by
David Harvey
[...] Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) argues that the relation to nature is what counts, thus transforming human evolution into a tale of environmental determinism. Africa is poor for environmental reasons, not, he says, because of racial inferiorities or (what he does not say) because of centuries of imperialistic plundering, beginning with the slave trade. [...]
interesting take on it. I'll need to go back to the source because I vaguely remember Diamond saying that the environment is what resulted in the plundering (thus, he didn't ignore it completely) but maybe I'm wrong