I wrote about this book when I read the first half of it late last year. I finished it and like it even more. I wrote a post about the book when I had read just the first two chapters. It is here.
In this nearly 400-page book, Ferguson shows how in the past 500 years, Europe and the West went from a plague-infested, stagnant collection of petty warring fiefdoms to domination of the world.
He makes the case in six chapters, each covering a major reason the West overtook and passed China and the Ottoman Empire: both dominant in the previous 500 years or more. The chapters:
1. Competition
2. Science
3. Property
4. Medicine
5. Consumption
6. Work
Ferguson looks at the growth and change of each of these areas over the previous five centuries. The final chapter on Work begins with the importance of what is called The Protestant Work Ethic to the rise of the West. He talks about the role religion played in the rise of the West and in the simultaneous decline of the Asian empires.
In 1517 Martin Luther started the revolution that split the Christian world. That divide between the Catholic Churches and what came to be known as Protestant Churches led quickly to the freedom that allowed the scientific revolution. That scientific revolution led to the development of medicine. The end of Catholic Church dominance quickly led to the end of the feudal system, to more private property and to the revolutions that would eventually end hereditary monarchy.
With the end of Church influence in commerce came the end of usury laws. Banking became legitimate. Consumption grew. The economies of the West flourished.
By contrast, China and the Muslim world became more unified and more oppressive in rule and religion. By the 19th Century, all of Asia from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean was under the sway of the West.
Ferguson chronicles all of the horrors committed by European countries in the Americas and Africa. He also makes clear how differences in religion and government made such a vast difference in the histories of North and South America.
I like sweeping histories and this one is very good. I plan to read more of Ferguson in the coming year. Next I will read his new book Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.
At the end of Civilization, published in 2011, Ferguson talks about the rise of China and the end of Western dominance. Doom was published in 2021 with China further ascendant and America falling further into the morass of Trumpism. I heard Ferguson talk about Doom on the Honestly Podcast with Bari Weiss. He definitely had some gloom to go with his doom. I am looking forward to hearing the details.
First five books of 2022:
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss
Unflattening by Nick Sousanis
Marie Curie by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)
The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche
Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen
