How the West became so dominant

Niall Ferguson has a zippy essay in The Times today previewing his forthcoming TV series and book on why the West became so dominant over the past 600 years. He argues that there are six features of the Western system that gave it its edge:

“1. Competition: a decentralisation of political and economic life, which created the launch pad for both nation states and capitalism. 2. Science: a way of understanding and ultimately changing the natural world, which gave the West (among other things) a major military advantage over the Rest. 3. Property rights: the rule of law as a means of protecting private owners and peacefully resolving disputes between them, which formed the basis for the most stable form of representative government. 4. Medicine: a branch of science that allowed a major improvement in health and life expectancy, beginning in Western societies, but also in their colonies. 5. The consumer society: a mode of material living in which the production and purchase of clothing and other consumer goods play a central economic role, and without which the Industrial Revolution would have been unsustainable.