Megan VanSickle
Climate Change
Collapse Summaries

Chapter 10-Malthus in Africa: Rwanda’s Genocide Summary
In Chapter 10 Jared Diamond is educating the readers in the instance of Rwanda’s collapse with the conditions of lack of farming land, hunger, war, poverty, lack of natural resources and more. These were caused by population pressure. Overpopulation is the primary cause which brings many problems along with it. Diamond begins the chapter by discussing and talking about his family’s stay in East Africa. He and his family saw overpopulated streets of poor people which sadly most of them were children. The children were on the side of the road begging. Diamond also discusses how population problems such as this with East Africa are sometimes pointed out as Malthusian theory. This is when population grows rapidly compared to food production increases. Diamond also discusses the Rwanda’s people that were controlled and influenced by Hutus, mostly farmers and Tutsis. Hutus and Tutsis did not like each other so Hutus army started killing Tutsis with weapons. Diamond later causes many examples such as overpopulation in Kanama. This caused population consuming below the average daily required calories. This educated readers about the different regions that are coming to be thee victims of population pressure. At the end of chapter 10, Diamond thinks that overpopulation had great impact on the Rwandan genocide. Diamond uses three counterarguments in order to prove his point. The first counterargument that Diamond points out is, he admits that some people might question that his theory is innocent. Diamond counter argues by saying that his theory is simply one of many causes. Secondly, Diamond also admits that