西方文明:一個好主意 Western Civilization: A Good Idea
Niall Ferguson
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/nf_western_civilization.pdf
根據民間傳說,聖雄甘地曾被記者問及他對西方文明的看法。他回答說他認為這是一個好主意。隨著反對這一概念的運動不斷推進,尤其是在美國和歐洲的大學,我傾向於同意甘地的觀點。我認為西方文明確實是一個好主意。
我所說的“西方文明”到底是什麽——或者在哪裏?戰後的白人盎格魯撒克遜新教男性或多或少本能地將西方(也稱為“自由世界”)定位在一條相對狹窄的走廊上,這條走廊(肯定)從倫敦延伸到馬薩諸塞州的列克星敦,(可能)從斯特拉斯堡延伸到舊金山。1945 年,剛從戰場回來的西方的第一語言是英語,其次是斷斷續續的法語。隨著 20 世紀 50 年代和 60 年代歐洲一體化的成功,西方俱樂部的規模不斷擴大。現在很少有人會質疑,低地國家、法國、德國、意大利、葡萄牙、斯堪的納維亞半島和西班牙都屬於西方,而希臘是當然成員,盡管後來效忠東正教,這要歸功於我們對古希臘哲學的長期支持以及對歐盟的支持。
但地中海南部和東部的其餘地區呢?它們不僅包括伯羅奔尼撒半島以北的巴爾幹半島,還包括北非和安納托利亞。埃及和美索不達米亞,最早偉大文明的發源地呢?南美洲——與北美洲一樣被歐洲人殖民,在地理上位於同一半球——是西方的一部分嗎?俄羅斯呢?歐洲版的俄羅斯真的是西方的嗎?烏拉爾山脈以外的俄羅斯在某種意義上是東方的一部分嗎?在整個冷戰期間,蘇聯及其衛星國被稱為“東方集團”。但肯定有理由說蘇聯和美國一樣是西方文明的產物。它的核心意識形態與民族主義、反奴隸製和婦女選舉權一樣,都具有維多利亞時代的淵源:它誕生和成長於大英圖書館古老的圓形閱覽室。它的地理範圍與美洲的定居一樣,也是歐洲擴張和殖民的產物。在中亞和南美洲,歐洲人統治著非歐洲人。從這個意義上說,1991 年發生的事情隻是最後一個歐洲帝國的滅亡。然而,塞繆爾·亨廷頓最近對西方文明最具影響力的定義不僅排除了俄羅斯,還排除了所有具有東正教宗教傳統的國家。亨廷頓的西方僅包括西歐和中歐(不包括東正教東部)、北美(不包括墨西哥)和澳大利亞。希臘、以色列、羅馬尼亞和烏克蘭不在名單內;加勒比海島嶼也是如此,盡管許多島嶼與佛羅裏達一樣西化。1
因此,西方文明不僅僅是一種地理表達。另一個令人費解的是,不團結似乎是西方文明的決定性特征之一。21 世紀初,許多美國評論家抱怨“大西洋變寬”——冷戰期間將美國與西歐盟友聯係在一起的共同價值觀的瓦解。2 如果說現在比亨利·基辛格擔任國務卿時稍微清楚一點,即當美國政治家想與歐洲對話時應該給誰打電話,那麽現在就很難說誰代表西方文明拿起電話了。然而,與過去因宗教、意識形態甚至文明本身的意義而產生的大分裂相比,美國和歐洲之間最近的分歧是溫和而友好的。第一次世界大戰期間,德國人宣稱他們是為了更高層次的文化而戰,反對庸俗、唯物主義的英法文明(托馬斯·曼和西格蒙德·弗洛伊德等人作出了這種區分)。但這種區分很難與戰爭初期焚燒魯汶和立即處決比利時平民相協調。英國宣傳家反駁說,德國人是“匈奴人”——文明界限之外的野蠻人——並在勝利勳章上將戰爭本身稱為“文明大戰”。3
換句話說,“西方文明”將是一個好主意,如果我們確定在哪裏可以找到它的話。不過,可以說這麽多。出於某種原因,從 15 世紀末開始,西歐的小國借用了拉丁語(和少量希臘語)的混雜語言,宗教源於拿撒勒猶太人的教義,智力上借鑒了東方數學、天文學和技術,創造了一種不僅能夠征服東方大帝國,還能夠征服其他民族的文明。
非洲、美洲和澳大利亞,同時也讓全世界的人們皈依西方的生活方式——這種轉變更多的是通過言語而不是武力實現的。
有人對此提出異議,聲稱所有文明在某種意義上都是平等的,西方不能聲稱自己優於歐亞大陸的東部。4 但這種相對主義顯然是荒謬的。以前沒有一個文明像西方一樣統治過其他文明。5 1500 年,歐洲未來的帝國主義強國占據了世界陸地麵積的約 10%,最多占世界人口的 16%。到 1913 年,11 個西方國家* 占據了世界領土的 10%,人口的 26%,國內生產總值 (GDP) 的 58%,統治著世界另外 48% 的領土、31% 的人口和 16% 的 GDP。 6 1830 年,美國人均收入比中國人高 2.3 倍,到 1968 年,這一數字上升到 22 倍。1900 年,美國的平均預期壽命幾乎是印度的兩倍,比 1950 年的中國長 30 年。西方人生活水平的提高還體現在飲食更好(甚至農業勞動者也是如此)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決於城市。按照這一標準,西方也名列前茅。據我們所知,1500 年,世界上最大的城市是北京,人口在 60 萬到 70 萬之間。當時,世界上十大城市中,隻有一個——巴黎——是歐洲城市,人口不到 20 萬。倫敦大約有 5 萬居民。然而到了 1900 年,情況發生了驚人的逆轉。當時,世界十大城市中隻有一個是亞洲城市,那就是東京。擁有約 650 萬人口的倫敦是全球大都市。8
此外,在 20 世紀下半葉,人們清楚地認識到,縮小收入差距的唯一方法是東方社會效仿日本,采用西方的一些(但不是全部)製度和運作模式。結果,西方文明成為世界其他國家渴望組織自己的一種模板。當然,在 1945 年之前,非西方社會可以采用各種發展模式。但最具吸引力的都是歐洲模式:自由資本主義、國家社會主義、蘇聯共產主義。第二次世界大戰摧毀了第二個
****** 這 11 個國家分別是奧地利、比利時、法國、德國、意大利、荷蘭、葡萄牙、西班牙、俄羅斯、英國和美國。其中隻有法國、葡萄牙和西班牙在 1500 年與 20 世紀早期的形式相似。俄羅斯自稱是西方的一部分,見下文。尼爾·弗格森 3 歐洲,盡管它在許多發展中國家以假名存在。蘇聯在 1989 年至 1991 年之間的解體摧毀了第三個。
可以肯定的是,在全球金融危機之後,人們一直在談論替代性的亞洲經濟模式。但即使是最熱心的文化相對主義者也不會建議恢複明朝或莫臥兒王朝的製度。當前自由市場支持者和國家幹預支持者之間的爭論,從根本上講,是西方思想流派之間的爭論:亞當·斯密的追隨者和約翰·梅納德·凱恩斯的追隨者,還有少數卡爾·馬克思的忠實追隨者仍在努力。這三個流派的誕生地不言而喻:柯克迪、劍橋、特裏爾。實際上,世界上大部分地區現在都融入了西方經濟體係,正如斯密所建議的那樣,市場決定了大部分價格,決定了貿易流動和勞動分工,但政府所扮演的角色更接近凱恩斯所設想的角色,即進行幹預,試圖平滑商業周期並減少收入不平等。
至於非經濟機構,沒有什麽值得爭論的。全世界的大學都在向西方規範靠攏。醫學科學的組織方式也是如此,從稀缺的研究一直到一線醫療保健。如今,大多數人都接受了牛頓、達爾文和愛因斯坦揭示的偉大科學真理,即使他們不接受,在流感或支氣管炎的最初症狀出現時,他們仍然會急切地尋求西方藥理學的產品。元素周期表中的幾乎每個元素都是由西方科學家發現的;隻有俄羅斯人發現的六個元素是例外。
隻有少數社會繼續抵製西方營銷和消費模式以及西方生活方式本身的侵蝕。越來越多的人吃西方食物、穿西方衣服、住西方房子。甚至連獨特的西方工作方式——五即每周工作六天,從早上 9 點到下午 5 點,中間有兩三周的假期,這正在成為一種普遍的標準。與此同時,西方傳教士試圖向世界其他地區輸出的宗教,有三分之一的人信奉,而且在世界上人口最多的國家也取得了顯著的進展。即使是西方開創的無神論也取得了令人印象深刻的進展。去年秋天,我獲得了北美曆史專業學位:
曆史 4XXJ“土著宗教史”
曆史 1XXJ:“殖民地美國的巫術和社會“
曆史 283:“超自然曆史”
曆史 260J:“性、生活和世代”
斯坦福大學曆史 41Q 的標題是“瘋女人:美國女性和精神疾病的曆史”。它通過提出“探索性別如何塑造美國曆史上的精神疾病經曆和治療”來吸引潛在的學生,並提出這樣的問題:“為什麽女性是過去的巫婆和歇斯底裏者?”我並不想將這些主題中的任何一個視為沒有興趣或價值。它們似乎隻是解決不那麽重要的問題,而不是美國如何成為一個擁有基於有限政府理念的憲法的獨立共和國,或者它如何在奴隸製內戰中幸存下來。
與 1966 年秋季學期哈佛曆史係開設的課程相比,這一對比十分鮮明(見附錄)。例如,美國曆史係開設的課程包括“曆史 61a:美國民族的發展,1600-1877”和“曆史 160b:美國革命和憲法的形成”,以及“曆史 164b:美國在世界政治中的地位”。課程目錄中英國曆史課程多達十二門:毫無疑問,太多了,但總比沒有好,這正是 2016 年秋季學期學生所學的課程。總而言之,1966 年曆史係開設了 27 門課程,涵蓋 20 個重要曆史科目,比今天的曆史係多五倍。取代舊曆史的新曆史有兩個問題。首先,其中一些內容與我們當代的關注點脫節,與 250 年前哲學家們嘲笑的古物主義相比,好不了多少。第二個問題是,學術微觀世界誌往往伴隨著明顯的政治化。事實上,其中一些內容被當代關注點扭曲,從根本上來說不符合曆史。例如,斯坦福大學曆史 3A 課程“讓巴勒斯坦可見”聲稱要展示“巴勒斯坦的權利主張”如何變得“對大多數美國公眾來說難以理解”。課程描述繼續說道:“這種學習體驗以討論和澄清為核心,與國家和斯坦福校園對以色列-巴勒斯坦行動主義的討論相聯係。”同一所大學的曆史 263D 課程“Junipero Serra”要求學生參加“關於以有爭議的曆史人物命名大學或公共建築的道德問題的正式辯論”。 (課程描述中尖銳地加上了“用英語授課”的字眼。)
我從甘地開始講起。最後,讓我以丘吉爾結束。丘吉爾經常被認為是他的對立麵,僅僅因為他曾經用過一些貶義詞。“很少有詞比‘文明’這個詞使用得更隨意,”最偉大的西方領導人尼爾·弗格森 7
1938 年宣稱,當時他所理解的文明正處於致命的危險之中。“它意味著什麽?”他的回答如下:
它意味著一個以平民意見為基礎的社會。它意味著暴力、戰士和專製首領的統治、營地和戰爭、暴亂和暴政的條件都讓位於製定法律的議會和長期維護這些法律的獨立法院。這就是文明——在它的土壤中不斷生長著自由、舒適和文化。當文明在任何國家盛行時,人民群眾的生活就會更加寬廣,煩惱也更少。過去的傳統受到珍視,前賢或英勇之人留給我們的遺產成為所有人享受和利用的豐富財富。文明的核心原則是統治階級服從人民的既定習俗和憲法所表達的意願……13
如今,大多數經濟學家和政治學家都同意丘吉爾的觀點,盡管他們在強調公共秩序、私有財產權、法治和其他良性製度時使用了截然不同的語言。
1938 年,對西方文明的主要威脅似乎來自其內部:德國。然而丘吉爾明白希特勒並不是真正的威脅;真正的威脅是他自己黨內的綏靖主義者的妄想,“僅僅……宣布正確的原則……就沒有價值,除非……得到公民美德和男子漢勇氣的支持——是的,以及武力和科學的工具和機構的支持,而這些工具和機構最終必須成為捍衛正義和理性的手段。”丘吉爾強調道。“文明不會持久,自由不會生存,和平不會保持,”他宣稱,“除非絕大多數人類團結起來捍衛它們,並表明自己擁有一種警察權力,在野蠻人麵前
隨著時間的流逝,越來越多的人像我們一樣購物、學習、保持健康(或不健康)、購物和祈禱(或不祈禱)。漢堡、本生燈、創可貼、棒球帽和聖經:無論你走到哪裏,都無法輕易擺脫它們。隻有在政治製度領域,全球才存在著顯著的多樣性,世界各地的許多政府都抵製法治理念,反對以法治保護個人權利作為有意義的代議製政府的基礎。激進的伊斯蘭教試圖抵製二十世紀末西方性別平等和性自由規範的推進,與其說這是一種宗教,不如說是一種政治意識形態。9
簡而言之,西方文明的崛起是公元後第二個千年下半葉最重要的曆史現象,這並不是“歐洲中心主義”。這是一個顯而易見的陳述。西方文明既不是從文化上也不是從地理上定義的,而是從製度上定義的,它是迄今為止為工業社會設計的最成功的操作係統。因為說西方文明的勝利是因為帝國主義是沒有說服力的。許多其他文明也曾試圖建立帝國,但成功率要低得多。我認為,唯一可信的解釋是,西方文明的“殺手級應用”首先在西北地區發展起來,然後從那裏傳播開來:經濟和政治生活中的競爭都是合法的;基於實驗方法的科學革命;尼爾·弗格森 4 基於私有財產權的法治;現代醫學;消費社會;以及價值觀,無論是新教的還是其他的。這種製度方法的強大之處在於,它比其他強調地理、文化或帝國的模型更好地解釋了西方崛起的時間和地點。
衰落和沒落是否仍是西方文明的命運?從人口統計學角度來看,西方社會的人口長期以來隻占世界人口的少數,但今天這一比例顯然正在減少。美國和歐洲的經濟曾經如此占主導地位,現在麵臨著在二十年內被中國超越的現實前景(按當前美元計算)(按購買力平價計算,這已經發生了)。西方的“硬實力”似乎在大中東地區(從伊拉克到阿富汗)逐漸減弱,而關於自由市場經濟政策的“華盛頓共識”在金融危機中瓦解,這似乎揭示了消費社會核心的一個根本缺陷,即其強調債務驅動的零售療法。曾經被視為西方計劃核心的新教節儉倫理幾乎已經消失殆盡。與此同時,西方精英們幾乎被即將到來的環境災難的千年恐懼所困擾。
也許更重要的是,西方文明似乎對自己失去了信心。從 1963 年的斯坦福大學開始,一係列主要大學都停止向本科生提供經典的“西方文明”曆史課程,而恢複這門課程的嚐試也遭遇了徹底的失敗。在學校裏,西方崛起的宏大敘事也已經過時了。由於教育家們熱衷於以“新曆史”的名義將“曆史技能”提升到知識之上,再加上課程改革過程的意外後果,太多的英國學生在中學畢業時隻知道一些不相關的西方曆史片段:亨利八世和希特勒,還有一點馬丁·路德·金的曆史。對英國一所頂尖大學曆史係一年級本科生進行的一項調查顯示,隻有 34% 的人知道無敵艦隊時期的英國君主是誰,31% 的人知道布爾戰爭的地點,16% 的人知道誰指揮了滑鐵盧的英軍(認為是納爾遜而不是威靈頓的比例是該比例的兩倍多),11% 的人能說出一位 19 世紀的英國首相的名字。10 在對 11 至 18 歲英國兒童進行的類似調查中,17% 的人認為奧利弗·克倫威爾參加了黑斯廷斯戰役,25% 的人把第一次世界大戰的世紀搞錯了。此外,在英語世界,人們越來越認為,我們應該研究其他文化,而不是我們自己的文化。1977 年,旅行者號航天器送入外太空的音樂采樣器包含 27 首曲目ks,其中隻有十件來自西方作曲家,不僅包括巴赫、莫紮特和貝多芬,還包括路易斯·阿姆斯特朗、查克·貝裏和盲人威利·約翰遜。大英博物館館長於 2010 年出版的《100 件物品中的世界曆史》收錄的西方文明產品不超過三十件。12
這個問題的一個顯著例證是美國精英大學教授西方曆史的方式。如果有人問“現代曆史上最重要的事件是什麽?”,沒有兩個人,當然也沒有兩個曆史學家,會給出相同的答案。我認為,一份重要曆史主題的清單如果省略了以下二十個中的大多數,在任何知名報紙、雜誌、教科書或百科全書出版商眼中都會被視為不完整的。為了粗略地衡量這一意義的重要性,括號中的數字是過去 12 個月中這些術語在普通教授選擇的報紙《紐約時報》上出現的次數:
1. [任何時期] 英國曆史 (31) Niall Ferguson 5
2. 宗教改革 (52)
3. 科學革命 (8)
4. 啟蒙運動 (163)
5. 美國革命 (111)
6. 法國大革命 (11)
7. 美國憲法 (87)
8. 工業革命 (68)
9. 美國內戰 (13)
10. 德國統一 (2)
11. 第一次世界大戰 (609)
12. 俄國革命 (21)
13. 大蕭條 (245)
14. 法西斯主義的興起 (6)
15. 第三帝國(52)
16. 第二次世界大戰 (2,746)
17. 非殖民化 (16)
18. 冷戰 (846)
19. 以色列曆史 (7)
20. 歐洲一體化 (69)
在評估美國三大曆史係(哈佛、斯坦福和耶魯)提供的課程範圍時,我隻是將這份清單作為基準。如果你是 2016 年秋季在這些機構之一的本科生,你會發現這些課程涵蓋了哪些科目?
哈佛的答案是:不多。確切地說,一個有曆史傾向的學生會徒勞地尋找除七門課程以外的所有課程。德國統一、法西斯主義和第三帝國都包含在一門課程中,“HIST 1265:德意誌帝國,1848-1948”。還有一些課程涵蓋了俄國革命、大蕭條、冷戰和歐洲一體化。對於一個擁有 55 名教職員工的係來說,這有點微不足道,其中隻有 7 名被列為本學期休假。20 名哈佛曆史學家被列為美國曆史專家。然而,至少在上個學期,本科生徒勞地尋找有關美國革命、憲法製定和內戰的教育。
耶魯的情況乍一看更好,直到人們意識到幾乎所有的內容都由兩門課程提供:約翰·梅裏曼的“HIST 202:歐洲文明,1684-1945”,以及保羅·肯尼迪的“HIST 221:1500 年以來的西方軍事史”。除了這兩門課程外,去年秋季學期,隻有另外四名教職員工(該係共有 67 名教職員工)參與教授我列出的任何主題。同樣,斯坦福大學開設了六門與我們列表中的二十個主題相關的課程。剩下 42 名教師的興趣似乎在其他地方。
現在,這並不是說這三所大學提供的其他課程沒有價值。而是說,希望增加對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騙。當我們反思曆史係對美國和歐洲曆史的地理關注隨著時間的推移相對穩定時,這些發現就更加令人驚訝了。
值得一看的是 2016 年秋季哈佛、斯坦福和耶魯大學開設的一些課程。以哈佛 1954 年的曆史為例:“曆史中的情感”。Niall Ferguson 6 課程描述如下:“情感在曆史中的位置是什麽?這個問題本身有多重含義,在本課程中,我們特別考慮兩個:如何撰寫情感的曆史,以及曆史學家的情感如何影響曆史的寫作。曆史學家與曆史研究對象距離越近,獲益越多嗎?情感史學家應該壓抑還是培養同理心?情感寫作是否必然無法通過學術嚴謹性和平衡性的考驗?我們將探討情感史的一些可能的分析框架和關於曆史主觀性的辯論,並考慮將它們應用於澳大利亞曆史的案例研究。”根據 my.harvard 網站的數據,這門課程的總注冊人數為 1,這讓我覺得並不完全令人驚訝。
或者考慮以下耶魯大學提供的課程,這些課程是學生感興趣的選項之一野蠻和返祖的力量將令人敬畏。” 14 野蠻和返祖的力量今天也無處不在。但今天,和當時一樣,對西方文明的最大威脅不是來自其他文明,而是來自我們自己的膽怯——以及滋生這種膽怯的曆史無知。
注釋
1 亨廷頓,《文明的衝突》。
2 參見卡根的《天堂與權力》和最近的舒克的《海變》。 3 參見奧斯本的《文明》。
4 參見費爾南德斯-阿梅斯托的《千禧年》;古迪的《資本主義與現代性》和《歐亞奇跡》;黃的《轉型中的中國》。
5 麥克尼爾的《西方的崛起》。另見達爾文的《帖木兒之後》。
6 根據麥迪遜的《世界經濟》中的數據。
7 詳情見 Fogel 的《逃離饑餓》,第 9 頁,表 1.2 和第 13 頁,表 1.4。
8 數據來自 Chandler 的《城市增長》。
9 有關啟發性討論,請參閱 Scruton 的《西方和其他地區》。
10 Matthews 的《奇怪的死亡》;Guyver 的《英格蘭》。
11 Amanda Kelly 的《希特勒在戰爭中做了什麽,小姐?》《泰晤士報教育副刊》,2001 年 1 月 19 日。
12 MacGregor 的《世界曆史》。13 Churchill 的《文明》,第 45 頁及以下。14 Churchill 的《文明》,第 45 頁及以下。
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.