Why the West Rules for Now Prcis of Ian Morriss book Archaeologist Ian Morriss book Why

the West Rules for Now takes a look at over 15 000 years of history to offer fresh insights into why development differed in the East and West and what the future will bring. It looks at the patterns of history to see what they reveal about the future. All his findings are based totally on archaeological digs that have been discovered and dated back to different time periods in history. Social development and the paradox of development In it, Morris builds a central thesis that development is the process whereby lazy, greedy, frightened people are constantly looking for easier, more profitable and safer ways to do things, which results in changes that create successful developments. But these successes in turn create new problems that need to be solved this Morris refes to as the paradox of development. People confront and solve these new problems every day, which is why social development has kept moving upward over time. However, at certain times, the process of development creates tough ceilings that will yield only to truly transformative changes. During these times, if societies fail to solve the problems that confront them, a terrible package of ills that Morris calls the 5 horsemen of the apocalypse are let loose famine, disease, uncontrolled migration, state failure and climate change causing developmental stagnation and ultimate decline. Throughout history the East and West have gone through the same stages of social development in the last 15000 years, in the same order, because they have been peopled by the same kinds of human beings who generate the same kinds of history. But they have not done so at the same times or at the same speeds. Morris suggests that biology and sociology explain the global similarities between East and West while geography explains the regional differences and explains why the West rules for now. Throughout time East and West have faced disruptions in social development that were either manmade, such as violence and warfare, power struggles, political ambition, migration and regime changes, or initiated by nature. Climate change is beyond human control and usually caused much more severe disruptions than manmade challenges. History illustrates that when climate change, famine, state failure and migration join together with disease, social development disruptions can turn into collapses, driving social development down. We can also see that developmental collapse comes out of the interactions between natural and human forces and that bigger more complex societies generate bigger more threatening upheavals, increasing the risk that disruptions such as climate change and migration will set off collapse. In big complex societies, when one kingdom fell, it affected others and chaos extends and drags everyone down. This is familiar in our own age where the rise of international finance in the capitalist nations of Europe and America have helped to push social development upward faster than ever before. But these linkages have also made it possible for the American bubble in 2008 to shake virtually the whole world. Another point is that while bigger more complex societies generate bigger more threatening disruptions, they also offer more and more sophisticated ways to respond to them. A look at human history The West can be defined as the modern day Middle East beginning with Iraq and Iran, together with Western Europe and the US. In history these were the ancient Ottoman Empires, Europe and the New World of the US. Looking over history we notice a number of great geographical contrasts between the East and the West. Firstly, at the end of the Ice Age 15 000 years ago, global warming marked off a band of lucky latitudes where an abundance of large, potentially domesticable plants and animals evolved. In these latitudes developed the first farmers who settled in villages and domesticated plants and animals starting before 9000 BCE (formerly BC). From these first farmers descended the societies of the West. 2000 years later people in what is now China moved the same way and from them

descended the societies of the East. Because Westerners were the first to farm, and because people are all much the same, Westerners were also the first to feel the paradox of development in a serious way and the first to learn what Morris refers to as the advantages of backwardness. As farming spread far and wide, people in new lands had to adjust it to work in their environment and in this way found ways to make it more fruitful than the original agricultural regions. Sometime after 4000 BCE these new farming areas in the Middle East began to organise themselves into cities and states. About 2000 years later this process played out in the East too. The second great geographical contrast between East and West was that the East had no extraordinary inland sea which could provide them with cheap and easy transport. The Mediterranean offered the West these transport opportunities, but with them came many challenges in the paradox of development caused by a drought at that time. Because these challenges were not overcome, the 5 horsemen of the apocalypse brought in Western region collapse. Before the developmental collapse of 12001000 BCE, Western social development had been running well ahead of the East for 13 000 years. By 200 BCE the East and West had more in common than at any other time since the Ice Age. Each was dominated by a single great empire with tens of millions of subjects. Each had a literate, sophisticated elite, living in great cities fed by highly productive farmers and supplied by elaborate trade networks. This shows that people are all much the same. Despite being divided by the vast expanses of Central Asia and the Indian Ocean, East and West had followed separate but similar histories in virtual isolation from each other, differing chiefly in the fact that the West still narrowly kept the lead in social development that the geography of domesticable plants and animals had given it at the end of the Ice Age. The first century CE (Formerly AD) brought with it the First Old World Exchange between the Roman Empire in the West and the Han Empire in China. The growing movement between East and West brought a shared material culture as merchants and warriors passed Eastern and Western ideas, art and weapons from hand to hand. But the most important cargoes moving between East and West were germs syphilis, smallpox, measles and meningitis. The Western and Eastern cores had evolved their own unique combination of deadly diseases in the thousands of years previous. But as more merchants and nomads moved along the chains linking the societies, the disease pools merge setting loose horrors for everyone in Rome, the New World and China. The consequences were devastating cities shrank, trade declined, tax revenues fell and fields were abandoned. Evidence also suggests that during the same period the weather turned, ending the Roman warm period with average temperatures falling 2 degrees between 200 and 500 CE. Cooler summers reduced evaporation over the oceans and rainfall declined as well. In China and Western Europe populations fell, thistles and forest reclaimed fields and life grew shorter and meaner. By 541 CE the Easts social development score overtook the Wests, ending a 14 000 year old pattern of Western leadership. By 1100 the gap between East and West was bigger than it had been for two and a half thousand years. The West, split between a Muslim core and a Christian periphery, now lagged far behind and would not match the Easts level of development until the 18th century, on the eve of Britains industrial revolution. Every indication was that the huge Eastern lead would turn social development into Eastern rule. The West was plagued by wars, conflicts over taxes and religious upheavals. Bubonic plague carried by fleas and rats from Africa took hold in the West due to ever warming temperatures. The fundamental contrast between East and West which determined how the shocks of war and disease affected development had to do with geography. While the West had productive farmers, they were nothing like the Easts booming rice paddies. Also, it was thought that Eastern iron masters and mill owners were on their way to unleashing the power of fossil fuels and beginning an industrial revolution. By 1100 the first true age of technological transfer between East and West began (The Second Old

World Exchange), to the advantage of the West, bringing with it the wheelbarrow and horse collars and most importantly cheap castiron tools, paper, the magnetic compass and guns. By 1295 the Easts lead was shrinking. The East remained a traditional economy and did not engage in an industrial revolution unleashing the power of fossil fuels. Also, Europeans were on the move, travelling all over the world. Eastern dominance was turned into decline by Genghis Khans Mongol army. Natural disasters such as floods, famine, migration, state collapse and disease reduced the population by a quarter and the gap between East and West started closing. By 1400 a new core was forming in the West and having it own renaissance in Western Europe. Shipbuilding and gunnery, technologies that Western Europeans had learned from the East during the Second Old World Exchange allowed them to turn the Atlantic Ocean into a highway, once again transforming the meaning of geography. Eager to tap into the wealth of the East, Western sailors fanned out and bumped into the Americas. Geography had made it harder for Easterners to discover the Americas in the 15th century as they had much further to travel. In the 17th century the expansion of the cores changed the meaning of geography again. Centralized empires with muskets and cannons closed the inner Asian steppe highway that linked East and West ending nomadic migration and killing one of the horsemen of the apocalypse. The Atlantic oceanic highway was used by Western European merchants to open new markets. The powers of coal and steam were realised and Western Europe was able to smash through the ceiling of development. Between 1500 and 1800 Eastern and Western development rose, but the Wests development was faster and overtook the Easts by 1800, ending the twelvehundred year Eastern age. Given more time, Easterners would probably have made the same discoveries and had their own industrial revolution, but geography made it easier for Westerners and so they got there first The West rules because of better geography Early developments in the Western and Eastern cores were mostly similar, nothing giving Western culture greater potential than Eastern culture. However, thanks to geography the West got a 2000 year head start in development, retained that lead long enough to arrive first at industrialization and therefore dominates the world. From this look at history we see that each age gets the thought it needs and resulting in new developments at that time, born out of these new needs. Intellectuals ask the questions that the social development of that time forces them into. The industrial revolution was unique in how much and how fast it drove up social development but otherwise was very like all the upswings in earlier history. Like all those episodes of rapidly rising development, it happened in an area that had until recently been peripheral to the main story. Since the origins of agriculture, the major cores had expanded through various combinations of colonization and imitation, with populations on the periphery adopting what worked in the core and adapting it to different environments. Sometimes this process revealed the advantages in backwardness finding better ways of doing things by adapting existing techniques to new areas. Western Europeans succeeded where the Romans and Song empires had failed because 3 things had changed. First, technology had gone on accumulating and they could now do more than before. Second, because technology had accumulated, agrarian empires now had effective guns to close the steppe highway. When social development accumulated, the fifth horseman of the apocalypse migration did not ride. The societies were able to cope with the other 4 horsemen and avert collapse. Third, again, largely because technology had accumulated, ships could now sail almost anywhere they wanted allowing Western Europeans to create an Atlantic economy unlike anything seen before. Neither the Romans nor the Song dynasties had been in a position to build such vast engines of commercial growth. The west rules for now because of geography. Biology tells us why humans push social development upward, sociology tells us how they do this and geography tells us why the West has for the last 200 years dominated the globe. Biology and sociology provide universal laws, applying

to all humans in all times and places, but geography explains differences. Over time people constantly tinker, making their lives easier or richer or struggling to hold onto what they have and nudging social development forward. the origins of agriculture, the rise of cities and states, the creation of different kinds of empires, the industrial revolution were all the result of desperate times calling for desperate measures. History has been the same old same old, a single grand and relentless process of adaptations to the world that always generates new problems that call for further adaptations. This process is the paradox of development. People confront and solve such paradoxes every day, but once in a while the paradox creates a tough ceiling that will yield only to truly transformative change. If societies do not figure out how to smash the ceiling, their problems spiral out of control as the 5 horsemen of the apocalypse break loose and famine, disease, migration and state collapse, particularly when they coincide with climate change, will drive development down. What does this tell us about the future? If social development in the East and West keeps rising at the same speed as in the 20th century, the East will regain the lead at the turn of the century if Eastern development continues as it has over the last century. Eastern cities are already as large as Western cities and the gap between the total economic output of China and the US is narrowing as Eastern Development outpaces the West at present. The American National Intelligence Council thinks Chinas output will catch up with the US in 2036, Goldman Sachs thinks it will happen in 2027 and PWC thinks it will take place in 2025. It will take longer for the Easts war making capacity, information technology and energy capture to overtake the Wests, but it seems reasonable to suspect that after 2050 Eastern social development will catch up quickly. However, in order to see what will happen in the future you need to factor in the paradox of development, identify advantages of backwardness and foresee how geography will shape social development. Since 2000 an unusual relationship between the US and China has evolved. In order to keep the US able to buy more and more cheap Chinese products, China lent the US money to keep buying Eastern goods. It did this by investing its huge current account surplus in dollar denominated securities. This dependent relationship between the Chinese and US economies has delivered spectacular economic growth but it could not go on forever as we saw with the 2008 economic crash. It is too soon to write off the US which has reinvented itself more than once in history. And China is not without its problems, including losing some of the advantages of backwardness, an aging population, a shortage of natural resources and political and civil unrest. Looking ahead, it is thought that the East will adapt the industrialism, capitalism and liberalism invented in the 19th century by the Western core, to their own needs. But do not forget the 5 horsemen of the apocalypse that could ride loose again and disrupt development. The first of these is global warming. This is the ultimate example of the paradox of development because the fossil fuels that drove the leap in social development since 1800 have filled the air with carbon, trapping heat and will eventually cause temperatures to rise by up to 5 degrees, raising sea levels and causing more natural disasters. Famine is another horseman that could ride again in the future. Today the paradox of development is at work in agriculture. As wealth rises, farmers feed more cheap grain to animals so we can eat expensive meat or turn more acres over to biofuels so we can drive cars without oil. This increases staple food prices making the poor hungrier. With world populations set to reach 9 billion by 2050, food price volatility and food shortages will increase. Geography will continue to be unfair in the 21st century. Global warming will raise crop yields in cold, rich countries but will have the opposite effect in Africa and Asia where most of the worlds poor live potentially unleashing the last 3 horsemen of the apocalypse (migration, state failure and disease). Every year the threats from the horsemen of the apocalypse keep building. Pressure on resources will mount, new diseases will evolve, nuclear weapons will proliferate and global warming will

shift weather patterns. As surely as geography dictated that the West would rule, it also dictates that the East will catch up, exploiting the advantages of its backwardness until its social development overtakes the Wests. Lets hope that before then our age will get the thought it needs to avert the threats from the horsemen of the apocalypse and enable social development to continue to rise in a sustainable way. To try to summarise the more than 1000 pages of Morriss book into the 5 short pages of this prcis really does not do justice to the excellent work of Morris, and so it is highly recommend that readers read the book for themselves.