Why the West Rules--For Now

‘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
London EC1R 0JH
www.profilebooks.com

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 Altamira 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