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Recently finished “Civilization: The West and the Rest” by Niall Ferguson. Ferguson argues that competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumer
by adaisadais 7y ago
Recently finished “Civilization: The West and the Rest” by Niall Ferguson. Ferguson argues that competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and western-Protestant work ethic allowed the West to make “advancements” while others “stagnated”. (1)
In the section on consumerism he talks about how the USSR in many ways was equal or stronger than US or other western countries but couldn’t seem to make a single decent pair of blue jeans.
The Chinese government has made some incredible strides and has taken note of the many things that the west did right and the west did wrong. I believe TikTok is one of the best ways China has been able to study western culture. It won’t be long before it will be the East and the rest. And the west gave most of it away for free.
(1) https://archive.org/details/civilizationwest00ferg https://archive.org/details/civilizationwest00ferg
- ahelwer 7y agoAny book purporting to explain why the west was so successful without including the practices of colonialism is just utterly without merit, sorry. Enormous transfer of wealth and resources from the rest of the world are very handy.
- fastball 7y agoSomewhat of a chicken-and-egg problem. If the West was successful due to colonization, how is it that the West became the colonizers in the first place, and not the colonized?
- nemothekid 7y ago>how is it that the West became the colonizers in the first place The Industrial Revolution? Colonization has existed hand-in-hand with empires, the West has been colonized by Rome, Britain, France, in a massive tug-o-war. The Industrial Revolution took that fight global. There's a clear "egg" here.
- Uhuhreally 7y agoeasy. Imagine twin brothers each with identical wealth and then one of them steals the other one's money. Now one has twice the wealth of the other.
- fastball 7y agoIf my brother stole from me, I'd steal it back. If that failed, I could always kill him. Why couldn't the colonized do the same? The Europeans succeeded in their colonization efforts because they were more technologically advanced than anyone they were colonizing. It is not a case of twin brothers. It is the case of an older brother stealing from his baby brother.
- pjc50 7y ago"Guns, Germs, and Steel" has a go at explaining this. The role of germs should not be underestimated; the pandemics the colonizers brought and spread (in some cases deliberately) killed far more than the guns. Thus offering the illusion that there was empty space for the taking.
- fastball 7y agoBut the reason that Europe had germs is because Europe had dense cities for far longer than the places they were colonizing.
- altoidaltoid 7y agoSimilar arguments made by Paul Kennedy in his seminal work Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great_Powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great...