My last post, “Land Grants or Land Grabs,” revealed that most federal land that started land-grant universities had been taken from Indians. I received some constructive pushback. (See the comments.) But that feedback reminded me of a question, Why did the Europeans invade the New World in the first place and conquer Native Americans, rather than Native Americans invading Europe and conquering Europeans?
The phrasing of this question will alert some readers to the subject of this post, the powerful 1997 book by Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel.[1]
Diamond’s book travels through time (back to the origins of humans) and space (all continents except Antarctica) to answer that question—to determine why some societies became so powerful, with such technology, that they could cross an ocean and conquer millions of people. The European/Native American conflict is the most obvious example, but history has many examples of more powerful groups overcoming less powerful groups.
