Collapse

Title: Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

Author: Jared Diamond

Publisher: Penguin, 2011 (First published 2005)

ISBN: 978-0-241-95868-1

Pages: 539

Jared Diamond needs no introduction to readers of all genres other than comics. His Guns, Germs and Steel is one of the only five books that have been rated 5-Star in this blog. Being a professor of geography and with extensive travels over various continents on which to draw knowledge from, Diamond’s works are immensely attractive to readers. Comprehensiveness is the byword for his books, as his researches go deep into the past and with a convincing array of arguments. The same is true of this book too, in which the fates of some societies that had collapsed due to environmental factors and still some others who managed to hold on to their habitat to enter modernity. Not content with simply describing the downfall, he analyses the test cases and comes up with a general theory of how the crash took place, how it is applicable to other ancient societies and also to modern ones. Very few scholars would be able to gather generalized ideas and still fewer who would successfully correlate their predictions with actual results. Damage to the environment inflicted by a society does not go long unpunished and when the setback comes, the society may crumble in its own ruins. This fact is expressed with many illustrative examples, like that of Easter Island, Pacific islands like Pitcairn and Henderson, Old Norse societies in Greenland, Anasazi Indians of southwest US, and the Mayas of Central America. We note with astonishment that the author’s five-point list of factors which causes collapse is equally applicable to all of them. Then we realize with a shudder that these criteria apply to our modern societies too and that the failure of all of those past societies should serve as a lesson to our politicians and policy makers. Diamond lists out a slew of measures that could be co-opted to tide over the crisis and ends with cautious optimism at the society’s will to adapt and to exist for a long time to come which we may bequeath to our children.

Diamond identifies five common factors affecting any society in its existence on a particular stretch of land. These are the society’s impact on its environment, climatic change caused by natural reasons, cultural or religious attitudes ingrained by the people, friendly trade relations with other human groups and hostile interactions with still other societies. In all the examples given in the book, these causes act singly or in multiples, on the inhabitants. In the several examples illustrated in the text that of Central American Mayas and old Greenland Norse societies attract our attention due to the size of the territory and hard evidence for the assertions. The first part of the book is devoted to collapse of societies and that of Greenland should serve as an example for the whole world. When the Vikings colonized that distant North Atlantic Island in the 10^th century, the climate was very mild, being in a warm phase of periodic cycles. The Norse Vikings adopted their established lifestyle of daily farming with cows, sheep and pigs. Quickly, they understood that the style was ill-suited to Greenland. The little patches of green were gobbled up by the livestock and the harsh winter precluded any opportunity for leaving the cattle grazing in the meadows. They have to be kept indoors during the winter months, and the hay to be used as fodder had to be farmed in summer. The equilibrium was very sharp edged. A small nudge was enough to tip the balance. A longer winter or a wet summer was sufficient to create problems like inadequate hay to feed the cattle. Timber and iron were deficient in Greenland, but they couldn’t be traded with the mother country due to the long ship travels. Items having large value and small volume, like luxury and religious artifacts grabbed a large proportion of trade. Coupled with these harrowing problems was the arrival of Inuits, a people with technology appropriate to the coldness of the land. But the Vikings were newly converted to Christianity and shared the zeal of converts. Inuit hunting methods could’ve been imitated or essential commodities could’ve been traded with them. The Norse did nothing of the kind, and was gradually wiped out of this story. Even today, it is not clearly established as to how exactly the early wave of colonization petered out on the icy Greenland terrain.

Side by side with failed communities stand a few who had succeeded in maintaining a sustainable and flourishing economy as a result of identifying problems in incipient state and taking corrective action in an effective way. Japan is one such example which faced many of the environmental troubles faced by failed societies at one stage of their history. Logging of Woodland for monumental construction denuded much of Tokugawa Japan’s forests, but the Shogunate quickly reversed the policy and actively encouraged preservation. Today, 74% of Japan’s land area is covered by forests, which is quite high in a First World country. We read about genuine measures in the Dominican Republic where the preservation of forests and natural reserves was once entrusted to the armed forces, rather than a civilian ministry like environment or agriculture.

Diamond’s review of modern societies in the third part of the book is a painfully long survey of environmental issues afflicting China and Australia in particular. The extensive treatment is unappealing and causes drudgery. Even though the subject peoples are separated by half the globe, the symptoms are the same – soil erosion, loss of forest cover, loss of soil nutrients, unavailability of water, salinization and such. While making the study of modern societies, the author discusses about the caste-based society of India and remarks approvingly that castes showed a laudable method of sustainable harvesting of resources, as these people are commended to be anxious to preserve the resources to their offspring who was sure to take up the vocation of their parents in a rigid caste-based society. Such praise for a system that is notorious for the inhuman discrimination practiced against the weak is surely misplaced. This is like praising a brutally dictatorial regime for its quick decision making, but ignoring all the other horrific manifestations.

Many of the test cases selected for analysis is highly local and don’t constitute a representative case of the issue under study. Easter Island, the islands of Pitcairn and Henderson and the Anasazi Indians of the U.S south west were isolated societies effecting a very marginal presence on the flow of history. Then, how can we generalize the lessons learnt from these examples? What Diamond intended was to draw conclusions that apply equally to societies transcending time, race or geography. Two of the fundamental factors forming the author’s five-point evaluation scheme consist of interactions with neighboring communities which can be friendly or hostile. In all the above cases, such contacts died out mostly due to geographical isolation. By the same token, this argument is not valid for old world civilizations or, even to modern societies which are engaged in intense communications with their peers. Also, the long first chapter on Montana and its environmental problems make uninteresting reading. Maybe that was relevant or appealing to Americans residing on the west of the country. But does it impact an ounce of relevance to the rest of the book or to other modern societies? Conflicting opinions may be voiced in response to such a question.

The book gives interesting ideas about how to determine the culinary preferences of ancient societies by analysis of remains of bones in abandoned kitchen middens. It may surprise us when Diamond explains how to determine the botany of a past landscape. This is achieved by examination of pollen from lake sediments. When the scientist takes a vertical piece of sediment, it provides him with data of centuries of plant abundance in the area. Such exciting feats of estimation of seemingly impossible events allure young people to choose a carrier in science. One other aspect discernible throughout the narrative is the cyclic nature of warming and cooling on global scales. Periodically, it heated up or cooled down. This may create doubts on reader’s minds about the veracity of the assertion that the global warming affecting us today is anthropogenic, even though Diamond declares that it is indeed so.

Even though the author is genuinely committed to the environment, and ending the exploitation of Third world natural resources by first world corporations, his loud-mouthed appreciations of some of them, like Chevron may hinder the books acceptance among some sections of the public.

Diamond ends the book in a positive note in which he expresses confidence at the society’s capability to learn from the past and make amends. This optimism imparts great value to the work. After all, if we are surely going to be doomed even after heroic feats of self-preservation, who will care to go the extra mile for corrective action? We undertake a venture only if there is a chance – however slight – of winning. The book is endowed with a long section of suggested reading, which is encyclopedic in content and a fine index. A good set of monochrome plates add visual detail to the arguments.               

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star