Renowned economic historian Niall Ferguson discussed the financial and power differential between the West and the rest of the world during yesterday's 15th Richard E. Snyder President's Lecture.
Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences James Glaser and University President Anthony Monaco welcomed Ferguson to campus during the event held in Distler Performance Hall. Both highlighted Ferguson's academic credentials and ability to challenge conventional beliefs, a keystone of the Snyder Lecture series.
"He is one of the world's leading historians of the global economy," Monaco said. "He has been called one of the most talented British historians of his generation."
Ferguson, a prolific author and frequent media commentator, regularly appears in media outlets such as Bloomberg Television and Newsweek. He was among the few academics to accurately predict the recession of the late 2000s.
The lecture, titled "The Financial Crisis and the Descent of the West," was a brief preview of his upcoming book, "The West and the Rest." Yesterday marked the first time Ferguson discussed his new work with an audience in the United States.
"I want to assess the events of the financial crisis and set them in a broader historical framework, so that we don't simply focus on the short?run ups and downs of the stock market," Ferguson said.
This broader historical context involves examining the West's divergence from the rest of the world in terms of wealth and dominance over the last 500 years.
"Most of the world's wealth is owned by Westerners," Ferguson said. "Why was it that this minority of mankind became so much richer than everybody else?"
He said that an understanding of the differential between the Western and non?Western nations is a cornerstone of modern economic history.
His upcoming book is an attempt to analyze this divergence in a way that appeals to the younger generation. To that end, Ferguson focused on explaining the six key institutions that underlie the West's success in terminology more accessible to youth today.
"What is it that they most care about? They care about their phones," he said. "So I said, instead of boringly arguing that there were six key institutions, I said, kids, there were six killer apps!"
The West's so?called "killer applications" are competition, the Scientific Revolution, private property rights, modern medicine, consumer society and work ethic, Ferguson said.
Through the development of these institutions, the West was able to successfully establish its dominance, he said.
The introduction of a rigorous scientific method during the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, he argued, was purely a Western invention that allowed the West to overtake earlier scientific gains of the Arab, Indian and Chinese civilizations.
Ferguson also emphasized that the consumer society of the West was one of the main drivers of the industrial revolution, which further established the region's dominance.
"There could not have been an industrial revolution if there had not been an almost infinitely elastic demand for clothes," he said. "People have an insatiable appetite for clothes, quite different from their appetite for spices."
The last institution Ferguson highlighted was the West's emphasis on hard work, alluding to the fabled Puritan work ethic.
Today, a strong work ethic is largely becoming a hallmark of Asian countries, he said, citing recent labor statistics comparing Western and Asian countries.
"Today, the work ethic doesn't live here any more," he said. "The work ethic moved, and it moved to Asia."
He then shifted the focus of his lecture to the end of Western dominance and ascendancy.
"Could it be that on our generation's watch, 500 years of Western ascendancy is ending? There is compelling evidence that it is ending on our watch," Ferguson said, adding that he sees this as a reason for celebration rather than sorrow.
"What we see here is a dramatic reduction in the differential between the West and the rest," he said. "And it's falling fast. The differential has narrowed incredibly fast since I was 14."
The financial crises of Western countries, including the recession of the late 2000s and the ongoing troubles in the European Union, are simply speeding up this process, he said.
"We're living through the end of Western dominance," Ferguson said. "The killer apps have been downloaded and as they are downloaded, the shift from the West to the rest is speeding up. This is not a bad thing."
But all is not lost for the West, he maintained. The fact that other countries are "downloading" Western applications implies that the world is in some ways still moving "our way."
The Snyder lecture series, established in 2004, is designed to provoke dialogue about contemporary issues on the Hill. Funding for the series is provided by Richard Snyder (A '55), former chairman and CEO of Simon & Schuster.
