The Birth of the Modern World

The West and the Rest; Neiall Ferguson

 

Europe was miserable backwater, recovering from the plague and divided into petty kingdoms. By contrast, imperial China was in full bloom, sending expeditions as fare afield as eastern Africa, while the Ottomans were relentlessly advancing on central Europe through the Balkans.

 

300 years later, the situation was reversed. China had succumbed to the Mongols and then to stagnation, while the Ottomans had been repulsed before the walls of Vienna and were well on their way to becoming the 'sick man' of Europe. The western European states, by contrast, had shown themselves capable of projecting power thousands of miles beyond their borders, seizing colonies in the east and settling vast tracts of North and South America.

 

The West's 'killer applications' by Ferguson

1. competition

2. growth of science

3. property rights defined by law

4. triumph of Western medicine

5. develolopment of consumer society

6. work ethic