Where did you go right?

Recently, I read a book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond.

The book attempts to answer the question: why have some societies fared better through time than others?

It's a very, very good book and highly recommended reading if this topic interests you.

You mean there are other people from CT besides me in SL?

Yes, atleast 3, and we are all from branford lolz

In the 1800s, people from other countries referred to America as hicksville, pretty much. "Them people from the country," that sorta thing. But if you look at what we did in the 1800s, we developed a LOT of technologies and mechanisms that made life -easier-. America, true to this day, has always been a country that focuses on making the simple tasks in life more simple. I genuinely believe this is how our country climbed to the top, and there's evidence for it just the same.

New South Wales and Tasmania were started as penal colonies -- for such crimes as stealing bread to feed empoverished families - vicitims of a overflowing prison system- as for Western Australia and South Australia - I think you'll find that they were settled by people coming over for the promise of land and work .. the majority of which were folks such as tradesmen, pretty much coming over to seek their fortunes... we even had our own gold rush... fancy that.

You'll find the much publicised 'prisoner' past that we Australians are so proud of was actually a very small minority.

Most Australians will consider getting out of England 'a thing done right'

Uh... reead more carefully yourself... I read quite well TYVM.
He used th eword WE - inherently an inclusive. I didn't use that word.. nor pick it. Therefore it is up to the speaker to define who the hell he is including in "we".

Go poison someone or something else before you go around weakly trying to insult or troll.

Oh.. no "please" included from me to you.

Quite true, but in the modern sense, Canada I understand, is ahead of the US. We're far more progressive and tolerant, our communications infrastructure while still behind the likes of Japan or the Netherlands, is further ahead than the United States, and we have a lower proportionate unemployment rate. We're also still their major supplier of most raw materials and we even house their alienated peace-lovin hippies when it gets all gun-happy down there.

... so I think Canada deserves more credit than being: "pretty modern too."

I think the US is getting far more credit than it deserves. IMHO, it's not the centre of the universe and is a very very very far cry from being a country to look up to.

I think that as far as colonization goes, environmental transformation from wilderness to "civilization" should be one of the key objective measurements of their success.
In this respect, the USA has been an unmitigated success, while Australia is still mostly desert and Canada is still mostly forest.
This is why I placed the USA slightly above them.

I second the recommendation for Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel as it takes a sweeping look into the questions Eggy posed. But the Iberians had the technology and the pathogens and great naval skill to boot.

My wild ass guess is that the Iberians were insufficiently dominating. For example, Brazil is roughly the size of the US and has 170M indigenous people while the US has under 2M indigenous people. (Throw away Alaska and the countries are equal in size and you've lost 0.65M total people and a lot of moose).

Then again, as far as culture goes, I think I'd gladly trade $150 sneakers for siestas, but that's just me.

A moose once bit my sister...

> Then again, as far as culture goes, I think I'd gladly trade $150 sneakers for siestas

Dostoyevsky: "Man gets used to anything".

Azelda

you are not alone!

I think this talk of national differences misses the point of books like Guns, Germs, and Steel. Comparing Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, the United States or a number of other countries is like comparing bites of the same apple, might be a little more sour on the green side, is all. They're all part of western civilization, they all have similar languages, cultures, life-styles, values and beliefs, etc., and in the big scheme of things, there's not much difference between America on the one side and Belgium or Canada or Italy on the other side, sorry.

To say differently is to amuse a whole lot of East Asians, South Asians, Africans, etc., who've had their lives and cultures "westernized" for better and for worse. Best way I know to see this is to study the subtle but very deep differences between a western industrial nation like the U.S. or Canada, and a non-western industrial nation like Japan, South Korea, or soon, China.

Eggy, Spain, and to a great degree, France, as well, viewed their Colonies in Asia, Africa, India and the Americas as sources of either ready specie (gold and silver) to fund their wasteful religious and dynastic wars in Europe, or the source of luxury items such as furs, gems and sugar, which were obtained at great expense and little real strategic return. Great Britain, on the other hand, used their colonies primarily as a pressure valve. Virtually all of the discontent and dispossessed members of society in England, Scotland and Ireland eventually made their way to the colonies. The UK also utilized truly valuable goods from the colonies. Flax, cotton, rice and indigo from Southern colonies. Oak and Pinewood, tar, turpentine and pitch for building and maintaining a huge navy came from the northern colonies, while sugar from the Carribean and tea from Ceylon and later India were traded to them for rum, fishand trade goods to buy and feed the slaves. Vicious cycle, maybe, but immensely profitable.
Portugal and the Netherlands developed huge worldwide empires which returned them vast amounts of money, but they had to defend themselves from the French and Spanish at home, and they had populations which were just too small to support the empire with the massive emmigration which quickly polulated the British colonies.

No, the worldwide slave trade was mostly based out of Bristol, England and Boston, Massachusetts. There were a lot of Portuguese slavers but most of the ships were English and American owned.

Not really a prison colony as Australia was. Georgia was set up primarily as a military outpost to protect the valuable colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas from the Spanish in Florida. James Edward Oglethorpe brought in debtors, French and Austrian Protestants, Scottish Jacobites, Sephardic Jews (the first non-native person born in Georgia was a Jew) and religious dissenters - mostly Methodists. He actually made slavery and hard alcohol illegal in Georgia, but bonded and indentured servants were very common, and slavery was allowed soon after he returned to Europe.

Thank you for the informative reply, David. I hadn't seen you in a long while... hope everything's alright with ya

Uhm, It was on Main Street after the second light. That's where I got lost. I'm NOT following your directions again, Eggy!

American and English companies owned the ships, but the people who conducted the actual trade in Africa and parts of South Asia were Portuguese and Arabs. They bartered for flesh with small nations conducting perpetual war with each other and taking human "booty".

Yes, what does it profit a (hu)man to gain a fortune but forfeit his(her) soul?

As for me, I'm ready to high-tail it to Barcelona! Enough of this American rat race, already.

I agree. This book was recommended to me when I was wondering how much impact climate had on a civilizations development.

My question was how did living in an area with distinct seasons and freezing temperature affect the development of technology.