Civilización

A world traveler in 1411 would have been dazzled by the mighty Eastern civilizations. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming China; in the Middle East, the Ottomans stalked Constantinople. In contrast, the warlike countries of Western Europe, England, Scotland, Castile, Aragon, France, and Portugal, were poor and backward, weakened by epidemics, poor sanitation, and incessant warfare. As for North America, in the fifteenth century it was a sparsely populated and anarchic space compared to the impressive and organized empires of the Incas and Aztecs. The idea that the West could come to dominate the rest of the world for the next half millennium would have seemed delusional. And yet that is what happened. What enabled Western European civilization to dominate the seemingly superior Eastern empires? According to Niall Ferguson, the West managed to develop six powerful instruments: competition, science, the rule of law, medicine, the consumer society, and the work ethic. The fundamental question today is whether the West has lost its monopoly on these six levers of global power. To find out, Civilization takes us on an extraordinary journey around the world, from the Grand Canal in Nanjing to Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island in Namibia; from the high towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailing ships, missiles, land titles, vaccines, jeans, and Chinese Bibles. It is the definitive version of contemporary global history.