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Chapter 14
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Sapiens, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Foraging, Industry, and Human Happiness
Fiction, Cooperation, and Culture
Science, Wealth, and Empire
Human-Caused Ecological Devastation
Summary
Analysis
In the 1700s, governments sent expeditions around the globe to measure the transit of Venus passing between the sun and the Earth, so that they could calculate Earth’s distance from the sun. The Royal Society sent Charles Green to Tahiti, on a boat captained by Naval Officer Captain James Cook. In those days, many sailors died of scurvy. Cook encouraged his sailors to eat fruits and vegetables when the boat docked, and none of his sailors died. During that expedition, Cook also claimed Australia and several South Pacific Islands for British occupation. Within a century, Australia and New Zealand were colonized by Europeans. The Aborigines “never recovered.”
In this chapter, Harari will argue that efforts to learn scientific information about the world often masked efforts to colonize the world. Many European colonists thought they were serving the needs of science, but actually, they were serving the goals of empire-building. For example, Charles Green’s scientific expedition to measure the transit of Venus across the Sun from the South Pacific ended up making Captain Cook seize Australia and New Zealand for British rule.
Themes
Cook also claimed Tasmania, which had been isolated for 10,000 years. European settlers killed and imprisoned the natives and converted the survivors to Christianity. Meanwhile, dead Tasmanians’ corpses were used for scientific research and put on display in museums. Harari wonders if Cook’s expedition was a “scientific expedition protected by military forces, or a military expedition with a few scientists tagging along.” He thinks science and empire are two sides of the same coin.
Harari continues talking about Cook’s “scientific expedition” to emphasize how much of it was actually focused on colonizing other territories to create a British empire. He stresses this to show that historical scientific expeditions weren’t just neutral efforts to learn more about the world, so that he can bolster his claim that the scientific endeavor often serves the goals of empire building.
Themes
During the Roman Empire, Western Europe was a “distant backwater” that nobody thought much of. By 1750, Western Europeans colonized many parts of the world. Even then, Asia dominated 80 percent of the global economy. By 1950, Western Europe and the United States accounted for over half the global economy. Harari thinks a “new global order” emerged from these shifts. He argues that even people who don’t like Europeans are European in their dress, tastes, and thinking. Harari argues that many people credit scientists—and the technologies they developed, like railroads and machine guns—for the rise of European culture.
Once again, Harari stresses that scientific research isn’t neutral—it always serves a political or economic goal. He thinks that a lot of scientific research centers on developing new technologies, like railroads and machine guns, and that powerful people use those new technologies to dominate other societies. Harari encourages his readers to worry about the uses to which science was put in the past, so that they’ll think more critically about the goals that science will serve in the future—and hopefully think more about whether or not those goals actually benefit them.
Themes
Harari wonders why the British built the first railroad and not the Chinese or Persians. They clearly had the technology for steam engines too. Harari thinks the Chinese and Persians lacked the “values, myths […] and sociopolitical structures” to push the agenda of industry. Specifically, Harari thinks Europeans favored science and capitalism, which gave them the edge. He thinks that even if Europe no longer rules the world, their values, centered on science and capitalism, do.
Harari stresses that the pursuit of wealth (capitalism) often motivates scientific research. He even suggests that it often looks like science is driving humanity, but really, capitalist goals (making money) are driving the scientific endeavor behind the scenes. Harari (controversially) thinks that other societies outside Europe around the 1700s didn’t have such capitalistic goals, so they didn’t push the agenda of science as strongly as Europeans did.
Themes
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Scholars from many places made scientific contributions, but Harari thinks that the European imperial elites collated those insights. Harari thinks that European imperialists wanted to “explore” the world and learn things they didn’t know. In 1831, the Royal Navy sent the H.M.S. Beagle to chart South America’s coasts for military purposes. They took along Charles Darwin, who discovered the theory of evolution on that trip. Harari thinks about a story in which a Native American tribesman gives astronauts a message to take to the moon. When the astronauts translate the message, they realize it reads “Don’t believe a single word these people tell you. They have come to steal your lands.”
Harari reinforces his idea that capitalism (the desire for profit and wealth) and empire (the desire for power and territory) actually drive scientific discoveries. He stresses, once more (leveraging the example of the H.M.S. Beagle) that many 19th-century “explorers” were fulfilling scientific and imperial goals at the same time. Harari uses the example of the Native American message to stress that humanity shouldn’t trust the scientific endeavor—it’s often empire-building in disguise.
Themes
Before Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas, cartographers used to draw full and detailed maps of the Earth, according to their knowledge. After Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas, Europeans began drawing maps with blank spaces in them, and traveling to places to fill them in. Harari thinks that other historical voyagers (like Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who explored the Indian Oceans at length), were different because he didn’t try to conquer the countries he visited. Harari notes that the Romans never tried to conquer India, the Persians never tried to conquer Spain, and the Chinese didn’t attempt to conquer Africa. The difference with Europeans is that they were driven by the desire to explore the world, and also to conquer it.
Harari uses the symbol of maps with empty spaces to represent the scientific mentality. Before the Scientific Revolution, people assumed that religious scriptures already contained all the knowledge that humans needed (which Harari symbolizes with maps that are completely filled in, with no space set aside for uncharted lands). After the Scientific Revolution, people assumed that they were ignorant about the world and needed to acquire knowledge by exploring and observing it. For Harari, blank spaces in maps represent knowledge that’s yet to be discovered. He subtly implies here that blank spaces in maps also represent territory to be conquered—showing that Europeans had a hard time separating their pursuit of science from their pursuit of empire.
Themes
Harari thinks about Hernàn Cortés, who conquered Aztec Mexico in the 1500s. Spanish colonists had already committed genocide in most of the Caribbean, but the Aztecs didn’t know about this. When Cortés arrived, the first Aztecs he met thought that Cortés was a peaceful visitor and they led him to Emperor Montezuma, whom Cortés took hostage. Cortés began controlling the Aztec empire through Montezuma. After several months, the Aztec elite rebelled against Cortés’s rule, but Cortés convinced many other indigenous people to side with him. They thought Cortés would liberate them from Aztec rule, but they soon found themselves controlled by Spain, in a far worse regime.
Although Harari has spent a lot of time arguing that empires are good for humanity because they unite people under a common social order, thereby facilitating widespread cooperation, he offers another picture of empires here. He emphasizes—through Cortés’s efforts to seize power over the Aztec Empire—that empire-building is often fraught with brutal oppression. He also suggests that had the Americas already been a united empire, the Aztecs would have known what was coming (based on what Spanish colonists did to the Caribbean). Harari tries to show here that—for good or bad—empires tend to win out when they’re competing with isolated societies.
Themes
Then, 10 years later, Francisco Pizarro conquered the Incan Empire based on what he learned from Cortés’s expedition. The Incans, who knew nothing about what had happened to the Aztecs, had no idea what was coming. Meanwhile, no Asian nations sent expeditions to the Americas. Harari thinks they were relatively unconcerned by the Europeans’ conquests, until Europeans started infiltrating Asia. By the time Asian nations realized what the Europeans were up to, it was too late. Harari thinks that the only time other nations could defeat European rule was when their plights became globalized—like Vietnam’s fight against the Americans. Harari wonders how Montezuma might have fared if he’d know about other nations and reached out for support against the Spanish.
Harari stresses once more that empires tend to win out when they compete with isolated societies. He stresses that the Europeans’ empire-building enterprise managed to defeat small isolated societies in the Americas, and it also infiltrated many established nations in Asia. Harari also thinks that Asian nations (who were already in contact with the European world) assumed that European explorers were just trying to do scientific research, so they didn’t think of the Europeans as a threat. He suggests here, as before, that scientific projects often mask more sinister goals.
Themes
Harari thinks that for modern Europeans, setting up empires and doing scientific research were deeply intertwined. When the British conquered India, they quickly scouted all the gold mines, but they also conducted biological surveys, discovered lost ruins, and deciphered ancient scripts. To Harari, the British imperial vision was marked by scientific curiosity. Harari thinks about British officer Henry Rawlinson, who went to Persia to help train the Persian army and also discovered ancient inscriptions in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian carved into a cliff face, enabling him to “unlocked the secrets” of these ancient Empires. Harari thinks that without European imperialists, humanity wouldn’t know about all these ancient empires.
So far, Harari has focused on his worries about being too trusting of science. Many scientific projects actually serve other purposes—like making people rich or expanding nations’ empires. Curiously, Harari changes tack here to argue that empire-building often yields scientific knowledge, which he depicts as a good thing. He suggests that British scientists were able to learn a lot about history from their imperial activities in Persia, and he suggests that it was beneficial for humanity overall.
Themes
Another imperialist scholar, William Jones, discovered connections between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and developed a methodology for linguistics. Harari thinks such pursuits of knowledge gave imperialists an advantage in their empires. Harari thinks the pursuit of scientific knowledge also made imperialists feel that their conquests were justified. Harari also thinks imperialists used their thirst for scientific knowledge for “sinister” purposes, like arguing that Europeans were superior to other races. The idea of European (or Aryan) racial superiority fueled many right-wing agendas in Europe, including the Nazi regime. Harari thinks modern Europeans are no different. He thinks about French politician Marie le Pen, who argues that Muslim cultures have backwards attitudes towards gender equality, and she uses the social sciences to justify her position.
Harari continues weighing up the pros and cons of scientific discoveries that arose during European imperialism. On one hand, he thinks William Jones’s research was good for humanity. But he also condemns research that tried to privilege some races over others. Harari thinks that modern politicians (like Marie le Pen) don’t argue that some races are superior, but they do argue that some cultures are superior, and—like their predecessors—they use social scientific theories to back up their claims. Harari wants to show that scientific research is still being used to service political goals today.
Themes
Harari thinks that without scientists, the European imperial project would not have been so successful. He also thinks that without imperialists, science wouldn’t have developed as quickly as it did. Harari wonders about other factors that influenced the rise of science, like capitalism, which he’s going to address next.
Harari thinks that capitalism (the pursuit of profit and wealth) also influences the direction that science takes, and he worries about this too. He’s going explain why in the following chapter.
Themes
