西方文明 一个好主意 Western Civilization A Good Idea

西方文明：一个好主意 Western Civilization: A Good Idea

Niall Ferguson

https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/nf_western_civilization.pdf

根据民间传说，圣雄甘地曾被记者问及他对西方文明的看法。他回答说他认为这是一个好主意。随着反对这一概念的运动不断推进，尤其是在美国和欧洲的大学，我倾向于同意甘地的观点。我认为西方文明确实是一个好主意。

我所说的“西方文明”到底是什么——或者在哪里？战后的白人盎格鲁撒克逊新教男性或多或少本能地将西方（也称为“自由世界”）定位在一条相对狭窄的走廊上，这条走廊（肯定）从伦敦延伸到马萨诸塞州的列克星敦，（可能）从斯特拉斯堡延伸到旧金山。1945 年，刚从战场回来的西方的第一语言是英语，其次是断断续续的法语。随着 20 世纪 50 年代和 60 年代欧洲一体化的成功，西方俱乐部的规模不断扩大。现在很少有人会质疑，低地国家、法国、德国、意大利、葡萄牙、斯堪的纳维亚半岛和西班牙都属于西方，而希腊是当然成员，尽管后来效忠东正教，这要归功于我们对古希腊哲学的长期支持以及对欧盟的支持。

但地中海南部和东部的其余地区呢？它们不仅包括伯罗奔尼撒半岛以北的巴尔干半岛，还包括北非和安纳托利亚。埃及和美索不达米亚，最早伟大文明的发源地呢？南美洲——与北美洲一样被欧洲人殖民，在地理上位于同一半球——是西方的一部分吗？俄罗斯呢？欧洲版的俄罗斯真的是西方的吗？乌拉尔山脉以外的俄罗斯在某种意义上是东方的一部分吗？在整个冷战期间，苏联及其卫星国被称为“东方集团”。但肯定有理由说苏联和美国一样是西方文明的产物。它的核心意识形态与民族主义、反奴隶制和妇女选举权一样，都具有维多利亚时代的渊源：它诞生和成长于大英图书馆古老的圆形阅览室。它的地理范围与美洲的定居一样，也是欧洲扩张和殖民的产物。在中亚和南美洲，欧洲人统治着非欧洲人。从这个意义上说，1991 年发生的事情只是最后一个欧洲帝国的灭亡。然而，塞缪尔·亨廷顿最近对西方文明最具影响力的定义不仅排除了俄罗斯，还排除了所有具有东正教宗教传统的国家。亨廷顿的西方仅包括西欧和中欧（不包括东正教东部）、北美（不包括墨西哥）和澳大利亚。希腊、以色列、罗马尼亚和乌克兰不在名单内；加勒比海岛屿也是如此，尽管许多岛屿与佛罗里达一样西化。1

因此，西方文明不仅仅是一种地理表达。另一个令人费解的是，不团结似乎是西方文明的决定性特征之一。21 世纪初，许多美国评论家抱怨“大西洋变宽”——冷战期间将美国与西欧盟友联系在一起的共同价值观的瓦解。2 如果说现在比亨利·基辛格担任国务卿时稍微清楚一点，即当美国政治家想与欧洲对话时应该给谁打电话，那么现在就很难说谁代表西方文明拿起电话了。然而，与过去因宗教、意识形态甚至文明本身的意义而产生的大分裂相比，美国和欧洲之间最近的分歧是温和而友好的。第一次世界大战期间，德国人宣称他们是为了更高层次的文化而战，反对庸俗、唯物主义的英法文明（托马斯·曼和西格蒙德·弗洛伊德等人作出了这种区分）。但这种区分很难与战争初期焚烧鲁汶和立即处决比利时平民相协调。英国宣传家反驳说，德国人是“匈奴人”——文明界限之外的野蛮人——并在胜利勋章上将战争本身称为“文明大战”。3

 

换句话说，“西方文明”将是一个好主意，如果我们确定在哪里可以找到它的话。不过，可以说这么多。出于某种原因，从 15 世纪末开始，西欧的小国借用了拉丁语（和少量希腊语）的混杂语言，宗教源于拿撒勒犹太人的教义，智力上借鉴了东方数学、天文学和技术，创造了一种不仅能够征服东方大帝国，还能够征服其他民族的文明。

非洲、美洲和澳大利亚，同时也让全世界的人们皈依西方的生活方式——这种转变更多的是通过言语而不是武力实现的。

有人对此提出异议，声称所有文明在某种意义上都是平等的，西方不能声称自己优于欧亚大陆的东部。4 但这种相对主义显然是荒谬的。以前没有一个文明像西方一样统治过其他文明。5 1500 年，欧洲未来的帝国主义强国占据了世界陆地面积的约 10%，最多占世界人口的 16%。到 1913 年，11 个西方国家* 占据了世界领土的 10%，人口的 26%，国内生产总值 (GDP) 的 58%，统治着世界另外 48% 的领土、31% 的人口和 16% 的 GDP。 6 1830 年，美国人均收入比中国人高 2.3 倍，到 1968 年，这一数字上升到 22 倍。1900 年，美国的平均预期寿命几乎是印度的两倍，比 1950 年的中国长 30 年。西方人生活水平的提高还体现在饮食更好（甚至农业劳动者也是如此）和身材更高（甚至普通士兵和囚犯也是如此）上。7

文明在很大程度上取决于城市。按照这一标准，西方也名列前茅。据我们所知，1500 年，世界上最大的城市是北京，人口在 60 万到 70 万之间。当时，世界上十大城市中，只有一个——巴黎——是欧洲城市，人口不到 20 万。伦敦大约有 5 万居民。然而到了 1900 年，情况发生了惊人的逆转。当时，世界十大城市中只有一个是亚洲城市，那就是东京。拥有约 650 万人口的伦敦是全球大都市。8

此外，在 20 世纪下半叶，人们清楚地认识到，缩小收入差距的唯一方法是东方社会效仿日本，采用西方的一些（但不是全部）制度和运作模式。结果，西方文明成为世界其他国家渴望组织自己的一种模板。当然，在 1945 年之前，非西方社会可以采用各种发展模式。但最具吸引力的都是欧洲模式：自由资本主义、国家社会主义、苏联共产主义。第二次世界大战摧毁了第二个

****** 这 11 个国家分别是奥地利、比利时、法国、德国、意大利、荷兰、葡萄牙、西班牙、俄罗斯、英国和美国。其中只有法国、葡萄牙和西班牙在 1500 年与 20 世纪早期的形式相似。俄罗斯自称是西方的一部分，见下文。尼尔·弗格森 3 欧洲，尽管它在许多发展中国家以假名存在。苏联在 1989 年至 1991 年之间的解体摧毁了第三个。

可以肯定的是，在全球金融危机之后，人们一直在谈论替代性的亚洲经济模式。但即使是最热心的文化相对主义者也不会建议恢复明朝或莫卧儿王朝的制度。当前自由市场支持者和国家干预支持者之间的争论，从根本上讲，是西方思想流派之间的争论：亚当·斯密的追随者和约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的追随者，还有少数卡尔·马克思的忠实追随者仍在努力。这三个流派的诞生地不言而喻：柯克迪、剑桥、特里尔。实际上，世界上大部分地区现在都融入了西方经济体系，正如斯密所建议的那样，市场决定了大部分价格，决定了贸易流动和劳动分工，但政府所扮演的角色更接近凯恩斯所设想的角色，即进行干预，试图平滑商业周期并减少收入不平等。

至于非经济机构，没有什么值得争论的。全世界的大学都在向西方规范靠拢。医学科学的组织方式也是如此，从稀缺的研究一直到一线医疗保健。如今，大多数人都接受了牛顿、达尔文和爱因斯坦揭示的伟大科学真理，即使他们不接受，在流感或支气管炎的最初症状出现时，他们仍然会急切地寻求西方药理学的产品。元素周期表中的几乎每个元素都是由西方科学家发现的；只有俄罗斯人发现的六个元素是例外。

 

只有少数社会继续抵制西方营销和消费模式以及西方生活方式本身的侵蚀。越来越多的人吃西方食物、穿西方衣服、住西方房子。甚至连独特的西方工作方式——五即每周工作六天，从早上 9 点到下午 5 点，中间有两三周的假期，这正在成为一种普遍的标准。与此同时，西方传教士试图向世界其他地区输出的宗教，有三分之一的人信奉，而且在世界上人口最多的国家也取得了显著的进展。即使是西方开创的无神论也取得了令人印象深刻的进展。去年秋天，我获得了北美历史专业学位：

历史 4XXJ“土著宗教史”

历史 1XXJ：“殖民地美国的巫术和社会“

历史 283：“超自然历史”

历史 260J：“性、生活和世代”

斯坦福大学历史 41Q 的标题是“疯女人：美国女性和精神疾病的历史”。它通过提出“探索性别如何塑造美国历史上的精神疾病经历和治疗”来吸引潜在的学生，并提出这样的问题：“为什么女性是过去的巫婆和歇斯底里者？”我并不想将这些主题中的任何一个视为没有兴趣或价值。它们似乎只是解决不那么重要的问题，而不是美国如何成为一个拥有基于有限政府理念的宪法的独立共和国，或者它如何在奴隶制内战中幸存下来。

与 1966 年秋季学期哈佛历史系开设的课程相比，这一对比十分鲜明（见附录）。例如，美国历史系开设的课程包括“历史 61a：美国民族的发展，1600-1877”和“历史 160b：美国革命和宪法的形成”，以及“历史 164b：美国在世界政治中的地位”。课程目录中英国历史课程多达十二门：毫无疑问，太多了，但总比没有好，这正是 2016 年秋季学期学生所学的课程。总而言之，1966 年历史系开设了 27 门课程，涵盖 20 个重要历史科目，比今天的历史系多五倍。取代旧历史的新历史有两个问题。首先，其中一些内容与我们当代的关注点脱节，与 250 年前哲学家们嘲笑的古物主义相比，好不了多少。第二个问题是，学术微观世界志往往伴随着明显的政治化。事实上，其中一些内容被当代关注点扭曲，从根本上来说不符合历史。例如，斯坦福大学历史 3A 课程“让巴勒斯坦可见”声称要展示“巴勒斯坦的权利主张”如何变得“对大多数美国公众来说难以理解”。课程描述继续说道：“这种学习体验以讨论和澄清为核心，与国家和斯坦福校园对以色列-巴勒斯坦行动主义的讨论相联系。”同一所大学的历史 263D 课程“Junipero Serra”要求学生参加“关于以有争议的历史人物命名大学或公共建筑的道德问题的正式辩论”。 （课程描述中尖锐地加上了“用英语授课”的字眼。）

我从甘地开始讲起。最后，让我以丘吉尔结束。丘吉尔经常被认为是他的对立面，仅仅因为他曾经用过一些贬义词。“很少有词比‘文明’这个词使用得更随意，”最伟大的西方领导人尼尔·弗格森 7

1938 年宣称，当时他所理解的文明正处于致命的危险之中。“它意味着什么？”他的回答如下：

它意味着一个以平民意见为基础的社会。它意味着暴力、战士和专制首领的统治、营地和战争、暴乱和暴政的条件都让位于制定法律的议会和长期维护这些法律的独立法院。这就是文明——在它的土壤中不断生长着自由、舒适和文化。当文明在任何国家盛行时，人民群众的生活就会更加宽广，烦恼也更少。过去的传统受到珍视，前贤或英勇之人留给我们的遗产成为所有人享受和利用的丰富财富。文明的核心原则是统治阶级服从人民的既定习俗和宪法所表达的意愿……13

如今，大多数经济学家和政治学家都同意丘吉尔的观点，尽管他们在强调公共秩序、私有财产权、法治和其他良性制度时使用了截然不同的语言。

1938 年，对西方文明的主要威胁似乎来自其内部：德国。然而丘吉尔明白希特勒并不是真正的威胁；真正的威胁是他自己党内的绥靖主义者的妄想，“仅仅……宣布正确的原则……就没有价值，除非……得到公民美德和男子汉勇气的支持——是的，以及武力和科学的工具和机构的支持，而这些工具和机构最终必须成为捍卫正义和理性的手段。”丘吉尔强调道。“文明不会持久，自由不会生存，和平不会保持，”他宣称，“除非绝大多数人类团结起来捍卫它们，并表明自己拥有一种警察权力，在野蛮人面前

随着时间的流逝，越来越多的人像我们一样购物、学习、保持健康（或不健康）、购物和祈祷（或不祈祷）。汉堡、本生灯、创可贴、棒球帽和圣经：无论你走到哪里，都无法轻易摆脱它们。只有在政治制度领域，全球才存在着显著的多样性，世界各地的许多政府都抵制法治理念，反对以法治保护个人权利作为有意义的代议制政府的基础。激进的伊斯兰教试图抵制二十世纪末西方性别平等和性自由规范的推进，与其说这是一种宗教，不如说是一种政治意识形态。9

简而言之，西方文明的崛起是公元后第二个千年下半叶最重要的历史现象，这并不是“欧洲中心主义”。这是一个显而易见的陈述。西方文明既不是从文化上也不是从地理上定义的，而是从制度上定义的，它是迄今为止为工业社会设计的最成功的操作系统。因为说西方文明的胜利是因为帝国主义是没有说服力的。许多其他文明也曾试图建立帝国，但成功率要低得多。我认为，唯一可信的解释是，西方文明的“杀手级应用”首先在西北地区发展起来，然后从那里传播开来：经济和政治生活中的竞争都是合法的；基于实验方法的科学革命；尼尔·弗格森 4 基于私有财产权的法治；现代医学；消费社会；以及价值观，无论是新教的还是其他的。这种制度方法的强大之处在于，它比其他强调地理、文化或帝国的模型更好地解释了西方崛起的时间和地点。

衰落和没落是否仍是西方文明的命运？从人口统计学角度来看，西方社会的人口长期以来只占世界人口的少数，但今天这一比例显然正在减少。美国和欧洲的经济曾经如此占主导地位，现在面临着在二十年内被中国超越的现实前景（按当前美元计算）（按购买力平价计算，这已经发生了）。西方的“硬实力”似乎在大中东地区（从伊拉克到阿富汗）逐渐减弱，而关于自由市场经济政策的“华盛顿共识”在金融危机中瓦解，这似乎揭示了消费社会核心的一个根本缺陷，即其强调债务驱动的零售疗法。曾经被视为西方计划核心的新教节俭伦理几乎已经消失殆尽。与此同时，西方精英们几乎被即将到来的环境灾难的千年恐惧所困扰。

也许更重要的是，西方文明似乎对自己失去了信心。从 1963 年的斯坦福大学开始，一系列主要大学都停止向本科生提供经典的“西方文明”历史课程，而恢复这门课程的尝试也遭遇了彻底的失败。在学校里，西方崛起的宏大叙事也已经过时了。由于教育家们热衷于以“新历史”的名义将“历史技能”提升到知识之上，再加上课程改革过程的意外后果，太多的英国学生在中学毕业时只知道一些不相关的西方历史片段：亨利八世和希特勒，还有一点马丁·路德·金的历史。对英国一所顶尖大学历史系一年级本科生进行的一项调查显示，只有 34% 的人知道无敌舰队时期的英国君主是谁，31% 的人知道布尔战争的地点，16% 的人知道谁指挥了滑铁卢的英军（认为是纳尔逊而不是威灵顿的比例是该比例的两倍多），11% 的人能说出一位 19 世纪的英国首相的名字。10 在对 11 至 18 岁英国儿童进行的类似调查中，17% 的人认为奥利弗·克伦威尔参加了黑斯廷斯战役，25% 的人把第一次世界大战的世纪搞错了。此外，在英语世界，人们越来越认为，我们应该研究其他文化，而不是我们自己的文化。1977 年，旅行者号航天器送入外太空的音乐采样器包含 27 首曲目ks，其中只有十件来自西方作曲家，不仅包括巴赫、莫扎特和贝多芬，还包括路易斯·阿姆斯特朗、查克·贝里和盲人威利·约翰逊。大英博物馆馆长于 2010 年出版的《100 件物品中的世界历史》收录的西方文明产品不超过三十件。12

这个问题的一个显著例证是美国精英大学教授西方历史的方式。如果有人问“现代历史上最重要的事件是什么？”，没有两个人，当然也没有两个历史学家，会给出相同的答案。我认为，一份重要历史主题的清单如果省略了以下二十个中的大多数，在任何知名报纸、杂志、教科书或百科全书出版商眼中都会被视为不完整的。为了粗略地衡量这一意义的重要性，括号中的数字是过去 12 个月中这些术语在普通教授选择的报纸《纽约时报》上出现的次数：

1. [任何时期] 英国历史 (31) Niall Ferguson 5

2. 宗教改革 (52)

3. 科学革命 (8)

4. 启蒙运动 (163)

5. 美国革命 (111)

6. 法国大革命 (11)

7. 美国宪法 (87)

8. 工业革命 (68)

9. 美国内战 (13)

10. 德国统一 (2)

11. 第一次世界大战 (609)

12. 俄国革命 (21)

13. 大萧条 (245)

14. 法西斯主义的兴起 (6)

15. 第三帝国(52)

16. 第二次世界大战 (2,746)

17. 非殖民化 (16)

18. 冷战 (846)

19. 以色列历史 (7)

20. 欧洲一体化 (69)

在评估美国三大历史系（哈佛、斯坦福和耶鲁）提供的课程范围时，我只是将这份清单作为基准。如果你是 2016 年秋季在这些机构之一的本科生，你会发现这些课程涵盖了哪些科目？

哈佛的答案是：不多。确切地说，一个有历史倾向的学生会徒劳地寻找除七门课程以外的所有课程。德国统一、法西斯主义和第三帝国都包含在一门课程中，“HIST 1265：德意志帝国，1848-1948”。还有一些课程涵盖了俄国革命、大萧条、冷战和欧洲一体化。对于一个拥有 55 名教职员工的系来说，这有点微不足道，其中只有 7 名被列为本学期休假。20 名哈佛历史学家被列为美国历史专家。然而，至少在上个学期，本科生徒劳地寻找有关美国革命、宪法制定和内战的教育。

耶鲁的情况乍一看更好，直到人们意识到几乎所有的内容都由两门课程提供：约翰·梅里曼的“HIST 202：欧洲文明，1684-1945”，以及保罗·肯尼迪的“HIST 221：1500 年以来的西方军事史”。除了这两门课程外，去年秋季学期，只有另外四名教职员工（该系共有 67 名教职员工）参与教授我列出的任何主题。同样，斯坦福大学开设了六门与我们列表中的二十个主题相关的课程。剩下 42 名教师的兴趣似乎在其他地方。

现在，这并不是说这三所大学提供的其他课程没有价值。而是说，希望增加对西方文明史上重大事件的熟悉程度的本科生有理由感到被欺骗。当我们反思历史系对美国和欧洲历史的地理关注随着时间的推移相对稳定时，这些发现就更加令人惊讶了。

值得一看的是 2016 年秋季哈佛、斯坦福和耶鲁大学开设的一些课程。以哈佛 1954 年的历史为例：“历史中的情感”。Niall Ferguson 6 课程描述如下：“情感在历史中的位置是什么？这个问题本身有多重含义，在本课程中，我们特别考虑两个：如何撰写情感的历史，以及历史学家的情感如何影响历史的写作。历史学家与历史研究对象距离越近，获益越多吗？情感史学家应该压抑还是培养同理心？情感写作是否必然无法通过学术严谨性和平衡性的考验？我们将探讨情感史的一些可能的分析框架和关于历史主观性的辩论，并考虑将它们应用于澳大利亚历史的案例研究。”根据 my.harvard 网站的数据，这门课程的总注册人数为 1，这让我觉得并不完全令人惊讶。

或者考虑以下耶鲁大学提供的课程，这些课程是学生感兴趣的选项之一野蛮和返祖的力量将令人敬畏。” 14 野蛮和返祖的力量今天也无处不在。但今天，和当时一样，对西方文明的最大威胁不是来自其他文明，而是来自我们自己的胆怯——以及滋生这种胆怯的历史无知。

注释

1 亨廷顿，《文明的冲突》。

2 参见卡根的《天堂与权力》和最近的舒克的《海变》。 3 参见奥斯本的《文明》。

4 参见费尔南德斯-阿梅斯托的《千禧年》；古迪的《资本主义与现代性》和《欧亚奇迹》；黄的《转型中的中国》。

5 麦克尼尔的《西方的崛起》。另见达尔文的《帖木儿之后》。

6 根据麦迪逊的《世界经济》中的数据。

7 详情见 Fogel 的《逃离饥饿》，第 9 页，表 1.2 和第 13 页，表 1.4。

8 数据来自 Chandler 的《城市增长》。

9 有关启发性讨论，请参阅 Scruton 的《西方和其他地区》。

10 Matthews 的《奇怪的死亡》；Guyver 的《英格兰》。

11 Amanda Kelly 的《希特勒在战争中做了什么，小姐？》《泰晤士报教育副刊》，2001 年 1 月 19 日。

12 MacGregor 的《世界历史》。13 Churchill 的《文明》，第 45 页及以下。14 Churchill 的《文明》，第 45 页及以下。

Western Civilization: A Good Idea

Niall Ferguson

https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/nf_western_civilization.pdf

According to folklore, Mahatma Gandhi was once asked by a reporter what he thought of Western civilization. He replied that he thought it would be a good idea. As the campaign against the concept advances, not least in American and European universities, I am inclined to agree with Gandhi. I think Western civilization really would be a good idea.

What exactly – or where – do I mean by “Western civilization”? Post-war White AngloSaxon Protestant males used, more or less instinctively, to locate the West (also known as “the free world”) in a relatively narrow corridor extending (certainly) from London to Lexington, Massachusetts, and (possibly) from Strasbourg to San Francisco. In 1945, fresh from the battlefields, the West’s first language was English, followed by halting French. With the success of European integration in the 1950s and 1960s, the Western club grew larger. Few would now dispute that the Low Countries, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Scandinavia and Spain all belong to the West, while Greece is an ex officio member, despite its later allegiance to Orthodox Christianity, thanks to our enduring debt to ancient Hellenic philosophy and its more recent debts to the European Union.

But what about the rest of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, encompassing not just the Balkans north of the Peloponnese, but also North Africa and Anatolia? What about Egypt and Mesopotamia, the seedbeds of the very first great civilizations? Is South America – colonized by Europeans as surely as was North America, and geographically in the same hemisphere – part of the West? And what of Russia? Is European Russia truly Occidental, but Russia beyond the Urals in some sense part of the Orient? Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its satellites were referred to as “the Eastern bloc.” But there is surely a case for saying that the Soviet Union was as much a product of Western civilization as the United States. Its core ideology had much the same Victorian provenance as nationalism, anti-slavery and women’s suffrage: it was born and bred in the old circular Reading Room of the British Library. And its geographical extent was no less the product of European expansion and colonization than the settlement of the Americas. In Central Asia, as in the South America, Europeans ruled over non-Europeans. In that sense, what happened in 1991 was simply the death of the last European empire. Yet the most influential recent definition of Western civilization, by Samuel Huntington, excludes not just Russia but all countries with a religious tradition of Orthodoxy. Huntington’s West consists only of Western and Central Europe (excluding the Orthodox East), North America (excluding Mexico) and Australasia. Greece, Israel, Romania and Ukraine do not make the cut; nor do the Caribbean islands, despite the fact that many are as Western as Florida.1

Western civilization, then, is much more than just a geographical expression. Another puzzle that disunity appears to be one of Western civilization’s defining characteristics. In the early 2000s many American commentators complained about the “widening Atlantic” – the breakdown of those common values that bound the United States together with its West European allies during the Cold War.2 If it has become slightly clearer than it was when Henry Kissinger was secretary of state whom an American statesman should call when he wants to speak to Europe, it has become harder to say who picks up the phone on behalf of Western civilization. Yet the recent division between America and Europe is mild and amicable compared with the great schisms of the past, over religion, over ideology – and even over the meaning of civilization itself. During the First World War, the Germans claimed to be fighting the war for a higher Kultur and against tawdry, materialistic Anglo-French Zivilisation (the distinction was Niall Ferguson 2 drawn by Thomas Mann and Sigmund Freud, among others). But this distinction was rather hard to reconcile with the burning of Louvain and the summary executions of Belgian civilians during the opening phase of the war. British propagandists retorted by defining the Germans as “Huns” – barbarians beyond the Pale of civilization – and named the war itself “The Great War for Civilization” on their Victory medal.3

“Western civilization” would be a good idea, in other words, if we were sure where to find it. This much can be said, nevertheless. For some reason, beginning in the late fifteenth century, the little states of Western Europe, with their bastardized linguistic borrowings from Latin (and a little Greek), their religion derived from the teachings of a Jew from Nazareth, and their intellectual debts to Oriental mathematics, astronomy and technology, produced a civilization capable not only of conquering the great Oriental empires and subjugating Africa, the Americas and Australasia, but also of converting peoples all over the world to the Western way of life – a conversion achieved more by the word than by the sword.

There are those who dispute that, claiming that all civilizations are in some sense equal, and that the West cannot claim superiority over, say, the East of Eurasia.4 But such relativism is demonstrably absurd. No previous civilization had ever achieved such dominance as the West achieved over the Rest.5 In 1500 the future imperial powers of Europe accounted for about 10 per cent of the world’s land surface and at most 16 per cent of its population. By 1913, eleven Western states,* which accounted for 10 per cent of the world’s territory, 26 per cent of its population and 58 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP), ruled over a further 48 per cent of the world’s territory, 31 per cent of its population and 16 per cent of its GDP. 6 The average American went from being 2.3 times richer than the average Chinese in 1830 to being 22 times richer in 1968. Average life expectancy in the United States was nearly twice what it was in India in 1900 and thirty years longer than it was in China in 1950. Higher living standards in the West were also reflected in a better diet, even for agricultural laborers, and taller stature, even for ordinary soldiers and convicts.7

Civilization is in large measure about cities. By this measure, too, the West had come out on top. In 1500, as far as we can work out, the biggest city in the world was Beijing, with a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. Of the ten largest cities in the world by that time only one – Paris – was European, and its population numbered fewer than 200,000. London had perhaps 50,000 inhabitants. Yet by 1900 there had been an astonishing reversal. Only one of the world’s ten largest cities at that time was Asian and that was Tokyo. With a population of around 6.5 million, London was the global megalopolis.8

Moreover, it became clear in the second half of the twentieth century that the only way to close that yawning gap in income was for Eastern societies to follow Japan’s example in adopting some (though not all) of the West’s institutions and modes of operation. As a result, Western civilization became a kind of template for the way the rest of the world aspired to organize itself. Prior to 1945, of course, there was a variety of developmental models that could be adopted by non-Western societies. But the most attractive were all of European origin: liberal capitalism, national socialism, soviet communism. The Second World War killed the second in

* The eleven were Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Of these only France, Portugal and Spain existed in 1500 in anything resembling their early twentieth-century form. For Russia’s claim to be considered a part of the West, see below. Niall Ferguson 3 Europe, though it lived on under assumed names in many developing countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 killed the third.

To be sure, there has been much talk in the wake of the global financial crisis about alternative Asian economic models. But not even the most ardent cultural relativist is recommending a return to the institutions of the Ming or the Mughals. The current debate between the proponents of free markets and those of state intervention is, at root, a debate between identifiably Western schools of thought: the followers of Adam Smith and those of John Maynard Keynes, with a few die-hard devotees of Karl Marx still plugging away. The birthplaces of all three speak for themselves: Kirkaldy, Cambridge, Trier. In practice, most of the world is now integrated into a Western economic system in which, as Smith recommended, the market sets most of the prices and determines the flow of trade and division of labor, but government plays a role closer to the one envisaged by Keynes, intervening to try to smooth the business cycle and reduce income inequality.

As for non-economic institutions, there is no debate worth having. All over the world, universities are converging on Western norms. The same is true of the way medical science is organized, from rarefied research all the way through to front-line healthcare. Most people now accept the great scientific truths revealed by Newton, Darwin and Einstein and, even if they do not, they still reach eagerly for the products of Western pharmacology at the first symptom of influenza or bronchitis. Almost every element in the periodic table was discovered by a Western scientist; the six discovered by Russians are the only exceptions.

Only a few societies continue to resist the encroachment of Western patterns of marketing and consumption, as well as the Western lifestyle itself. More and more human beings eat a Western diet, wear Western clothes and live in Western housing. Even the peculiarly Western way of work – five or six days a week from 9 until 5, with two or three weeks of holiday – is becoming a kind of universal standard. Meanwhile, the religion that Western missionaries sought to export to the rest of the world is followed by a third of mankind – as well as making remarkable gains in the world’s most populous country. Even the atheism pioneered in the West is making impressive headway.

With every passing year, more and more human beings shop like us, study like us, stay healthy (or unhealthy) like us, shop like us and pray (or don’t pray) like us. Burgers, Bunsen burners, Band-Aid, baseball caps and Bibles: you cannot easily get away from them, wherever you may go. Only in the realm of political institutions does there remain significant global diversity, with a wide range of governments around the world resisting the idea of the rule of law, with its protection of individual rights, as the foundation for meaningful representative government. It is more as a political ideology than as a religion that a militant Islam seeks to resist the advance of the late twentieth-century Western norms of gender equality and sexual freedom.9

In short, it is not “Eurocentrism” to say that the rise of Western civilization is the single most important historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ. It is a statement of the obvious. Defined neither culturally nor geographically but institutionally, Western civilization emerges as the most successful operating system yet devised for industrial societies. For it is not persuasive to argue the Western civilization triumphed because of imperialism. Many other civilizations had tried building empires, with much less success. The only credible explanation, I believe, is that the “killer applications” of Western civilization evolved first in northwest and then spread from there: the idea of competition in both economic and political life as legitimate; the Scientific Revolution on the basis of the experimental method; Niall Ferguson 4 the rule of law based on private property rights; modern medicine; the consumer society; and the worth ethic, Protestant or otherwise. The great strength of this institutional approach is that it explains the timing and location of Western ascendancy much better than other models that emphasize geography, culture or empire.

Is decline and fall nevertheless what lies head for Western civilization? In demographic terms, the population of Western societies has long represented a minority of the world’s inhabitants, but today it is clearly a dwindling one. Once so dominant, the economies of the United States and Europe are now facing the real prospect of being overtaken by China (on a current dollar basis) within twenty years (on the basis of purchasing power parity, it has already happened). Western “hard power” seems to be receding in the Greater Middle East, from Iraq to Afghanistan, while the “Washington Consensus” on free market economic policy disintegrated in the financial crisis, which seemed to reveal a fundamental flaw at the heart of the consumer society, with its emphasis on debt-propelled retail therapy. The Protestant ethic of thrift that once seemed so central to the Western project has all but vanished. Meanwhile, Western elites are beset by almost millenarian fears of a coming environmental apocalypse.

Perhaps more importantly, Western civilization appears to have lost confidence in itself. Beginning with Stanford in 1963, a succession of major universities have ceased to offer the classic “Western Civ.” history course to their undergraduates, and attempts to revive it have been roundly defeated. In schools, too, the grand narrative of Western ascent has fallen out of fashion. Thanks to an educationalists’ fad that elevated “historical skills” above knowledge in the name of “New History” – combined with the unintended consequences of the curriculum-reform process – too many British schoolchildren leave secondary school knowing only unconnected fragments of Western history: Henry VIII and Hitler, with a small dose of Martin Luther King, Jr. A survey of first-year History undergraduates at one leading British university revealed that only 34 per cent knew who the English monarch was at the time of the Armada, 31 per cent knew the location of the Boer War, 16 per cent knew who commanded the British forces at Waterloo (more than twice that proportion thought it was Nelson rather than Wellington) and 11 per cent could name a single nineteenth-century British prime minister.10 In a similar poll of English children aged between eleven and eighteen, 17 per cent thought Oliver Cromwell fought at the Battle of Hastings and 25 per cent put the First World War in the wrong century.11 Throughout the English-speaking world, moreover, the argument has gained ground that it is other cultures we should study, not our own. The musical sampler sent into outer space with the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 featured twenty-seven tracks, only ten of them from Western composers, including not only Bach, Mozart and Beethoven but also Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson. A history of the world “in 100 objects”, published by the Director of the British Museum in 2010, included no more than thirty products of Western civilization.12

A striking illustration of the problem is the way in which Western history is taught in elite American universities. If one poses the question “What are the most significant events in modern history?” no two people, and certainly no two historians, would give the same answer. I submit that a list of significant historical subjects that omitted the majority of the following twenty would be regarded as incomplete in the eyes of any reputable newspaper, magazine, textbook or encyclopedia publisher. To provide a rough measure of importance in this sense, the numbers in parenthesis are the number of times these terms appeared in the average professor’s newspaper of choice, the New York Times, in the past 12 months:

1. [Any period of] British history (31) Niall Ferguson 5

2. The Reformation (52)

3. The Scientific Revolution (8)

4. The Enlightenment (163)

5. The American Revolution (111)

6. The French Revolution (11)

7. The U.S. constitution (87)

8. The Industrial Revolution (68)

9. The American Civil War (13)

10. German Unification (2)

11. World War I (609)

12. The Russian Revolution (21)

13. The Great Depression (245)

14. The Rise of Fascism (6)

15. The Third Reich (52)

16. World War II (2,746)

17. Decolonization (16)

18. The Cold War (846)

19. The history of Israel (7)

20. European integration (69)

In assessing the range of courses provided by three major U.S. history departments— those of Harvard, Stanford and Yale—I have simply used this list as a benchmark. If you were an undergraduate at one of these institutions in the fall of 2016, which of these subjects would you have found covered by the courses on offer to you?

The answer in the case of Harvard is: not many. To be precise, a historically inclined student would have looked in vain for a course on all but seven. German Unification, Fascism and the Third Reich were covered by a single course, “HIST 1265: German Empires, 1848- 1948.” There were also courses that covered the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the Cold War and European Integration. This was a somewhat meagre showing for a department that lists 55 faculty members, of whom only seven are listed as being on leave this semester. Twenty Harvard historians are listed as specialists in the history of the United States. Yet, last semester at least, the undergraduate looked in vain for education about the American Revolution, the making of the Constitution, and the Civil War.

The picture at Yale looks at first sight better, until one realizes that nearly all the coverage was provided by just two courses: John Merriman’s “HIST 202: European Civilization, 1684-1945,” and Paul Kennedy’s “HIST 221: Military History of the West since 1500.” Aside from these two, only four other faculty members—of a department numbering 67—were engaged in teaching any of the topics on my list last fall semester. Similarly, at Stanford, six courses were on offer that related to the twenty topics in our list. That leaves 42 faculty members whose interests would seem to lie elsewhere.

Now, this is not to say that the other courses available at these three universities are without value. It is to say that undergraduates wishing to increase their familiarity with significant events in the history of Western civilization would be justified in feeling shortchanged. These findings are all the more surprising when one reflects on the relative stability over time of the geographical focus of history departments on American and European history.

It is worth looking at some of the courses that were available at Harvard, Stanford and Yale in the fall of 2016. Take, for example, Harvard’s History 1954: “Emotions in History.” The Niall Ferguson 6 course description was as follows: “What is the place of emotion in history? The question itself holds multiple meanings, and in this course we consider two in particular: how to write the history of emotion(s), and how the historian’s emotions affect the writing of history. Do historians benefit more from proximity to, or distance from, their historical subjects? Should historians of emotion suppress, or cultivate, their feelings of empathy? Does emotive writing inevitably fail the test of scholarly rigor and balance? We will explore some possible analytic frames for the history of emotion and debates over the subjectivity of history, and consider their application to case studies drawn from Australian history.” It strikes me as not wholly surprising that this course had, according to the my.harvard site, a total enrollment of one.

Or consider the following course titles available at Yale, which were among the options available to students interested in North American history last fall:

History 4XXJ “Indigenous Religious Histories”

History 1XXJ: “Witchcraft and Society in Colonial America”

History 283: “History of the Supernatural”

History 260J: “Sex, Life, and Generation”

Stanford’s History 41Q was entitled “Madwomen: The History of Women and Mental Illness in the U.S.” It enticed potential students by proposing to “explore how gender has shaped the experience and treatment of mental illness in U.S. history” and asking the question: “Why have women been the witches and hysterics of the past?” I do not wish to dismiss any of these subjects as being of no interest or value. They just seem to address less important questions than how the United States became an independent republic with a constitution based on the idea of limited government, or how it survived a civil war over the institution of slavery.

The contrast with the courses that were offered by the Harvard History Department in the fall semester 1966 is very striking (see appendix). For example, students of American history were offered “Hist. 61a: The Growth of the American Nation, 1600-1877” and “Hist. 160b: The American Revolution and the Formation of the Constitution,” as well as “Hist. 164b: The United States in World Politics.” There were no fewer than twelve courses in British history in the course catalogue: too many, no doubt, but better than nothing, which is what students in the fall semester 2016 were offered. In all, the History Department of 1966 offered 27 courses on my 20 important historical subjects, five times more than their counterparts today. There are two problems with the new history that has displaced the old. The first is that some of it is so disconnected from our contemporary concerns that it is little better than the antiquarianism scoffed at by the philosophes 250 years ago. The second problem is that the microcosmographia academica is so often accompanied by overt politicization. Indeed, some of it is so skewed by contemporary concerns that is fundamentally unhistorical. For example, Stanford’s History 3A, “Making Palestine Visible,” claimed to show how “Palestinian claims to rights” had been rendered “illegible for much of the American public.” The course description went on: “This learning experience, incorporating discussion and clarification at its core, connects with the national and Stanford campus discussion of activism on Israel-Palestine.” The same university”s History 263D, “Junipero Serra,” requires students to participate in “a formal debate on the ethics naming university or public buildings after historical figures with contested pasts.” (Pointedly, the course description adds: “Taught in English.”)

I began with Gandhi. Let me conclude with Churchill, who is often thought of as his polar opposite, if only because of some derogatory terms he once applied to him. “There are few words which are used more loosely than the word ‘Civilization’,” declared the greatest of all Niall Ferguson 7

Western leaders in 1938, at a time when civilization as he understood it stood in mortal danger. “What does it mean?” His answer was as follows:

It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization – and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort and culture. When Civilization reigns in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men become a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all. The Central principle of Civilization is the subordination of the ruling class to the settled customs of the people and to their will as expressed in the Constitution …13

These days, most economists and political scientists agree with Churchill, though they use rather different language when they are emphasizing public order, private property rights, the rule of law and other benign institutions.

In 1938 the principal threat to Western civilization appeared to come from within it: from Germany. Yet Churchill understood that Hitler was not the real threat; the real threat was the delusion of the appeasers within his own party “that the mere … declaration of right principles … will be of any value unless … supported by those qualities of civic virtue and manly courage – aye, and by those instruments and agencies of force and science which in the last resort must be the defence of right and reason.” Churchill was emphatic. “Civilization will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept,” he declared, “unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which

barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.” 14 Barbaric and atavistic forces are abroad to day, too. But today, as then, the biggest threat to Western civilization is posed not by other civilizations, but by our own pusillanimity – and by the historical ignorance that feeds it.

Notes

1 Huntington, Clash of Civilizations.

2 See e.g. Kagan Paradise and Power and, more recently, Schuker, “Sea Change.” 3 See most recently Osborne, Civilization.

4 See Fernández-Armesto, Millennium; Goody, Capitalism and Modernity and Eurasian Miracle; Wong, China Transformed.

5 McNeill, Rise of the West. See also Darwin, After Tamerlane.

6 Based on data in Maddison, World Economy.

7 Details in Fogel, Escape from Hunger, pp. 9, table 1.2, and 13, table 1.4.

8 Figures from Chandler, Urban Growth.

9 For an illuminating discussion, see Scruton, The West and the Rest.

10 Matthews, “Strange Death”; Guyver, “England.”

11 Amanda Kelly, “What did Hitler do in the war, miss?” Times Educational Supplement, January 19, 2001.

12 MacGregor, History of the World. 13 Churchill, “Civilization,” pp. 45f. 14 Churchill, “Civilization,” pp. 45f.