A negative outlook

Why, the energetic historian Niall Ferguson asks in his new book, did a minority of people stuck out on the extreme western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the world in cultural, political and economic terms for more than half a millennium? This, he says, ‘seems to me the most interesting question a historian of the modern era can ask’. Its supplementary — to which he only tentatively suggests answers — is ‘is it all over?’

Make no mistake [he writes], this is not another self-satisfied version of ‘the triumph of the West’. I want to show that it was not just Western superiority that led to the conquest and colonisation of so much of the rest of the world; it was also the fortuitous weakness of the West’s rivals.

In other words, it’s not just that we were great; everyone else was rubbish, too.

In the pages that follow, Ferguson races through a history of civilisation, explaining the hows and arguing the whys.