PBS Specials

Guns, Germs and Steel: Into the Tropics (2005x14)

Date de diffusion: Nov 07, 2005

So far, Jared Diamond has demonstrated how geography favoured one group of people – Europeans – endowing them with agents of conquest ahead of their rivals around the world. Guns, germs and steel allowed Europeans to colonize vast tracts of the globe – but what happened when this all-conquering package arrived in Africa, the birthplace of humanity? Can Jared Diamond's theories explain how a continent so rich in natural resources, could have ended up the poorest continent on earth? Guns Germs and Steel triumph again...? Jared's journey begins on a steam train in Cape Town, designed to carry civilization to the heart of the so-called 'dark continent'. In the Cape, Jared discovers a landscape and way of life that feels very European – farms growing cattle, wheat, grapes and barley; settler communities dating back over three hundred years. He realizes that the first European settlers in southern Africa were dealt a very lucky hand by geography – they landed in one of the few temperate zones of the southern hemisphere – a climate to which their crops an animals were ideally suited. These foundations of their historical success worked for them even 6,000 miles from home and they were able to sweep aside the indigenous hunting communities with ease – assisted by the impact of European germs. But these settlers were not ones to stand still. A mass migration known as the Great Trek took thousands of Dutch settlers north and east – into unknown territory – and, as they found to their cost, into Zulu land. The Zulus had built a sophisticated African state based on military conquest – and now they resisted European invasion. But eventually, overcoming the limitations of their weapons and inheriting new, automatic weapons form industrialized Europe, the settlers triumphed over their rival African tribes - at the cost of thousands of lives. Jared observes that the story of Guns, Germs and Steel seems to be unfolding all over again. But