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Civilization: The West and the Rest

Page 52

by Niall Ferguson

taxation 38, 44, 106, 107, 117, 210–11, 288

  Taylor, James Hudson 280, 282

  technology see Industrial Revolution;

  science/technology

  Teller, Edward 235

  Tennyson, Alfred Lord xiv

  terrorism see violence/terrorism

  textile industry/trade 28, 198–9, 200, 203, 218–19, 239–40

  cotton 201, 202–3, 204, 218

  in India 224–5

  in Japan 223–4

  Thatcher, Margaret 252

  Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) 37

  Thuillier, Louis 169

  Tigris river/valley 17

  tobacco 46, 131

  Todd, John L. 169

  Tolstoy, Leo 270

  Toqué, Emile 165

  Touška, Ivan 247

  Toussaint ‘Louverture’, François-Dominique 160

  Townsend, Pete 274n

  Toynbee, Arnold: The Study of History 297

  trade/trade routes 9, 22, 29, 31, 161

  with China 29, 31, 35, 47, 48

  comparative advantage doctrine 202, 202n

  competition in 33–6, 48

  development of 33–6

  free markets 7, 17

  in Great Depression 229–30

  importance of 20, 46, 47, 48

  ocean freight 218–19

  in slaves 97, 129–36, 161; see also slavery

  in spices 33, 34, 36

  in sugar 129, 131–2, 160

  in textiles see textile industry/trade

  transatlantic 106, 115, 218–19

  trade monopolies 38

  trade tariffs 202–3, 229–30

  trade unions 238–9, 245

  trading companies 36, 38, 83, 161, 201, 278

  Trafalgar, battle of (1805) 160

  Trevithick, Richard 200

  Trotha, General Adrian Dietrich Lothar von 178–9, 181

  Troup, Bobby 274

  Tull, Jethro 27

  Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons 228

  Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, on civilization 2

  Turkey

  under Kemal Atatürk 90–93, 228

  Dolmabahçe palace 88, 90

  founding of 91

  as Islamist 253–5

  linguistic issues 90, 91–2

  as a secular state 92, 253

  see also Ottoman empire

  Twain, Mark, on imperialism 144

  Tyndale, Matthew 62

  Uganda 170

  Ulugh Beg 69

  unemployment 230–31, 232, 265, 265n

  see also labour market

  United Kingdom see Britain

  United Provinces 39, 104

  see also Low Countries

  United States (US) xvi, 5, 15, 16

  Christianity in 267, 270, 273–7

  colonial expansion 144

  economic growth/output xvi, 218, 307–12

  in First World War 182–3

  Great Depression 229–31

  Gullah Coast 135–6

  Japan and 221; in Second World War 233–5

  migrants to 219; South Americans 138–9

  population figures 218

  property rights 124

  racial issues 129, 133, 134–6, 137–9; Civil Rights movement 245; segregation 137–8, 177

  Russia and 236; Cold War 236–9

  St Louis World Fair (1904) 260–61

  in Second World War 233–5

  slavery in 129, 130, 132–3, 134–6

  student unrest 245

  trade with 218–19

  Max Weber in 260–61

  as a world power xvi–xvii, 97, 218, 257, 307–12

  see also America, North, British colonies; American …

  United States Army 234–5

  university education 7, 17–18, 92, 175, 244–5

  urbanization see cities

  Vaquette de Gribeauval, General 84

  Veblen, Thorstein 205

  Venezuela 119, 128, 139

  Caracas 129

  Catholicism in 120, 120n

  under Chávez 128

  property rights 119, 124, 128

  revolution in 119–22

  Verdun, battle of (1916) 183

  Vermeer, Jan xxiv

  Vesalius, Andreas 65

  Vespucci, Amerigo 96

  Vico, Giambattista: Scienza nuova 296

  Vienna, siege of (1683) 52, 53, 55, 57

  Vietnam 167

  see also Indo-China

  Vietnam War (1965–73) 245, 246

  violence/terrorism 246–7, 254n, 258, 288–9, 291

  homicide rates 24, 25, 105

  Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) 67, 70–71, 78, 79

  on China 46

  Diatribe du Docteur Akakia … 80

  Vordman, Adolphe 170

  Voulet, Paul 166

  wages 203, 210–11, 238

  Wagner, Richard 162, 162n, 206, 208

  Waldseemüller, Martin: Universalis cosmographia 96

  Wales, England and 24, 39

  see also Britain

  Wallace, George 137

  Wang Zhen: Treatise on Agriculture 28

  Wappers, Egide: Episode of the Belgian Revolution 162n

  Warburg, Siegmund 94

  warfare/weapons 4, 23, 24, 57, 82

  armed forces 215–16, 229, 233, 234, 236; colonial troops 164, 181–9; see also individual armies

  atomic weapons 235–6

  casualty figures 301–2

  Clausewitz on 157–8

  communications in 55, 181–2

  definition 157–8

  financing of 161

  gunpowder 28

  imperialism as conquest 99–102

  military technology 37, 41, 57, 65n; ballistics 83–5

  military uniforms 215–16, 229, 233, 234, 237

  naval 37, 160

  religious 9, 12, 38–9

  Lewis Fry Richardson on 301–2, 301n

  siege warfare 52, 54–7

  strategy/tactics 84, 85, 133; Inca 100

  see also individual battles/conflicts

  Washington, George 116, 116n, 117

  water supplies 145, 145n

  Waterloo, battle of (1815) 160

  Watt, James 70, 200, 201, 202, 204, 206n

  Waugh, Evelyn, on Catholicism 269–70

  Weber, Max 259–60, 270

  on China 21, 264

  on the Jews 262

  on Protestantism 259, 260–64, 276, 283

  in US 260–61

  on Western ascendancy 11

  Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel 94

  Wenzel von Liechtenstein, Prince Joseph 84

  the West

  definition 14–16; by Samuel Huntington 15, 16

  Islam and 39, 50–57, 63, 85–90, 255

  loss of confidence by 17–18

  Ottoman empire and 52, 53, 63, 86–90

  Roman Empire in 16–17

  Western ascendancy

  competition and 12, 13, 19–49

  consumerism and 12, 13, 195, 196–255

  Jared Diamond on 11–12

  health issues and 12, 13, 146–8, 168–75, 191

  Samuel Johnson on 10

  David Landes on 11

  legal systems and 8, 12, 13; see also property rights

  reasons for xv–xvi, xxvi, 1–8, 96–7, 195

  science/technology and 10–11, 13, 50–95

  threats to 17–18, 255, 256–94, 295–325; economic crises 257, 258, 259, 260–64, 276, 283

  Max Weber on 11

  work ethic and 12, 13, 259–94

  see also individual countries

  Whittington, Richard (Dick) 22, 23

  Wilde, Oscar 208–9

  William II, Kaiser 178

  William of Orange, as King of England 104–5, 107

  Willoughby, Hugh 36

  Wilson, Paul 248

  Wilson, President Woodrow 227

  witch doctors 171, 172

  witches/witchcraft 63–4, 114

  Wittfogel, Karl, o
n Oriental despotism 42

  Wolle, Stefan 244

  women

  in Japan 222

  measurements, scientific study of 237

  as missionaries 282

  women workers 224

  women’s education 94, 244

  women’s fashion/clothing 216, 220, 246

  Islamic 253–5, 253n

  Woodruff, Robert W. 243

  Woolwich Academy of Engineering and Artillery 85

  work ethic 12, 17, 259–94

  definition 13

  working hours 265, 277

  World Values Survey 266, 267

  Wren, Christopher 69–70

  Wu, Y. T. 283

  Yersin, Alexandre 169

  Young, Brigham 241

  young people

  as consumers see consumerism

  Islamic organizations for 290

  power/influence of 244–9, 253–4

  Yuan Zhiming 287

  Zhang, Hanping 285

  Zhao Xiao 287

  Zheng He, Admiral (Chinese explorer) 28–9, 32, 37, 48

  Zhou Enlai 283

  Zhou Shixiu 26–7

  Zhuo Xinping 287

  Zong (slave ship) 132–3

  * Which he called ‘the first English newspaper for which the word “news” lost its old meaning of facts which a reader ought to know … and acquired the new meaning of facts, or fictions, which it might amuse him to read’.

  † After he was briefly arrested for defying her father, she quipped: ‘John Donne – Anne Donne – Un-done.’ No wonder he loved her.

  * The eleven were Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Of these only France, Portugal and Spain existed in 1500 in anything resembling their early twentieth-century form. For Russia’s claim to be considered a part of the West, see below.

  * This question was indeed being posed in non-Western empires in the eighteenth century. In 1731 the Ottoman writer İbrahim Müteferrika asked: ‘Why do Christian nations, which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations, begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?’

  * It is an idiosyncratic notion that one of the world’s most venerable civilizations should have a name that no one but a political theorist has ever heard of. In his original 1993 essay, Huntington used ‘Confucian’.

  * There was a seventh voyage in 1430–33. It has been claimed by Gavin Menzies that Chinese ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope, sailed up the west coast of Africa to the Cape Verde Islands, crossed the Atlantic and then continued as far as Tierra del Fuego and the coast of Australia; and that one of Zheng He’s admirals may have reached Greenland, returning to China along the north coast of Siberia and through the Bering Strait. The evidence for these claims is at best circumstantial and at worst non-existent.

  * Crucially, the Ottoman claim to the caliphate was rejected and resisted by the Shi’a Muslims of Persia and by the less doctrinaire Mughals in India.

  † Suleiman’s full title was: ‘His Imperial Majesty The Sultan Süleyman I, Sovereign of the Imperial House of Osman, Sultan of Sultans, Khan of Khans, Commander of the Faithful and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, Protector of the Holy Cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, Emperor of The Three Cities of Constantinople, Adrianople and Bursa, and of the Cities of Damascus and Cairo, of all Armenia, of the Magris, of Barka, of Kairuan, of Aleppo, of Arabic Iraq and of Ajim, of Basra, of El Hasa, of Dilen, of Raka, of Mosul, of Parthia, of Diyarbakır, of Cilicia, of the Vilayets of Erzurum, of Sivas, of Adana, of Karaman, of Van, of Barbary, of Abyssinia, of Tunisia, of Tripoli, of Damascus, of Cyprus, of Rhodes, of Candia, of the Vilayet of the Morea, of the Marmara Sea, the Black Sea and also its coasts, of Anatolia, of Rumelia, Baghdad, Kurdistan, Greece, Turkistan, Tatary, Circassia, of the two regions of Kabarda, of Georgia, of the plain of Kypshak, of the whole country of the Tatars, of Kefa and of all the neighbouring countries, of Bosnia and its dependencies, of the City and Fort of Belgrade, of the Vilayet of Serbia, with all the castles, forts and cities, of all Albania, of all Iflak and Bogdania …’

  * Leopold embodied both the Habsburg family’s capacity for acquiring territory by marriage rather than war and its attendant difficulties arising from inbreeding. He was christened Leopold Ignaz Joseph Balthasar Felician von Habsburg, and his full titulature when he was elected holy Roman emperor was ‘Leopold I, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Rama, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Cumania, Bulgaria, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Margrave of Moravia, Duke of Luxemburg, of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Württemberg and Teck, Prince of Swabia, Count of Habsburg, Tyrol, Kyburg and Goritia, Landgrave of Alsace, Marquis of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgovia, the Enns, the Higher and Lower Lusace, Lord of the Marquisate of Slavonia [and] of Port Naon and Salines’. Afflicted with an especially pronounced lower jaw (the notorious ‘Habsburg lip’), Leopold married three times: first the Spanish Margarita Teresa, who was both his niece and first cousin, then the Tyrolean Archduchess Claudia Felicitas and finally Princess Eleanore of Neuburg. He had sixteen children in all, only four of whom outlived him.

  * The story may have originated with Alfred Gottschalk, author of the first edition of the Larousse Gastronomique (1938). At first he attributed the croissant to the siege of Budapest in 1686, when a baker supposedly alerted the authorities to the sound of Turkish tunnelling. In a later publication Gottschalk changed the setting to Vienna in 1683.

  * The Authorized Version (as the King James Bible of 1611 came to be known) stands alongside the plays of William Shakespeare among the greatest works of English literature. The team of forty-seven scholars who produced it were let down by the royal printers only once. The 1631 edition – known as ‘the Wicked Bible’ – omitted the word ‘not’ from the commandment ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’

  * Of the world’s most important scientific breakthroughs – 369 events that are mentioned in literally all reference works on the history of science – an astonishingly high proportion (38 per cent) happened between the beginning of the Reformation and the beginning of the French Revolution. The role of freedom of thought, both religious and political, is a key variable in Charles Murray’s remarkable but neglected theory of human accomplishment. Murray also identifies the positive contributions of urbanization and, perhaps paradoxically, military conflict. As we shall see, the relationship between warfare and scientific progress was very close indeed.

  * In their travels, Candide, Cunégonde and the Leibnizian Dr Pangloss and Cacambo suffer or witness flogging, war, syphilis, shipwreck, hanging, an earthquake, enslavement, bestiality, illness and death by firing squad.

  * Jerusalem was temporarily seized by Arab forces in 1948 after heavy fighting that saw the expulsion of the Jewish community and the destruction of the city’s old synagogues. However, by the time of the January 1949 ceasefire, Israel had staked a claim to the new city (West Jerusalem) and the old Jewish quarter. Transjordan claimed East Jerusalem, along with the West Bank of the Jordan. For nearly two decades the city was divided in two, much as Berlin was between 1961 and 1989, though without international recognition for the arrangement. But then, in the Six Day War of 1967, East Jerusalem was ‘liberated’ by the Israel Defence Forces, again in defiance of the UN. Under Mayor Teddy Kollek, large parts of Arab Jerusalem were destroyed, including the Maghribi Quarter. The policy of building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem was also designed to make Israeli control permanent. Yet recurrent bouts of violence, notably the youth-led Arab intifadas, have tended to restore the division of the city, while persuading many Israelis that a return to the pre-1967 borders must be part of an enduring peace settlement. Nevertheless, Israeli law still asserts that ‘Jerusalem, completed and unified, is the capital of Israel’. Since 1988, meanwhile, the
Palestinians have claimed the city (which they call al-Quds al-Sharif) as their capital. At the time of writing, any compromise on the issue is hard to imagine.

 

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