College Notes (Lecture and Tutorials) Academic Reading And Writing (5181V7RW) Guns, Germs and Steel, ISBN: 9781784873639

Academic Reading and Writing
Compilation Document
Contents
Academic reading and writing lecture 1 13-9........................................................................................2
Introduction to academic reading and writing...................................................................................2
Guns, germs and steel – an introduction to the great divergence.....................................................2
Academic reading and writing tutorial 1 20-9........................................................................................3
Academic reading and writing tutorial 4 1-10........................................................................................4
Academic reading and writing tutorial 6 18-10......................................................................................6
Academic reading and writing tutorial 7 8-11........................................................................................8
Academic reading and writing tutorial 8 15-11....................................................................................10
Academic reading and writing tutorial 9 22-11....................................................................................11
Academic reading and writing tutorial 10 29-11..................................................................................12




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, Academic reading and writing lecture 1 13-9
Introduction to academic reading and writing
Academic reading and writing linked up with global history

Guns, germs and steel – an introduction to the great divergence
Global history:

- The first worldwide web (12 k years ago)
- Metropolitan webs (6 k years ago)
- “the” old world web (2 k years ago)
- Single cosmopolitan web (in the last 500 years)

Case study: the great divergence – Kenneth Pomeranz (book)  articles:

1. California school and beyond – Pierre Vries
2. Military revolution – Tony Andrade

When choosing between 1 and to (look at PowerPoint) choose your niche

There is also a documentary of guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond

To understand any book or article you can look at its author and look at what the author has written
before (Diamond also wrote about sexuality for example)

Main idea of guns, germs and steel: Why do you white men have so much cargo, and we, New-
Guineans, have so little? Why is the ‘West’ so much more affluent than the rest

 Main argument: complex civilizations
o food surplus due to favourable (climatic) circumstances  specialization
o domestication of animals (Eurasia is the only area in the world that inhabits
domesticable animals)  the animals carry diseases which make the Eurasian
populations immune to a lot of diseases (germs)
o violence (guns)
o innovation  scientific breakthroughs (guns and steel)

Why not Asia? Why the “West” and not the rest?

- Military competition between states in Europe
o efficient military techniques
o efficient economic structures
o only states that effectively collect taxes survive
- central-led empires in Asia
o some innovation haltered
o Europe had an advantage because it was made up of different small empires which
could respond quickly to innovations whereas the large Asian empire is very slow in
its functioning/agency
o Example of Zhen He

Jared Diamond is very easy to critique (armchair scholarship)




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