Related News
In defense of the maligned West
By Donald Kagan |
November 25, 2011, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THIS is a difficult time in which to present an account - and what amounts to a defense - of the West's rise to pre-eminence and its unequaled influence in shaping the world today. The West is on the defensive, challenged economically by the ascent of China and politically and militarily by a wave of Islamist hatred. Perhaps as great a challenge is internal. The study of Western civilization, which dominated American education after World War II, has long been under attack and is increasingly hard to find in our schools and colleges. When it is treated at all, the West is maligned because of its history of slavery and imperialism, an alleged addiction to war and its exclusion of women and nonwhites from its rights and privileges. Some criticize its study as narrow, limiting, arrogant and discriminatory, asserting that it has little or no value for those of non-European origins. Or it is said to be of interest chiefly as a horrible example.
Niall Ferguson thinks otherwise. A professor at both Harvard University and the Harvard Business School, he flatly rejects the view of those who find nothing worthwhile in it, calling their position "absurd." He recognizes both good and bad sides and decides in comparison with other civilizations, the better side "came out on top."
Many of the observations in "Civilization: The West and the Rest" will not win Ferguson friends among the fashionable in today's academy. He upbraids critics who speak scornfully of "'Eurocentrism' as if it were some distasteful prejudice."
"The scientific revolution was, by any scientific measure, wholly Eurocentric," he writes.
Ferguson pays due respect to the intellectual and scientific contributions of China and Islam, but makes it clear that modern science and technology are fundamentally Western products. He asks if any non-Western state can simply acquire scientific knowledge without accepting other key Western institutions like "private property rights, the rule of law and truly representative government."
Ferguson is so unfashionable as to speak in defense of imperialism: "It is a truth almost universally acknowledged in the schools and colleges of the Western world that imperialism is the root cause of nearly every modern problem, ... a convenient alibi for rapacious dictators like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe." Contradicting historians who "represent colonial officials as morally equivalent to Nazis or Stalinists," he points out that in most Asian and African countries "life expectancy began to improve before the end of European colonial rule."
Ferguson does not attempt a thorough investigation of the many charges made against the West or a defense against them. Instead, he addresses the difficult question: "Just why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?"
Niall Ferguson thinks otherwise. A professor at both Harvard University and the Harvard Business School, he flatly rejects the view of those who find nothing worthwhile in it, calling their position "absurd." He recognizes both good and bad sides and decides in comparison with other civilizations, the better side "came out on top."
Many of the observations in "Civilization: The West and the Rest" will not win Ferguson friends among the fashionable in today's academy. He upbraids critics who speak scornfully of "'Eurocentrism' as if it were some distasteful prejudice."
"The scientific revolution was, by any scientific measure, wholly Eurocentric," he writes.
Ferguson pays due respect to the intellectual and scientific contributions of China and Islam, but makes it clear that modern science and technology are fundamentally Western products. He asks if any non-Western state can simply acquire scientific knowledge without accepting other key Western institutions like "private property rights, the rule of law and truly representative government."
Ferguson is so unfashionable as to speak in defense of imperialism: "It is a truth almost universally acknowledged in the schools and colleges of the Western world that imperialism is the root cause of nearly every modern problem, ... a convenient alibi for rapacious dictators like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe." Contradicting historians who "represent colonial officials as morally equivalent to Nazis or Stalinists," he points out that in most Asian and African countries "life expectancy began to improve before the end of European colonial rule."
Ferguson does not attempt a thorough investigation of the many charges made against the West or a defense against them. Instead, he addresses the difficult question: "Just why, beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?"
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
