Yes. He cherry picked some ideas about history to support his theory, and ignored the couple centuries of development of geographic determinism in history that went over all his ideas in detail and showed they didn't work before he was born.
I have never examined his ornithology, but I'm willing to extend him professional courtesy that it's solid, but his popular books should be categorized with Gavin Menzies.
Could you list a few books and main criticisms? Like do the critics claim Diamond is mistaken about the need for plants and animals that can be profitably domesticated, and how few there are? Or that infections diseases played a key role in the success of Western imperialism?
Well I skimmed over the links, and like all the other critiques of GGS I have seen, they don't really address his argument.
For one thing, he was not arguing why Europeans conquered the world, but rather why a Eurasian civilization did so. Also he was not a determinist who was arguing that it was inevitable that this happen, rather that it was possible that it could, and that a civilization from another continent couldn't, or at least it was much less likely.
And indeed, when you look at the civilizations on other continents, they had much less developed military technologies, and much lower agricultural production per capita than the advanced Eurasian ones. None of the critiques I have seen address Diamond's argument that Eurasia prevailed because it had the plants and animals needed to develop more powerful civilizations than did the other continents. I mean, do you think the Mayans could have conquered Europe, China, India and the Middle East, even though they lacked grains and beasts of burden? And what about a civilization whose territory lacked the coal and iron ore needed to produce iron and steel, could it have won militarily against those that did and were making use of them?
If you've already familiar with a lot of Diamond critiques but have decided he's right all along then why say "Could you list a few books and main criticisms?". You come off as not engaging in good faith.
In what way? I'm not sure that anyone seriously argues [against the idea] that geographic determinism had a lot to do with which two core centers of civilization arose earliest (and hence had a big head start). The criticism, such as it is, mostly relates to the fact that geography certainly isn't the only factor that played into how civilizations evolved after they got going in the first place.
However, if you read Why the West Rules for Now (which serves as a pretty good East and West world history), the author basically says near the beginning that of course geography played a big role in where early civilization started.
But, to the central question of the book, that doesn't begin to explain why China had to pay homage to Britain, rather than the other way around.
If I understand correctly, China could have ruled the world at least twice.
First, around 1100, China was starting in on an industrial revolution. They peaked at tens of thousands of tons of iron produced each year. Then the mandarins noticed that some commoners were getting rich, which was contrary to the proper order, and the government shut down the iron industry, and the whole thing stopped. But they could have had at least the beginnings of the industrial revolution five centuries before England. (Source: The Victory of Reason, by Rodney Stark.)
Second, China had fleets that dominated at least the Far East, and could have dominated the Indian Ocean. But shortly after 1434, the Chinese emperor decreed an end to the voyages of their great fleet. (Source: 1421 and 1434, by Gavin Menzies.)
Underpinning the book I referenced, the author Ian Morris put together a very detailed attempt to quantify the overall level of civilization [1].
Certainly after the Fall of Rome, the West declined precipitously. I've been reading a bit about that period in Europe recently and the extent of the decline is really quite staggering. It's uneven to be sure as areas of the Middle East, for example, didn't really fall as far.
In any case, China was arguably more advanced than Europe for a significant period and certainly didn't trail significantly until the industrial revolution in the West. (And the industrial revolution(s) pretty much swamped everything that came before.)
ADDED: The book is pretty light on the why behind the West's relative success but there's some speculation, as I recall, around centralized government and general conservatism caused China to miss out.
In Jared Diamond's "guns, germs and steel" an explanation given is that in China, some monarchs simply decided to abandon ocean faring ships, and so China didn't have them for a long time. The same couldn't happen in Europe, because there were so many small competing countries.
