No title (2011)

“Just why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?” One of the most intriguing questions is why the West suddenly dominated the World after the 1500s which is the crucial question Ferguson addresses here. Ferguson has written one of the best of his several works. He artfully dissects reasons why the West dramatically increased its power and strength over the rest of the world. At present, he says, we are experiencing “the end of 500 years of Western predominance,” and he foresees the possibility of a clash between the declining and rising forces. He wonders “whether the weaker will tip over from weakness to outright collapse.”

Several of Ferguson's works are relevant to his concerns here.

In Empire, Ferguson showed how the Americans lacked manpower for their overseas military efforts, the Americans suffered from an attention deficit and would not pull for their country over the long haul, and perhaps most importantly, the Americans were plagued with a financial deficit.

In Colossus, Ferguson demonstrates that Chimerica, the idea that America can fund its deficit infinitely without severe repercussions, was seriously flawed.

In the Ascent of Money, Ferguson shows the world-wide financial crisis was brought on by a complex of factors but old-fashioned liquidity was the problem during the era of supposedly more secure financial networks.

For his work here, there are six civilizations: Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Islamic, Jewish, and Western (following Melko and Eisenstadt, p. 3). These entities are remarkably resilient despite outside influences and extensive interactions between cultures.

Yet, beginning around 1500, something remarkable happened that has not occurred like anything before or since. The West exploded. In 1500, the West accounted for only 10 percent of the land and 16 percent of the world's population. By 1913, Western nations controlled nearly three fifths of all territory and population and a staggering 79 percent of global economic output (p. 5). "The rise of the United States saw the gap between West and East widen still further. By 1990 the average American was seventy-three times richer than the average Chinese" (p. 5). Both the models of governance and economics were Western, whether the civilization was Eastern or Western.

Imperialism does not explain Western dominance. The Ottoman, Safavid, and Ming dynasties existed at the same time while the West and non-Western empires practiced various forms of imperialism thus this does not account for the West's dominance. An important factor to consider are institutions: consider the test cases of Germany, China, and Korea. In each case, if you impose communist institutions on a culture, people suffer; on the other hand, if Western capitalism flourishes, the very same culture flourishes and prospers.

According to Jared Diamond, the monolithic Chinese empire stifled competition whereas in Europe competition bred excellence and advances. According to Ferguson, this is an "appealing" but not a "sufficient" explanation (p. 12).

According to Ferguson, there are six "mainsprings of global power": 1) competition; 2) science; 3) property rights; 4) medicine; 5) the consumer society; and 6) the work ethic. He calls these the "killer apps" (p. 12) of Western dominance.

Property Rights
Property rights are key. Locke argues that if even seven people are gathered together and their beliefs coincide; they constitute a church. Therefore, all beliefs should be tolerated and through the reasonableness of Christianity some may see the truth (p. 113). In the tolerant example provided, in North America, the United States grew in liberty and expanded. In South America though, the area was characterized by "division, instability, and underdevelopment. . . . " (p. 115) "conflict, poverty, and inequality (p. 119). Ferguson addresses the issue of difference. At root is the issue of land. In his early career as a South American Washington, the Liberator Simon Bolivar failed to appeal to non-whites and they rallied to the royalist cause. It was only after two unsuccessful attempts at forming a Republic that Bolivar developed a strategy to unite all people of color. In his efforts he found unlikely supporters among Irish and British freedom fighters. 7,000 U.K. supporters were attracted with promises of freedom and land (p. 121).

Three difficulties plagued Bolivar even after he successfully repulsed royalist forces. South Americans had had no practical experience running their own affairs as the American colonists had enjoyed for decades before their Revolution. Peninsulares had so controlled governance that the creoles had little experience (p. 123). At one point, Bolivar is quoted by Ferguson as stating that the American experiment could never work in Latin America. He states that there is little in common between the English American and the Spanish American (p. 124). Bolivar's vision was not a land-owning Republic with the rule of law but a life-long dictatorship of Bolivar.

The second problem was the unequal distribution of land. A creole elite, merely 10,000 people, 1.1% of the people, owned nearly all the land (p. 124). In 1910, on the eve of the Mexican revolution, only 2.4% of the rural population owned any land (p. 124). In contrast, in 1900, the rural population in the United States owned 75% of the land. Throughout the British Empire the same general statistic of land ownership remains consistent. Up the present, it continues to be one of the primary distinctions between British-influenced areas and Latin America.

Finally, racial antagonism and division doomed Latin America from unity (p. 125). Creoles resented former slaves and vice versa. The indigenous peoples made up a larger component of Latin America than in North America and they were not integrated, or displaced as in North America, into Latin American governance.

Bolivar's grand vision disintegrated into factional disputations and the unity achieved by the United States never occurred. Bolivar depressingly but accurately described the future of Latin America and it was bleak. "The newly independent states began their lives without a tradition of representative government, with a profoundly unequal distribution of land and with racial cleavages that closely approximated to that economic inequality" (p. 127). Unfortunately, when Hugo Chavez celebrates his connection to Bolivar, the dictatorial, sham democracy, and his nationalizing pursuits, Chavez is on sound historical grounds. Bolivar did not create a republic and he was no Washington.

Medicine
Those contemplating the evils of imperialism might consider the advance in medicine assisting the world's people's to live longer. For example, in 1800 the average life expectancy was 28.5 years, and in 2001, Western medicine lengthened life expectancy globally to 66.6 (p. 146). During the colonialist period life expectancy increased during occupation and has declined in the post-colonial period (p. 147).

One of the most dangerous books ever was Rousseau's insistence in The Social Contract that the Noble Savage should not be restrained and he advocated for the General Will. Edmund Burke had early on seen the danger in the French Revolution and consequently wrote against it. "Revolutions devour their own children" (p. 153). Tocqueville pointed out how France was not America: "in sum, they chose Rousseau over Locke" (p. 154).

Work
One of the most intriguing aspects of China's rise according to Ferguson is the simultaneous popularity of Christianity (pp. 277-88). The Chinese authorities have long been wary of religious movements but Christianity is making significant inroads among the population. According to one scholar, the Communists looked into why the West was pre-eminent, and various reasons were advanced: guns, politics, economics, "but in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful" (p. 287). Christianity and transcendence leads society to understand tolerance, equality, environmental protection, among the leading ideas advanced by the West. "The XIVth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Part was presented with a report specifying three requirements for sustainable economic growth: property rights as a foundation, the law as a safeguard and morality as a support" (p. 288). It is the West that has lost faith in itself.

To illustrate his points in the conclusion, Ferguson invokes "The Course of Empire" which is a five-part series of paintings created by Thomas Cole in 1833-36 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Course_of_Empire). Paul Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 by Paul M. Kennedy, http://www.librarything.com/work/12599/27116122) develops this American concern, that the Republic is at an end and Ferguson deals with current ideas about the decline and fall of civilization. Kennedy identified "imperial overstretch" as the issue to contend with (p. 298). Then there is Green theorist Jared Diamond's Collapse to consider as well (Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond: http://www.librarything.com/work/1070881/27115644). Ferguson disagrees with Diamond's long-term, catastrophic Green collapse; in contrast, Ferguson states civilizations can collapse over night.

This is the most alarming aspect of Ferguson's work: civilizations, as in nature, are complex systems which can collapse quickly and virtually overnight. He illustrates this point with numerous examples from the Roman Empire to the fall of Great Britain. Civilizations collapse.

The story of the West and the rest is explained by Ferguson's six killer apps: "mainsprings of global power" (pp. 305-306). Once the killer apps are downloaded, as in the case of Japan, other economies took off as well. India, once its abysmal socialist experiment ended, invoked free-market principles and benefited tremendously as a result.

According to Ferguson, "the financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 should therefore be understood as an accelerator of an already well-established trend of relative Western decline" (p. 308). The financial situation of the United States is blinking red and according to Ferguson a relatively minor impetus could plunge the entire system into an immediate tailspin. Our debt is held in foreign hands, primarily China, and other nations such as Japan could pull themselves out of a crisis since they have held onto their own liabilities.

China will consume more, import more, invest more abroad, and innovate more (p. 316). Just as crucial is what could go wrong for China and there are four hypotheses. China could decline as Japan did although before the last two decades Japan was predicted by some to surpass the U.S. Second, China may be plagued with social unrest. A third possibility is that the middle class may demand a bigger piece of the political pie. And finally, China's aggression may drive neighbors into the hands of the U.S.

As Ferguson pointed out earlier, civilizations collapse quickly and although the West no long maintains a monopoly on advantageous cultural developments there is an endurable package of Western ways of being.

"This Western package still seems to offer human societies the best available set of economic, social and political institutions--the ones most likely to unleash the individual human creativity capable of solving the problems the twenty-first century world faces" (p. 324). It is this package that has done the best job of finding and highlighting talent. "The big question is whether or not we are still able to recognize the superiority of that package" (p. 324).

The Western texts that should be most instructive and promoted in the schools are:

The King James Bible
Shakespeare
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations and Moral Sentiments
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France
Isaac Newton, Principia
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
Abraham Lincoln
Winston Churchill

“The biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity — and by the historical ignorance that feeds it” (p. 325). Ferguson calls for a return to traditional education, since “at its core, a civilization is the texts that are taught in its schools, learned by its students and recollected in times of tribulation” (p. 324) — by which he means Great Books, and especially Shakespeare. The greatest dangers facing us are probably not “the rise of China, Islam or CO2 emissions,” he writes, but “our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors” (p. 325).

"Can the West endure any democracy achieved by enemies who in no way resemble them?"
Orhan Pamuk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan_Pamuk

The introduction to this book excited me because the author posed a question I'd often pondered: why did Europe overtake Asia? Guns, Germs and Steel avoided the question as that text slipped from "Eurasia" to "Europe" hoping no one would notice. Would I finally get an answer? Sadly, no. China turned inward, but why? Still a mystery.

This book is an epic undertaking. I can't say the author strayed from his thesis becuase his thesis (the six killer apps) was broad enough to encompass a lot. But, he never answered his central question about the West vs. the Rest. Are our differneces the result of institutions or or culture? Are these really two different things?

Mr. Ferguson is an engaging writer. He's done a lot of research and is a well respected author. Maybe he didn't want to answer his question about the West losing ground because he admires western civilization and retains a sense of optimism. As he says, there are a "plurality of futures." ( )

Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. All over the world, more and more people study at Western-style universities, work for Western-style companies, vote for Western-style governments, take Western medicines, wear Western clothes, and play Western sports. Yet six hundred years ago the petty kingdoms of Western Europe seemed like miserable backwaters, ravaged by incessant war and pestilence. It was Ming China or Ottoman Turkey that had the look of world civilizations. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed?

In Civilization: The West and the Rest, acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that, beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts that the Rest lacked: competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic. These were the ‘killer applications’ that allowed the West to leap ahead of the Rest; opening global trade routes, exploiting new scientific knowledge, evolving representative government, more than doubling life expectancy, unleashing the industrial revolution, and hugely increasing human productivity. Civilization shows exactly how a dozen Western empires came to control three-fifths of mankind and four-fifths of the world economy. ( )

Ferguson's work is interesting, covers a lot of ground but often in minimal depth. His ultimate conclusions resonates, which is that what the West needs to fear is its own pusillanimity, but the work itself does less to prove it than it does to relate often trivial factual data.

One of his better points, which is worth remarking, is that the greatest lost civilizations have usually collapsed within a remarkably short period--a generation, maybe two. But even this bears some criticism. The Rome of Theodosius was a far weaker place than the Rome of Augustus, so much of the decline had already been evident long before the bizarre reign of Honorius. Rome fell because it sacrificed its proven value system, with its emphasis on military discipline, political engagement, and the restriction of ambition, for a new, different one with an emphasis on withdrawal from the affairs of life and the re-creation of Heaven on Earth. Between this substantial change in not only values but also incentives and constraints, and the depletion of the Roman military through constant civil wars and attempted usurpations, Rome lost its military supremacy, and was forced to allow the barbarian tribes of Goths and other Germans into its territory in exchange for "protection" from other barbarians. The Roman soul was thereby sacrificed. This process was a product of centuries, not of half-decades. Unfortunately, Ferguson treats this chapter in the history of the West far differently; he implies that the reign of Theodosius was as glorious as that of Augustus, rather than a rescue-reign after numerous atrocious reigns by inferior emperors, and asserts confidently that Rome was lost in just one generation.

All told, if only for the volume of facts which are therein related, the book holds some value; but for its arguments and presentation, I think it fails to live up to its promise quite miserably. ( )

An interesting view on the reasons western civilization progressed ahead of the rest and how the 'rest" are now catching up and may eventually overtake.
Comparisons on competition, science, property, medicine, consumption and work are used to explain why certain countries grew and expanded and why others did not.
Some interesting concepts although sometimes so many facts it was difficult to take them all in - although I do think I actually did learn something! ( )