Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Collapse and the Concentration of Power
The Norse, like other medieval European Christians, Jared Diamond says in Collapse, scorned pagan non-European peoples and lacked experience of how best to deal with them. “Only after the age of exploration that began with Columbus’ voyage in 1492 did they learn Machiavellian ways of exploiting native people to their own advantage, even while continuing to despise them.
“Hence, the Norse refused to learn from the Inuit and probably behaved towards them in ways ensuring their enmity. Many later groups of Europeans in the Arctic similarly perished as a result of ignoring or antagonizing the Inuit, most notably the 138 British members of the well-financed 1845 Franklin Expedition, every single one of whom died while trying to cross areas of the Canadian Arctic populated by Inuit. The European explorers and settlers who succeeded best in the Arctic were those most extensively adopting Inut ways, like Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen.
“Finally, power in Norse Greenland was concentrated at the top, in the hands of the chiefs and clergy. They owned most of the land (including all the best farms), owned the boats, and controlled the trade with Europe. They chose to devote much of that trade to importing goods that brought prestige to them: luxury goods for the wealthiest households, vestments and jewelry for the clergy, and bells and stained glass for the churches.
Chiefs had two motives for running large sheep herds that could damage the land by overgrazing: wool paid for the imports, and independent farmers on overgrazed land were more likely to be forced into tenancy, and become the Chief’s followers in his competition with other chiefs. Many innovations such as importing more iron and less luxuries, designing different boats and using different hunting techniques might have achieved success. But those would have threatened the power, prestige and narrow interests of the chiefs. In the tightly controlled, interdependent society of Norse Greenland, they were is a position to prevent these.
“Hence, the Norse refused to learn from the Inuit and probably behaved towards them in ways ensuring their enmity. Many later groups of Europeans in the Arctic similarly perished as a result of ignoring or antagonizing the Inuit, most notably the 138 British members of the well-financed 1845 Franklin Expedition, every single one of whom died while trying to cross areas of the Canadian Arctic populated by Inuit. The European explorers and settlers who succeeded best in the Arctic were those most extensively adopting Inut ways, like Robert Peary and Roald Amundsen.
“Finally, power in Norse Greenland was concentrated at the top, in the hands of the chiefs and clergy. They owned most of the land (including all the best farms), owned the boats, and controlled the trade with Europe. They chose to devote much of that trade to importing goods that brought prestige to them: luxury goods for the wealthiest households, vestments and jewelry for the clergy, and bells and stained glass for the churches.
Chiefs had two motives for running large sheep herds that could damage the land by overgrazing: wool paid for the imports, and independent farmers on overgrazed land were more likely to be forced into tenancy, and become the Chief’s followers in his competition with other chiefs. Many innovations such as importing more iron and less luxuries, designing different boats and using different hunting techniques might have achieved success. But those would have threatened the power, prestige and narrow interests of the chiefs. In the tightly controlled, interdependent society of Norse Greenland, they were is a position to prevent these.
