Old wine in new bottle

Niall Ferguson’s works often elicit sharp responses. Some scholars regard him as the court historian of the American right, a supporter of imperialism. Others believe he is among the few historians who have stepped down from the ivory towers of academia to popularise history.

There is some truth in both schools of thought. In Civilization: The West and the Rest, Ferguson is at his lucid best. His pairings of places, people and events set the book’s pace. The Thames of 15th century London—a shambolic, disease-ridden den—is discussed with the Yangtze, part of a sophisticated waterway which included more than 1,600 km of canal. The historian’s purpose is to highlight how three centuries later modern civilisation flourished on the banks of the Thames while the Chinese river nourished feudal societies.

The triumph of “the West” (Western Europe and North America) over “the Rest” (Asia, Africa and South America) between the 16th and 20th centuries is to be understood, he says, in terms of six factors or “applications”, he describes, in computer jargon, “killer apps”: competition, science, the rule of law, medicine, consumerism and work ethic.

The story is not always happy. Ferguson’s account is replete with instances of hypocrisy, venality and even outright barbarism.

Ferguson avoids the triumphalism of the early apologists of imperialism. But the implicit understanding is the ends justify the means.

Ferguson believes that Western dominance is a good thing, and he writes about the West’s “civilisational software being downloaded” by other countries. And at another place he writes, “The rulers of western Africa prior to the European empires were not running some kind of scout camp. They were engaged in the slave trade. They showed zero sign of developing the country’s economic resources. The counterfactual idea that somehow the indigenous rulers would have been more successful in economic development doesn’t have any credibility at all.”

Shefali Kukreti is in the Indian Administrative Service

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