Civilization: The West and the Rest

Wow, what an amazing, exciting and insightful historical analysis of how we all got here! By "here," I mean to say, at Amazon, browsing books on line, reading the reviews of anonymous readers with wildly divergent opinions! Before I write anything, remember this: Comparative Culture is, by definition, based on human opinion, and its study can be polarizing and emotionally sensitive. This book will get your back up, one way or the other. There are many detailed reviews already written on this controversial volume, so I'll just cut RIGHT to the chase: If you're a conservative American (or European, for that matter), and you think we are "by God, the strongest country on earth, never been stronger, and all you foreign hordes coming from Asia can love it or leave it!" then this book is NOT for you. If you're a Tea Partier or a Rick Perry supporter, this book is going to rankle you, maybe even offend you, because Dr. Ferguson recognizes that the United States is an empire in serious trouble. But he doesn't leave the story there. On the other side of the coin, if you're a staunch "declinist," a radical environmentalist, an Occupier, or a gloom-and-doom jeremiah, this book will ALSO put you off. Niall Ferguson is far too sophisticated a social critic to be easily labeled. He's not a flag waving patriot, and he's not a red-hot revolutionary. He's an enormously accomplished historian who believes that our times are BAD, that civilization is dangerously close to rapid disintegration, that the loss of standards and civility in life are creating a world of unimaginable selfishness, that fear and greed rule the WORLD, not just the markets, and that mass consumerism leads to boredom, loneliness and depression. There's just one catch: He believes we can fix it. He believes we NEED to fix it, quickly, URGENTLY! So who will actually LIKE this book? Political scientists, intellectuals, and liberals with enough time and money to contemplate BIG issues will love this book. Your typical suburban professional, with a mind inquisitive enough to wonder what the hell is going on will love this book. Anyone living in the "West" with the feeling that we're muddling through a decade-long malaise will appreciate this book. Your political persuasion is really not important. Dr. Ferguson gets our attention by first dispelling the historical misconception that strong empires tend to fade away with time, due to internal stagnation and external competition. Well, he wants us to know that empires don't fade away, they CRUMBLE, usually within a generation. He supports this view with historical evidence. In other words, we live in a world within which many great civilizations have come crashing down due to [the same] internal stagnation and external competition in a matter of a few years. He thinks the "West," and the United States in particular, are dangerously close to falling off the cliff. The Eurozone, too. He wants to "save" the "West" from this outcome by 1) sounding the alarm and 2) offering recommendations on how this might be done. This is really, REALLY important and amazing stuff. The book centers around a metaphor of the "West" using its "killer apps" to rapidly advance economically from the "Rest" over the past 500 years. He sets up a beautifully effective structuralist argument that the "West" adopted an "operating system" which became the world standard, and that six "killer apps" were designed for that operating system that completely marginalized the rest of the world. Dr. Ferguson is quite specific about the six "killer apps" around which he constructs his argument. You'll have to read the book to learn what they are! He dedicates a chapter to detailed discussion of each of these killer apps, and explores how the "Rest" are catching up to the "West" because they have simply learned how to download these apps, and make them work within their own "operating system." The "Rest" adopted an "operating system" that may have been technically superior, but became marginal because it was not pragmatic or expedient. Here, he's referring to the great Asian and African civilizations, and he's stuffing (and generalizing) the comparative political analysis into a "Beta vs. VHS" or "Apple vs. Microsoft" metaphor. I love it! Here's the punchline: The six killer apps of the West have become corrupted by viruses and are losing there competitive advantage due to COMPLACENCY. We need to refocus on the continued development of our killer apps, and then "reboot" the entire system. We'll become the better performing, restored machine after this, moved back from the brink by own our effort and skill. We'll need to accommodate a new operating system too, because Asia is rapidly advancing. If we fail to recognize the problem, our killer apps, and our entire operating system may be replaced by another more aggressive and adaptable standard. The world will become one-sided. The metaphor refers here to the emergence of Asia, once again, supported by historical trends. For those of you who rave that Dr. Ferguson's thesis is racist, I offer this: He's not comparing RACE anywhere in the text, but he is comparing CULTURE. Once again, we're talking about comparative culture, which is an extremely sensitive topic. And, if anything, he is praising the enormous advancements of the civilizations OUTSIDE the "West." I think this is a brilliant thesis, told with powerful insight, strong historical references, and a lovely post-modern allegorical structure. Niall Ferguson doesn't know everything, but he is smart enough to know when things are bad enough to take notice. And he's optimistic enough in the tools he learned as a "Westerner" to believe that there's much more good work to do. The West is too young to die. Our apps work. They need updates... now. Will we heed the call to fix things, or will we let stagnant gridlock, selfish intolerance and complacency destroy our civilization? Niall Ferguson believes the choice is ours. WE can work for a better society, or we can continue to go our own way, knocking down anyone and everyone who stands in our way to... what? More debt, more stagnation, and more Lexapro? This book is, obviously, highly politically charged, and it does NOT respect the decorum we would generally describe as "politically correct." It's an easy read about weighty issues, but it's going to make you either mad as hell or thankful for such a penetrating mind. But if it moves you to action or, at least to contemplation, it's a successful book.

Excellent. The usual insightful and amazing Niall Ferguson! Covers all the main reasons for the ascendancy of Western civilization for the last 500 years! I would add “ Rule of Law” as one of the 6 most important reasons above consumer society and Medicine. This and “ Private Property Rights” are probably the two primary contributors to the economic Engine that propelled the West above the Rest for the previous 500 years. It remains to be seen if this trend continues! A must read for anyone who wants to move beyond the propaganda of modern day History and thought! Bravo Niall!!

This is a wonderful, thought-provoking, but sadly undisciplined book. It's wonderful because Ferguson takes us on a erudite romp through history, ranging from Zhong He's 15th century African voyages to the siege of Vienna in 1680 to the foibles of the French in 19th century Africa to 21st century Christianity in China. Thought-provoking because it ask the right questions: Why has the West been more successful than other cultures, and what is needed to maintain the benefits that Western civilization has brought, not just in the West but throughout the world. (In another time and place, these questions might be less thought provoking, but in the current intellectual climate -- when one can be charged with racism merely for suggesting that not all cultures are equally conducive to human flourishing -- his ideas plow intellectual ground that for too many will be new terrain.) Undisciplined because in his exuberant exposition of all he touches on, Ferguson ultimately fails to prove his thesis. A lot is thrown up on the wall, a lot of it sticks, but in the end, its not clear that what remains paints the picture he wants it to. More on that below, but first a summary of the main points of the book. Ferguson maintains that the West surpassed "The Rest" of the world because of six defining characteristics that come together in the 16th century. (In a sop to the iGeneration, he annoyingly calls these characteristics "apps", a mistake that will date the book in a few years.) These six are competition, property rights, science, medicine, consumerism, and work. Each of the six main chapters of the book are devoted to one of these characteristics: * Competition: This refers not so much to the free market as to the fact that European powers were small and fragmented. Their drive to dominate each other drove them to innovate and to search for riches in the New World. This contrasts with China, where the monolithic state had no rival and was ruled by a complacent elite fully convinced of the superiority of all things Chinese. Thus, no drive to explore or change. * Science: The West developed the scientific method and exploited its technical applications. Despite the early appearance of certain technical advances and inventions in China, these were never developed systematically in the Middle Kingdom, and the underlying scientific method was never formulated. * Property rights: To some degree, this is misnamed, because his point is more about the rule of law in general. In the West, even ordinary people could expect a certain degree of legal protection of their rights, most significantly that of property, which enabled the rational deployment of capital and labor to commercial ends. * Medicine: Obviously, the ability to eliminate disease and heal injury vastly improves the quality of our lives. The West figured this out first. * Consumerism: We have learned to want more, which is an impetus for business to produce more, and more cheaply. * Work: Echoing Max Weber, Ferguson notes the Protestant roots of the West's work ethic. More importantly for Ferguson, the literacy that Protestants fostered (in order for people to be able to read the Bible) brought with it a whole host of benefits in increased intellectual freedom and economic creativity. Ferguson concludes his book by wondering if the West is losing these six virtues, and whether the rest of the world, China in particular, is picking them up. To add a little frisson, he discusses theories about the decline and fall of civilization and leans towards those that favor a sudden, "tipping point" collapse. It is not clear whether he feels the West must maintain a relative superiority over the Rest, or whether he is just arguing the West ought not to neglect what makes it great. The conjunction of these six characteristics no doubt go a long way to explaining the West's success. Yet I said above the book is undisciplined because in his discussion of these characteristics, much ink is spilled on topics that are essentially irrelevant to his topic. If you are going to put forth a list of factors that made the West great and are needed to keep it that way, you have to answer two questions: First, why those factors made it great, and, second, why those factors arose in the West and not elsewhere. Most of the discussion does neither of these things. The chapter on competition draws the obvious distinction between Europe and China. But the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas were also fragmented, and that didn't spur them on. And if Europe had still been united as in the days of Charlemagne, would that really have prevented the West's rise? It is not clear at all. The chapter on science is devoted mainly to a very interesting comparison of the declining Ottoman Empire with rising Europe, noting particularly weaponry, but without any real discussion of why science developed in the West and not in Turkey. The chapter on property is a bit more to the point, showing how the much wider distribution of property to North American settlers as compared to South American led to greater prosperity North of the border. But the second half of the chapter is a long discussion of the differences between North and South American slavery in which the property principle also plays: North American slaves were more fully property than their South American counterparts. But Ferguson is quick to deny that the application of property rights in this case had anything to do with North America's prosperity --- so why bring it up? The chapter on medicine is mainly about the nature of French imperialism in Africa. Very interesting, but not really to point. Besides, isn't the development of medicine just an application of science, i.e. shouldn't it have been subsumed into that chapter? The chapter on work is the best, but Ferguson seems to imply that China's economic rise is due to the spread of Christianity. It could certainly be argued that China's work ethic is more naturally attributable to the Confucian stress on education and the next generation (delayed gratification). This possibility is not considered, and that is a general problem with this book. Alternative hypotheses are not robustly engaged. Despite having just said Ferguson overreaches in attributing China's work ethic to Protestantism, my biggest critique of the book is that in its wide-ranging discussion, if fails to see that in 15th and 16th century Europe, Protestantism was a driving factor not only behind the work ethic and literacy, but also behind the other factors as well. Protestant Christianity placed a high worth on the individual and the individual's right of conscience. This was by far the most important change in the 15th century. Property rights (rule of law), medicine, and consumerism can all be seen as manifestations of a high regard for individual well-being. Respect for the individual also places a high value on freedom, which views competition - an inevitable outcome of the interaction of free individuals -- as a good thing. Science, too, despite the popular perception to the contrary, has its roots in Christian thinking. All of the great scientists of the 16th century were Christians who were confident of the possibility of scientific discovery precisely because of their belief that the natural world would operate according to divine laws that are comprehensible by reason. They viewed the "book of nature", together with Scripture, as part of God's revelation to us, and their job was to open that book up. It was only later that science and religion were viewed as conflicting. But despite failing to tie things together the way I like, this is a great book, well worth your time. For an interesting comparative treatment of the same topic, readers might also be interested in The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization .

El autor tiene más que el conocimiento necesario para haber hecho de esta obra algo más ambicioso, sin embargo, encuentra el balance perfecto entre el recuento de la historia y el tiempo limitado que tenemos los lectores para leer una obra de este tipo. Sin duda altamente recomendable.

Ferguson sets out to explain how and why, Western Civilization became the world`s dominate force. Ferguson also outlines, why other areas of the globe remained an economic backwater. Ferguson boils down the last five hundred years of western success, to a list of six essential components. Here is the list 1)Competition 2)Science 3)Property 4)Medicine 5)Consumption 6)Work Each ingredient has its own chapter. Ferguson then takes the reader through various historical lessons. These historic episodes help the reader understand, how these listed factors applied to western success. Some of the history will be very familiar to reader. I am also willing to bet, most readers will also discover a few new areas of history, that Ferguson uncovers. The conclusion of the book is all about how other countries, have started to apply western methods of success. Will the rise of strong Asian economies eclipse the growth of the west? This book should really be part one of a series. Part two could be all about how current western societies, have moved away from the six factors of economic prosperity. One caution I may make to a prospective reader of this book. The over all theme is a somewhat Libertarian message. This will be the deciding factor, in your potential enjoyment of the book.

Excellent! Ferguson explains the mechanics of the western successes since xvi century and allows to everyone to reflect on the Western weaknesses of the present focusing on our apparent and traditional sthrenghts

とても読みやすく、日本人の書いた歴史の概観でなく西洋からの世界史の視点が新鮮でした。すでに邦訳出ていますが、英語はとても読みやすい、ユーモアにあふれる表現です。近現代史を新たな視点で見る、歴史を英語で話す必要性のある人にも最適です。

It's always a pleasure to read and/or view Niall Ferguson's books and/or DVD-TV-series of the products of his mind. His is a highly knowledgeable intellect, beside knowing how to use the tools (the passion for the subject, the persuasion of his arguments, the gripping description of the historical events as if they weren't presented by a gifted historian but by an experienced mystery writer) to capture the attention of the reader/viewer. I highly recommend to read this book which, together with his "The Ascent of Money", passionately describes the road the Western World travelled to create our present civilization. What's up to us now, is to establish a truly peaceful and productive human society. To do so, please read, added to Niall Ferguson's mentioned books, "ABUNDANCE, the future is better than you think," by Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler," "MERCHANTS of DESPAIR," by Robert Zubrin," and "DECONVERTED," by Seth Andrews and add them to Ayn Rand's Philosophy of Objectivism. Hours of intense awareness and fruitful reading pleasure expect you, as you run through pages upon pages of fascinating writings that will capture your full attention.