Why the West Rules—for Now

by Morris, Ian;

  534 “Strange as it”: Churchill, speech to the House of Commons (1955), cited from Gaddis 2005, p. 65.

  536 “Let’s be frank”: Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, speech at Bedford (July 20, 1957), cited from Sandbrook 2005, p. 80.

  536 “residents from raw estates”: Philip Larkin, “Here” (1964), reprinted in Larkin 2004, p. 79.

  537 “Snub-nosed monsters”: John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939), chapter 5.

  540 “if allowed to”: Riesman 1964 (first published 1951), p. 64.

  541 “Anything that makes” etc.: Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, the “Kitchen Debate” (Moscow, July 24, 1959), cited from http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=176.

  542 “Flog the driver!” etc.: joke cited from Reynolds 2000, p. 541n.

  544 “The dearest people”: China Youth Journal (September 27, 1958), cited from Becker 1996, p. 106.

  544 “The Party Secretary”: Bo Yibo, Retrospective of Several Big Decisions and Incidents (1993), cited from Becker 1996, pp. 107–108.

  544 “It is not”: Lu Xianwen (autumn 1959), cited from Becker 1996, p. 113.

  544 “The air is filled”: Report from Jiangxi (autumn 1958), cited from Spence 1990, p. 580.

  545 “Communism is paradise”: Song by Kang Sheng (1958), cited from Becker 1996, p. 104.

  545 “No one in our family”: Informant, cited from Becker 1996, p. 136.

  545 “The worst thing”: Informant, cited from Becker 1996, p. 138.

  546 “It was class hatred”: “Li XX,” public poster in Beijing (September 2, 1966), cited from MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006, p. 127.

  546 “This was the week”: President Richard Nixon, toast at a dinner in Shanghai (February 27, 1972), cited from Reynolds 2000, p. 329.

  547 “bookworms who”: Zhang Tiesheng (1973), cited from Spence 1990, p. 638. In 1976 the “Gang of Four” (an ultraleftist clique including Mao Zedong’s widow) was accused of inventing this whole episode.

  547 “a socialist train”: slogan attributed to the Gang of Four (1976), cited from Spence 1990, p. 651.

  548 “During the ‘Cultural Revolution’”: Deng Xiaoping, speech (September 2, 1986), cited from Gittings 2005, p. 103.

  548 “How do you double”: cited from “Soviet Cars: Spluttering to a Halt,” The Economist, July 10, 2008.

  549 “We can’t go on”: Mikhail Gorbachev, private conversation (1985), cited from Gorbachev 1995, p. 165.

  549 “In the Soviet Union”: Gorbachev 1995, p. 490.

  549 “dregs of society”: Deng, speech to party leaders and army officers (June 9, 1989), cited from Spence 1990, p. 744.

  550 “Our first objective”: Zalmay Khalilzad, Defense Planning Guidance, FY 1994–1999, Section IB, cited from http://www/gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb245/index.htm (accessed October 17, 2008).

  551 “an official who believes”: Patrick Tyler, New York Times (March 8, 1992), p. I1, cited from J. Mann 2004, p. 210.

  552 “proceed slowly”: Deng, speech at Shenzhen Folk Culture Village (1992), cited from Gittings 2005, p. 252.

  553 “the China price”: Business Week (December 6, 2004), p. 104.

  553 “The boss remarked”: Kynge 2006, pp. 89–90.

  553 “The direction of the wind”: Mao, speech in Moscow (November 1957), cited from Schram 1969, p. 409.

  11. WHY THE WEST RULES …

  566 “Men make”: Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852).

  572 “It is … in vain”: Lord Macartney (1793), from Cranmer-Byng 1963, p. 191.

  579 “Let us speculate”: Mao, speech in Moscow, November 18, 1957, cited from Short 1999, p. 489.

  580 “hand went up”: R. F. Kennedy 1969, p. 71.

  581 “Recorded history”: Elton 1967, p. 62.

  12.… FOR NOW

  582–83 economic output estimates: National Intelligence Council 2008, p. 6; Wilson and Stupnytska 2007; Hawksworth and Cookson 2008; Maddison 2006; Fogel 2007.

  583 “If the courses” and “He became”: Dickens, Christmas Carol, Staves 4 and 5.

  585 “Chimerica”: Ferguson and Schularick 2007; Ferguson 2009.

  586 2010 growth predictions: International Monetary Fund 2009, Table 1.1.

  586 Congressional Budget Office: Douglas Elmendorf, cited from “Falls the Shadow: The Deficit and Health Care,” The Economist, July 25, 2009, p. 25 (available at http://www.economist.com).

  586 “After … 1989”: cited from “May the Good China Preserve Us,” The Economist, May 23, 2009, p. 47 (available at http://www.economist.com).

  587–88 2030 and 2040 incomes calculated from Maddison 2006, Table 5, and Fogel 2007, Tables 1, 2. Maddison expresses GDP in 1990 US$; I have converted these to 2000 US$ using Bureau of Labor Statistics values (http://stats.bls.gov/).

  588 “Soothing Scenario”: J. Mann 2007, p. 1.

  588 “Trade freely”: George W. Bush, speech at the Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California (November 19, 1999), cited in Dietrich 2005, p. 29.

  589 “contested modernities”: Jacques 2009, p. 100.

  591 “Our way of life”: Jeremy Rifkin, from an interview conducted in 2000, cited from Singer 2009, p. 105.

  592 “a future period”: Kurzweil 2005, pp. 5, 24.

  593 “the Rapture for Nerds”: an expression coined by the science fiction novelist Ken MacLeod in his novel The Cassini Division (1998).

  593 “criticism from incredulity”: Kurzweil 2005, p. 432.

  593 “When a scientist”: Richard Smalley, cited from Nicholas Thompson, “Downsizing: Nanotechnology—Why You Should Sweat the Small Stuff,” Washington Monthly, October 2000 (http://washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0010.thompson.html).

  594 “We can rebuild him”: The Six Million Dollar Man, ABC Television, 1974–78.

  595 “We’re not playing”: Craig Venter, cited from Carr 2008.

  595 “network-enabled telepathy”: Roco and Bainbridge 2002, p. 19.

  599 “Altered frequencies”: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007, pp. 12–13.

  600 “the really scary stuff,” “the even scarier stuff,” and “global weirding”: T. Friedman 2008, pp. 117, 122, 133. Friedman attributes the third expression to Hunter Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

  601 “arc of instability”: National Intelligence Council 2008, p. 61.

  601 “climate migrants”: Stern 2006.

  601 2006 Gallup poll: “Don’t Drink the Water and Don’t Breathe the Air,” The Economist, January 26, 2008, pp. 41–42 (available at http://www.economist.com).

  604 “The world may be”: World Health Organization, “Ten Things You Need to Know About Pandemic Influenza,” http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/pandemic10things/en/index.html (accessed November 29, 2008).

  604 “The oil”: Summary of Report on Near Eastern Oil, 800.6363/1511–1512 (National Archives, State Department, Washington, DC), February 3, 1943, cited from Yergin 1992, p. 393.

  604 “peaceful rising” and “peaceful development”: B. Zheng 2005.

  604 “great drain robbery”: cited from Kynge 2006, p. xiii.

  605 “a threat to world peace”: Ipsos-Reid poll (April 2005), cited from “Balancing Act: A Survey of China,” The Economist, Special Report, March 25, 2006, p. 20 (available at http://www.economist.com/specialreports).

  605 threat to global stability: Gallup poll (October 2007), cited from “After Bush: A Special Report on America and the World,” The Economist, March 29, 2008, p. 9 (available at http://www.economist.com/specialreports).

  605 “PEOPLE AGONIZED”: China Daily headline (May 1999), cited from Hessler 2006, p. 20.

  605 “strategic conspiracy”: Chinese Communist Party resolution (2004), cited from “Balancing Act: A Survey of China,” The Economist, Special Report, March 25, 2006, p. 15 (available at http://www.economist.com/specialreports).

  605 “it is more likely”: Graham and Talent 2008, p. xv.

  606 “No physical force”: Norm
an Angell, The Great Illusion (1910), cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 190.

  606 “international movement of capital”: Jean Jaurès, cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 190.

  606 “must involve the expenditure”: Prime Minister Edward Grey in conversation with the Austrian ambassador to Britain, July 1914, cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 191.

  606 “total exhaustion”: Grey, letter to the German ambassador to Britain, July 24, 1914, cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 191.

  607 “I do not know”: Albert Einstein, interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism (April—May 1949), cited from Isaacson 2007, p. 494.

  608–609 estimates: Richardson 1960; Smil 2008, p. 245, http://www.thebulletin.org/content/doomsday-clock/overview.

  609 “guys with gross obesity”: Anonymous official in the Indian Foreign Ministry, cited from “Melting Asia,” The Economist, June 7, 2008, p. 30 (available at http://www.economist.com).

  609 “The first era”: T. Friedman 1999, p. xix.

  609 “Globalization 3.0”: T. Friedman 2005, p. 10.

  610 “The only salvation”: Albert Einstein, New York Times, September 15, 1945, cited from Isaacson 2007, pp. 487–88.

  610 “If the idea”: Albert Einstein, comment on the film Where Will You Hide? (May 1948), Albert Einstein Archives (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) 28–817, cited from Isaacson 2007, p. 494.

  612 David Douglas, International Energy Agency: statistics in this and the following paragraph cited from T. Friedman 2008, pp. 31, 73, 59–60.

  613 “But where are they?” Enrico Fermi, Los Alamos, circa 1950, cited from Jones 1985, p. 3.

  615 “We will see”: Steven Metz, interview with Peter Singer, September 19, 2006, cited from Singer 2009, p. 240.

  615 “the U.S.”: Roger Cliff, The Military Potential of China’s Commercial Technology (2001), quoted in Singer 2009, p. 246.

  618 “human space” etc.: Adams 2001.

  621 “They have ridden” etc.: Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West,” MacMillan’s Magazine, December 1889.

  621 archaeologists and television: Diamond 2005, p. 525.

  APPENDIX

  634 jet bomber and Roman legionary: Sean Edwards, “Swarming and the Future of Warfare,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2005, p. 136, cited from Singer 2009, p. 100.

  Further Reading

  In writing this book I have drawn on the painstaking work of generations of scholars who have assembled, analyzed, and interpreted mountains of data. The scholarly literature on Eastern and Western history is not only virtually endless but also highly argumentative, which means that it is almost impossible to make a statement on any major issue without it being challenged by at least some specialists. Space does not allow for exhaustive bibliographies for all the controversies, even if time allowed me to read them all; but in this section I list the works that have most influenced my thinking.

  The works I list combine introductory studies aimed at general readers, more academic overviews, and detailed pieces of research that I found particularly useful. Whenever possible I mention recent works that include detailed bibliographies of their own. The most recent books are available in bookstores and many journal articles are available online, but for the time being most of these studies can be found only in research libraries. I have restricted my references to works in English whenever possible.

  With the exception of short articles in newsmagazines, I refer to works by the authors’ or editors’ last names and the date of publication. Full details are gathered in the bibliography that follows.

  Like countless historians before me, I have relied heavily on the Cambridge University Press multivolume histories covering different parts of the world. These are often the best place to find the basic facts, and rather than cite them over and over again, I will simply list the series I have used most heavily:

  The Cambridge Ancient History (2nd ed., 14 volumes, 1975–2001)

  The Cambridge History of China (10 volumes, 1979–)

  The Cambridge History of Egypt (2 volumes, 1980–99)

  The Cambridge History of Iran (8 volumes, 1968–91)

  The Cambridge History of Islam (2 volumes, 1970)

  The Cambridge History of Japan (6 volumes, 1988–99)

  The New Cambridge Medieval History (7 volumes, 1995–2006)

  The New Cambridge Modern History (12 volumes, 1957–90)

  The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (2 volumes, 1993)

  In addition to these series there are also several invaluable single-volume Cambridge histories, which I cite by editors’ names and publication dates below.

  INTRODUCTION

  Our main source for the Qiying’s arrival in England is “The Chinese Junk, ‘Keying,’” Illustrated London News 12, no. 340, April 1, 1848, pp. 220, 222. Anglo-Chinese relations in the 1830s–40s: Fay 1997, Waley 1958. Hong Xiuquan: Spence 1996.

  Nature of Western rule: Mandelbaum 2005. Chinese economic takeoff: Jacques 2009.

  Chinese-European relations in the sixteenth century: Spence 1983. Eastern theories of Western rule: Fukuzawa 1966 (originally published 1899); Y. Lin 1979.

  Westerners have produced hundreds of long-term lock-in theories since the eighteenth century. Diamond 1997, S. Huntington 1996, and Landes 1998 are excellent examples of modern approaches.

  Torr 1951 collects Karl Marx’s Chinese writings.

  On Zheng and Columbus, see Chapter 8. Menzies 2002 presents the case for Zheng’s global circumnavigation. Chiasson 2006 claims (even more remarkably) to have found a Chinese colony at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. For the 1763/1418 map, see http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0123_060123_chinese_map.html. Fifteenth-century Chinese maps: R. Smith 1996.

  Goldstone 2009, Lee and Wang 1999, Pomeranz 2000, and Wong 1997 are the classic Orange County/short-term accident books; Arrighi 2007 explores the implications of their arguments. A. G. Frank 1998 is the most influential of the radical theories; Goody 2004 and Hobson 2004 may be the most extreme. Allen et al. 2005 and Bengtsson et al. 2005 provide quantitative evidence.

  Controversies over the California School: the essays collected in Journal of Asian Studies 61, 2002, pp. 501–662, and Canadian Journal of Sociology 33, 2008, pp. 119–67, provide good examples.

  Biology, sociology, and geography: among the studies that have most shaped my thinking are Conway Morris 2003, Coyne 2009, Dawkins 2009, Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2008, and Maynard-Smith and Dawkins 2008 (biology); Boserup 1965, Gerring 2001, North et al. 2009, Smelser and Swedberg 2005, and J. Wood 1998 (social sciences/sociology); Konner 2002, Vermeij 2004, and E. O. Wilson 1975 (interface of biological and social sciences); and Castree et al. 2005, de Blij 2005, Martin 2005, and Matthews and Herbert 2004 (geography). Acemoglu et al. 2002 provide the toughest challenge to geography as an explanation for why the West rules. I would like to thank Jim Robinson for discussing the issues with me.

  1. BEFORE EAST AND WEST

  Defining the West: Pomeranz 2000, pp. 3–10. History of the universe: Steinhardt and Turok 2007. Humanity’s place in it: Christian 2004, Morowitz 2002.

  Klein 2009 is the definitive survey of human evolution, covering all the topics in this chapter, and Wrangham 2009, the most readable brief account. Principles of evolution generally: Coyne 2009.

  Workings of the brain: Zeman 2008. Reiteration and the FOXP2 gene: P. Lieberman 2007.

  Movius Line: Norton and Bae 2008; Petraglia and Shipton 2008. Dmanisi: Lordkipanidze et al. 2007.

  Zhoukoudian: Boaz and Ciochon 2004. Flores tools: Brumm et al. 2010. Flores “hobbits”: Morwood and van Osterzee 2009, Tocheri 2007, Jungers et al. 2010. Chimpanzee intelligence: Savage-Rumbaugh and Lewin 1994. Central Asian “yeti”: Krause et al. 2010.

  Neanderthals: Mithen 2005. Distribution: Krause et al. 2007a. Bone breakage and rodeo riders: Berger and Trinkaus 1995. FOXP2 gene: Krause et al. 2007b. Clan of the Cave Bear: Auel 1980. Gibraltar: Finlayson et al. 2006. Spiritual life: Renfrew and Morley 2009.

 
Homo sapiens: Mithen 1996, Fleagle and Gilbert 2008. African Eve: Cann et al. 1987, Ingman et al. 2000. African Adam: P. Underhill et al. 2001.

  Body lice: Kittler et al. 2003. A newer DNA study (Kitchen et al. 2010), however, suggests that lice evolved 190,000 years ago, with Neanderthals.

  Baby Steps Forward: McBrearty and Brooks 2000, with new evidence in Bouzouggar et al. 2007, Morean et al. 2007, Morgan and Renne 2008, and Vanaeren et al. 2006. Demography and fully modern culture: Powell et al. 2009.