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Civilization: The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson
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Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries.
How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors.
Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.
- Sales Rank: #57541 in Books
- Brand: Penguin Books
- Published on: 2012-10-30
- Released on: 2012-10-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.41" h x .98" w x 5.45" l, .85 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 432 pages
- Penguin Books
Review
“[Ferguson] uses his powerful narrative talents in these pages to give the reader a highly tactile sense of history. … The author [has a] knack for making long-ago events as vivid and visceral as the evening news, for weaving anecdotes and small telling details together with a wide-angled retrospective vision.”—New York Times
“A dazzling history of Western ideas.”—The Economist
“Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.”—Wall Street Journal
“[W]ritten with vitality and verve… a tour de force.”—Boston Globe
“This is sharp. It feels urgent. Ferguson, with a properly financially literate mind, twists his knife with great literary brio…Ferguson ends by suggesting the biggest threat is not China but ourselves – our cowardice, drawn from ignorance, even stupidity, about our past. He is right. But as he shows himself, that can be fixed.”—The Financial Times
“The author boldly takes on 600 years of world events… so that the history lesson remains fresh and compelling… A richly informed, accessible history lesson.”—Kirkus (starred)
About the Author
NIALL FERGUSON is one of Britain's most renowned historians. He is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, a Senior Research Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and a Senior Research Fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the bestselling author of Paper and Iron, The House of Rothschild, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus, Empire, Colossus, The War of the World, The Ascent of Money, and High Financier. He also writes regularly for newspapers and magazines all over the world.
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Capitalism: The Unsung Hero of Civilization
By Robert J. Mack
Niall Ferguson has the following impressive credentials: Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University; the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; a senior research fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford. How’s that for a resume. He has the education, undeniably, but is he astute about how the world is right now and what made it that way? The answer is: Yes, he is. And he shows it in this comparison of Western civilization’s free market capitalism versus every other kind of political, social, and economic construct over the course of 500 years and how it has provided better economic and social benefit than what he terms all “the Rest.”
Tackling that kind of historical, political, and economic analysis is courageous and daunting. However, Ferguson is up to the challenge, offering cogent reasons why capitalism in the form of free-market entrepreneurship was a success over the course of those five centuries and why all the other systems, such as communism and socialism and the last of the Ming dynasties were not. As with all great professors, he makes unique comparisons and offers outside-the-box examples to support his assertions. The inward looking philosophy and mistrust of innovation by the Ming dynasties of the late 18th and early 19th centuries was reflected in their rejection of the European clocks of that era when the clock was originally invented by the Chinese. Of course the pendulum has shifted 180 degrees from that insularity by China today. The role of Gutenberg’s printing press in the spread of Martin Luther’s Reformation ideas, which encouraged wealth as a sign of salvation, led to rapid economic expansion. The inability of the USSR to produce a pair of jeans comparable to America’s Levi’s 501 jeans was symptomatic of communism’s disregard of consumerism which led to its eventual downfall. These are just some of the perceptive examples he uses throughout the book.
Ferguson postulates six reasons why the West became dominant:
• the Scientific Revolution (all “the major 17th century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology happened in Western Europe)
• modern medicine (“nearly all the major 19th and 20th century breakthroughs in healthcare, including control of tropical diseases, were made by Western Europeans and North Americans”)
• the Protestant or work ethic (the role of that principle in social and economic organization, in the expansion of literacy, and “sustained capital accumulation”)
• competition
• “the rule of law and representative government… based on property rights and the representation of property-owners in elected legislatures” (as shown by the differences in evolution between North and South American economies and political structures)
• the consumer society (the Industrial Revolution created a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies to meet the demand for more and cheaper goods)
Some more juicy examples of Ferguson’s analysis of societies: He is a fan of Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher who predicted the French Revolution’s decent into depravity while America’s Revolution did not because of the magnitude of the war that engulfed France. He also discusses the pros and cons of colonization and the replacement of it with consumerism as represented by the meteoric rise of the Singer sewing machine. In terms of the Cold War, he says: “Yet the Cold War turned out to be about butter more than about guns, ballgames more than bombs…The problem for the Soviet Union was simple: the United States offered a far more attractive version of civilian life than the Soviets could.” The competition between churches in America for the saving of souls explains why there is a vast decline in Protestantism in Europe and a rise in Protestantism in America given that “Americans have experienced more or less the same social and cultural changes as Europeans” since the 1960s.
Summing up, Ferguson examines the rise of China and the decline of the West with the pros and cons of that perception. He ends that discussion with optimism for the West and a challenge: “Yet this Western package [civilization] still seems to offer human societies the best available set 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. Over the past half-millennium, no civilization has done a better job of finding and educating the geniuses that lurk in the far right-hand tail of the distribution of talent in any human society. The big question is whether or not we are still able to recognize the superiority of that package…At its core, a civilization is the texts that are taught in its schools, learned by its students and recollected in times of tribulation… But what are the foundational texts of Western civilization that can bolster our belief in the almost boundless power of the free individual human being? And how good are we at teaching them, given our educational theorists’ aversion to formal knowledge and rote-learning? Maybe the real threat is posed not by the rise of China, Islam or CO2 emissions, but by our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors.”
This is a highly original and influential historical tome written by an erudite historian and economist about an economic system, capitalism, that has affected billions of people in positive ways throughout five centuries. Read it to understand how the world got to where it is today, what might be in store for it in the future, and how the West can retain the lead.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting read
By AMZNRDR
This book with Brexit and the US election as a backdrop becomes all the more interesting to read. I could perhaps say that Mr. Ferguson simplifies the complexity to suit the narrative (or as he says historians trying to retroactively fit civilizational cycles to their theories) but the larger point he makes is very valid and makes you question whether the foundational pieces of western civilization are being torn down (not just by the brexiters but also the anti-brexiters... I use both as a shortcut for grouping the two sides coming up around the Democratic world). One side questioning trade and immigration and the other glorifying precolonial colonies (I don't want to use the term nation and hence use colony for the lack of a better term) and disparaging religion's role in society. The list can go on. Long story short... Would recommend it to read.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
An Analysis of Civilization
By Jamshed Mathur
Having being born in British India; worked for 15 years in Independent India; then immigrated to and worked in the US for 30 years, I was curious to know how Professor Ferguson handled a huge subject such as civilization in the Western and non-Western Worlds. His book was a very pleasant surprise.
Ferguson is a man of tremendous scholarship which he carries lightly and easily. There is not a single page in his writing of academic heaviness, obscurity or dullness. His writing style is always easy to read and always attractive enough to persuade you effortlessly to look forward to the next page. This in itself qualifies him for a Five Star Award.
The guts of the book answers basic questions such as: Why did modern civilization happen in the West and not elsewhere? What has been the effect of religion on civilization? Is Western civilization now in decline? How does modern industrialized China compare with the West?
I (a retired Engineer) found the book to be altogether delightful reading and would strongly recommend it to anyone - especially those from the Third World - interested in the basic questions mentioned above. Don't be frigtened off by 400 pages, including notes, bibliography and
index. The book has some fine illustrations, maps, graphs and photographs.
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