fleet's donations to a Buddhist temple, the famous Tenavarai Nayanar temple of Tondeswaram.

Commemoration[link]

Tomb and museum[link]

Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing has been repaired and a small museum has been built next to it, although his body is missing as he was buried at sea off the Malabar Coast near Calicut in Western India.^[62] However, his sword and other personal possessions were interred in the typical Muslim tomb inscribed with Arabic characters.

Zheng He's assistant Hong Bao's tomb was unearthed recently in Nanjing.

Maritime Day[link]

In the People's Republic of China, 11 July is Maritime Day (中国航海日) and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage.

Gallery[link]

• 

  Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing

• 

  Museum to honour Zheng He, Nanjing

• 

  Zheng He Gallery in Malacca

• 

  Zheng He statue in the Quanzhou Maritime Museum

• 

  A display at the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai compares the size of ships used by Zheng He and by Christopher Columbus.

See also[link]

• Ming Dynasty
• Chinese exploration
• Hui people
• Ma Huan
• Fei Xin
• Chang Yuchun
• Hong Bao
• Ming Shi-lu
• Zhou Man
• Galle Trilingual Inscription

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Deng, Gang (2005). Chinese Maritime Activities and Socioeconomic Development, c. 2100 BC - 1900 AD. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-29212-4.
• Dreyer, Edward L. (2006). Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming, 1405–1433 (Library of World Biography Series). Longman. ISBN 0-321-08443-8.
• Levathes, Louise (1997). When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433. Oxford University Press, trade paperback. ISBN 0-19-511207-5.
• Mills, J. V. G. (1970). Ying-yai Sheng-lan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores (1433), translated from the Chinese text edited by Feng Ch'eng Chun with introduction, notes and appendices by J. V. G. Mills. White Lotus Press. Reprinted 1970, 1997. ISBN 974-8496-78-3.
• Ming-Yang, Dr Su. 2004 Seven Epic Voyages of Zheng He in Ming China (1405–1433)
• Viviano, Frank (2005). "China's Great Armada." National Geographic, 208(1):28–53, July.
• Joseph Kahn: China Has an Ancient Mariner to Tell You About. In The New York Times of 2005-7-20.
• Newsletter, in Chinese, on academic research on the Zheng He voyages
• Cummins, Joseph (2006). History's Great Untold Stories. Murdoch Books. ISBN 1-74045-808-7.
• Shipping News: Zheng He's Sexcentenary - China Heritage Newsletter, June 2005, ISSN 1833-8461. Published by the China Heritage Project of The Australian National University.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Zheng He

• Zheng He - The Chinese Muslim Admiral
• Zheng He Journey to Arabia
• Zheng He 600th Anniversary
• BBC radio programme "Swimming Dragons".
• TIME magazine special feature on Zheng He (August 2001)
• Virtual exhibition from elibraryhub.com
• Ship imitates ancient vessel navigated by Zheng He at peopledaily.com (25 September 2006)

Inca-era terraces on Taquile are used to grow traditional Andean staples, such as quinoa and potatoes, alongside wheat, a European introduction.

The Columbian Exchange was a dramatically widespread exchange of animals, plants, culture, human populations (including slaves), communicable disease, and ideas between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. The contact between the two areas circulated a wide variety of new crops and livestock which supported increases in population in both hemispheres. Explorers returned to Europe with maize, potatoes, and tomatoes, which became very important crops in Eurasia by the 18th century. Similarly, Europeans introduced manioc and the peanut to tropical Southeast Asia and West Africa, where they flourished and supported growth in populations on soils that otherwise would not produce large yields.

Influence[link]

Portuguese trading animals in Japan; detail of Nanban panel (1570-1616)

In the biological and ecological exchange that took place following Spanish establishment of colonies in New World, people of Europe and Africa settled in the New World, and animals, plants and diseases of Eurasia and the Western Hemisphere were introduced to each area in an interchange.

This exchange of plants and animals transformed European, American, African, and Asian ways of life. New foods became staples of human diets, and new growing regions opened up for crops. For example, before AD 1000, potatoes were not grown outside of South America. By the 1840s, Ireland was so dependent on the potato that a diseased crop led to the devastating Irish Potato Famine.^[1] Since being introduced by 16th-century Portuguese traders, who brought them from the Americas,^[2] maize and manioc replaced traditional African crops as the continent’s most important staple food crops.^[3] New staple crops that were introduced to Asia from the Americas via Spanish colonizers in the 16th century, including maize and sweet potatoes, contributed to the population growth in Asia.^[4]

One of the first European exports, the horse, changed the lives of many Native American tribes on the Great Plains, allowing them to shift to a nomadic lifestyle based on hunting bison on horseback.^[5] Tomato sauce, made from New World tomatoes, became an Italian trademark and tomatoes were widely used in France, while coffee from Africa and sugar cane from Asia became the main commodity crops of extensive Latin American plantations. Introduced to India by the Portuguese, chili/paprika from South America is today an integral part of Indian cuisine, as are potatoes.

New World native plants. Clockwise, from top left: 1. Maize (Zea mays) 2. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) 3. Potato (Solanum tuberosum) 4. Vanilla (Vanilla) 5. Pará rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) 6. Cacao (Theobroma cacao) 7. Tobacco (Nicotiana rustica)

Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no tomatoes in Italy, no potatoes in Germany, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no cattle in Texas, no donkeys in Mexico, no chili peppers in Thailand and India, and no chocolate in Switzerland. The dandelion was brought to North America by Europeans for use as an herb.

Old World native plants. Clockwise, from top left: 1. Citrus (Rutaceae); 2. Apple (Malus domestica); 3. Banana (Musa); 4. Mango (Mangifera); 5. Onion (Allium); 6. Coffee (Coffea); 7. Wheat (Triticum spp.); 8. Rice (Oryza sativa)

Of the world's top 20 crops, measured by weight of production in 2007, five (maize, potato, cassava, tomato and sweet potato) originated in the Americas while a sixth, grapes, is most commonly a European plant grafted onto an American rootstock.^[6] The remaining Old World-origin agricultural commodities in the top twenty are all grown throughout the world today (cow milk, soybeans, wheat, sugar beet, sugar cane, rice, oranges, onions, sorghum, hen eggs, barley, lettuce, chicory and apples). One-half of the top crops by weight within the United States depends on foods that were first grown in the Americas (but only 39% by value).^[7]

Before regular communication had been established between the two hemispheres, the varieties of domesticated animals and infectious diseases that jumped to humans, such as smallpox, were strikingly larger in the Old World than in the New. Many had migrated west with animals or people, or were brought by traders from Asia, so diseases of two continents were suffered by all. While Europeans and Asians were affected by the Eurasian diseases, their endemic status in those continents over centuries caused many people to acquire immunity. By contrast, "Old World" diseases had a devastating impact on Native American populations because they had no natural immunity to the new diseases. The smallpox epidemics are believed to have resulted in the largest death tolls among Native Americans, surpassing any wars.^[8]

Examples[link]

Unintentional introductions[link]

History of New Spain
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Plants that arrived by land, sea, or air in "ancient" times (or before 1492 in the U.K.) are called archaeophytes, and plants introduced to Europe after those times are called neophytes. In addition to the diseases mentioned above, many species of organisms were introduced to new habitats on the other side of the world accidentally or incidentally. These include such animals as brown rats, earthworms (apparently absent from parts of the pre-Columbian New World), and zebra mussels, which arrived on ships.^[9]

Invasive species of plants and pathogens also were introduced by chance, including such weeds as tumbleweeds (Salsola spp.) and Wild oats (Avena fatua). Some plants introduced intentionally, such as the Kudzu vine introduced in 1894 from Japan to the United States to help control soil erosion, have since been found to be invasive pests in the new environment. Fungi have been transported, such as the one responsible for Dutch elm disease, killing American elms in North American forests and cities, where many had been planted as street trees. Some of the invasive species have become serious ecosystem and economic problems after establishing in the New World environments.^{[citation needed]} Note that most of these detrimental invasions were from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western.

A beneficial, although probable unintentional, introduction is Saccharomyces eubayanus, the yeast responsible for lager beer now thought to have originated in Patagonia.^[10]

Introduced feral populations[link]

Escaped and feral populations of non-indigenous animals have thrived in both the Old and New Worlds, often displacing native species.

Gray squirrels have been particularly successful in colonising Great Britain and populations of raccoons can now be found in some regions of Germany, the Caucasus and Japan. Fur farm escapees such as coypu and American Mink have extensive populations in the Old World.

In the New World, populations of feral European cats, pigs, horses and cattle are common.

See also[link]

	United Nations portal
	Agriculture and Agronomy portal
	Indigenous peoples of the Americas portal
	New Spain portal

• Alfred Crosby
• Domestication
• Great American Interchange
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Population history of American indigenous peoples
• Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
• Transformation of culture
• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Columbian Exchange: Plants, Animals, and Disease between the Old and New Worlds in the Encyclopedia of Earth by Alfred W. Crosby
• Worlds Together, Worlds Apart by Jeremy Adelman, Stephen Aron, Stephen Kotkin, et al.
• New study blames Columbus for syphilis spread from Reuters Jan 15, 2008
• Foods that Changed the World
• The Columbian Exchange study guide, analysis, and teaching guide
• NBC News piece on Columbian Exchange

Further reading[link]

Crosby, Alfred (2003). The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. http://www.worldcat.org/title/columbian-exchange-biological-and-cultural-consequences-of-1492/oclc/492569775&referer=brief_results

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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book, and produced by the National Geographic Society, was broadcast on PBS in July 2005.^[1]

It was also published under the title Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years.^[2] The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (in which he includes North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while refuting the assumption that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures, and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.

Synopsis[link]

The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any genetic superiority of Europeans. Yali asked, using the local term "cargo" for inventions and manufactured goods, "Why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?" (p. 14)

Diamond realized the same question seemed to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin... dominate the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists." (p. 15) The peoples of other continents (Sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and New Guineans, and the original inhabitants of tropical Southeast Asia) have been largely conquered, displaced and in some extreme cases – referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians and South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples – largely exterminated by farm-based societies such as Eurasians and Bantu. He believes this is due to the societies' military and political advantages, stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last Ice Age. He proposes explanations to account for such disproportionate distributions of power and achievements.

Title[link]

The book's title is a reference to the means by which farm-based societies conquered populations of other areas and maintained dominance, despite sometimes being vastly out-numbered – superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns); Eurasian diseases weakened and reduced local populations, who had no immunity, making it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized government promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel). The book uses geography to show how Europeans developed such superior military technology, and how Europeans and Asians developed some immunity to diseases which spread among them, while epidemics of them devastated the indigenous populations in the Americas after European contact. Eurasia was the beneficiary of favourable geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics, particularly after the last Ice Age about 13,000-15,000 years ago.

The theory outlined[link]

Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.

In our earliest societies, humans lived as hunter-gatherers. The first step towards civilization is the move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, with the domestication and farming of wild crops and animals. Agricultural production leads to food surpluses, which supports sedentary societies, specialization of craft, rapid population growth, and specialization of labor. Large societies tend to develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which may lead in turn to the organization of nation states and empires.^[3]

Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, Eurasia had the best collection of plants and animals suitable for domestication – barley, two varieties of wheat and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; goats, sheep and cattle provided meat, leather, glue (by boiling the hooves and bones) and, in the case of sheep, wool. As early Middle Eastern civilizations began to trade, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, most notably horses and donkeys for use in transport.

In contrast, Native American farmers had to struggle to develop maize as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor, teosinte, but it provides few nutrients and must be planted one by one – an extremely cumbersome task. Eurasians had wheat and barley, which are high in fiber and nutrients and can be sown en masse with just a toss of the hand. They generated food surpluses which supported greater population growth. Such growth led to larger workforces and more inventors, artisans, etc. Grains can also be stored for longer periods of time unlike tropical crops such as bananas.

Eurasia as a whole domesticated 13 species of large animals (over 100 lb / 44 kg); South America just one (counting the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same species); the rest of the world none at all. Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of the Anna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication.

Sub-Saharan Africans had mostly wild mammals, whereas Eurasians chanced to have the most docile large animals on the planet: horses and camels that are easily tamed for human transport; but their biological relatives zebras and onagers are untameable; and although African elephants can be tamed, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity;^[3][4] goats and sheep for hides, clothing, and cheese; cows for milk; bullocks for tilling fields and transport; and benign animals such as pigs and chickens. Africans, developing alongside large mammals, had available lions, leopards etc. Diamond points out that the only animals useful for human survival and purposes in New Guinea came from the East Asian mainland when they were transplanted during the Austronesian settlement some 4,000–5,000 years ago.

Eurasia's large landmass and long east-west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided it with more plant and animal species suitable for domestication, and allowed its people to exchange both innovations and diseases. Its East-West orientation allowed breeds domesticated in one part of the continent to be used elsewhere through similarities in climate and the cycle of seasons. In contrast, Australia suffered from a lack of useful animals due to extinction, probably by human hunting, shortly after the end of the Pleistocene. The Americas had difficulty adapting crops domesticated at one latitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other). Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from North to South: plants and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's East-West orientation: in the first millennium BC, the Mediterranean areas of Europe adopted the Middle East's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in the first millennium AD, the rest of Europe followed suit.^[3][4]

The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported made division of labor possible. The rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen and scribes accelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries by using the "Guns" and "Steel" of the book's title.

Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and living in close proximity to livestock resulted in widespread transmission of diseases, including from animals to humans. Natural selection forced Eurasians to develop immunity to a wide range of pathogens. When Europeans made contact with America, European diseases (to which they had no immunity) ravaged the indigenous American population, rather than the other way around (the "trade" in diseases was a little more balanced in Africa and southern Asia: endemic malaria and yellow fever made these regions notorious as the "white man's grave";^[5] and syphilis may have spread in the opposite direction^[6]). The European diseases – the "Germs" of the book's title – decimated indigenous populations so that relatively small numbers of Europeans could maintain their dominance.^[3][4]

Guns, Germs, and Steel also offers a very brief explanation of why western European societies, rather than other powers such as China, have been the dominant colonizers.^[3]

• Other advanced cultures developed in areas whose geography was conducive to large, monolithic, isolated empires. In these conditions policies of technological and social stagnation could persist – until Europeans arrived. China was a very notable example; in 1432, a new Emperor outlawed the building of ocean-going ships, in which China was the world leader at the time.
• Europe's geography favored balkanization into smaller, closer, nation-states, as its many natural barriers (mountains, rivers) provide defensible borders. As a result, governments that suppressed economic and technological progress soon corrected their mistakes or were out-competed relatively quickly. As an example of this national Darwinism, Diamond offers the disappearance of the counter-progressive Polish regime. He argues that geographical factors created the conditions for more rapid internal superpower change (Spain succeeded by France and then by England) than was possible elsewhere in Eurasia.

Diamond examined European dominance in more detail with further examples in a later article.^[7]

Intellectual background[link]

Diamond was not the first to argue that environmental factors had a decisive influence on human history. In the late 1850s Henry Thomas Buckle sought to discover laws that governed history, and wrote that favorable climate and soils, and the plentiful food they produced, were important contributors to a population's accumulation of wealth. He believed that freedom from natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods made people less prone to superstition and therefore more likely to make rapid intellectual progress.^[8]

In the 1930s, the Annales School in France undertook the study of long-term historical structures by using a synthesis of geography, history, and sociology. Scholars examined the impact of geography, climate and land use. Although geography had been nearly eliminated as an academic discipline in the USA after the 1960s, several geographically-based historical theories were published in the 1990s.^[9] In addition, environmental history has arisen as a field taking account of man's activities in nature.

Reception[link]

This section requires expansion with: reviews.

Guns, Germs and Steel met with a wide range of response, ranging from generally favorable to rejection of its approach. In 1998 it won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, in recognition of its powerful synthesis of many disciplines, and the Royal Society's Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books.^[10][11] The National Geographic Society produced a documentary by the same title based on the book, and it was broadcast on PBS in July 2005.^[1]

Criticism[link]

Critics of the book argue that it is derivative of the work of such cultural evolutionists as Leslie White, Julian Steward, and Ester Boserup, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture, economic and political growth; and such historians as William McNeill and Alfred Crosby, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture, European expansion, and disease.

Criticism can be grouped into three main lines of reasoning, as follows:

Eurocentrist determinism[link]

In his last book published in 2000, the anthropologist and geographer James Morris Blaut criticized Guns, Germs, and Steel for reviving the theory of environmental determinism, and described Diamond as an example of a modern Eurocentric historian.^[12] Blaut criticizes Diamond's loose use of the terms "Eurasia" and "innovative", which he believes misleads the reader into presuming that Western Europe is responsible for technological inventions that arose in the Middle East and Asia. Blaut states that Diamond ignored or underestimated the nutritional value of several staple crops that grow naturally outside the temperate parts of Eurasia, overestimated the difficulty of adapting crops to new conditions by selective breeding, and ignored the separation of agriculturally productive regions within Eurasia's temperate belt by deserts and mountains.^[13] Blaut noted examples of North-South diffusion of crops in the Western Hemisphere, most significantly the cultivation of maize in Peru and its adoption in North America. He stated that in Europe, the major economic and technological developments of the last 500–600 years took place in Northern and Western Europe; as the area is generally flat, this weakens Diamond's suggestion that Europeans benefited by competition among societies that developed separately due to geographic barriers, such as mountains.

David Deutsch in The Beginning of Infinity terms all societies prior to the enlightenment as static societies, where technological improvement was slow and mostly a result of memetic emergence rather than intentional human endeavour. Thus Deutsch takes a contrary view to Diamond and argues that the knowledge to develop new technology rapidly to solve problems that arise could have happened anywhere in the world regardless of the local resources, not just Europe, it just happened to arise there first, aided by the knowledge of previous short-lived proto-enlightenment movements such as those from Ancient Greece and Renaissance Florence.^[14]

Political factors[link]

Military historian and conservative political columnist Victor Davis Hanson agrees with Diamond in that he rejects a racial explanation for Western dominance. But Hanson argues that certain fundamental aspects of Western culture are responsible, specifically political freedom, capitalism, individualism, republicanism, rationalism, and open debate. Hanson has written that Diamond seems "terribly confused" about history, and that environment was "almost irrelevant" to Western success.^[15] Supporters of Diamond,^[who?] however, have argued that these cultural aspects were created because of the environment and resources at Europe's disposal. In fact, Diamond specifically cites the evolution of complex socio-political structures as a yield of the increased resources and environment which benefited western Europeans.

Clifford Pickover pointed out that in the 15th century, the Turks closed lucrative trade routes between the Orient and Europe. Merchants responded by developing new routes, primarily by sea, to restore trade with the Orient. This process accelerated the development of cartographic and navigational technologies, which allowed Europeans to dominate the globe in less than a century.^[16]

Weaknesses in arguments[link]

In a review of Guns, Germs, and Steel that ultimately commended the book, historian Professor Tom Tomlinson wrote that, "Given the magnitude of the task he has set himself, it is inevitable that Professor Diamond uses very broad brush-strokes to fill in his argument," but regarded Diamond's sketchy coverage of social, political and intellectual history (a handful of pages), especially in the last 500 years, as a notable weakness. He stated that Diamond's approach ignored "much of the current literature on cultural interactions in modern history" and Diamond omitted "almost all of the standard literature on the history of imperialism and post-colonialism, world-systems, underdevelopment or socio-economic change over the last five hundred years." Tomlinson also stated that, "The European empires of conquest in Asia, especially those of the British in India and the Dutch in Java, were not based on clear technological superiority in armaments, nor on the spread of disease."^[17]

Another historian, professor J. R. McNeill, was on the whole complimentary but thought Diamond oversold geography as an explanation for history, noting several exceptions and inconsistencies. McNeill also faults Diamond for underemphasizing cultural autonomy.^[4][18]

Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo in The Statues That Walked^[19] argue that the deforestation story of Easter Island leading to collapse is not catastrophic as Diamond argues. The loss of palm trees is likely due to the conversion of forests into farmland. Wide scale regeneration of palms was hampered by slow growth and imported rats eating the palm seeds. Hunt and Lipo write the that the positions and forms of the statues can only be explained by simple transport not requiring trees. Thus the statues were not linked to deforestation.^[20] Diamond, in response, argues against Hunt and Lipo's model of Easter Island prehistory.^[21]

Responses to criticism[link]

Anticipation of criticism[link]

Before stating his main argument, Diamond considers three possible criticisms of his investigation (page 17):

"If we succeed in explaining how some people came to dominate other people, may this not seem to justify the domination? Doesn't it seem to say that the outcome was inevitable, and that it would therefore be futile to try to change the outcome today?" 

His answer is that this is a confusion of an explanation of causes with a justification of the results. "[Psychologists, social historians, and physicians] do not seek to justify murder, rape, genocide, and illness." Rather, they investigate causes to be able to stop the results.

Doesn't addressing the question "automatically involve a Eurocentric approach to history, a glorification of Europeans ..."? 

But, according to Diamond, "most of this book will deal with peoples other than Europeans." It will, he says, describe interactions between non-European peoples. "Far from glorifying peoples of European origin, we shall see that the most basic elements of their civilization were developed by peoples living elsewhere and were then imported to Europe." And Diamond specifically and repeatedly states that the advantages that Eurasians had in development were primarily due to a fortuitous mixture of climate, crops, and animals, and not due to any inherent advantages of the people themselves. Given time (without exposure to Eurasian culture), he posits that other societies would have eventually made the same technological leaps, they just didn't get to the starting line at the same time due to the above factors.

"Don't words such as 'civilization,' and phrases such as 'rise of civilization,' convey the false impression that civilization is good, tribal hunter-gatherers are miserable, ...?" 

On the contrary, according to Diamond, civilization is a thoroughly mixed blessing, in ways that he describes. In addition any preconceived semantic boundaries of the words 'civilization' and the spatial to mental apprehension of the meaning 'rise' will all be individually encountered. The word "rise" in the sense used in the question does not warrant the assumption that it is "positive" but only representing the subject, civilization, coming into existence; that is to say "arise".

Response to criticism of Eurocentrism and determinism[link]

In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond frequently anticipates some of the criticism received. In the third sentence of the prologue, he notes that "the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies." But he almost immediately says that most accounts of world history focus too much on Eurasia, too much on western Eurasia and too much on the tiny fraction of human history that follows the invention of writing. In particular, he says, "a history focused on Western Eurasian societies completely bypasses the obvious big question. Why were those societies the first that became disproportionately powerful and innovative? ... Why did those ingredients of conquest arise in western Eurasia, and arise elsewhere only to a lesser degree or not at all? ... Why didn't capitalism flourish in Native Mexico, mercantilism in Sub-Saharan Africa, scientific enquiry in China, ... and nasty germs in Aboriginal Australia?"

Later in the book Diamond briefly examines why some of the "founder" civilizations that discovered agriculture, and became specialized and urbanized did not become dominant on a world scale. He says, for example, that Southwest Asia's intense agriculture damaged the environment, encouraged desertification, and hurt soil fertility. He argues that because central China has fewer geographical barriers (i.e. mountain ranges or bodies of water) than Europe, China was unified relatively early in its history (see Zhou Dynasty, Qin Dynasty). He suggested that political homogeneity led to stagnation, particularly because there were no external competitors that might have forced the nation to reverse mistaken policies. As the book is mostly concerned with developments from prehistory up to about AD 1500, it understandably does not dwell on colonialism, post-colonialism, or other developments in the modern period. Furthermore, Diamond argues that Eurasia (as opposed to Europe alone) would inevitably be dominant.

In a later article, Diamond notes that c. 1500, during the Ming Dynasty, China's naval superiority over what Europeans could field was terminated by a single political decision, the hai jin ("ocean forbidden"); in a Europe fragmented into hundreds of kingdoms and nation-states, no such authority existed. Similarly Japan learned about guns from Portuguese explorers in 1543 and by 1600 had the world's best guns; but as these threatened the power of the Samurai class, it restricted and finally banned their production. (Although claimed by Diamond, this is factually incorrect. Japan never stopped producing or using guns.^[22]) Diamond concludes that such bans could be imposed only in politically unified and isolated nations, such as Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate. He also says that India, on the other hand, may have been too fragmented for a monumental rise in power similar to Europe's.^[7]

Diamond has answered the critique of historical counterexamples (in differing growth rates unrelated to material endowments) by claiming that these cases represent short-term growth over (at most) fifty-year time windows. In the case of rapidly expanding economies (such as the "East Asian Tigers"), the rapid growth is usually explained (in economics) as one country "catching-up" to the rest (cf. endogenous growth theory), through trade and technological transfer (which would have been difficult between continents in the pre-1500 period on which the book concentrates.) Instances of civilizations' stagnating or being conquered despite having access to resources superior to their neighbors are mentioned several times in this book; in Diamond’s view, such reversals of fortune support his thesis, as they provide a mechanism for the spread of cultural dynamism and technology within continents but not, until the "Age of Exploration", between them. (His later work, Collapse, tied environment and the fate of individual civilizations together more closely, but in Guns, Germs, and Steel his argument is made at the continental level, rather than the level of specific societies.)

Diamond's view is largely "deterministic", in that Guns, Germs and Steel argues that Eurasian dominance was inevitable, or at least very likely (sometimes called geographical determinism). Although Diamond later cites the effects of specific decisions by governments, he suggests that geographical isolation was what made their effects so long-lasting (for example Ming China's ban on ocean-going ships). Nevertheless, Diamond explicitly asks (on page 17) whether this inevitability would "justify the domination", and whether it renders futile modern attempts to "change the outcome." He denies that it does. Today the effects of proven environmental determinism can be easily nullified by contemporary transport and communication. The effects of racial determinism might be used to justify genocide, but such racial determinism has not been proven.

See also[link]

• Alfred W. Crosby
• Climatic determinism
• Geographic determinism
• Cultural ecology
• Cultural materialism
• Connections (TV series)
• James Burke (science historian)
• Outliers (book)
• Malcolm Gladwell
• Marvin Harris
• Population history of American indigenous peoples
• Scramble for Africa
• Ishmael (novel)
• Rise of the West
• Fates of Nations

References[link]