Civilization: The West And The Rest By Niall Ferguson

How Science Helped the West Surpass the East Civilization: The West and the Rest, presented by Niall Ferguson, is a documentary in which Ferguson reveals what he calls the six killer applications and how these apps have helped Western civilization dominate over everyone else. These six applications are competition, science, property, medicine, consumerism, and work. The application and episode that will be analyzed for this paper is Competition, and the reasons for which Ferguson believes that competition has helped the West come to be number one. Over 500 years ago, it was the East, specifically China, who was considered the most advanced civilization in the world while Europe was stranded in the Dark Ages. Ferguson asks, “Why was the

Ferguson proves this by discussing how one emperor of the Ming Dynasty had grand ships, ten times the size of the Santa Maria, built by the dozens, in order to explore all the way to Greenland and East Africa. Regrettably, the emperor’s main goal was simply to show off China’s supremacy. Because of this, the only thing China had to show for its supremacy and exploration were exotic animals, such as the giraffe, which he brought back from Africa. Unfortunately, after the death of the emperor, China’s dreams of expansion died along with him. The new emperor discontinued exploration altogether as well as destroyed the enormous ships and made it punishable by death to build any more ships that had more than to masts. Not only did he make exploration and expansion implausible, but also had all the records of the previous explorations destroyed. Because of this refusal, China began to turn inward on itself, thereby causing the beginning of its decline. Per Ferguson, “China’s failure to exploit its advantages, left the path of overseas expansion wide open for the West.” It was Portugal that jumped

Competition in the West grew as states and city states competed amongst each other, compared to China’s one vast empire where competition did not exist. One example that Ferguson gives to show how the West was ahead of the East was with the mechanical clock. While China had originally invented the clock, it was the Europeans who perfected it. The intricate craftsmanship of the clock was an example of Europe’s cutting edge technology, which they would send to foreigners to show off. The clock was so sophisticated that the Chinese weren’t even able to fix them when they broke. In 1368, China was the world’s most sophisticated civilization and remained as such for over a century under the Ming Dynasty. However, by the mid-seventeenth century political factionalism, fiscal crisis, and famine opened the door for rebellion and invasion. This caused upsetting results, such as conflict and disease which reduced China’s population by 20 percent. Ferguson states that China turning inward on itself, proved fatal for a complex and densely populated society like China’s. In contrast, while in England as population grew, trade brought an inflow of new nutrients, like potatoes and sugar. Colonization allowed for immigration of an excess amount of people, which over time caused the rise of productivity and income. The English even found