Why the West Rules—for Now Read online

  ‘The nearest thing to a unified field theory of history we are ever likely to get. With wit and wisdom, Ian Morris deploys the techniques and insights of the new ancient history to address the biggest of all historical questions: Why on earth did the West beat the Rest? I loved it.’ Niall Ferguson

  ‘This is a great work of synthesis and argument, drawing together an awesome range of materials and authorities to bring us a fresh, sharp reading of East–West relationships. As China rises and the world’s population spikes, Morris weaves lessons from thousands of years of world history towards a startling and scary conclusion.’ Andrew Marr

  ‘Ian Morris has returned history to the position it once held. No longer a series of dusty debates, nor simple stories – although he has many stories to tell and tells them brilliantly – but the true magister vitae – the ‘teacher of life’. He explains how the shadowy East–West divide came about, why it really does matter, and how one day it might end up. His vision is dazzling, and his prose irresistible. Everyone from Sheffield to Shanghai who wants to know, not only how they came to be who and where they are, but where their children and their children’s children might one day end up, must read this book.’ Anthony Pagden, distinguished professor of political science and history at the University of California, Los Angeles, author of Worlds and War: The 2,500 Year Struggle Between East and West

  ‘Morris’s history of world dominance sparkles as much with exotic ideas as with extraordinary tales. Why The West Rules – For Now is both a riveting drama and a major step towards an integrated theory of history.’ Richard Wrangham, Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Harvard University and author of Catching Fire

  ‘Ian Morris is a classical archaeologist, an ancient historian and a writer of such breathtaking vision and scope as to make him fit to be ranked alongside the likes of Jared Diamond and David Landes. His magnum opus is a tour not just d’horizon but de force, taking us as it does on a spectacular journey to and from the two nodal cores of a euramerican West and Asian East, alighting and reflecting as suggestively upon 10,800 BC as upon AD 2010. The shape of globalising history may well never be quite the same again.’ Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, University of Cambridge

  ‘This is an astonishing work: hundreds of pages of the latest information dealing with every aspect of change. Then, the questions of the future: What will a new distribution bring about? Will Europe undergo a major change? Will the millions of immigrants impose a new set of rules on the rest? There was a time when Europe could absorb any and all newcomers. Now the newcomers may dictate the terms. The West may continue to rule, but the rule may be very different.’ David S. Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

  ‘Deeply thought-provoking and engagingly lively, broad in sweep and precise in detail.’ Jonathan Fenby, author of The Penguin History of Modern China, former editor of the Observer and South China Morning Post

  ‘A formidable, richly engrossing effort to determine why Western institutions dominate the world … Readers will enjoy [Morris’s] lively prose and impressive combination of scholarship … with economics and science. A superior contribution to the grand-theory-of-human-history genre.’ Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  WHY THE WEST RULES—FOR NOW

  WHY

  WEST

  RULES—FOR NOW

  ________________________________

  The Patterns of History,

  and What

  They Reveal About

  the Future

  ________________________________

  IAN MORRIS

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

  PROFILE BOOKS LTD

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

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  First published in the United States of America in 2010 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  Copyright © Ian Morris, 2010

  Maps and graphs copyright © Michele Angel, 2010

  Designed by Abby Kagan

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  This eBook edition published in 2010

  A portion of chapter 11 (‘Why the West Rules …’) originally appeared, in slightly different form, in the Wall Street Journal.

  Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint the following material: Excerpt from Mark Edward Lewis’s partial translation of a poem by Cao Cao, reprinted by permission of the publisher from The Early Chinese Empire: Qin and Han by Mark Edward Lewis; Timothy Brook, General Editor (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), copyright © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Excerpt from The Family Instructions of the Grandfather from the Cambridge Illustrated History of China by Patricia Ebrey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.

  Translation of Daoqian’s (Tao Ch’ien’s) poem ‘On the Way to Guizong Monastery,’ reprinted with permission from Commerce and Society in Sung China by Shiba Yoshinobu (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1970).

  Donald B. Wagner’s translation of excerpts from ‘Stone Coal’ by Su Shi, from his article titled ‘Blast Furnaces in Song-Yuan China’ in East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, no. 18 (2001), pp. 41–74. Reprinted by permission of Donald B. Wagner. Richard Strassberg’s translation of Kong Shangren’s poem ‘Trying on Glasses,’ from Macao: Mysterious Decay and Romance by Ronald Pittis and Susan Henders (eds.), reprinted by permission of Oxford University press (China) Ltd.

  Excerpt from ‘Here’ from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin, copyright © 1988, 2003 by the estate of Philip Larkin, reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, and Faber and Faber Ltd.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN 978 1 84765 294 2

  For Kathy

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Introduction

  PART I

  1 Before East and West

  2 The West Takes the Lead

  3 Taking the Measure of the Past

  PART II

  4 The East Catches Up

  5 Neck and Neck

  6 Decline and Fall

  7 The Eastern Age

  8 Going Global

  9 The West Catches Up

  10 The Western Age

  PART III

  11 Why the West Rules …

  12 … For Now

  Appendix: On Social Development

  Notes

  Further Reading

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Illustrations

  Figure I.1. The Chinese junk Qiying in London, 1848. (Reproduced from the Illustrated London News volume 12, April 1, 1848, p. 222)

  Figure I.2. The British ship Nemesis in action on the Yangzi River, 1842. (National Maritime Museum. Copyright © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

  Figure 1.1. Locations mentioned in Chapter 1

  Figure 1.2. The Movius Line

  Figure 1.3. The spread of modern humans out of Africa, 60,000–14,000 years ago

  Figure 1.4. The Al
tamira cave paintings. (Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic Image Collection)

  Figure 1.5. Finds of cave paintings and portable art in Europe

  Figure 1.6. The Hohle Fels “Venus” figurine. (Copyright © University of Tübingen, photo by H. Jensen)

  Figure 2.1. Locations mentioned in Chapter 2

  Figure 2.2. Temperatures across the last 20,000 years

  Figure 2.3. Locations around the Hilly Flanks mentioned in Chapter 2

  Figure 2.4. The spread of agriculture across Europe, 9000–4000 BCE

  Figure 2.5. Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s map of European DNA

  Figure 2.6. The world’s cores of domestication

  Figure 2.7. Locations in China discussed in Chapter 2

  Figure 2.8. The spread of agriculture across East Asia, 6000–1500 BCE

  Table 2.1. The beginnings of East and West, 14,000–3000 BCE

  Figure 3.1. Earl Cook’s estimates of energy use across history

  Figure 3.2. The relocations of the Eastern and Western cores since the Ice Age

  Figure 3.3. Social development, 14,000 BCE-2000 CE

  Figure 3.4. Exponential growth plotted on a conventional graph

  Figure 3.5. Interrupted exponential growth plotted on a conventional graph

  Figure 3.6. Interrupted exponential growth plotted on a log-linear graph

  Figure 3.7. Social development, 14,000 BCE-2000 CE, plotted on a log-linear graph

  Figure 3.8. The interruptions to social development, 1600 BCE-1900 CE

  Figure 3.9. Projected social development, 1700–2100 CE

  Figure 4.1. Social development, 14,000–5000 BCE

  Figure 4.2. Social development, 5000–1000 BCE

  Figure 4.3. Locations in the West mentioned in Chapter 4

  Figure 4.4. The Western International Age kingdoms, c. 1350 BCE

  Figure 4.5. Locations in the East mentioned in Chapter 4

  Table 4.1. Major Eastern and Western collapses, 3100–1050 BCE

  Figure 5.1. Social development, 1000–100 BCE

  Figure 5.2. Locations in the East dating 1000–500 BCE mentioned in Chapter 5

  Figure 5.3. Locations in the West dating 1000–500 BCE mentioned in Chapter 5

  Figure 5.4. Climate change in the early first millennium BCE

  Figure 5.5. The Assyrian and Persian empires

  Figure 5.6. The Qin Empire

  Figure 5.7. The Persian and Roman empires

  Figure 5.8. Routes linking East and West in the late first millennium BCE

  Figure 6.1. Social development, 100 BCE-500 CE

  Figure 6.2. Shipwrecks and lead pollution in the Mediterranean, 900–1 BCE

  Figure 6.3. The greatest extent of the Han and Roman empires

  Figure 6.4. The collapse of the Han Empire, 25–220 CE

  Figure 6.5. The Roman Empire in the third century CE

  Figure 6.6. Shipwrecks and lead pollution in the Mediterranean, 1–800 CE

  Figure 6.7. The collapse of the Roman Empire, 376–476 CE

  Figure 6.8. The divided kingdoms of East and West, 400–500

  Figure 6.9. The growth of Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism

  Figure 7.1. Social development, 300–1100

  Figure 7.2. (a) The states of China in 541; (b) the Tang Empire in 700

  Figure 7.3. The Longmen Maitreya Buddha, carved around 700. (Werner Forman Archive, London)

  Figure 7.4. The wars of Justinian, Khusrau, and Heraclius, 533–628

  Figure 7.5. Empress Theodora of Byzantium, 547. (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 7.6. The Arab conquests, 632–732

  Figure 7.7. Divisions in the Western core, 100 BCE–900 CE

  Figure 7.8. The eleventh-century migrations of the Seljuk Turks and Vikings

  Figure 7.9. China around 1000

  Figure 8.1. Social development, 1000–1500

  Figure 8.2. The Jurchen and Song empires in 1141

  Figure 8.3. The Mongol Empire, 1227–1294

  Figure 8.4. Zones of trade and travel across Eurasia, c. 1300

  Figure 8.5. The Eastern and Western cores c. 100 and 1200

  Figure 8.6. The Western core, 1350–1500

  Figure 8.7. The fifteenth-century world as seen from China

  Figure 8.8. The fifteenth-century world as seen from Europe

  Figure 8.9. Footbinding: the slippers and socks of Huang Sheng, 1243. (Taken from Fujiansheng bowuguan, ed., Fuzhou Nan-Song Huang sheng mu, published by Wenwu Chubanshe [Cultural Relics Publishing House], Beijing, 1982)

  Figure 8.10. The fifteenth-century world as seen from America

  Figure 9.1. Social development, 1400–1800

  Figure 9.2. Locations in East Asia mentioned in Chapter 9

  Figure 9.3. Wages of unskilled urban laborers, 1350–1800

  Figure 9.4. The Western empires around 1550

  Figure 9.5. The conquest of the steppes, 1650–1750

  Figure 9.6. Empires and trade around the Atlantic, 1500–1750

  Figure 9.7. Kangxi, emperor of China, around 1700. (Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita culturali/Art Resource, NY)

  Figure 9.8. The War of the West, 1689–1815

  Figure 10.1. The West’s nineteenth-century industrial revolution

  Figure 10.2. Social development, 1–2000 CE

  Figure 10.3. Wages of unskilled laborers in London, Florence, and Beijing, 1375–1875

  Figure 10.4. Globalization in the nineteenth century

  Figure 10.5. Opium sales in Guangzhou, 1730–1832

  Figure 10.6. A Chinese view of a British sailor, 1839. (Copyright © Corbis)

  Figure 10.7. “The Yellow Peril,” based on an 1895 sketch by Kaiser Wilhelm II. (AKG Images, London)

  Figure 10.8. The world at war, 1914–1991

  Figure 10.9. The author and his toys, 1964. (Author’s photograph, taken by Noel Morris)

  Figure 10.10. The health of U.S. Army veterans, 1910–1988

  Figure 10.11. Eastern and Western social development compared, 1900 and 2000

  Figure 11.1. Social development, 14,000 BCE–2000 CE, plotted on a log-linear graph

  Figure 12.1. Projected social development, 1700–2100 CE

  Figure 12.2. Instability and water shortages in the twenty-first century

  Figure A.1. Energy capture, 14,000 BCE–2000 CE

  Table A.1. Energy capture, 14,000 BCE–2000 CE

  Table A.2. City size, 7500 BCE–2000 CE

  Table A.3. War-making capacity, 3000 BCE–2000 CE

  Table A.4. Information technology, 9300 BCE–2000 CE

  Figure A.2. The implications of 10 percent margins of error in social development

  Figure A.3 The implications of 20 percent margins of error in social development

  WHY THE WEST RULES—FOR NOW

  INTRODUCTION

  ALBERT IN BEIJING

  London, April 3, 1848. Queen Victoria’s head hurt. She had been kneeling with her face pressed to the wooden pier for twenty minutes. She was angry, frightened, and tired from fighting back tears; and now it had started raining. The drizzle was soaking her dress, and she only hoped that no one would mistake her shivers for fear.

  Her husband was right next to her. If she just stretched out her arm, she could rest a hand on his shoulder, or smooth his wet hair—anything to give him strength for what was coming. If only time would stand still—or speed up. If only she and Prince Albert were anywhere but here.

  And so they waited—Victoria, Albert, the Duke of Wellington, and half the court—on their knees in the rain. Clearly there was a problem on the river. The Chinese armada’s flagship was too big to put in at the East India Docks, so Governor Qiying was making his grand entry to London from a smaller armored steamer named after himself, but even the Qiying was uncomfortably large for the docks at Black-wall. Half a dozen tugs were towing her in, with great confusion all around. Qiying was not amused.

  Out of the corner of her eye Victoria could see the little Chinese band on the pier. Their silk
robes and funny hats had looked splendid an hour ago, but were now thoroughly bedraggled in the English rain. Four times the band had struck up some Oriental cacophony, thinking that Qiying’s litter was about to be carried ashore, and four times had given up. The fifth time, though, they stuck to it. Victoria’s stomach lurched. Qiying must be ashore at last. It was really happening.