Since classical antiquity, historians have tended to think that empires, like individual organisms, evince a discernible rhythm. They come into being, mature, and then, soon or late, decay and decline.
In Civilization: The West and the Rest, Niall Ferguson has come along to tell us that it need not be this way. Taking the long view of history has not, however, inclined him to the cheerful Whig presumption that civilization “shall not perish from the earth.” The study of history — described by Auden as “breaking bread with the dead” — is presumably too melancholy an endeavor to justify such vain hopes. Ferguson’s prodigious communing with the dead has led him to believe that not only will the forces of composition yield to those of decomposition, but they may do so with dramatic speed. If at times history appears to have a cyclical quality, he reminds us that it is actually far more haphazard.
Intimately acquainted with chaos theory, the author probes a sobering question: “What if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic — sometimes almost stationary, but also capable of violent acceleration?”
Ferguson has long been a firm advocate of hypothetical or “counterfactual” history — replete with “What if?” questions — on the grounds that history cannot be understood without appreciating that what we call the past was once the future. He stays loyal to this (unfairly maligned) method in Civilization, and harnesses it to superb effect. He maintains that without developing — or, if you like, downloading — these crucial innovations, civilization never would have climbed to its present height. It is impossible not to notice that the profusion of economically destitute and politically repressive states around the globe owe their status to the absence of one or more of the “killer apps.” What’s more, the undeniable decline of former leading states is largely attributable to their losing them or, as the case may be, casting them off.
In Civilization: The West and the Rest, Niall Ferguson has come along to tell us that it need not be this way. Taking the long view of history has not, however, inclined him to the cheerful Whig presumption that civilization “shall not perish from the earth.” The study of history — described by Auden as “breaking bread with the dead” — is presumably too melancholy an endeavor to justify such vain hopes. Ferguson’s prodigious communing with the dead has led him to believe that not only will the forces of composition yield to those of decomposition, but they may do so with dramatic speed. If at times history appears to have a cyclical quality, he reminds us that it is actually far more haphazard.
Intimately acquainted with chaos theory, the author probes a sobering question: “What if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic — sometimes almost stationary, but also capable of violent acceleration?”
Ferguson has long been a firm advocate of hypothetical or “counterfactual” history — replete with “What if?” questions — on the grounds that history cannot be understood without appreciating that what we call the past was once the future. He stays loyal to this (unfairly maligned) method in Civilization, and harnesses it to superb effect. He maintains that without developing — or, if you like, downloading — these crucial innovations, civilization never would have climbed to its present height. It is impossible not to notice that the profusion of economically destitute and politically repressive states around the globe owe their status to the absence of one or more of the “killer apps.” What’s more, the undeniable decline of former leading states is largely attributable to their losing them or, as the case may be, casting them off.
It is hard to quarrel with Ferguson on this score; it is a simple fact, for instance, that the scientific revolution owed scarcely any debt to the non-Western world. One further fact assists in pointing up the contrast between the West and the Rest: In 1500, the future imperial powers of Europe were minor entities, accounting for about 10 percent of the world’s land surface and at most 16 percent of its population. By 1913 eleven Western empires controlled nearly three-fifths of the world’s territory and population and more than three-quarters of its economic output. So much for a universal civilization.Ferguson is especially canny, however, on the imperial impulse that sought to make civilization universal. This will come as no surprise to those familiar with Empire, his illuminating work that painted the British imperial system as Oliver Cromwell asked to be painted: warts and all. Ferguson's Empire offered a subtle argument--that no better substitute had been evolved to promote freedom and prosperity in the world.
Indeed, as the son of a defunct Western empire, he seems to recognize the stench of decay. And it is not obvious that his nostrils are leading him astray. The only consolation to be found is in the fact that the future is, as Ferguson knows very well, no sure thing.
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