Civilization The West And The Rest Summary

Civilization: the West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson is a nonfiction book dedicated to answering the question: What makes a civilization such as the West more successful than the rest? The author believes that the secret lies within six “killer applications” that have been acquired over time: competition, science, property, medicine, consumption, and work.
To start off, the first of the ‘killer applications’ that Ferguson identifies is competition. He begins with a comparison of the 15th century East and West by way of their two rivers: the Yangzi and the Thames. The Yangzi River was part of a thousand mile long waterway system, packed with barges and ships whilst in comparison, London had a meager population of around 40,000 due to bad sanitation
The Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent was unmistakably the most advanced of the empires in the sciences, inventing algebra and many other areas of science. However, after the Ottomans were defeated at the Siege of Vienna, the empire’s brilliance disappeared as science was soon banned in the name of Islam. Meanwhile, the introduction of the printing press in Europe revolutionized the way information was stored and circulated, but the Ottomans rejected the press in their reverence for calligraphy. From the 1500’s to the late 1700’s, all major scientific discoveries and inventions, such as the telescope, the heliocentric theory, Newton’s Laws, and etc. were concentrated in Europe. To further illustrate his point, the author compares Sultan Osman III, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, and Frederick the Great of Prussia. While the Sultan experienced widespread corruption due to his unorganized governmental system, Frederick the Great’s ideals of a rigid system and putting the people’s interests above his own allowed his empire to
During Napoleon's reign of the French Empire the French tried colonize numerous towns in Africa (along with the rest of Europe, namely the British) Napoleon and the rest of his competitors dreamed of peaceful and charming European communities in the midst of tropical Africa. Unfortunately, when the first European colonies settled in Africa and began moving closer to the center, many people fell sick of tropical diseases and died. Due to this, researching diseases and creating cures to illnesses became crucial to allow the Europeans colonize Africa, who eventually raised the general life expectancy from 30 to about 65 in only 60 years.