10.3 History – Video Series Review                                      Version 1.0 December 2012

 

Niall Ferguson, Civilization: Is the West history? Chimerica Media, 2010

A series of six ≈45 minute episodes.

Review by Trevor Rogers

THE FOLLOWING ARE ESSENTIALLY NOTES, JUST TO SHOW WHERE I’M GOING.

THIS IS VERY MUCH A FIRST DRAFT.  I GOT DISTRACTED BY OTHER THINGS.

Introduction

Has Western dominance of the world come to an end?  Has it lost the “killer apps� that led to its global leadership?  Can we identify why the West rules – for now?  Others have tried, now Niall Ferguson lists his answers: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the protestant work ethic.  How good are these?

Niall Ferguson has produced two broad ranging TV series (that I know of) covering firstly ‘the history of money’ and now ‘why the West has dominated the world for the last 500 ears’.  I was impressed by his history of money – I found it very informative – and will review that separately. 

There is no doubt that his Civilisation series is well produced, easy to watch, and it is important that everyone understands the issues he raises.  Many, if not most, people don't have a global view of history, so we can hope the series attracts a wide audience, and happily promote it as a plausible and instructive view.  The historical perspective and the values he promotes are broadly consistent with these ‘global beliefs’.

Ferguson doesn’t acknowledge Jared Diamond’s seminal work (Guns Germs and Steele) which provides an explanation of why Europeans invaded the Americas, Africa and Australia, but no-one from the latter group invaded Europe.  Diamond provides a comprehensive and detailed explanation of why the large civilisations in the Americas – the Mayans, Aztecs and the Incas developed more slowly than those in Eurasia (China, India, the Middle East and Europe) and were more susceptible to European diseases, and why the ‘civilisations’ in Africa were relatively small and why there were no large settlements in Australia.

Summary

Ferguson’s series continues the story, focussing on why the West – the far west of the Eurasian continent – primarily Spain and England – overtook the far East and the Middle East – China and the Muslim world.  He goes on to explain why Western European colonies in North America surpassed European colonies in South America and Africa, and eventually triumphed over what should be called the Near West – the Russian empire – the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

Criticism

I found Ferguson’s Civilization series less impressive than his series on money, perhaps because I’m now more familiar with the subject area.

Ferguson skips over the huge ancient empires of the Huns and the Mongols, which may be understandable because they were short lived, but less forgivably India doesn’t rate a mention.  

He emphasises the transfer from the West of notions of capitalism, science, democracy, medicine and consumerism without acknowledging their origins in the Middle and Far East.

Money, writing and arithmetic came from outside Europe.  The origins of democracy and science can perhaps be traced to the ancient Greeks; many mathematical concepts arose in India; and these all passed through the Muslim empires, who added business management and passed them on to a Europe then emerging from its Dark Ages.

Ferguson observes that the Ottoman empire for a time banned printing presses and printed books, deeming them to be works of the devil, thereby excluding the Muslim world from acquiring modern knowledge, until it was too late to catch up.  Protestants encouraged their followers to have a direct relationship to God, so they needed to learn to read the Bible and bibles needed to be printed so that they were cheaply available to even the poor parishioners.  However, the printing press was not invented in Germany, as many think, but in China: the Gutenberg press was an improvement to an Eastern invention, and there were periods were literacy was widespread in China.

We still need to explain why China, in say the Song dynasty, didn’t go on to dominate the world, but it is more than conservative Confucianism.  There were also threats to the empire from nomadic hordes on the borders of the empire, debilitating civil wars when an emperor died to resolve succession disputes, and revolts from the peasantry offended by centralised control.  Ferguson skips over these complexities.

Indeed, Ferguson’s analysis of ‘consumerism’ is shallow.  He attributes the fall of Communism to the inability of the Soviet Communist Party to produce good quality denim jeans.  There is no doubt that this surprising inability, and the ban on Western music (rock and roll)

But peasants have wanted a decent income always – else they revolt.

Oppression was a major problem, not just lack of goods.

Medicine, that Ferguson counts as a Western idea, originated on all continents, in primitive societies, and was variously systematised, in China, India and the Muslim world.  The successful medicine Ferguson promotes is scientific, evidence based medicine.  It is an application of science, rather than an orthogonal dimension. 

Ferguson also seems to be unduly impressed by the technology of medicine, such as vaccines and pharmaceuticals.  But most of the prolongation of life in modern society has been more due to public health measures than clinical medicine: clean water, sewerage disposal, pest control, management of epidemics, and removing animal manure from the streets.  The greatest need in underdeveloped countries is not modern medicine, but public health.

 

Conclusion

It’s a great series that is an advance

The series openly adopts a Western perspective.  This is understandable in that the primary audience will be Western, mostly English speaking British and Americans.  It is chauvinistic – promoting the interests of the West.  It is effectively nationalistic, in the sense that most Westerners (outside the USA) now count themselves as part of an alliance, supporting Western liberal democracy and Western capitalism rather than narrowly favouring their own nation.  No doubt even some Americans can rise above their national chauvinism to embrace the West as a whole rather than simply America first.  The point of Ferguson’s series is apparently to provide advice to the West on how to remain dominant: to more confidently support capitalism, science, democracy, medicine, addressing consumer needs, and the work ethic.  And Western style freedom generates the creativity required to solve the world’s problems such as climate change.

But this parochial Western perspective is disappointing.  The subject matter is universal.  It is just as, or even more, important for Chinese, Muslims, South Americans, Africans, and Eastern Europeans to understand why the West has dominated the world recently.  If other regions wish to emulate the success of the West (as Westerners believe they should) then they need to learn the same lessons.  Capitalism has triumphed almost universally, but other lessons need to be learnt.  It is important for China to achieve greater political freedom – assuming greater democracy leads to greater stability rather than the chaos apparent in the former USSR.  It is important for the Muslim world to promote a wider understanding of science and move to secular government.  It is important for South America to address its inequality, political stability and the rule of law.  It is important for Africa to learn all these lessons. 

It is equally important for America to learn that it was lucky to have adopted the successful ‘apps’ Ferguson describes; it was not just their political insight, but European insight; it was not just their technology, because much of it originated in China, India, the Muslim world and Europe; it was not just their hard work, but the labour (and oppression) of African slaves that started America on the road to prosperity.  America needs to humbly acknowledge the brevity of its world dominance: the American century is ending; the Asian century is coming; Western values are becoming global values.

If we are citizens of the world then we do not seek ways to continue the West’s dominance, we seek to share Western insights, learn from Western mistakes, and promote a freer, fairer, world based on truth, compassion, diversity, responsibility and sustainability.