A SCHOLAR OF ALL
He was nearly killed in a road accident in 1930 — if he had perished then, would there have been a Holocaust? Would they be alive if Hitler succumbed in 1930? My book explores ways which help us figure out whether certain leaders do make a difference in politics, business, etc. — do some CEOs, for instance, really deserve a salary of $1 trillion or would any CEO have been able to do the same thing? This is why the Fertile Crescent got a 2,000-year headstart on the rest of the world in agriculture and thus, population explosion — it could produce enough food to feed growing numbers of people who would then figure out how to smelt metals, develop writing and grow empires. They discovered that the wettest time in Asia in the last 2,000 years was the decade of Genghis Khan’s birth — that high rainfall meant lots of hay to feed sheep and goats as well as the horses that Mongol soldiers rode into battle. If he had been born 20 years later or 200 miles away when it was drier, we wouldn’t be talking of the success of Genghis Khan today. I was born in 1937 — Gandhi existed in my lifetime. There were only about 20 major London theatres in Elizabethan times which also had great writers like Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe. When the African country of Botswana became independent, it had only 22 college graduates. Seretse Khama was one of those 22. He was one of only 22 people who could have been Botswana’s founding president and he was in a unique position as chief of the most powerful and enriched tribe. EXPLAINING IT ALL: Diamond’s book on history and ecology won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize Diamonds as a resource are crucial here. I lived in Chile for some time and its 1973 military coup was stunning — what Chileans did to each other was horrible compared to even the Nazis. There are around 3,000 main Hindu castes and over 25,000 sub-castes. Polynesian Hawaii also had castes but there were only 8. I graduated from college in 1958 in the United States.
Because of the Treaty of Versailles, hitler is regularly blamed for causing World War II and the Holocaust — but Germany was already dissatisfied after World War I. Because of its coach or players, if a team has a strong winning record, is that. Because europeans had better brains or higher IQ, many people in the West used to think, oh, it’s. Because of the distinctive way Gandhi worked towards independence by recognising that military action against the British in the 1920s and 1930s would not work, that was. Because in the era of Shakespeare, there were only a tiny number of Elizabethan playwrights, we can actually test this. Because we can look at the other comparable people around, so, we can assert that if Shakespeare had not made it to adulthood, we would definitely not have a play as good as ‘Hamlet’. Because they are much nicer, my experience is that cruelty is universal and it does not explain why some people achieve results and others don’t. Because of its biogeographic diversity, my speculation is that the Indian subcontinent offered many more diverse ways of making a living than any other part of the world — this was. Because they didn’t get good work opportunities, at that time, the highly educated women in my class were very upset. Because people were taught to think men understood business and women didn’t, until her, every business reporter for the newspaper was a man, also.
I remember in 1948, my parents one evening said to me in shock, “Gandhi has been killed”. Jared M. Diamond is Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As his new book ‘Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings’ releases, the polymath professor and prolific writer speaks with Srijana Mitra Das at Times Evoke about which factors shape success — and why this involves so much more than individual genius: Could you tell us about your new book ‘Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Make A Difference’? This book looks at historic political leaders, business leaders, sports coaches and religious leaders — and who made an enormous difference. As an example, Adolf Hitler seems like the most evil person of the 20th century. There was anti-Semitism already in Germany before Hitler — so, did Hitler himself make a difference? Many members of my and my wife’s family in Europe were killed in the Holocaust. Many historians believe leaders don’t make that much of a difference and even without Hitler, there would have been a second World War. Why did almost all leaders of the world’s major religions come from the Indian subcontinent or the Eastern Mediterranean? Why not from Africa? Those are some questions in my book. A SCHOLAR OF ALL So, what did you find about Hitler — was he pivotal to WWII? Why are you and I now speaking in the English language and not in Hindi? Why is it not the case that people from the Indian subcontinent came to the New World, conquering it and spreading over Africa? Why did history turn out the way it did? There is no evidence for that though. Instead, there is lots of other evidence. A SAGE OF PEACE: Mahatma Gandhi devised unique non-violent resistance What does power and its growth fundamentally rely on? It depends on food, plants and animals that can be domesticated. Different parts of the world have more or fewer plants and animals which can be tamed and used. The place in the world with the largest number of domesticated animals and plants was what is called the Fertile Crescent of the Eastern Mediterranean — this region had sheep, goats, horses, pigs and calves as well as abundant plants like wheat, barley, peas and beans. Now, the Indian subcontinent also had domesticated species, notably many milch cattle, sesame crops and various species of beans, but not nearly as much as the Fertile Crescent. So, there were empires in the Fertile Crescent a couple of thousand years before they emerged in India. All of that has nothing to do with people’s biology — it had everything to do with the plants and animals available for domestication. Can you tell us your explanation in your new work of how such factors played a role in the success achieved by individual leaders like Genghis Khan ? The largest land empire in world history that stretched all the way from the coast of China to the border of Europe was set up by the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan. Why did he succeed in establishing such a massive empire when there were other chiefs too on the steppes? At different times, there was Atilla the Hun, Arpad the Hungarian and Timur the Turk. They also set up empires but not nearly as big as that of Genghis Khan — Genghis was undoubtedly a good military leader and a shrewd commander but then, so were the others. So, why did he in particular become this huge ruler? It’s only in the last decade that we’ve learned the answer. Climatologists who can reconstruct ancient climates from different sources analysed tree rings in the steppes of Asia. Why did a caste system become so elaborate in India? So, Genghis Khan had the good luck, without knowing it, of being born at the right time and place. LORDS & THE RINGS:Tree rings indicate So, how would you analyse the success of Mahatma Gandhi , who was born in colonised India, addled with poverty, racism, disease and famines? My book answers questions about leaders in four areas — social protest, where Mahatma Gandhi made such a huge difference, is discussed in the epilogue, among fields that wait to be illuminated by the methods I discuss in this book. So, I can make some speculations on Gandhi. It’s significant Mahatma Gandhi did not come from a country with a few inhabitants but from a place with hundreds of millions of people. How then can one say that Mahatma Gandhi was the only person in the Indian subcontinent who could have accomplished what he did? Just from studies of demography, it seems inevitable that by the end of World War II, with Britain’s evident decline in power, independence would have come to the Indian subcontinent — but the way it came was stamped indelibly by Gandhi. Independence could have come to the Indian subcontinent as it did to Kenya, with horrible fighting breaking out between the British and local people. That didn’t happen. Why? Instead, he brilliantly devised techniques of non-violent resistance, which people around the world learned from. He was a profound leader who made a difference, not in causing the independence that would have come to India anyway but in the way he brought freedom to India. Could you tell us about the ‘Hamlet test’ you use in your book as one method of gauging leaders? In a few cases, there are clearly only a small number of people who could have made a huge difference. How can we figure out whether Gandhi in particular could have made a unique individual difference when there were hundreds of millions of other Indians during his time? We cannot figure out if these others were as good as Gandhi or not. It’s rare that we can actually name every other candidate in such situations — but one example is William Shakespeare. His ‘Hamlet’ is often considered the greatest play in the English language. Now, if Shakespeare had perhaps perished at an early age of, say, smallpox, would we have another play as great as ‘Hamlet’? To be one, there were qualifiers, like you needed to have a host theatre in London, you had to have a troupe with good actors, etc. Yet, not one of their plays is remotely as good as ‘Hamlet’. The ‘Hamlet test’ can occasionally be applied in politics. Further, he was chief of the most powerful tribe in Botswana — and he was chief of the tribe on whose land diamonds were found and later developed industrially. So, we can apply the ‘Hamlet test’ to Seretse Khama and say he made a real difference — we cannot apply that to Mahatma Gandhi as we don’t know about millions of his peers. If cruelty were restricted to only certain countries and others were exempt from it, one might suspect it has something to do with success. But my reading of history and my experience of travelling around the world is that every country has viciously cruel people. The United States has seen the cruelty of Americans towards others. There are no entirely nice people in the world that I’ve seen at any rate. A CLIMATE… FOR CASTE? Speaking of cruelty, you also link India’s caste system to the nation’s environment — how so? To many people around the world, it’s a fascinating question why a caste system achieved such an elaborate form in India, far more than anywhere else. Similarly, the Inca empire and the Andean civilisations had castes but just a couple of them. BUMPER HARVEST: Why did so many emerge in India then? The world falls into six biogeographic regions — North America, South America, East Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe. India is the only place on Earth where three biogeographic regions come together or are placed close together, namely China, Europe and Africa. It’s only in recent times that there’s been more equality, although we are still very far from achieving this in full. Within a few years, the situation began to improve. It’s still unequal but at least, we have seen women candidates run for president. In European countries, particularly in Scandinavia, there have been many women political leaders. Things have improved far more in Scandinavia than in the US but, on the other hand, they have declined sharply in Afghanistan. Men have used biology to become dominant. By observing demography and Britain’s decline, it seems inevitable that independence would eventually have come to India — but the way it came was unique and unlike that of, say, Kenya. Can societies evolve from the capture of such biological determinism though? They are already evolving. Things are better. My sister Susan graduated from our college, Harvard Radcliffe, two years after me — and she had much more opportunity than the women in my class. IN BOTSWANA: Susan became the first woman reporter for the business section of the Los Angeles Times. Susan broke that mindset as the first woman business reporter for the LA Times. So, we can be optimistic. There is a lot of distance to travel — but there is also hope. Views expressed are personal You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
India experienced the cruelty of the British historically. does the ability of people to be cruel, willing to wield weapons indiscriminately, also play a role in the success of nations which became colonisers, enslavers or today’s resource extractors While Seretse Khama was wise.
My belief is that Hitler really did make a difference. He was perhaps the most charismatic speaker of the 20th century. There were other German anti-Semites but none of them developed his industrial-scale means. He was also brilliant at deceiving people. He deceived not only Neville Chamberlain at Munich but also his fellow Nazis, German generals and business officers. He was a risk-taker. He threw everything on one stroke and his early risks paid off. Of course, his later risks, like not withdrawing the German army when it was surrounded at Stalingrad, ended disastrously. (When) do leaders make a difference? This is why India has lions from Africa, birds from Europe and tigers from China. You’ve got a tremendous diversity of plants and animals — that means there are so many ways to make a living in India. AN EPIC CONQUERER: Mongol If you want to be a fisherman, for instance, you can fish with a line, nets or spears, fish in the sea, at the mouth of a river or in backwaters. You can be a herder of cattle, a rearer of sheep, a forager, a farmer of multiple crops. There are so many different ways to produce livelihoods in India and my thought is that India developed this proliferation of castes stemming from all these different employments. You write about success and leadership — are these traits in many places around the world instinctively associated with men? If so, what does this tell us about societies which think like this? That is a big, big question. Anthropologists and historians have studied this around the world. The cruel, ugly fact is that everywhere on Earth, men have been dominant in most areas. They’ve been politically dominant, economically dominant and so on. This has nothing to do with men’s brains though — it has a lot to do with the difference in biology between the two genders. Women bear children and among the human species, they get primary responsibility for raising the young. If you look at our closest relatives, among the common chimpanzee, males are dominant. Among pygmy chimpanzees or bonobos, females are dominant. Among elephants and hyenas, females are dominant.
In ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’, why did you argue climate, environment, and non-human species drove the success some societies experienced historically? Biological differences — and how societies use them — explain a lot to us about ‘men versus women’ today.
