My main objection to Diamond is his reductionism, the explanation of the whole sweep of world history by a few grand laws. But Jack has managed to go one step further, to use one of the grandest, and odious, reductionism of them all, the world-wide conspiracy of “International Jewry” to explain Diamond.

Perhaps Jack could enlighten us as to whether the Jews or the germs had a greater impact on world history. Or is he unable to tell them apart?

Take, for example, Diamond’s statements on pages 412-413 of his book, “[The answer is] a power struggle between two factions in the Chinese court. The former faction had been identified with the fleets. Hence when the latter faction gained the upper hand in a power struggle, it stopped sending fleets. The episode is reminiscent of the legislation that strangled development of public lighting in London in the 1880s, the isolationism of the United States between the First and Second World Wars, and any number of backward steps in any number of countries. But in China there was a difference, because the entire region was politically unified. One decision stopped fleets over the whole of China [and] became irreversible.”

The suggestion that the US would be acting in a backwards manner if it had not entered WW1 and WW2 is exactly what International Jewry wants heard loud and clear to show that the US is right and noble in invading Iraq and, as a consequence, protecting Israel.

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Somebody says to me, “I want to understand why Zambia is the way it is now”, I might eventually say, “Ok, let me talk a little about the longue duree and material conditions”, I might want to talk about tsetse fly and pastoralism, and so on. But what I’m going to talk about first is colonialism. No, scratch that. I’m going to talk about that second. What I’m going to do first is toss the person asking a copy of Ferguson’s Expectations of Modernity, because then the questioner would understand that the way Zambia is now is actually in significant contrast with the way it was in 1965, that very short-term, highly contingent issues carry more explanatory weight than talking about malaria does.