And What They Reveal About the Future - The Patterns of History

I found this book through a mention in the Economist. I find it very interesting. It is taking a wholistic approach to looking at history and where the "ruling" power happens to be. I recommend it to others.

Interesting to see the long view expressed so clearly and well. Troubling to see the prognostications for a future determined by technologies which are still to,be developed. We can live in hope for the singularity, but this book does not prove its point.

The book is in perfect condition. Clean! No scratches! No missing pages! No folded pages! BRAND NEW. I am stratified to pay $8.69 for this book when it cost $13.80. I know it's not a big difference but I am happy to save the best I can:) I am also happy with the fact that I could just put the book in the same box it came in and ship it back.

im currently using my book for my history 101 class and its pretty fine. nothing special abt however it did come kind of beat up to my house. it was still new and all but some of the pages were damaged and that kinda of bummed me out but other than tht it was just fine!

Morris is a English American decline pessimist who seems to revel in the dark side of humanities history and wants to project the decline of the British Empire onto the American influence era. Along the way he makes the case for there being only one Western core including the middle East therefore dismisses Huntingdon's clash of civilisations hypothesis.

Spiced with plenty of gratuitous gory anecdotes Morris has a jaundiced view of nearly all of history except the part of the English industrial revolution probably due to his family origin coupled with an overly simplistic analysis of a development index which seems not to be based on sound data. Typical of the Oxbridge wing British over the top political economy view he calls the spread of his fellow English and European immigrants a ' white plague' while overlooking the ultimate benefits of development of prosperity or balanced institutions on huge numbers of people.

Try another more balanced view of history for example "Guns, Germs and Steel" or "Why Nations Fail" , they are much better books.

Author does not comprehend the whole world history but he analyzed in micro way.
If he has an eye to analyze macro way , he could have described the right reason
The right reason is in the Bible. Human beings start again from Noah's 3 sons.
Ham, Shem, Japheth. The Bible predicts their fortune that the descendants of Japheth were to destined to prosper
The author should have considered that fact as well, which should have written the book more impartially
Without the Bible, there is no clue to get and find why the West rule the East

The author shows his lack of understanding of the eastern civilization not to mention its development. Before 17th century, the technology not advanced enough to allow human to interact globally, Any regional power, such as Roman or Tang dynasty in China naturally could not rule the global. Each civilization goes cycles. The West was blessed with good luck that it up cycle coincided the down cycle in the east. Just like the Mongols invaded Europe when Europe was at its weakest. Stretching the lead to prehistoric time is too far fetched.

As other reviewers have said, this is a fascinating book of world history, especially for the pre-modern era. But a major part of Morris' analysis is his "index of social development". As he says:
"The *only* way to answer these questions [relating to why the West rules], I believe, is by measuring social development to produce a graph that---literally---shows the shape of history."

Morris lists four possible objections to his index, but misses what I regard as its greatest methodological flaw, which I will explain. His index is made up of four components (metrics):
(a) energy use per capita (in some part of the "core" of East or West, it would seem)
(b) size of largest city, as a proxy for organizational ability
(c) military strength, which seems to be measured roughly by ability to kill the enemy
(d) information, which is measured by an odd combination of literacy and speed of information transmission.

All of these seem reasonable as measures relevant to "why the West rules". Morris argues that they are all roughly equally relevant, so he adds together these scores, having normalized the maximum global value in the year 2000 CE for each of them to 250 points.

Seems reasonable, perhaps? The problem is that (c) and (d) have grown by absurdly large factors since the industrial revolution. Thus for all of history pre-1800 (which is where the question of "why the West rules" must have its answer), they are completely irrelevant to the total scores. Thus Morris' index reduces to (a) energy consumption, and (b) size of largest city. And in fact, it makes very little difference if one throws out (b) since that has also grown a lot more in the last 200 years than has energy consumption.

This exposes the follwing flaws:

1. Morris gives the impression of being more sophisticated than he is. He should just call his index "energy consumption per capita".

2. If Morris had chosen some other time, say 1800 CE, to define as the time where the then-global-maximum value of each metric was normalized to 250, he would have got a quite different picture. Metrics (b) (c) and (d) would have been much more important, and so might be the "shape of history" he uses to answer his big questions. Clearly the index should not depend on what is taken as the baseline year. (This problem would not have arisen if Morris had taken the logarithm of each metric before adding them together. Of course that could lead to other problems, as he gives makes metrics = zero for primitive societies).

3. I don't believe his claims that he knows energy consumption to with a 10% error margin. Much of his justification for his figures seem to be circular, as they are based on historian's impression of the sophistication of the society which his figure is supposed to measure.

4. What geographical region is to be considered for calculating the energy consumption per capita? The richest state? The richest ethnic group? The richest million people? The whole "core area" of East and West (and who defines this?) Morris is quite unclear about this.

Given the above, Morris' claim that he "explored several other traits (for example, area of largest political unit, [and others I've omitted]) but all had severe evidence problems or failed the test of mutual independence." is pretty dubious.

Let's consider "area of largest political unit".
a) I'm pretty sure this is better defined and, at least since 1000BCE, is better evidenced that energy consumption per capita in that part of East or West I [Morris] consider appropriate to consider",
b) It is certainly independent of energy consumption. (The Mongol Empire was far larger than any before or since (until the 19th century) but I'm sure did not have a remarkable level of energy consumption.

I'm not saying that "area of largest political unit" is a good measure, I'm just saying that Morris' justifications for considering and then rejecting it are nonsense.

The obvious metrics that I do think are missing relate to
a) level of scientific, mathematical, and geographical knowledge.
b) maximum distance travelled by merchants/explorers/ennvoys.

If these were included I think the West would have overtaken the East far earlier than the late 18th century, as in Morris' shape of history.

The real message is that we need to graph more than one metric to grasp the shape of history, and to consider more than just "East" and "West".

But still, buy the book. It will teach you a lot and really make you think.

Engagingly written and necessarily "all over the map," Ian Morris provides an accessible survey of what in lesser hands could have been too much information. I love history, facts, cultures crammed into such one-volume tomes, but less captivated readers may find themselves in a plethora of Qin, Hurrian, Hilly Flanks, Bactrians--and that's one-third of the way in. Yet, maps and charts (one titled "the dullest diagram in history" to document Morris' key plotting of Eastern vs. Western social development on a point scale) do aid the less geographically and archeologically adept follower. His prose carries the heavy lifting of so much data into a comparatively compact space. Even at nearly 650 pages of text, the book balances necessary depth with narrative awareness of how much a reader can comprehend.

For instance, to take three examples from a pivotal portion on the Axial Age: Morris sums up its progress while returning to the post-Ice Age motivator behind this era. "Lazy, greedy, and frightened people found easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things, in the process building stronger states, trading farther afield, and settling in greater cities." (263) He stresses how top-down "high-end" state systems centralize power, and use bureaucracies to run taxation gathering to generate income for a military force who enforces its collection. Lots goes out in revenue, but more comes in, so "the rulers and their employees live off the difference." More pithily, in China: "Lords built icehouses in their palaces; peasants slid into debt." (251) Lessons to be learned--as well as don't wipe out buffer states-- as fiercer invaders will likely take down the imperial center of power. Expansion of markets and territory, of course, impels this whole upward spiral that his charts follow over thousands of years.

I was mildly surprised that Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" theories did not gain wider analysis. While Morris challenges both "long-term lock-in" theories (similar to Diamond) and "short-term accident" explanations for Western dominance on pp. 17-18, I was left unsure how Morris improved or challenged Diamond, other than calling the ancient core the "Hilly Flanks" and not the "Fertile Crescent." East and West themselves shift, but a strength of this work is that Morris accounts for why Qin China and the Roman Empire succeeded-- and then due to geography and noble bickering became unable to control the frontiers of its vast territory. Migrations, climate change, plagues, and famine take center stage.

He also attends minutely to weather patterns and how this factor accounts for many periods of stagnation or expansion. "Energy capture" is a novel way to explain why cultures take off and soar as they harness their resources and labor potential. Morris may be criticized for not adhering to historiographical models of leaders or ideas, but as an archeologist, it's expected that he examines the material record and he reminds us early on of this tricky interpretation. Flowers left on a Shanidar grave in today's Iraq may have been brought into the burrow by rats; a puppy buried within the embrace of an elderly woman 11,000 BCE at 'Ain Mallaha may not have been placed there "as if asleep" so conveniently!

Where this balance of facts and research shifts is in spot-checking for sources. For instance, take those Bactrians. I found one source for them cited in the end notes, but that was all, and this section was embedded into a much larger chunk of the chapter at hand, with seemingly few references for a considerable narrative stretch. There appeared a tremendous amount of secondary scholarship examined by Morris. To his credit, yet not all of that was "common knowledge." It's not always easy to track back to the works cited to hunt down facts or data in the narrative. A casual style of giving a key phrase from a page and a citation at text's end is fine, but often Morris makes leaps over what he has compacted down into such a small block of a chapter, so it's hard to "unpack" this scholarship if you wish to track down the primary research.

Yet, any single volume designed to reach out to wider audiences than a monograph or university press tome will get hit with flak. I'd urge an open-minded reader to come to Morris' endeavor with a lively mind and lots of patience. One's curiosity will be rewarded, and one's mind stimulated. Those who enjoy playing games of conquest or watching multi-season series of imaginary realms hacking and scheming should find this real-life predecessor as worthwhile, for it, after all, is our story.

Overall, I liked this book as I teach a class in "Technology, Culture and Society" that looks at Diamond and Ray Kurzweil's "singularity." Morris plays Kurzweil's optimism off of Isaac Asimov's story "Nightfall" well. As with those thinkers, critics will have plenty to carp about in anyone trying to present thousands of complex ideas and findings within a few hundred pages for a wider readership. As with such books, this one-size-fits-nearly-all ambition is both admirable and perhaps doomed to its own minor shortcomings. Still, I recommend Morris' book for its verve and energy, and it will enrich the hours you invest in its unfolding of our own story, told yet again in epic fashion. One wonders if we will last, as a civilization, long enough to see the projected Eastern regaining of the lead over the West in 2103.

Inspirational book. Deep thoughts on historical nature of the progress of the West and the East over the entire course of Mankind. The ups and downs, the rise and collapses. The comparisons between political structures, economic, industrial and so forth, this book has some very interesting thoughts that were quite exciting. While the last 4 chapters were not as interesting as the first part (mainly the last chapters were a quick run up of history from 1800 to present and why the West rules and when China will overtake the West), the first part of the book had some very interesting history to connect West and East, explain some unexplained histories not covered in our educational systems (Central Asia, India and the a few others), and many background stories of various leaders, explorers, philosophers and more. One of the few books that I have read that I read the chapters 2-3 times AND visited some of the cities discussed (Vienna, Madrid and Istanbul).

The author reviews the progress of socio-economic accomplishments in the Eastern and Western worlds so as to determine which of the two is likely to lead the world in the future. After considering their history during the past 14,000 years he concludes that modern technology has more or less equalized the two and any difference between them will be irrelevant. Neither will lead and - as is touchingly illustrated in a poem by Rudyard Kipling - Eastern and Western social developments will likely join in a fraternal union. Alas, while this should complete the proclaimed task of the book, there is a big addendum: To wit, this investigation has also revealed the unexpected predicament that the same technology, which has brought us such marvelous success, has at the same time landed us at the edge of an abyss. The reader hears about nuclear devastation and similar disasters (called "Nightfall") or, in the alternative, about "Singularity", an eerie specter that sounds even worse. The race between the two may end as early as 2045 and you get the impression, either way that would be the end of human civilization the way we know it.

Certainly, if you take the addendum seriously, it would deprive the first 95% of the book of any significance whatsoever. Death is knocking on the door, so what is the purpose of questioning 14,000 years of history to find the future leader? It would perhaps have been better, had Ian Morris curtailed his scientific predictions a trifle, but whatever your opinion might be, I beg you not to overlook the sheer pleasure of accompanying him on this travel through the centuries and millennia of humanity's growth toward modernity. He will guide you through many cultures at both extremities of the Eurasian continent and you will be impressed by his familiarity with all of them. You observe that beauty, wisdom and goodness are all human and can be found around the world, but regrettably so are outrageous brutality and mass murder. What an intrepid job it was to weigh two distant cultures one against the other over the course of thousands of years. The author has selected four quantifiable traits by which to roughly measure human progress even millennia ago so as to be able to estimate the changing ups and downs of their progress. The effort to execute such rating system in a realm as chaotic, forever changing and helter-skelter as "social development" and do it in a plausible way seems almost insurmountable. Never mind that some reviewers disagree on one point or another, for this is too complex a subject to expect uniform answers. For those interested in the origin and evolution of the human race and their modern interpretation, reading this book should instead be one of sheer delight and a genuine intellectual feast.

There is one final thought. Our present global uncertainties resemble that of 100 years ago: Had a European Union existed in the early 20th century, there would have been no world wars, no atomic bomb and no Holocaust. Unification eliminates wars, cools nerves and promotes pragmatism. This book points at all the justifications for us to unite under global law and to build a defensive unit to tackle oncoming global challenges. Global federation has been a dream for centuries and has been exhaustively investigated for decades. Its basic outlines are well known and it is a feasible undertaking. The time is right. The history of human civilization is impatiently waiting for us to do what must be done. Yet, this book touches on it only in passing and almost dismissively and is joined by many other recent publications that don't mention it at all. Global federation is simply on nobody's agenda. You wonder why.

Isn't it strange that archaeologists seem to have a better grasp of what is REALLY going on in the present? Perhaps it is because they are trained to get as much data as possible in contexts without writings to guide them. Morris' use of kilocalories as a measure of energy used is something us anthropologists have been doing for over 50 years. I have some quibbles about his other three measures and Morris himself admits that energy use is the main driver. Nevertheless he makes some very good arguments. I also like how he addresses what the results would be if he had some errors. This is sound statistical practice and I wish other social scientists would use the same technique.

The most comprehensive over of world history I have personally read, beginning all the way back to the end of the last major ice age (and actually even before that as well as Morris affirms that all humans biologically derived from the same hominid ancestor.) He works with some powerful ideas ("paradox of social development" "advantages of backwardness" and the recurring "five horsemen" that threaten civilization with collapse as society strains against its current limits). More importantly, Morris attempts to show tremendous parallels development in east and west (although the west is literally a shifting landscape from southwest Asia to northwest Europe and eventually north America.). The west merely had a head start and some advantages in geography that favored the European core. (Most interesting is his analysis of why when China had actually surpassed the west for over a thousand years yet without having their own industrial revolution; the short answer is that according the Morris Theorem - you'll have to read the book to know what that is - that China was too geographically advantaged in their age of stability to seek new markets and resources and too disadvantaged geographically to tap the Americas, In a way, the book was less about what was different between Europe and China that led to Industrial Revolution, but rather how similar they were up until the point where they diverged. The last chapter where Morris looks at the future makes for disturbing yet compelling reading. While I found his conclusions a bit overstated, one cannot dismiss his prediction entirely namely that within the next 50 years, world civilization will either collapse or achieve a far more radical breakthrough than the first industrial revolution. Overall this book makes great companion reading with others like Guns, Germs, and Steel, Why Nations Fail, and even 1493. (I have not read yet read Kennedy or Landes yet) I absolutely loved his focus on pre-history and the origins of early societies. His narrative tended to focus necessarily on the grim history of armed conflict, and also, for reasons which he outlines there is very little at all in the book about Africa and India.

This book attempts to answer questions such as: (1) What advantages did the West have that
enable it to dominate other regions at certain times in history. (2) *When* did the West
dominate? And, (3) having attempted to learn something about social development and the
advancement of society, what can we say about our future, both in the West and in the
East.

I'm hoping we'll get answers to the questions such as: (1) What were those (historical)
strengths? (2) Are those same strengths and characteristics still advantageous, given our
current problems? (3) Who has and is gaining those strengths? Who is losing them? And,
of course, (4) what can be done? Is there anything effective that can be done, both to
advance our society and to protect us from some of the environmental, climate, and
resource problems that lie in our future?

For me, since I'm a techie and a computer programmer, chapter 10, "The western age" is an
especially interesting one, because it picks apart the story of how power (mostly steam
power, I suppose), innovation, technology, and mechanization helped break through what
Morris calls a "hard ceiling". That's interesting because this story might give us hints
about how to break through the next hard ceiling or, if we are in the process of some sort
of break through, how that process might proceed. I believe that each of these major
moves in technology is started by some significant new enabling technology, e.g. the
printing press (although Morris denies that the printing press really changed
communication, not level of social development), the steam engine, accurate watches for
navigation, telegraph, ..., and the Internet. If Morris is correct in the last few
chapters of this book that we are approaching some sort of cataclysmic change, it is
extremely important that we understand the nature of the change we are currently going
through and also how this transformation might be influenced.

Migration and immigration -- Morris has interesting things to say about migration, in
particular migration over the long term. He claims that one of the enablers of a modern
Europe was what he calls the closing of the Steppe Highway. The effect of that blockage
was to protect Europe from disruptive invasions from the east, enabling it (Europe) to
advance to levels of social development that occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Labor costs are a worthwhile point of view for thinking through the changes that Morris
describes in Europe's industrial revolution. A central theme or basis for explanation is
that people are naturally lazy, greedy, and frightened (or chose euphemisms if you
prefer), and that this motivates them to invent and work towards what is easier, more
rewarding, and safe. Apply that to labor availability and use; then you will soon arrive
at explanations for mechanization, labor efficiency studies, etc. What kinds of incentives
does this apply to, e.g. the drive to mechanize? What other incentives push
mechanization? Reliability of labor and the labor force? Other, non-wage costs, e.g. the
demand for education, medical care, etc? Worries about dependable labor availability. (I
know that my relatives in California worry about whether there will be a sufficient labor
force available right when fruit is on the trees and must be harvested immediately.

Perhaps we ask questions about the quality of the metrics that Morris uses to measure
social development. By that I mean, is one kind of energy use just as good as another?
Isn't a more efficient use of energy, even when the total energy consumed is lower, a sign
of a more highly developed society? And, is all manufacturing the same? Perhaps building
houses is not as good in some sense as manufacturing farm implements or some other
machinery that helps to produce food. Perhaps burning lots of coal, especially if done in
an uncontrolled and "dirty" way, produces a poorer quality of life than a lower use of
energy might.

A higher-level question should also be asked about Morris's comparisons of East and West:
Is this a zero-sum game? If one nation, region, or alliance wins, must others lose?
Isn't it possible that in the future, all, or at least most, of us could become richer?
Even while the East, in particular China and some of the nations once called the "Asian
tigers" close the lead, isn't it possible that the West will still remain ahead, and that
it will have even more wealth at its disposal, while societies in the East advance, too?
If, after reading this book, you need help sleeping at night, then you might try to
convince yourself that what Morris calls climate weirding will force the industrial
nations to organize and cooperate in response.

Although much of this book discusses the relative position between societies, it also
spends a good deal of effort on the problem of whether all or any of the advanced
societies in the world today can proceed. Can we continue on our present trajectory
without hitting some unbreakable ceiling, or even without descending into some apocalyptic
state of dis-organization or resource depletion or destruction? So, we have to ask
whether it is reasonable to expect that the four measures of social development used by
Morris can continue on an upward trend. In the long-term, don't these measures have to go
down as well as up? Isn't there something self-limiting about the use of accelerating
amount of energy, for example? Yes, learning how to use energy enables us to use more of
it, but won't there be exogenous limiting pressures? To give him credit, Morris is well
aware of this worry; in fact, he discusses it and tries to factor it into his theory and
calculations.

I'm going to introduce an alternative thing to worry about. This book encourages us to
think about when and why the East will catch up with the West, even as they both advance.
I'm worried that both the East and the West will devolve or even implode, possibly while
the East does so more slowly relative to the West, as nations in both the East and West
consume more of the easily accessible natural resources that have been enabling recent
progress. Morris assumes that more social development, more use of resources, more energy
use, and, even, more ability to wage war are all signs of progress. Morris worries about
this, too, although his suspicions about what will go wrong are different from mine and
are quite a bit more cataclysmic. My worries are that as the world population soars in
response to our improved abilities to feed and care for people, we may see limits that
can't be finessed by improved technology. There is the possibility that we, both in the
West and in the East, will need to learn to do more with less and to even to make do with
less. It'd be nice to be able to believe that those hockey stick, elbow- shaped graphs
that Morris shows can go up forever. But, I doubt that. Even if we do not have the
cataclysms that Morris worries about, I believe that the green revolution can *not* go on
producing increasingly larger supplies of food, nor can fish farming in the ocean can
produce increasing supplies of fresh fish, etc. There are going to be some limits and some
costs. All societies face that sooner or later. It might even be that the higher levels
of social organization, information processing, and ability to use energy will bring us up
against those limits all the faster.

Perhaps we need a higher order, wider scale of social organization. But, given that the
most powerful country and the one most needed to drive an effort to create that
organization has in the last ten years outlawed serving French Fries because they had a
foreign name, I don't have much in the way of hope about that.

I have these criticisms for the assumption that continuing growth is the only conceivable
goal: (1) It can't continue; those elbow-shaped graphs in Morris's book that go steeply
upward cannot continue for long. There are some limits (some hard and some merely
uncomfortable) that will be imposed on increasing city size, increased use of natural
resources, accelerating use of energy, etc. (2) It does not produce the results we want.
Too many are left out, while a few acquire extreme amounts of wealth. So that some can
benefit from these advances, so many must live in poverty. Yes, overall standards of
living have improved, but we simply must do a better job of enabling more of the world-
wide population improve their lives in a sustainable way.

One of the most interesting aspects of Morris's book is his awareness of this paradox.
And he attempts to analyze the future, several possible futures in fact, in the light of
that paradox and his theory of social development.

If I were to stretch for one complaint about this book, it would be that several concepts
that I tried to look up in the index were not there, even though they seemed central to
Morris's thinking. I notice that the store has a Kindle version (I read paper), so I suspect
that if you read that, you'd just be able to search for what you want.

For those of you who want a somewhat more approachable, or at least shorter, book on why
societies fall behind and collapse, take a look at "The Collapse of Complex Societies", by
Joseph A. Tainter. Tainter's view seems to be that a society is a resource consuming
organism; that as a society depletes resources, it becomes more complex in an attempt to
acquire those resources; and that eventually that attempt fails. Comparing that line of
thinking with Morris's ideas on our society's future leads to interesting, but gloomy,
conclusions.

If you are interested in understanding the BIG PICTURE about the last 15,000 years of human history, then ‘Why The West Rules - For Now’ by Ian Morris is a must read for you.

Morris applies four quantitative tools to serve as the fundamental measurements of human development from the end of the Ice Age to our modern era.

The strongest of these tools are strictly numeric and are relatively easy to guesstimate, given what we currently know about our history, and what we can infer from prehistoric forensics and archaeology. These tools are:

1. Energy Capture: The average number of Kilocalories used per capita per day by a given culture or civilization to sustain itself at the technological level it has achieved.

For late Ice Agers, that would be about 4,000 Kilocalories per day, which includes food, fire, and the energy investment represented by their material culture: shelter, tools, clothing, weapons and so forth.

For modern western and east asian cultures, that number, which includes such innovations as airplane rides, automobile manufacturing plants, air conditioning, and streetlights, comes to about 228,000 Kilocalories per day.

On the 15,000 year timeline, this and the other three quantitative tools all produce an exponential growth curve strongly skewed to the right. The three other tools are:

2. Organization/ Urbanization: How many people are in your biggest urban areas?

3. War-Making: Subjective, but being an estimate of elements such as fire-power at your command and the geographical reach of your armed forces.

4. Information Technology: Can you read and write? Can you print? Can you digitize? What proportion of your population has these skills?

Mr. Morris then blends the effect of all these elements together into a single combined measurement, which he calls ‘The Index of Social Development.’

By examining the results of applying each of the four quantitative tools and the Index of Social Development both separately and in combination with each other to the different cultural regions and eras under consideration, he is able to tease out various nuances and exceptions to the general rule of progress over time, fine-tune his calibrations, and provide his argument with an added degree of intellectual robustness.

As a means of assuaging if not kow-towing to the ever growing forces of political correctness, he starts off with the Jared Diamond-ish beginning assertion that:

‘Biology and sociology provide universal laws, applying to all humans in all times and places; geography explains differences.’

Then he promptly proceeds to spend almost all of his time in this lengthy tome where the action actually is - among the caucasians of the west, and the sino-japanese of the east. He also goes out of his way to point out the fact that human genetic group differences with respect to disease resistance is extremely significant (see ‘The Old World Exchange’ and ‘The New World Exchange’).

Perhaps the most interesting of his findings is the phenomenon he refers to as ‘The Paradox of Progress’ and “The Hard Ceiling” which states (I’m paraphrasing here):

‘Solving old problems creates new problems, which in turn need to be solved. This is the driver of social and technological change, which tends to accelerate over time until you reach (what he calls) a ‘Hard Ceiling’. Rising social development creates the very forces that undermine it. Stasis can never last for long. If you can’t figure out how to break through the Hard Ceiling you face, sooner or later, some combination of famine, disease, migration, state collapse, and/or natural disaster (‘The Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse’) will break loose upon you, overwhelm you, and drive your development back down, sometimes for centuries.

Three examples of Hard Ceilings are:

The naturally caused climatic event known as the Younger Dryas, from 12,900 to 11,700 years ago, when the most recent ice age had its last big resurgence, which was powerful enough to halt and even reverse the progress of agricultural development, for 1,200 years.

The Era of the Sea Peoples: A period of political, economic, and military chaos unleashed by a combination of state failure, war, famine, disease, and mass migration in the Mediterranean basin about 3.300 years ago.

The Decline and Fall of the Western Roman Empire, beginning about 1,800 years ago, arguably brought about by economic, military, and political collapse whose root cause was the failure of the Romans to figure out how to get their technology up to the next level, which would have been a steam-powered industrial revolution.

Possible Hard Ceilings for us moderns are many; they might include failure to overcome environmental degradation, failure to cope with emergent diseases, or the failure to adequately safeguard and protect our electrical supply and distribution systems.

Other interesting ideas which Morris explores include concepts he calls:

‘Changing the Meaning of Geography’. For example, the objective fact of the Atlantic Ocean itself has not changed very much in the past 15,000 years. But our concept of it has - it has changed from being a forbidding wall of desolation, danger, and obstruction, from being the very end of the world, into becoming seen as a convenient, mundane transportation highway.

‘The Advantages of Backwardness’ The greater the development in a civilizational core, the greater the opportunity for the periphery to make progress as well - including, sometimes, taking over or surpassing the old core, because they can acquire the core’s advantages but are slower to be saddled with the core’s problems.

Another point in Morris’ favor is you can tell he has had a lot of fun tackling this vast and complex project, and has maintained his sense of perspective and humor. He tells us his operating assumption behind all his elaborate documentation and theorizing about the rise of civilization and social progress comes down to a single idea expressed many years ago by his favorite science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, who roughly said:

‘Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people (who rarely know what they are doing) looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things.’

The book is "Why The West Rules, for Now", written by Ian Morris. I heard an interview he gave on the radio down here and was impressed and lo and behold it was under the Xmas tree. Couldn't put it down once started and would read untill eyes went blurry. This guy has real credentials and address questions I have often wondered about. It is way beyond casual reading but done so in a fashion not overly scholarly so that it can be followed by the likes of me. Sort of a post doctoral dissertation in language suitable for mere undergraduates. He has some rather startling conclusions in the later chapters and outlines the history and reasons for them in the early chapters. He gets a bit obtuse from time to time, maybe so he can hold a more knowledgeable audience, but never sinks into the pit of sophistry. It is a history book just as much as a book on economics, which tends to make my eyes glaze over anyway. Never happens. A considerable amount of his conclusions is based on very recent archeology, the ink is barely dry on some of these pupblications. All peer reviewed.
Full of interesting historical facts, like the Muslims inventing ice cream and pasta in Sicily in 750 AD and the fact that the US military invented the internet. and are leading the field in robotics and nanotechknowledgy. Maybe you knew, I didn't. He makes constant use of notes at the bottom of a page so as not to sidetrack the reader, but there are enough of them for a book on it's own. Like the fact that the Chinese were stealing manhole covers in Chicago in 2004 and shipping them home because they are so short of steel. They have few natural resources but coal.
I have to admit it makes me very worried about the future because what he postulates is not new, it has all happened before and there is really no reason it won't happen again. We are no less prone to catastrophic blunders than our predecessors. He points out that it is men of genius and blundering idiots who populate the history books and the latter out number the former by far. It is China about which we have to be concerned, not Islam, which is hardly mentioned. China has broken up 4 times in the past and descended into anarchy, and shows signs of repeating. He does point out that it is only a matter of when, not if, fundamentalist Islam will get the bomb. Worry.
He quotes scientists in other discplines and does not give short shrift to those who disagree with him. I had read Gavin Menzies' books about the Chinese fleets in the early 15 th century and although I believed him, Menzies is given little credence. He was only a Naval Officer. Too bad, it made great reading.

Attempts to resolve the riddle of civilizations usually fail due to the wrong assumptions brought to the study, assumptions about economics, assumptions about science and a possible science of history, and assumptions about evolution and the nature of human emergence. Attempts to figure through the issues of economics always throw the analysis out of whack, because economic systems are not the prime determinant of civilizations, even if their momentum finally overtakes the whole and dominates all outcomes. The innovations of the early modern in Europe were decisive in creating a new form of civilization, but the sudden crystallization around capitalism just at the end, if anything, bent that great advance out of shape. The efforts by Toynbee and Spengler to study world history after the rubric of 'civilizations' has also confused the issue, as has the false distinction of East and West. Civilizations are like clouds, and too diffuse to be determining organisms of historical evolution. As to the question of evolution, Darwinism has consistently thrown all analysis out of whack and, in league with capitalist hubris, reduced all analysis to the 'tough guy' ideologies of Machiavellian nihilism cum historical materialism rendered conservative, etc, etc....

A better approach is to simply look at the clear structure of world history as a whole, which unexpectedly shows the answer to both economic fundamentalism, and evolutionary social darwinism. The rise of the West follows a clear pattern of historical progression and occurs on schedule in the sixteenth century for a brief surge of three centuries. The subsequent economic domination/decline phase is misleading. The clear macro structure in a sequential logic of developmental evolution behind the emergence of Civilization, if not 'civilizations', resolves the riddle of advancing civilizations and shows a very simple logic behind the temporary dominance of the 'West'. The resemblance to the issues of the Axial Age is remarkable and shows that it is not a question of civilizations but of differential time-slices of such, precisely what we see in the modern transition, only secondarily an economic phenomenon.
In general economic historians are so far off the mark as to make their analysis ridiculous, if not dangerous. The temporary dominance of the West due to the overgrowth of economic fundamentalism has spoiled its deeper contributions. If we examine the Axial period we can see that its contributions were larger than the economic and imperialistic, factors which soon destroyed the larger advance. The same process is underway now as globalization creates an economic orgy followed by, nothing much but decline, and in the modern case, environmental madness.

World History And the Eonic Effect: Civilization, Darwinism, and Theories of Evolution Fourth Edition

Ian Morris set himself an ambitious goal for this book: explain the last 14,000 years of world history. As Morris himself admits, there's a lot of what he calls chainsaw art in this undertaking the further back you go, but the broad outlines become somewhat clear with Morris' deft handling of evidence from archaeology, geography, history, sociology, and other fields. If you buy into his assumptions, then it's a satisfying work that ties in many seemingly disparate trends. I imagine, however, that adherents of various religions, especially the three big monotheistic ones, would have radically different interpretations of how and why history unfolded as it did. But so much the better. Variety is the spice of life, and Morris' spice will add some nice flavor to some people's intellectual palate. It comes with an outstanding bibliography and notes so one can pursue the many different directions covered in more depth if desired. If there's one thing I didn't care for it was Morris' refrain that each generation gets the thought or ideas it needs. Such a "just so" interpretation is without empirical evidence until after the fact and has no predictive capacity (you can't say what ideas future generations will need; you only know what they needed by looking back and saying, "Aha! So that's what they needed!"). But this hardly detracts from the larger argument. I also found the writing to be very felicitous and accessible and appreciated the humor. All in all, an excellent work. Highly recommended.

This is history as it should be written. Morris focuses on the patterns, relative to social development. He leavens the story with his humanism, humor, and personal experiences as an archaeologist. He is remarkably well read, and for those subjects I have read more extensively in, I can vouch for his accuracy - well maybe he fails to note some of Genghis Khan's positive achievements amidst all the horror (cf. book by Jack Weatherford). He separates observations from opinion, and defends his opinions fairly.

I am skeptical of the "hard ceiling" which may be a result of the way Morris is measuring things. Morris owes a huge debt to Jared Diamond and his "Gun, Germs and Steel"; it is interesting that Diamond is not a professional historian either.

Morris deliberately omits much discussion of the Indian sub-continent which simplifies things, thankfully. However, many economists (cf. Yasheng Huang, "Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics") believe India will overtake China in this century: both because of demography, and because it employs capital much more efficiently.

If you have not read the book, I would warn you that some of the early material is not as good as the rest of the book. The early theoretical discussion tends to be repetitive, and I believe Morris goes into more detail than necessary in describing the power shifts in the "middle east" prior to 600 BCE. As another reader points out, Morris also spends a lot of time early in the book refuting the racial explanation for relative progress, which is unnecessary for many readers.

This panoramic history is formidable reading about the comparative development of Western and Eastern civilizations. It catalogs significant archeological, scientific, and political events of 16,000 years of human history and several millennia in the life of the planet. Historian Ian Morris explains the forces that allowed Western civilization to overtake Eastern civilization and why this critical balance may now be tipping in favor of the East. This is high-quality academic scholarship: an interdisciplinary analysis, tying together esoteric facts and maps spanning geography, historical theories, paleontology, genetics, climatology, archeology and politics. Morris's book supports his detailed model comparing the development of Eastern and Western civilizations. His construct relies on recounting detailed history, analysis and comparisons. This can be challenging reading, albeit leavened by Morris's visible scholarship and entertaining style. You have to want to finish this book, but if you are a serious reader of history, getAbstract assures you that the effort has very substantial rewards - and if you are building up your ambitions, it also makes for fascinating skimming.

This is admirable but uneven attempt to sketch out a sort of universal history. Morris goes well beyond the question of his title to produce an overview of Eurasian, and to a lesser extent, world history, over the last few thousand years. Morris takes human nature as essentially fixed and universal with no significant ethnic differences. He then focuses on how civilizations developed at the two approximate poles of the Eurasian continent. The latter is his focus because civilizations emerged first in these regions and enjoyed a de facto technological head start and persistent advantages over other areas that developed civilizations, such as the Western Hemisphere or Africa. Morris provides a series of reasonably good overviews of the development of civilizations in Western Eurasia and East Asia. Following the suggestion of Jared Diamond, this is a biogeographical story with the availability of plants and animals suitable for domestication leading to the emergence of agriculture, more sedentary societies, and civilizations. Morris then follows the trajectories of the Western Core (the ancient Near East and its successors) and the Eastern Core (China) over subsequent centuries. This is a story of irregular progress and decline with the Eastern and Western Cores outpacing each other at different times. A distinctive feature of this analysis is that Morris attempts to go beyond impressionistic analysis. He constructs an index of civilizational achievements which he uses as a yardstick to compare the Eastern and Western Cores. One can argue about the construction and use of his scale but this is an interesting and useful attempt.

Morris does an overall good job with his narrative, summarizing a large amount of secondary literature. He shows the rise and falls of major Eastern and Western societies, how they interacted via trade across Eurasia, and also looks into what determines the rise and fall of major polities and societies. Climactic change is argued to be particularly important. Despite the collapse of some major polities, like the Roman Empire, there is overall upward progress on Morris' scale across centuries. The Eastern and Western Cores are at approximate parity until the Industrial Revolution. Morris argues that the Eastern Core is now catching up and may surpass the Western Core.

Despite the good narrative and efforts at scientific classification, there are some real problems with Morris' analysis. His definition of the Western Core is essentially that of cultural continuity. The Western Core migrates from the ancient Near East to the Mediterranean to Europe and then the borders of the North Atlantic. In contrast, the Eastern Core is basically defined geographically as China. But how much cultural continuity is there in modern China? The latter is a nation-state, its government involves a form of mass politics, it pursues a form of industrial capitalism, and its intellectual culture is dominated by the natural sciences. The Chinese have adopted the package of major cultural innovations developed in Western Europe and North America around the Industrial Revolution, a marked discontinuity with its past. The present comparison isn't then between East or West, its properly a comparison between different versions of the Western Core.

Morris also has a rather deterministic, monocausal view of important events, particularly the genesis of the Industrial Revolution. He sees this as being driven by geography. Because Europe had easier access across the Atlantic to the Western Hemisphere, it developed an Industrial Revolution. While the "ecological windfall" of the Americas (and the corresponding availability of coerced labor from Africa) is probably a crucial factor in the genesis of the Industrial Revolution, this kind of monocausal explanation is unlikely to correct. Morris is determined to avoid what he calls "lock in" explanations of more recent events. In particular, he attacks the idea that some unique feature of Greek culture set the West on the inevitable road to the modern world. While I agree with his desire to avoid this kind of determinism, there is some throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Our natural sciences originate with Hellenic and Hellenistic science and math. While there is a long and torturous path from Greece to the 17th century Scientific Revolution, Greek science and math (transmitted to Europe and elaborated by great Muslim intellectuals) provide the essential germ of our scientific tradition. No Western science, no Industrial Revolution. There is little evidence that Chinese civilization ever developed something analogous to the Western scientific tradition (see the final third of Mark Elvin's interesting Retreat of the Elephants). Morris greatly underestimates the complex genesis and deep roots of the Industrial Revolution.

The final section of the book, some speculation on the future, is the weakest. Morris seems taken with the improbable ideas of Raymond Kurzweil about the so-called Singularity and also seems to have an exaggerated concept of the impact of biotechnology. He also seems to have an exaggerated idea of the likelihood of an acute collapse of civilization. In fact, what we're likely faced with the continued articulation of our industrial civilization and the countervailing consequences of gradual environmental degradation caused by our impressive technology.

Have you ever read history and thought, `well, this is all very interesting, but what does it mean?' Clearly some patterns of history are discernable: Civilizations rise and fall, kings and states centralize their power, progress moves forward, although not always in a straight line. Why do these things happen? Our textbooks sometimes offer explanations, but they tend to be partial answers at best. And even fewer try and answer the largest questions. If any of this has ever crossed your mind you are not alone. In recent years more scholars have taken on these questions. And in particular, they have tried to answer what William McNeil calls the "Rise of the West," why Western Civilization advanced so rapidly after 1500. And these efforts have borne some fruit. William McNeil and David Landes ("The Wealth and Poverty of Nations") have both pointed to importance of the colonization of the Americas by Europe in transferring the balance of power to the west. Landes has more generally emphasized the importance of geography, along with a culture's ability to harness its resources as the keys to development. Max Weber ("The Protestant Work Ethic") and Charles Murray ("Human Achievement") have pointed to unique cultural features found only Western Europe. Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel") has explained the origins of civilization in Eurasia and their subsequent domination of the globe as a result of "biogeography," the presence of the largest number of species of cultivable grains and domesticable animals in the Fertile Crescent, along with an east-west axis along the Eurasian landmass that enabled their transfer laterally.

Yet for all these advances, there has not been a volume that follows the pre-history of mankind through today, focusing on the relative advancement of each region. It is this void that classical historian Ian Morris sets out to fill. And Morris' answer can be summed up in a single word: Geography. It is geography, Morris claims that allowed the first civilizations to develop where they did in the so-called "lucky latitudes", the temperate zones with an abundance of domesticable animals and plants. It is geography that dictated which regions dominated others in the ancient world, based on their ability to harness resources on a larger scale than their predecessors (the "advantages of backwardness"). It is geography that allowed empires to grow and reach new heights peaking in Europe at the 1st Century AD s the Roman Empire shipped goods around the Mediterranean, while the Chinese reached their peak in the 11th century after the contruction of the Grand Canal made shipping there easier. The declines of civilizations were also due to geographic factors, as the "five horsemen of the apocalypse" famine, disease, migration, state failure, and climate change overcame the best efforts of man. Indeed, even the Industrial Revolution, which led the West dominate the globe was due to geography, according to Morris. As Europeans sailed across the Atlantic, practical questions arose in sailing, navigating, and keeping time. In answering these questions, Westerners discovered a mechanical model of the universe, which led directly to the Scientific Revolution, and in turn, to the Industrial Revolution. Later, the abundance of coal in Britain sparked industry there. There was no major shift in culture in Europe during this time, nor were Europeans any smarter than their Chinese counterparts. "Every society gets the answers it needs," Morris asserts. Other societies didn't have a need to answer these questions, therefore they didn't. Distance dissuaded the Chinese from sailing to America and hence trying to figure out how and why things work. Western rule therefore was neither a long-term lock-in nor a short-term accident, but a long-term probability.

As for the role of culture, men, and ideas, Morris claims that these matter, but not nearly as much as material factors. For example, he writes that once industry became possible for the East, it was only a matter of time before they set out down that road. But Japan's road started in the 1860's, while China's was much later. Non-geographic factors account for this difference, Morris claims. Japan adjusted quicker to the new realities. Therefore other factors matter, but not nearly as much as cold, hard, material realities. Culture and free will cannot trump geography, they only change responses to geography: You cannot domesticate grains where there are not grains, you cannot domesticate animals where there are none to be domesticated, and you cannot mine for coal where there is no coal.

If all this sounds a bit too tidy and reductionist, it may well be. But the measuring stick for any work is not whether or not the author has ended the debate, but whether he has moved it forward. And in this regard, Morris clearly has succeeded. By explicitly stating how the interplay between geography and social development shaped societies responses, he has pushed the debate to new understandings. He has also taken a massive amount of data ranging from anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, biology, and climatology, and compiled it into one clear narrative that covers all of human history, something that has been lacking until now. His self-created "Social Development Index" provides a metric to track human development, although this will no doubt be controversial. But most of all, he has laid out a very clear case that material realities create certain unalterable conditions. Geography, as Jared Diamond pointed out in "Guns, Germs and Steel", is not fair. And like that previous work which Morris so clearly admires, "Why the West Rules" explains what those inequalities are, and how they shaped the very broadest patterns of history. Alas, Morris nearly undoes all his fine work in the conclusion. First, he argues that if 20th century trends continue, the East will overtake the West in 2103. It seems that Morris fell in love with his own metrics a bit too much here. Why should we assume that 20th century trends will continue? Are we to expect that Chinese economic growth will continue at 8 percent for the next century? Even worse, he postulates science-fiction scenarios for the future of mankind in which we either suffer total annihilation due to global warming and/or nuclear war on hand or merge with computers to for "a Singularity", new, more powerful species. Morris should have stuck with guns, stating that social development may be nearing its limit unless mankind can find greener forms of energy and manage to avoid nuclear Armageddon. This would have been in keeping with the previous chapters as well as in line with what we already know about our current situation. Still, this book is intriguing and makes for a fine read. Highly recommended.

Have you ever read history and thought, `well, this is all very interesting, but what does it mean?' Clearly some patterns of history are discernable: Civilizations rise and fall, kings and states centralize their power, progress moves forward, although not always in a straight line. Why do these things happen? Our textbooks sometimes offer explanations, but they tend to be partial answers at best. And even fewer try and answer the largest questions. If any of this has ever crossed your mind you are not alone. In recent years more scholars have taken on these questions. And in particular, they have tried to answer what William McNeil calls the "Rise of the West," why Western Civilization advanced so rapidly after 1500. And these efforts have borne some fruit. William McNeil and David Landes ("The Wealth and Poverty of Nations") have both pointed to importance of the colonization of the Americas by Europe in transferring the balance of power to the west. Landes has more generally emphasized the importance of geography, along with a culture's ability to harness its resources as the keys to development. Max Weber ("The Protestant Work Ethic") and Charles Murray ("Human Achievement") have pointed to unique cultural features found only Western Europe. Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel") has explained the origins of civilization in Eurasia and their subsequent domination of the globe as a result of "biogeography," the presence of the largest number of species of cultivable grains and domesticable animals in the Fertile Crescent, along with an east-west axis along the Eurasian landmass that enabled their transfer laterally.

Yet for all these advances, there has not been a volume that follows the pre-history of mankind through today, focusing on the relative advancement of each region. It is this void that classical historian Ian Morris sets out to fill. And Morris' answer can be summed up in a single word: Geography. It is geography, Morris claims that allowed the first civilizations to develop where they did in the so-called "lucky latitudes", the temperate zones with an abundance of domesticable animals and plants. It is geography that dictated which regions dominated others in the ancient world, based on their ability to harness resources on a larger scale than their predecessors (the "advantages of backwardness"). It is geography that allowed empires to grow and reach new heights peaking in Europe at the 1st Century AD s the Roman Empire shipped goods around the Mediterranean, while the Chinese reached their peak in the 11th century after the contruction of the Grand Canal made shipping there easier. The declines of civilizations were also due to geographic factors, as the "five horsemen of the apocalypse" famine, disease, migration, state failure, and climate change overcame the best efforts of man. Indeed, even the Industrial Revolution, which led the West dominate the globe was due to geography, according to Morris. As Europeans sailed across the Atlantic, practical questions arose in sailing, navigating, and keeping time. In answering these questions, Westerners discovered a mechanical model of the universe, which led directly to the Scientific Revolution, and in turn, to the Industrial Revolution. Later, the abundance of coal in Britain sparked industry there. There was no major shift in culture in Europe during this time, nor were Europeans any smarter than their Chinese counterparts. "Every society gets the answers it needs," Morris asserts. Other societies didn't have a need to answer these questions, therefore they didn't. Distance dissuaded the Chinese from sailing to America and hence trying to figure out how and why things work. Western rule therefore was neither a long-term lock-in nor a short-term accident, but a long-term probability.

As for the role of culture, men, and ideas, Morris claims that these matter, but not nearly as much as material factors. For example, he writes that once industry became possible for the East, it was only a matter of time before they set out down that road. But Japan's road started in the 1860's, while China's was much later. Non-geographic factors account for this difference, Morris claims. Japan adjusted quicker to the new realities. Therefore other factors matter, but not nearly as much as cold, hard, material realities. Culture and free will cannot trump geography, they only change responses to geography: You cannot domesticate grains where there are not grains, you cannot domesticate animals where there are none to be domesticated, and you cannot mine for coal where there is no coal.

If all this sounds a bit too tidy and reductionist, it may well be. But the measuring stick for any work is not whether or not the author has ended the debate, but whether he has moved it forward. And in this regard, Morris clearly has succeeded. By explicitly stating how the interplay between geography and social development shaped societies responses, he has pushed the debate to new understandings. He has also taken a massive amount of data ranging from anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, biology, and climatology, and compiled it into one clear narrative that covers all of human history, something that has been lacking until now. His self-created "Social Development Index" provides a metric to track human development, although this will no doubt be controversial. But most of all, he has laid out a very clear case that material realities create certain unalterable conditions. Geography, as Jared Diamond pointed out in "Guns, Germs and Steel", is not fair. And like that previous work which Morris so clearly admires, "Why the West Rules" explains what those inequalities are, and how they shaped the very broadest patterns of history. Alas, Morris nearly undoes all his fine work in the conclusion. First, he argues that if 20th century trends continue, the East will overtake the West in 2103. It seems that Morris fell in love with his own metrics a bit too much here. Why should we assume that 20th century trends will continue? Are we to expect that Chinese economic growth will continue at 8 percent for the next century? Even worse, he postulates science-fiction scenarios for the future of mankind in which we either suffer total annihilation due to global warming and/or nuclear war on hand or merge with computers to for "a Singularity", new, more powerful species. Morris should have stuck with guns, stating that social development may be nearing its limit unless mankind can find greener forms of energy and manage to avoid nuclear Armageddon. This would have been in keeping with the previous chapters as well as in line with what we already know about our current situation. Still, this book is intriguing and makes for a fine read. Highly recommended.

A book very well worth reading. Morris is an excellent historian and a great story teller. He weaves the exploding body of empirical evidence about human history into an easily followed story line culminating in the emergence of the contemporary "world order." However, as a theorist of history he has a long way to go.

Morris attempts to begin this intellectual journey with the origins of humans ca. 2 million years ago. But evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology are not his forte and this early part of the book is a little shallow and unsatisfying. However, as he reaches the eras where his specialties, archaeology and history, get traction, the story gains powerful substance and narrative force.

This strong tour of the archaeology of the first Eurasian states, the ensuing development of the great later states (like the Roman and Han Empires) and the formation of the enormous contemporary states (England, China, Japan, Russia, India, the US, France, Germany, etc) occupies the majority of 622 pages. Morris' exploration of this rich landscape gives even the expert reader new opportunity to assimilate this truly massive and illuminating body of evidence. Some details of the Western component will be familiar, but the Eastern elements (especially Chinese archaeology) are sufficiently new that there is a great deal to be learned from Morris' quick witted story telling. All this empirical insight more than justifies the time to read this long book.

However, Morris' particular concern is to construct a theory of history that will explain why the West (Western Europe and its derivatives, like North America) has become so economically dominant - and the related question of whether the East (especially fast-growing China) will catch up, or even take over global economic primacy.

In attempting this larger theoretical task Morris has produced yet another 20th Century history but we need is a 21st Century version, a fundamentally new kind of effort. Specifically, the author pursues the earlier professional historian's tradition of telling a superficially, intuitively plausible story - and then calling this story a science of history. It is no such thing. Rather, the author does brilliant "natural history" (as it would be called in the physical and biological sciences). Natural history (in this sense) consists of the early and vital endeavor of gathering bodies of empirical insight that can form the basis on which a real science of a subject (history, in this case) can subsequently be built. Our evolved human minds lead us to organize such raw evidence into plausible "stories." These stories help us see and remember the data, but they are not explanations of those data. Only science can give us actual explanations.

An analogy helps here. In the 18th Century, Linnaeus organized his enormous systematic analysis of the properties of organisms into an orderly "phylogeny." However, all this organized information could be just as readily explained as the product of a divine plan as of purposeless, material processes. Only with the coming of Darwin's' scientific theory of evolution by natural selection did Linnaeus' efforts become science rather than natural history.

More specifically, for claims to be scientific they must be "falsifiable." This term of art has a simple and exact meaning. A claim is scientific if and only if it is strongly vulnerable to being shown to be false by a skeptical second party acting in public on the basis of empirical evidence that everyone has access to. History as "natural history" - still in its scholarly adolescence - has developed the opposite tradition. Professional historians have learned (mostly unconsciously) to tell rich "just so" stories that are inherently invulnerable to falsification. This imperviousness to test allows historians to build reputations based solely on their empirical work and their esteem within a fraternity/sorority of fellow story tellers. This tiny sisterhood/brotherhood of professional academic story tellers is well served by this practice - the larger global community (urgently in need of a real science of history) is most emphatically not well served.

Let us illustrate this criticism by analyzing one of the many just so stories masquerading as theory in this book. Morris seeks to explain the origins of the first agriculture in Southwest Asia. He suggests that combinations of local climate and unusually high availability of domesticatable species did the trick. In this form, this claim is not falsifiable. After all, we cannot rerun history after having given East Asia more domesticatable plants, for example.

However, we can restate this claim in forms that are falsifiable. For example, all the supposed consequences of agriculture should follow plant domestication, on this theory. This prediction turns out to be wrong. The coming of plant domestication to Southwest Asia apparently follows an earlier social revolution in which relatively large permanent settlements supported by wild food harvesting appear first (the archaeologically recognizable Natufian culture). Plant domestication looks like an effect of a preceding social cause, not a cause in its own right.

Another falsifiable version of this specific just so story states that the availability of domesticated plants should drive the rapid formation of the relatively large permanent villages associated with agriculture - available domesticated plants should behave like a cause. The prehistoric (pre-colonial contact) record from North America falsifies this form of the story/theory. Specifically, the Mesoamerican Triad of domesticates (maize/corn, beans and squash) are imported into North America more than 1000 years before the great agricultural societies of the continent are formed (including the Mississippians and Anasazi). Moreover, these North American agricultural societies arise quite abruptly, even explosively, when they finally do come. These empirical observations, again, falsify Morris' theory that plant domesticates cause agriculture revolutions. Something else, possibly something social, is apparently afoot here.

Having falsified the "available domesticates" theory of agricultural revolutions, we must go back to the drawing board and try again. We keep constructing new falsifiable theories and destroying them on the evidence until we finally come upon one that we cannot destroy/falsify. This surviving story/theory is the answer we seek. In a mature science we "fail our way to success." There is just no other way to move forward.

The natural history of history is now wonderfully mature - and Morris has made his own formidable contributions here. Learning to transform just so stories into falsifiable claims is a professional craft that can be mastered - allowing rich natural history to metamorphose into legitimate science. Members of Morris' generation have a unique opportunity to midwife this transition, creating entirely new professional reputations for themselves. It would be tragic for this author's generation if their students made this revolution instead - while Morris and his contemporaries stayed behind.

On the last page of his book Morris suggests that a real theory of history is vital to a humane, survivable future. We could not agree more. It's time to take the step.

Paul M. Bingham and Joanne Souza
Co-authors of Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe
Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe: Human Evolution, Behavior, History, and Your Future

For over a decade analysts and futurists have said that the 21st century may be known as "The Pacific Century." The Pacific Rim, according to this view, will most likely be the economic, cultural and political leader for many decades ahead--with China, Japan and eventually India as the leading world economies, California as the increasingly influential leader of the United States, and Asian military might rather than NATO as the focal-point of global power sometime around the year 2050. From this perspective, the 20th century with its Euro-centric battles between fascism, communism and capitalism was the "Atlantic Century"--dominated by European powers and the American Eastern seaboard.

A recent book by Ian Morris, Why the West Rules--For Now, puts a new twist on the common wisdom. In fact, after reading Morris, I am left quite unconvinced that the years from 2050 to 2100 will be dominated by the Pacific Rim at all. It could just as easily be led by resurgent Atlantic alliances or a rise of the southern half of the globe or some other nation or alliance.

The future is not as sure as the experts sometimes think, Morris shows. Numerous things can bring major changes that drastically alter the commonly held view of what will most likely come. As much as we debate about what happened in history, how can we possibly have a clear or shared view of things ahead?

Morris introduces what he calls, "...a `Morris Theorem,' (expanding an idea of the great science fiction writer Robert Heinlein) to explain the entire course of history--that change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people (who rarely know what they're doing) looking for easier, more profitable and safer ways to do things...

"We have seen people constantly tinkering, making their lives easier or richer or struggling to hold on to what they already have as circumstances change, and, in the process, gently nudging social development upward. Yet none of the great transformations in social development--the origins of agriculture, the rise of cities and states, the creation of different kinds of empires, the industrial revolution--was a matter of mere tinkering; each was the result of desperate times calling for desperate measures" (p. 559).

In short, it is not current trends that create our future so much as challenges which have yet to occur--and, of course, it is impossible to predict what all such challenges will be. Current events are, in this view, simply the ongoing responses to past challenges. But challenges often surprise us, and it is the surprising challenges which change society the most because we are unprepared for them. When we are forced to make major adjustments in order to overcome unexpected crisis, society changes in ways impossible to predict.

At the macro level, I'm convinced that there are two major ways to respond to crises: 1) with increased freedom and belief in the ability of individuals, families and communities to adapt and succeed, or 2) with decreased initiative, innovation and independence and instead more dependence on experts, government and big institutions as the "saviors" of the regular people. Since the Great Depression and World War II, the trend has been toward the second approach.

We may be witnessing a rebirth of the first attitude, evidenced by everything from the increased popularity of whole foods and holistic health, non-traditional education where parents take a bigger role, independents and tea parties in politics, to the "Arab Spring" which is revolutionizing the Middle East. The rise of the Internet may have catalyzed this shift, if in fact such a change is occurring.

The future is influenced by many factors--some predictable, some not. Tocqueville's studies and travels led him to foretell, in the 1830s, that the future world would split between nations supporting the United States and those backing Russia, and that the two sides would engage in a long conflict. He said that if the contest was decided by military might Russia would win, but if determined by economic prowess the victor would be the United States. Other long-term predictors have shown that current trends can tell us much about what's ahead. Winston Churchill suggested that we can use history itself to effectively foretell; Morris seems to concur.

In 1776 Adam Smith accurately forecast the coming rise of the West over the Orient. He believed that Britain, as a "nation of shopkeepers," was poised to spread its entrepreneurial power across the globe. Smith said that though China was an example of wealth and power, it wouldn't last. "The Chinese, in short, were stuck," writes Morris. "'The competition of the labourers and the interests of the masters,' Smith predicted, `would soon reduce them to the lowest rate which is consistent with common humanity,' with the consequence that `the poverty of the lower ranks of people in China far surpasses that of the most beggarly nations in Europe...'" (p. 40).

The problem, as Smith pointed out, is that China "...had already acquired `that full complement of riches which the measure of its laws and institutions permits it to acquire'" (pp. 39-40). If the laws and government don't allow entrepreneurship, innovation, adaptation or growth, a nation must either change its laws and government or face the consequences.

History and trends can teach us a lot about potential futures. One lesson is that when entrepreneurship is unleashed, economic prosperity and political power follow (see, for example, Morris's thoughts on pp. 11-12, 19-21; see also The Mainspring of Human Progress by Henry Grady Weaver). Find the nations where entrepreneurship is most encouraged by society, and a good bet is that they're on the path to leadership. Even where unpredictable things occur, it is the innovative spirit of entrepreneurialism which is most likely to overcome challenges with the least difficulty or lost time.

In times of crises, leaders should know that the second priority is to deal wisely and effectively with the immediate emergency. The third priority is to find ways to drastically unleash entrepreneurship. The first priority, which to be truly effective must be applied before a crisis comes, is to establish a culture and system where entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial values are widely encouraged for the long haul. Then when calamity hits, there are numerous entities empowered and ready to take action under government direction and/or support.
Note that such free enterprise is different than mere capitalism: the first gives freedom and opportunity to all, the latter gives special legal benefits to the wealthy and limits what others can do.

Another rule of history is that crises will come. Change happens. To be prepared, it is best to have an entrepreneurial-minded people full of initiative, innovation, resiliency, ingenuity, and self-starting leadership. No government program can cause this, but bad government policies can discourage it.

That said, it does not seem easy right now to imagine a resurgent "Atlantic Century" any time soon. Nor does Morris suggest such a course. Still, stranger things have happened. The future, like the past, belongs to the societies where entrepreneurial innovation flourishes. Government can help or hurt this, and in so doing it has drastic influence on the future. Morris doesn't say all of this in his long and detailed book, but it is worth reading for its in-depth analysis of the broad waves of human history.

In the tradition of greats like Jared Diamond, Paul Kennedy, Samuel P. Huntington and Joseph S. Nye, Morris teaches numerous principles of history that are vitally important in our time. Morris is right that a knowledge of history helps prepare us for the future, and he quotes Churchill to strengthen this point: "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see" (p. 30).

We are a nation ill-versed in history, and this can only have a negative impact on the future of freedom. In a time where people worry about China, India, the Middle East and other parts of the world, and about their direct impact on the economy and politics of the West, we can't afford to remain uninformed. Why the West Rules--for Now is not an easy read, but it is an important one. Ten, twenty and seventy years from now, some nation or region will be the world leader. With so much widespread concern right now about America's decline, those who care about the future of freedom should read and ponder Morris's book.

This is one of the most intriguing books on history I had ever read. The others are so boring, not to mention the low quality/accuracy writing particularly on ancient China. (I am a Hong Kong born Chinese who studied Chinese history for years so you have to trust me on that). I do buy into the author's own theory (pg28), that "Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things. And they rarely know what they're doing. History teaches us that when the pressure is on, change takes off." Nevertheless, I am obliged to express my objection to his conclusion that geography had played a very important part in shaping our past. Furthermore, IMHO, as technology is so fundamental to historical change, and technological breakthrough is simply unpredictable, nobody can really make any prediction of our future at all. Anyway, I strongly recommend this book to all who love to read. Per Winston Churchill (pg13), The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

p.s. Below please find some favorite passages of mine for your reference.
Because they had no rivals, most Chinese emperors worried more about how trade might enrich undesirable groups like merchants than they did about getting more riches for themselves; and because the state was so powerful, they could stamp out this alarming practice. In the 1430s they banned oceanic voyages, and in the 1470s perhaps destroyed Zheng's records, ending the great age of Chinese exploration. pg17
History, n.. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools. - Ambrose Bierce. pg26
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. - Heinlein Theorem pg27
Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things. And they rarely know what they're doing. - Morris Theorem pg28

This is a very detailed account of the complex national and international relations in various parts of the world throughout history going back as far as Antiquity (the first third of the book is all about Assyrians, Babylonians and such) and covering the East as thoroughly as the West.

Very well written and interesting, but some stretches (mostly in the first third of the book :-) bored me. It's a good History lesson but I am not sure that the "Why the West Rules?" question was answered adequately.

To all my friends, colleagues and family members who think I dig too deep when answering a question: you should meet Ian Morris !

I gave this book a high mark because it articulates its position well. The lay reader will have little or no ability to critically assess the view of world history which takes up a large part of the book (it's a great read and informative) so you have to some extent to accept the interpretation put on the historical record. What is that position? it relies heavily on a materialistic view of the drivers of human society to the extent of stating that every society gets the thought it needs (hence religion sprang from a structural deficiency within society, not as a result of any self-generated human search for meaning). Cultural outputs are also treated as by-products of the factors driving (or retarding) human development. individuals as a whole do not feature strongly in this story.

The book focuses on societies as a whole and the dynamics of their interactions with other groups on their borders. social development is a two-edged sword. it improves living standards, but the increased complexity of advanced societies makes them vulnerable to attack and inflexible in their response to non-human challenges (such as climate change). Aggression towards others is inevitable because societies must deliver continuous improvements in living standards to maintain cohesion and often the easiest way to generate increased returns is through conquest. Social reverses are inevitable in the authors eyes unless there is an exceptional confluence of factors. The risks of a catastrophic social decline following a failure to break through the next social development ceiling ( a key concept in the book) are exacerbated by the power of the weapons of aggression available to us and the fact that there are no longer any empty lands to conquer.

There are lots of positives. The book is written in a very accessible style. Its exceptional in the timescale that it attempts to cover and gives a vivid sense of how exceptional our own epoch is. The way attitudes towards the central question have been shaped by ideology and scientific discovery is an interesting story on its own. However, the author sometimes goes too far in his efforts to appeal to a non-expert readership. The last section is about forecasting the future and is perhaps the most unconvincing as it seeks to suggest how the human race (which the author has characterised as selfish and lazy) finds a meaningful response to the challenges of climate change and nuclear technology. It seems to call for a human capacity to act for the greater good which is not evident in the rest of the book.

Since this is a topic that I have been interested in for years, I bought this book with extreme enthusiasm. I'm now on P.207, reading about water levels in the Nile in 2300 BCE, and am considering dropping this reading project and donating the book to the local library. While much of what is being said is interesting, it has only marginal (at best) relevance to the thesis of the book. You need to get way past P.100 to even get to the existence of East and West; why cave paintings failed to move northward from their initial sites may be interesting, but I cannot see its relevance. For someone who has more than a passing familiarity with history, this read can be very slow, repetitive, and yes, boring. A much sharper focus would help the reader follow the thread better, and keep things hopping.

It was the most humiliating day in the history of the British Empire. Britain had been conquered before--by Romans, by Anglo-Saxons, by Vikings, by Normans--but nothing like this. Never to a people so strange and foreign.

On April 3, 1848, Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington, and much of the court knelt in the rain on London's East India Docks...waiting. Governor Qiying's armada would be arriving from China at any moment, and Victoria would be expected to pay her respects to His Majesty, the Grand Exemplar, the Cultured Emperor Daoguang, submit to his overlordship and open British ports to Chinese traders.

Victoria would live the rest of her life in shame, going down in history as the queen who lost Britain to heathen infidels.

Of course, none of this actually happened. On that date in 1848, Victoria and Albert went to the East India Docks not as vassals to a new master but as tourists--to view a Chinese junk that British businessmen had brought back from Hong Kong.

Ian Morris starts his recently-published Why the West Rules--For Now with this spurious story to make a point. Why didn't it happen this way? Why was it that British warships "shot their way up the Yangzi in 1842, rather than Chinese ones up the Thames?"

Morris spends the next 767 pages offering his answer in an always interesting but sometimes annoyingly flippant telling of the past 12,000 years of world history as two parallel narratives, one Eastern and one Western.

Making an argument that echoes the work of anthropologist Jared Diamond in his Pulitzer-Prize Winning Guns, Germs, and Steel--which I also highly recommend--Morris argues that it was "maps, not chaps" that made the difference. In other words, geography was the primary driver, not cultural or biological reasons. I'll return to that theme shortly.

Other scholars have asked this question. It has been suggested that Britain industrialized first because of the island's long history of liberalism and Protestantism. England had its Magna Carta--and later its Glorious Revolution of 1688--so therefore it was "natural" that it would be the free-thinking English who brought us industrialization.

Really?

If all that was needed was to be free of tyrannical kings and the Catholic Church, then why didn't the Industrial Revolution happen in the Protestant Dutch Republic?

Other scholars have come up with some rather innovate answers as well. In A Farewell to Alms Gregory Clark theorizes that Britons had better genes because in the Darwinian world of natural selection, their upper classes had more surviving offspring than their poor. Therefore, over the course of several generations, a larger percentage of the population is descended from "the best," who are then spread among the common people via the forces of downward mobility. This gave Britain a more productive workforce, which combined with the British tradition of property rights and limited government, created the right conditions for industrialization to happen there and not China.

The flaw in this argument is that China, with its high population density, should have had the same selective pressures. And for that matter, so should have ancient Rome (though perhaps Romans simply needed another 2,000 years to evolve). So Clark's argument, while interesting, isn't fully satisfactory either.

Returning to Why the West Rules, Morris divides the competing answers into two broad schools of thought, the "long-term lock-in" and "short-term accident" theories.

As Morris explains it,

"The unifying idea behind long-term lock-in theories is that from time immemorial some critical factor made East and West massively and unalterably different, and determined that the industrial revolution would happen in the West. Long-termers disagree--fiercely--on what that factor was and when it began to operate.

"Some emphasize material forces, such as climate, topography, or natural resources; others point to less tangible matters, such as culture, politics, or religion... But the one thing long-termers can agree on is that the Britons who shot their way into Shanghai in the 1840s and the Americans who forced Japan's harbors open a decade later were merely the unconscious agents of a chain of events that had been set in motion millennia earlier... It had been locked in for generations beyond count."

The "short-term accident" theorists, however, would retort that:

"The East was actually better placed to have an industrial revolution than the West until accidents intervened. Europe...was simply "a distant marginal peninsula" in a "Sinocentric world order." Desperate to get access to the markets of Asia, where the real wealth was, Europeans a thousand years ago tried to batter their way through the Middle East in the Crusades. When this did not work some, like Columbus, tried sailing west to reach Cathay. That failed too, because America was in the way, but...Columbus's blunder marked the beginning of the change in Europe's place in the world system."

The problem with both of these approaches, as Morris sees it, is that neither takes the full scope of human history into account. Owing to a better selection of domesticable plants and animals, the West (the Fertile Crescent of the modern-day Middle East in this case) had an enormous head start on China and living standards--measured by the social development index--remained higher in the West for over 14,000 years. In the 6th century AD, after the fall of Rome had reduced Western development, the East surged far ahead of the West--where it remained for over 1,000 years.

In the ebb and flow of human history, the East would often be in decline while the West was rising and vice versa. But in both the East and the West, civilization would advance for long periods before it reached certain "hard ceilings" that it couldn't break through. Morris calls this the "paradox of development": rising social development creates the very forces that undermine it. Gregory Clark referred to this same cyclical relationship as the "Malthusian Death Trap." Rising living standards cause higher birthrates, which in turn causes overpopulation, social unrest, disease and mass starvation and eventually the breakdown of civilization--until falling populations cause living standards to rise and start the whole process over again.

Of course, when civilization breaks down, not all is lost. Humans learn and adapt and progress does continue. The ebb and flow has an upward bias, if you will. And this is why Britain industrialized first and came to rule the world.

There is sometimes an advantage to being backwards. The Atlantic European states (including Britain) discovered and colonized the Americas precisely because they were backward. The real economic action was in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean, the trade routes to China. In trying to get a piece of this action by finding a new Atlantic sea route to China, England and the other Atlantic European powers ended up with New World Empires. These empires provided the wealth, food supplies, and raw materials to help propel Europe to the next stage of development.

Why didn't China discover America first? After all, Chinese shipbuilding technology was far superior in the centuries before. This answer is twofold. First is geography. China had a much larger sea to cross in that the Pacific is much bigger than the Atlantic. But second is economics. Why would China have wanted to sail east? As the preeminent economic power of the day, all of the nations of the world came to China to trade. There was no reason to go anywhere.

Returning again to geography, Morris writes,

"I have stressed a two-way relationship between geography and social development: the physical environment shapes how social development changes, but changes in social development shape what the physical environment means. Living on top of a coalfield meant very little two thousand years ago, but two hundred years ago it began meaning a lot. Tapping into coal drove social development up faster than ever before--so fast, in fact, that soon after 1900 new fuels began to displace coal. Everything changes, including the meaning of geography."

In other words, timing is a major issue. Britain industrialized first because she had the right materials to do so at a time when technology had risen to the point to make those materials useful. With no coal, Britain would have quickly run out of fuel--and perhaps another nation might have leapt ahead. But had Britain not had the good timing of being socially advanced enough to use that coal, she might have instead followed the fate of Africa in the 19th century or the Persian Gulf today--becoming a place known only for the commodities in its earth.

After 768 pages, Morris's answer is somewhat anticlimactic. The real value of the book is not so much Morris's muddled answer but in the historical journey itself. Read this book if you want a fascinating and original interpretation of world history, even if it fails to really answer the question in its title in a clean and succinct manner.

If there is one real disappointment in the book, it is the author's wild and irritatingly preachy conjectures in the final chapters in which he alternatively postulates that:

1. The East will overtake the West and we will all eventually learn Mandarin or
2. It won't matter in any event because by then technology will have advanced so far that we live in some kind of computerized nirvana that resembles the Matrix or
3. We reach another "hard ceiling" like we have at other stages of human history and either starve to death due to global warming or nuclear war.

If only historians would stick to history...

To close, I would repeat that Ian Morris's Why the West Rules--For Now is a highly original and thought-provoking book, even if its ending left a little to be desired. If you are a student of history, this is a book that deserves a space on your bookshelf.

Ian Morris (born 1960) is a Cambridge-University-educated historian, classicist, and archeologist who now teaches at Stanford University. His ambitious 750-page book is chock full of fascinating details. As is well known, it used to be said that the sun never set on the British empire of old. However, even though the sun has more recently set on the old British empire, the educated chaps in England have continued to take a big-picture view of the world, as Morris' book shows.

By happy coincidence, the emergent dominance of the West that Morris discusses roughly parallels the dominance of the West that I discuss in my article "The West Versus the Rest: Getting Our Cultural Bearings from Walter J. Ong" in the journal EME: EXPLORATIONS IN MEDIA ECOLOGY, volume 7, number 4 (2008): pages 271-282.

Not surprisingly, the American cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003) does not discuss in his 400 or so publications many of the historical and cultural details that Morris discusses.

But Morris does not discuss many of the historical and cultural details that Ong discusses in constructing his elaborate account of Western cultural development.

Their two independent accounts of the historical emergence of the West can be understood as roughly parallel and complementary.

Nevertheless, their two accounts can also be understood to be competing accounts, especially when we consider which of the two accounts could possibly be used to guide the cultural development in developing countries around the world today.

For example, an estimated one billion people in the world today do not know how to read and write any language. Those people will not be using computers or the Internet. Now, Ong's account of Western cultural development highlights the role of literacy in the West, which suggests that literacy education should be a priority in developing countries today.

But Ong's account of the emergence of modernity in the West also focuses attention on what he styles the quantification of thought in medieval logic, which produced "a new state of mind," as he puts it. That new state of mind inculcated through formal education for three centuries and more contributed to the historical emergence of modern science, modern capitalism, modern democracy, the Industrial Revolution, and the Romantic Movement.

Now, if I correctly understand the import of Sam Dillon's article "Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators" in the NEW YORK TIMES on December 7, 2010, it looks to me like the Chinese are inculcating the new state of mind that Ong associates with medieval formal logic that was taught for three centuries or more in formal education in the West, into the formal education of children in Shanghai.

In his landmark book RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON (Harvard University Press, 1958), Ong discusses the quantification of thought in medieval logic (esp. pages 53-91). But Ong most cogently sums up the import of the quantification of thought in medieval logic in his collection of essays titled THE BARBARIAN WITHIN: AND OTHER FUGITIVE ESSAYS AND STUDIES (Macmillan, 1962) as follows:

"In this historical perspective, medieval scholastic logic appears as a kind of pre-mathematics, a subtle and unwitting preparation for the large-scale operations in quantitative modes of thinking that will characterize the modern world. In assessing the meaning of scholasticism, one must keep in mind an important and astounding fact: In the whole history of the human mind, mathematics and mathematical physics come into their own, in a way that has changed the face of the earth and promises or threatens to change it even more, at only one place and time, that is, in Western Europe immediately after the scholastic experience. Elsewhere, no matter how advanced the culture on other scores, and even along mathematical lines, as in the case of the Babylonian, nothing like a real mathematical transformation of thinking takes place - not among the ancient Egyptians or Assyrians or Greeks or Romans, not among the peoples of India nor the Chinese nor the Japanese, not among the Aztecs or Mayas, not in Islam despite promising beginnings there, any more than among the Tartars or the Avars or the Turks. These people can all now share the same common scientific knowledge, but the scientific tradition itself that they share is not a merging of various parallel discoveries made by their various civilizations. It represents a new state of mind. However great contributions other civilizations may hereafter make to the tradition, our scientific world traces its origins back always to seventeenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, to the place where for some three centuries and more the arts course taught in universities and para-university schools had pounded into the heads of youth a study program consisting almost exclusively of a highly quantified logic and companion physics, both taught on a scale and with an enthusiasm never approximated or even dreamt of in the ancient academies" (page 72).

According to Ong's way of considering cultural developments as inter-related, that new state of mind contributed to the historical emergence of modern science, modern capitalism, modern democracy, the Industrial Revolution, and the Romantic Movement in the West.

In any event, what a remarkably candid title Morris has given his book, WHY THE WEST RULES - FOR NOW. In my estimate, Ong does a better job of explaining why the West is dominant today than Morris does. But Morris understands the potential of China as a competitor for the West better than Ong does.

As Morris understands, Confucianism is a widespread and powerful force in China. As the recent test scores in Shanghai show, Confucian cultural conditioning can readily be adapted to promoting formal education in reading and math and science to roughly replicate through formal education the kind of new state of mind that Ong has identified as being inculcated through medieval logic for three centuries and more of formal education in the West.

When Diane Sawyer of ABC News recently visited China, she learned that there are more people in China today who speak English than there are in the United States. As a result, millions of Chinese can read not only Morris' book, but also Ong's books and articles about Western cultural development.

If I were a betting man, I am not sure I would bet on the West against China. From the title of Morris' book, it doesn't sound like he would either.

Although I am rather skeptical about the whole idea of measuring such a complex concept as society's development and assigning specific marks to it, still I must admit that there is a method in this "folly." the author is undoubtedly well documented, not only in archaeology, but in history as well. This book updated my notions on ancient civilizations (I used to think that the earliest times we knew anything about went little further back than 5000 bC, while the author brought convincing information on events dating back to 15000 bC).
Another merit of this book is that of actually measuring how dark the Dark Ages really were and to what extent medieval times represented a decline versus e.g. the Roman Empire, by comparing and relating significant data, such as maritime traffic, etc.

In short, I rate this book with 4 stars because, though I find the graphs purposeful, the author seems to me almost to fall in love with his figures and make the whole excercise look somewhat gimmicky.

I've just finished reading "Why the West Rules for Now - The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future" by Ian Morris and I have to say, WHAT A BOOK!! It is an amazing perspective of our world, from the beginnings of humans settling down (around 12,000+BCE) to now, with some powerful thoughts on the future. I love history, so facing a big book like this is no big deal for me, and the best thing about it is the way it's written - Ian has a lovely, informal style, bringing in lots of references to popular culture, as well as humour, which makes it readable for everyone. I think this is very important as many of his contemporaries write too academically - which means it doesn't appeal to a broader readership.

Looking at our entire social development, but focusing on four areas of measurement - energy capture per capita, organisation/urbanization, war making capabilities and information technology - Ian traces human social development back to when we first started jacking in the "hunter gatherer" lifestyle around 12,500BCE. Kicking off in a place known as the Hilly Flanks - later Ancient Mesopotamia, and today mostly modern-day Iran - this is the earliest known evidence where humans settled, got organised, and from there, it all began. There is other evidence, such as pottery making in China in 16,000BCE and wall building in Peru in 11,000BCE, but this is where Ian begins and explains his case. It's a fascinating journey.

Social development, as defined by Ian in the book is: "the bundle of technological, subsistence, organizational, and cultural accomplishments through which people feed, clothe, house, and reproduce themselves, explain the world around them, resolve disputes within their communities, extend their power at the expense of other communities, and defend themselves against others' attempts to extend power. Social development, we might say, measures a community's ability to get things done, which, in principle, can be compared across time and space."

Based on the premise that the world has evolved until today with two cores - East and West - Ian compares social development of both cores, with both progressing in essentially the same way but not always at the same time, with the East sometimes overtaking the West, but it is the West that predominately leads the East, until a short time into the future when the East may again overtake the West - but that depends on the decisions we make today.

The book also tracks "The Five Horses of The Apocalypse" and the impact they had at the times they reared their ugly heads. The five horses are: climate change; famine; state failure; migration; and disease. Sound familiar? Scary stuff indeed, with many of these things being predicted.

There are a couple of conclusions Ian focuses on that I took away - some in his words, some in mine:
* People - in large groups - are all pretty much the same
* We always get the thoughts we need to deal with the time we are in - so for example, the religions humans developed and still follow make sense in the context of this argument, because they met a need at the time they were created, but maybe are not relevant for this new age?
* People are essentially lazy, greedy and frightened, looking for easier, more profitable and safer ways to do things - that's a continuing theme throughout the book
* We've always had wars and migration, but when you read it in the context of our entire history, war no longer makes sense - in any way! Empires always fail, war costs money and destroy countries' economies, and future wars have such potentially catastrophic consequences that it's time to sort out this aspect of humanity. Our future is about being together as one whole, with one Core, and making it work for everyone or...
* We need to let go of the nationalism and hatred tied up in history - especially towards current or former colonial powers. They did what was "needed" then and the whole world moved forward because of these actions. The reality is, most of the old world countries have had a go at it at some point, and the new world countries are following suit - but for the world to keep growing and prospering, the time to let go of hatred is upon us, or we will be no more. Hard to imagine when we can't even watch international sport without kicking the crap out of each other
* Migration is top of the pops for issues within Western countries around the world (as we see too often in the media), but the greatest social developments occurred because of migrations - so perhaps it's time to change this mindset? The reality is we need to. According to Ian, it is expected that 200 million "Climate Migrants" will be on the road by 2050 (five times as many as the world's refugee population in 2008) and that means there's going to be a lot of thirsty and hungry people needing help. Are we already getting organised to deal with this? But then, we don't exactly have a great track record of helping those starving... The threat of war around this issue is frightening as well...

And then we go into the future, and reading the worst case scenario is not easy on the mind. He doesn't leave us without hope though, and that's why I think this book is REALLY important. According to Ian we are facing two scenarios - singularity and nightfall.

My take - singularity is us all coming together, we are one Core, and we all work to make the world work for everyone. We are more efficient at capturing energy and using less per capita, because if we keep increasing at the rate we're going, we're going to destroy our world anyway. The way we organize our world needs to be done on a global scale, with effective global governance of some description (something I don't have too much faith in right now with the EU imploding), but this will be an important part of our future. Our war making capabilities will not go away, but as we have the ability to destroy our world 50 times over with nukes, we obviously need to get that aspect under control - state failure and rogue states is another massive threat as far as this is concerned. Then we have the fourth aspect - information technology - but who knows where that is going? We're hardly even aware of many of the advances happening behind closed doors, but then again, what we do know is mind boggling enough. Making sure these advances are to the betterment of humanity is what is important now.

Or we have nightfall, the complete destruction of our world as we know it, where humans may or may not survive. If we survive, we'll enter a dark age, but eventually we'll come out of it and head back onto the same path, with either the West or the East harnessing the power of energy as they did in Britain in the Industrial revolution 200 years ago, and we'll reach the same level of development we're at today and perhaps again face the same issues moving forward? If we don't get it right this time, maybe our ancestors 400-500 years down the track will?

I hope humanity has the wisdom to ensure we take the path to singularity, but it's hard to believe sometimes. It feels like we're on the cusp, and hopefully we're entering a third axial age with new thoughts for new times?

I loved this book and there's so much more I could say, but I do believe it's a must read for as many of us as possible. I think it's a very VERY important book, which really crystallizes things from a very big perspective.

I wanted this book to convince me, because I liked the first few chapters on early human history. But having finished it, I agree with most of what the one-, two- and three-star reviewers have to say about the weaknesses of this book, so I won't repeat them here in every detail.

What I liked best about the book was the sweeping grandeur of the tale of early human ascension, the summary of chinese history, which I don't know much about, and the funny way in which the book is written. The author has a wry sense of humor.

This gets the book 3 stars. Also, creating an index of any kind is hard work; I know because I did so myself on a much smaller scale with mason's wages over two hundred years. Not many historians go through the trouble of collecting hard data (by which I mean numerical instead of textual data), much less over long periods of time. Having the data for such an index collected in one place and available for further research is worth much, so again, 3 stars just for that, even though I also know, from my own experience, how difficult it is to turn data into a meaningful index, and I'm not convinced that the index of social development the author created can actually be used for the purpose he states.

In the end, however, the book left me disappointed. I have no clearer understanding now why the west rules than I had before. Because the fifth horseman of the apocalypse was killed? Because the Atlantic was narrower than the Pacific? Really? That's it? Apart from that, I didn't find any ideas about how history "works" in it that I didn't already know. I don't need to go into any detail about the rambling last chapter full of weird conjectures about the future; suffice it to say I imagine that's what a bad trip on heroin feels like. Historians are, as Morris himself says, notoriously bad in predicting the future, and as an archaeologist, he should know better than to try. Frankly, the whole thing is embarrassing for someone in the author's position, starting with his first assumption, namely that extrapolating his index into the future gives him *any* kind of meaningful descriptive power.

But I did find a pattern *in* the book: It gets worse the farther you read. My personal guess is that either Morris got bored with it and wanted to finish quickly, or he got so absorbed in believing his index described the "shape of history" that he stopped to worry about supporting any of his assumptions with real arguments. His chainsaw art method may be convincing for periods we (or I, anyway) know little about, but it breaks down quickly when he talks about the last thousand years. By the time he tried to explain western development after the renaissance solely with the needs of a very roughly sketched atlantic economy, I wasn't doing much except scratching my head.

One thing I didn't mind which other reviewers had problems with was his definition of the west (everything that can be traced back to the fertile crescent core). I thought it was a clever way to avoid the problems that haunt Huntington's clash of civilizations. Then again, this just shows that Morris' theory, even if it was correct, wouldn't explain much at all, because the two main analytic concepts (west and east) are so broad as to be meaningless as guides for the present.

Final verdict: An enjoyable read if you leave out the last few chapters and concentrate on the summaries on prehistory and chinese history instead of the actual question the book fails to answer.

I always find Morris thought provoking and with unusual insights. I think he is definitely onto something here, but I am a staunch believer in culture being the great determiner in human affairs. That's just me though, what makes sense to me after extensive reading. I can't claim to be right (if anyone does, know they're a liar and steer clear) so this book may appeal more to others. Geography played and plays a huge part, but it's all about culture to me. You might say I'm of the Sowell/Huntingdon school. Enjoyed the book, regardless.

Morris' book manages to be both tedious and fascinating in equal measure, ending with one of the more remarkable chapters found in any book of this sort. He spends way too much time explaining a tiresome and stilted metrics system that he uses to measure civilizations, intermixed with an expansive overview of all of human history. But the last chapter, a projection of the next 50 - 100 years, took my breath away. Book = redeemed. Skim and then read the last chapter.

This book aims to be a more ambitious "Guns, Germs, and Steel," but ultimately it fails.

Ian Morris argues that we can measure a state's progress and strength by looking at its "social development," a society's ability to manipulate its people and resources to achieve control over its environment. In other words, Ian Morris sees societies as large corporations that must expand for the sake of expanding, and which are in constant competition with each other. His main thesis in the book is that the West leads mainly because of geography, that Europe was closer to the Americas, and so could colonize it before China. That the West was behind China in the lead-up to the Industrial Revolution also worked in the West's favour -- they had an incentive to improve, whereas China could just be complacent.

Morris concludes the book by arguing that the world today is no longer a competition between East and West -- because of globalization, we're in the same boat. That means we could all end up going to catastrophic war together, or we could learn to work together: "Nightfall" or "The Singularity."

Morris wrote this book for a mass audience, hoping to replicate Jared Diamond's successful popularization of well-known academic anthropology. And he thinks that using metaphors from popular culture would aid his cause, but all it does is make the book sound lame and silly. And this book is overly ambitious so that it quickly loses focus -- we're constantly bombarding by facts and speculations, and it's hard to separate the two. Also, Morris's use of counterfactuals (imagine if China had won the Opium War instead of Britain) was very annoying.

Given the back cover blurbs by Jared Diamond and David S. Landes, whose works I've read and whom Norris mentions in his text, I expected better -- the book is instead somewhat of a watered-down combination of both. I got the feeling that I've read this elsewhere, but by authors who make their arguments in a more concise and less tautological manner. In his effort to appeal to a popular audience, Norris references the writings of Arthur C. Clarke, Charles Dickens, etc., throughout. Are the analogies with Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear and von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods really necessary? Get an editor who will cut this distracting junk out. People who are interested in learning more about what Norris summarizes will find it difficult to locate his sources; although there is a bibliography at the end, there is a lack of citations in the text. The last chapter -- the "for now" part -- is random speculation.

In a sweeping history of mankind, starting maybe 1,000,000 BCE and ending in 2010 CE the author tries to explain, why the "West" is "ruling" today.
At the beginning, any racial reasons are ruled out by explaining the all of us (black or white or whatever..) have a very recent common ancestor. This is plausible.

The argument is based on some measure of social development, which includes energy consumption, organisatorial skills, war - skills, and maybe some more.
The book is well written, but too long! Even so broad a sweep should not need 622 pages of exceedingly small print -hard to read if you are not 25 any more.....
Also, one gets drowned in details, I recall the unending sequence of Chinese rulers....here I feel, less would have been more.

A completely different story is this measure of social development: Say, 4,000 BCE the measure differs by only 20% between East and West. As am engineer I question, whether such a quantity can be measured this accurately....BUT I am not a historian, so discount this comment!

Overall, this book offers an interesting point of view, IF you are willing to fight through 620 pages!

A very interesting and thought-provoking read with mind-boggling breadth and depth. I savored it over the summer and went through several highlighters, hoping to retain as much.as possible to enrich my teaching of high school World History classes.

I agree with almost everything in the review posted by PK, above, so I will not repeat his/her arguments here. Unlike PK, however, I was also disappointed by the last chapter. Here, Morris breathlessly describes the future as a race between the "Singularity" of man-machine consciousness and the "Nightfall" of worldwide nuclear annihilation. All this is to unfold in just the next hundred or so years as social development in both East and West rises from 1000 to an unbelievable 5000. It seems to me much more likely that the slope of social development will start to sharply decline as both East and West reach identical levels and then bump up against a new "hard ceiling" of technology, sociology, and politics. At that point, there will be a shared material culture common to both East and West, and the world will likely settle into a decidedly familiar competition between two competing superpowers and their allied client states. Not exactly a Utopian singularity or an end-of-times Armageddon, but just the business-as-usual balance of power politics we know so well.

In typical Stanford professor style, Ian Morris has written a book that is much too detailed to be of any real value and which, by trying to say everything (645 pages), essentially says nothing. Professor Morris, who is an archaeologist and historian, claims that to really understand what the future will hold we have to go back all the way to pre-history and trace seemingly every event from then up to the present. He also claims that ultimately it is geography that makes the difference. He develops a social development scale and uses this device to follow the human race, dividing the world into the West (Europe and what he calls "Southwest Asia" refusing to accept the convention "Middle East") and the East which is largely China. Over time we see the West start out in the lead, the East catch up and go ahead and then the West regain the lead. Now says the good professor, the East is about to take over again. Morris also seems to discredit the "Great Man" view of history, namely that history is largely the result of the actions of certain men (and a few women. But in fact much of the book deals with the impact such men have made on human history. It is for this reason that I think Morris' book is just so much huey. Sure climate and location have played a role in human history but it has been people who have ultimately changed things. We have only to think of China in modern times to see that this is true. Mao united China after the disruptions of the war with Japan and civil war and Dung created the changes that lead to the "opening up" that is the basis for China's modern day rise. No Mao and no Dung and things may well have turned out differently. Having been to Stanford (14 years!) and having sat through lectures by people like Morris I suppose that I am biased. But really, no one can predict the future. A lot of people seem to be jumping on the bandwagon of the East's rise in the 21st century and it may well happen. But not because of some Cro-magnon man who lived 14,000 years ago.

The examples are well selected and the story is well developed. Specially interesting it' the use of literary examples to show some issues. The punctuation is too subjective. The author give too much importance to global heating. The most interesting part is the conclusion: if the Singularity occurs, West and East will lost any importance.

To explain this "megalithe": the author refers on a "funny book tale", in which a megalithe with higher knowledge came flown out of the universe, and in this other book, this megalithe spoke, gave information, to the early prehistoric beings. This epiphany here is not artificiel, as I try to explain; this higher Person - his knowing, attentive subtle Face is visible round the clock - can really awake astonishment; the devine Helper is real, is not a subject of our limits giving natural conditions and laws.

I got this book cost free, and consider it very precious.
It is useless, to speak of all the knowledge, that it brings. But I was reflecting, we are not only a clever sort of developped apes, that is, what this seldom revelation says; it is a silent Face, that is visible since years, visible for many people and folks; and one can present it, show it to the public, and can photograph it. Other people can photograph this "Holy Face Phenomenon" too, and can see it on their photos too. One can call it a higher personality from the devine higher dimension, and he shows by this visibility - visible himself - a supernatural sphere, that exists. But: visible is not a whole immaterial, subtle person, visible is only that silent Face, with his facial expression, looking - relaxed und knowing - through space and time, seems to know, without effort, all the problems of all the individuals, persons, beings and of the earth condition and our future. And seems to know, problemless, matter, materia, life or not-life of other galaxies, planets too, of course.

Informer from a higher dimension? Perhaps this is an extraordinary factor and influence, a living factor from beyond, visible as a Personal, maybe devine Face and force, not to go under dictatoric autoritarian ideology and religion; to force doubtful benefit to us, that begins to encircle, to underran and circumvent the tradition of western free thinking, religion and philosophy, with all our disadvantages. That`s my opinion, seeing and registering this phenomenon Face in face, viewing it. (to say it with a joke: this visitation from unknown dimension, a silent 'whistleblower`, who declares by his silent visible Face: I am here, you can see me and examine the modality under which I am viewable, in an optical sense)

That`s a situation like from "Marcelino" in Altamira (famous cave painting there),
who looked the first time the prehistoric designs. But here, nothing is artificial, nothing is "manmade" and nothing is faked, nothing is painted, and one can check this, and make examinations, and study this phenomenon.
This Face or devine/higher helper is or seems to be, so to speak, super-high intelligent, and more, it has inside a higher life, and seems immortal; for what I have now received, regarding and looking in over 25 years of seeing, me with a certain, small knowledge. He is silent in this "appariton of grace", but in dreams occur some information, that helps to find a better way; and to make a publication. Early before, I didn't know, one can photograph this Face Phenomenon, which is not a slave of our conditions, and that others can see it on the new photographs and photo-enlargements too.

Now - beginning with these years 2015, 2016 - I want to present and show this subtle Face to the public cost free -

You can find information in german with the words >sichtoffenbarung, antlitz
and you find there many photos too (...google >pictures); it is not a artificiel picture, it is an epiphany, and - hard to understand - this higher Being in his permanent visibility gives strength and knowledge to the kind of "western religion", so to speak. The book editions dont love themes with a "church", and myself I went out from the lutheran church, but this universal Being seems to favorise this kind of way, that can be called "Egypt, Jerusalem, Rom, Wittenberg..... and now Hamburg". One can not understand it, but many specatators and viewers can see this HolyFace (perhaps Angel Revelation, or God Revelation, maybe Face of Jesus). Special, I am not a member of the american fundamentalism, and don't appreciate it much.

If a growing group of viewers view and experience this visible presence of a higher Personality, a new knowledge can arrive. This book refers to the film-story title "The Day after Tomorrow". I prepare the showing of this supernatural influence; the photo-enlargements (100x100cm, + -) are not cheap, this Face - in the reach of miracle - shines through on everyone (direct-photo or enlargement). This can be "The Day" for several groups of spectators, and if many viewers are there, there can be effects, like the title says: The Day after Tommorow, but in a good sense.

This visible apparition of the silent higher Being is always here, since over 25 years, uninterrupted. In dreams is expressed, that public interest will develop, in the region, a place in southern Germany.

With my writing here I want to say, that there exists still other influences and motivations on us; and it seems we were beings in a long long pre-ape time, used the friendly trees in the ape-phasis, and went out wandering, wandering now in the direction of stars and planets, that we used to look million years...

Most of the scientists make the impression, to be very good informed, but the knowledge is there open und not complete. Normally it is a situation like in the years before Einstein, when he broke the frames and brought new insights and perspectives and astonishing public experiences -

In seeing this presence since years, I now extend my barbell-exercises with 14, 18, 22... KG Kilogramm, in an medititave way, looking sometimes sporadic in the eyes and Face of this guarding Helper; for the health, against the physic frontiers of our forces and strength .
Near Switzerland, in the reach of some great mountains there,
Andreas J. Kampe,

This book is so near perfection as would be possible. The only criticism I can think of is the one Boon L. Kwan already mentioned: the maybe overly materialistic view. In the entire book, I noted only one (1) factual error (Rollo was not made king (but duke) of Normandy.)

This book is for readers who like things such as "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, "Clash of Civilizations" by Samuel P. Huntington, "Ascent of Money" (TV series by Niall Ferguson), "The Ascent of Man" (TV series by Jacob Bronowski), "Civilisation" (TV series by Kenneth Clark), and "In search of the Trojan war (TV series by Michael Wood).

Methodical and thought-provoking analysis. Provides very readable overview of 40,000 years of human history. If you are not interested in history on this scale, you can easily read the second half of the book and still pick up the author's principle arguments as they apply to more recent times. The book serves well the purpose of understanding the risks and challenges of the future.

Whilst I was initially enthused over the prospect of reading Mr Morris' book, I was ultimately most disappointed by it (perhaps I should have saved my time and money for Niall Ferguson's recent release). The book is mainly concerned with demonstrating the West came to rule the world through sheer luck, due to its propitious geography which gave it the tools to succeed as of the nineteenth century, taking advantage of its previous backwardness (violence on the fringes, distance from the core, but also proximity to the Atlantic). Mr Morris measures power in the terms of a social development index which includes war-making capacities, energy capture, etc.

First of all, Mr Morris--an archaeologist and anthropologist from the University of Stanford--has run a tedious repeat of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel". Both make the same point, although in markedly different ways, that geography explains Western domination. Not only is the idea unoriginal by now, but it would be more credible if Mr Morris had first cared to define in no uncertain terms what the West is. For Mr Morris, the West is no more than a geographic concept, this he makes clear in the first few chapters of the book, however, he does not say where it ends, and, consequently, where the East begins. Thus, the original Mesopotamian settlements of the Hilly Flanks are considered as "Western" and we find out the West was dominated by the Arab world in the two centuries following Muhammad's Hegira and sweeping conquests from Persia to Spain. Not only is this utterly confusing, but it makes the whole question irrelevant; if men are all the same (in large groups)--as Mr Morris argues in an insistent, almost autistic manner--then, what use is it to know whether the West or the East rules? In fact, although Mr Morris did not define the West in precise terms, he seems to imply the East is in fact only China. This Sino-centric perspective overlooks developments throughout the twentieth century when Japan looked like a more serious contender until fairly recently. Nor does the book consider even the remotest possibility that India might rise up to the challenge, and actually overtake China--this would be a significantly conservative theory, considering the book's wild assumptions and extrapolations in the last few chapters.

The book is almost exclusively centred on the assumption that geography--not culture or anything else, for that matter--shapes history. Whilst most people freely confess geography plays a considerable part in determining who holds the sceptre, it seems a tad too narrow as a single explanatory factor. Mr Morris repeatedly contradicts himself; China, he says, could have launched an industrial revolution under the thirteenth-century Song dynasty, had it not been overwhelmed by hordes of Mongol invaders, descending from the steppes onto `defenceless' China. Yet he also admits, half-grudgingly, the Chinese lost because of their bungling military leadership--let us not forget China then had gunpowder, although with limited military applications, the Great Wall, a far greater pool of potential soldiers, and was fighting at home. Hence Mr Morris recognises that political factors came into play, after all. Mr Morris overlooks culture entirely, and does not really explain why and how he came to discard it. Most historians acknowledge proximity to deposits of iron and coal was essential to effecting a successful industrial revolution, but Britain was not alone in possessing such mineral riches, far from it. For one, Poland had significant deposits of coal (which were transferred to its new Prussian, Russian and Austrian masters after it was partitioned in the final quarter of the eighteenth century). Yet Poland was not the cradle of the modern world. Could it be that, inter alia, Poland was held back by the same institutions which relentlessly hounded down and then had Nicolaus Copernicus burnt to the stake, namely the Catholic Church? Mr Morris does not seem to acknowledge the momentum lent to what he contemptuously calls the "northwest fringes" (or "backwaters", sometimes) by the Protestant Reformation, which in effect unleashed the potential of northwest Europe and conspired with the Great Discoveries to open new markets for Europeans. In this, he lags two centuries behind Max Weber. However, without the proper ethos, Europeans may not have been able to take advantage of these new opportunities, and Protestantism turned out to be far more liberal in terms of capital accumulation than the Catholic Church had ever been. Getting rich became a sign of God's favour--especially in Calvinistic congregations clinging to predestinarianism--where it had formerly been little short of a sin. After all, Jesus claimed it is harder for the rich to go to heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. In turn, capital accumulation made possible large-scale investment in new manufactures, which then tried to maximise output while reducing costs. Obviously, Mr Morris is not interested since he believes China also experienced an awakening of sorts, but he does not puzzle and wonder why China relinquished Enlightenment thought (that is, its national equivalent) and instead descended into foot-binding women and obsessive contemplation of its antiquity. At least, he could have lent somewhat more credence to his theories by trying and dismantling the alternative explanations (i.e. that Chinese rulers and scholars had become complacent and thought there was nothing else to invent after their ancestors and Confucius had done the job).

Mr Morris displays a strikingly Marx-like propensity to see history as broken down in phases that ineluctably succeed one another; farming replaced foraging, agriculture was supplanted by industry and technology will end up trumping industry. In Mr Morris' dialectical view of history is nothing short of Hegelianism and Marxism, in that it discerns the End of History (so did Francis Fukuyama, after all) around 2045 when we will all happily descend into either "Nightfall" or the "Singularity" (which I shall further explain). History is a triumphant, unstoppable march towards progress and bliss. Mr Morris overtly pushes for an internationalist agenda and praises the current drive towards a world government, yet another manifestation of his scorn for cultural differences, as he assumes we can all be governed by the same people applying the same laws derived from altogether different civilisations and ways of thinking, destroying centuries of tradition, whether it be Western or Eastern. Instead of Marx's ultimate communist society, we swap our world for a nightmarish one where "organic" humans have vanished and will be replaced by robots endowed with artificial intelligence. Hypothetic threats are agitated as standard straw men and scarecrows, without the slightest attempt at grounding them on hard facts--a most unscientific behaviour for an academic. Mr Morris' future sounds like a genuine dystopia, for all his heavy criticism of Leibnizian-style Panglosses.

Mr Morris--again, no trained historian--says there is no such thing as bungling idiots or great mean, that they only speed up or slow down the historical process. Examples of how this is not so abound. In the Punic Wars between Carthage and Rome, Hannibal, unlike what Mr Morris claims, could have easily overwhelmed the Roman capital, had it not been for his patent hesitation (he had smashed the Roman army at Cannae). World history would have looked different altogether--sorry, I forgot Mr Morris does not care about cultural differences, after all, all civilisations are all the same once we are all united in the bliss that consumerist society promises to be (matter takes precedence according to Karl Marx). His rejection of both long-term lock in theories (that the Western lead in social development always was a foregone conclusion) and short-term accident theories (that we groped all the way long to industrial revolution in a completely haphazard fashion) sounds convincing, but he frequently demonstrates his is a kind of long-term lock in theory as well, considering geography sweeps all it surveys (which is even more deterministic, by the way).

Mr Morris seems to have expended too much of his time reading science fiction books--he openly professes his admiration of von Däniken and Asimov. Therefore, he has come to believe that the future will either deliver "Nightfall" (atomic war descending upon earth and catapulting us all back to the Stone Age) or the "Singularity" (a rather far-fetched theory that purports humans will eventually merge with machines, and pretends to pass as "science"). Discarding the obvious question as to whether the "Singularity" would be a desirable occurrence, this sounds like utter wishful thinking--which it actually is--and struck me as quite unexpected from and unworthy of a Stanford academic.

Mr Morris' feeble references (contemporary "cinematographic" flops) are matched by the shallowness, even vacuity, of his analysis. While getting to grips with "Second Axial thought" (at long last), the author skates over all cultural differences as if they were meaningless. As a matter of fact, cultural differences do not exist in Mr Morris' rose-tinged fantasies about our contemporary world. Muhammad and Confucius' exponents and opponents alike are thrown together in a confusing, motley catalogue of influential thinkers. No consideration whatsoever is given to what actually makes them distinct from one another. Since culture is partly shaped by men's surroundings, this significantly impairs and quashes the author's emphasis on geography (his obsession with it, really).

The only real advantage of reading this book is that it allowed me to brush up on my archaeology and Chinese history, although in a rather sketchy way--which is excusable for the sake of brevity and because it was never meant to be the crux of this book. Actually, this is the only reason why I gave the book two stars instead of one. The last few chapters, on the other hand, were completely useless in my opinion. This could have been a far better, more balanced book, had it not been for the obvious bias the author gave it--academics should consider facts in a somewhat colder attitude of detachment instead of giving vent to quirks of theirs--besides, Mr Morris seems to have done a lot of research to support it, but seldom uses the evidence he collected to useful ends. A pity, really.

I've always had a hard time reading history books in communist Romania, maybe one of the reasons i was never attracted to history as a teenager. Not one person, regardless of his age, would have any problem reading - passionately, i might add - this comprehensive history book by prof. Ian Morris.