WHY THE WEST RULES—FOR NOW:
THE PATTERNS OF HISTORY, AND WHAT THEY REVEAL
ABOUT THE FUTURE
BY IAN MORRIS
Figure 1.1
Before “East” and “West” meant much: locations in the Old World mentioned in this chapter
Figure 1.2
The beginnings of East and West? This map shows the Movius Line, which for about a million
years separated Western hand-ax-using cultures from Eastern flake-and-chopper-using cultures.
Figure 1.3
The unity of mankind restored: the spread of fully modern humans out of Africa between
roughly 60,000 and 12,000 years ago. The numbers show how many years ago humans arrived in
each part of the world and the coastlines represent those of the late Ice Age, around 20,000 years
ago.
Figure 1.5
The beginnings of Western culture? The open circles show cave paintings 12,000 or more years
old, and the solid circles show finds of portable art of the same age.
Figure 2.1
The big picture: this chapter’s story seen at the global scale
Figure 2.2
A story written in ice: the ratio between oxygen isotopes in air bubbles trapped in the Antarctic
ice pack, revealing the swings between warm/wet and cold/dry weather across the last twenty
thousand years
Figure 2.3
The beginning of the West: sites in and around the Hilly Flanks discussed in this chapter
Figure 2.4
Going forth and multiplying, version one: the westward spread of domesticated plants from the
Hilly Flanks to the Atlantic, 9000–4000 BCE
Figure 2.5
A story written in blood: Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s interpretation of Europe’s genetic makeup, based
on a massive sample of nuclear DNA. He concluded that this map, showing degrees of genetic
similarity of modern populations to the hypothesized colonists from the Hilly Flanks, with 8
representing complete similarity and 1 the lowest level of correspondence (measuring the first
principal component in his statistical manipulation of the results, accounting for 95 percent of the
variation in the sample), showed that colonists descended from the Hilly Flanks spread
agriculture across Europe. But many archaeologists and some geneticists disagree.
Figure 2.6
Promised lands: seven regions around the world where domestication of plants or animals may
have begun independently between 11,000 and 5000 BCE
Figure 2.7
The beginning of the East: sites in what is now China discussed in this chapter
Figure 2.8
Going forth and multiplying, version two: the expansion of agriculture from the Yellow-Yangzi
valleys, 6000–1500 BCE
Table 2.1
The beginnings of East and West compared
Figure 3.1
The Great Chain of Energy in numbers: the geoscientist Earl Cook’s estimates of energy capture
per person per day, from the time of Homo habilis to 1970s America
Figure 3.2
Shifting centers of power: the sometimes slow, sometimes rapid relocation of the most highly
developed core within the Western and Eastern traditions since the end of the Ice Age
Figure 3.3
Keeping score: Eastern and Western social development since 14,000 BCE
Figure 3.4
The $8 million cup of coffee: compound interest plotted on a conventional graph. Even though
the cost of a cup of coffee spirals from $1 to $8,192 across fourteen weeks, the race to financial
disaster remains invisible on the graph until week 17.
Figure 3.5
A poor way to represent poor planning: the black line shows the same spiral of debt as Figure
3.4, while the gray line shows what happens after small payments against the debt in weeks 5
through 9. On this conventional (linear-linear) graph, these crucial payments are invisible.
Figure 3.6
Straight roads to ruin: the spiral of debt on a log-linear scale. The black line shows the steady
doubling of the debt if no payments are made, while the gray shows the impact of the small
payments in weeks 5 through 9 before it goes back to doubling when the payments stop.
Figure 3.7
The growth of social development, 14,000 BCE–2000 CE, plotted on a log-linear scale. This
may be the most useful way to present the scores, highlighting the relative rates of growth in East
and West and the importance of the thousands of years of changes before 1800 CE.
Figure 3.8
Lines through time and space: social development across the three and a half millennia between
1600 BCE and 1900 CE, represented on a linear-linear plot. Line A shows a possible threshold
around 43 points, which may have blocked the continuing development of the West’s Roman
Empire in the first centuries CE and China’s Song dynasty around 1100 CE, before East and
West alike broke through it around 1700 CE. Line B shows a possible connection between
declining scores in both East and West in the first centuries CE, and line C shows another
possible East-West connection starting around 1300 CE.
Figure 3.9
The shape of things to come? If we project the rates at which Eastern and Western social
development grew in the twentieth century forward into the twenty-second, we see the East
regain the lead in 2103. (On a log-linear graph, the Eastern and Western lines would both be
straight from 1900 onward, reflecting unchanging rates of growth; because this is a linear-linear
plot, both curve sharply upward.)
Figure 4.1
The shape of things so far: the West’s early lead in social development between 14,000 and 5000
BCE, as described in Chapter 2
Figure 4.2
Onward, upward, farther apart, and closer together: the acceleration, divergence, and
convergence of Eastern and Western social development, 5000–1000 BCE
Figure 4.3
The expansion of the Western core, 5000–1000 BCE: sites and regions mentioned in this chapter
Figure 4.4
The band of brothers: the Western core’s International Age kingdoms as they stood around 1350
BCE, after the Hittites and Mittani had gobbled up Kizzuwatna but before the Hittites and
Assyrians destroyed Mittani. The gray areas in Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy show where
Mycenaean Greek pottery has been found.
Figure 4.5
The expansion of the Eastern core, 3500–1000 BCE: sites mentioned in this chapter
Table 4.1
The horsemen of the apocalypse: the documented dimensions of disasters, 3100–1050 BCE
Figure 5.1
The dullest diagram in history? Social development, 1000–100 BCE
Figure 5.2
Low-end kingship in the East: sites from the first half of the first millennium BCE mentioned in
the text. Triangles mark major Zhou colonies.
Figure 5.3
Low-end kingship in the West: sites of the first half of the first millennium BCE mentioned in
the text. Triangles mark major Greek colonies; open circles, major Phoenician colonies. The
Greek homeland is shaded.
Figure 5.4
The chill winds of winter: climate change in the early first millennium BCE
Figure 5.5
The first high-end empires. The broken line marks the maximum extent of the Assyrian Empire,
around 660 BCE, and the solid line the maximum extent of the Persian Empire, around 490 BCE.
Figure 5.6
The triumph of Qin: the East in the era of Warring States, 300–221 BCE (dates in parentheses
show when the main states fell to Qin)
Figure 5.7
Ancient empires in the West: from Persia to Rome, 500–1 BCE. The broken line shows the
maximum extent of the western end of the Persian Empire, around 490 BCE, and the solid line
shows the extent of the Roman Empire in 1 BCE.
Figure 5.8
Between East and West: the late-first-millennium-BCE tissue of trade linking East and West
across the Indian Ocean, Silk Roads, and steppe highway
Figure 6.1
An Old World–wide depression: the peak, decline, and fall of the ancient empires, 100 BCE–500
CE
Figure 6.2
Goods and services: the parallel increases in Mediterranean shipwrecks and in lead pollution in
the Spanish lake of Penido Velho. Numbers of wrecks and amounts of lead have been
normalized so they can be compared on the same vertical scale, with the amounts of each in 1
BCE being counted as 100.
Figure 6.3
Making the most of the weather: the maximum extent of the Han (c. 100 CE) and Roman (117
CE) empires, incorporating areas that benefited from global warming
Figure 6.4
The end of the Han dynasty, 25–220 CE: locations mentioned in the text
Figure 6.5
Rome’s third-century crisis. The dotted areas show where Germanic, Gothic, and Persian raids
were common.
Figure 6.6
Declining and falling: numbers of Mediterranean shipwrecks and levels of lead pollution in the
lake bed at Penido Velho, Spain, across the first millennium CE. The downward slopes mirror
the upward slopes in the first millennium BCE shown in Figure 6.2. As in Figure 6.2, numbers of
wrecks and amounts of lead have been normalized so they can be compared on the same vertical
scale, with the amounts of each in 1 CE being counted as 100.
Figure 6.7
Scourges of God: the coming of the Huns and the collapse of the western Roman Empire, 376–
476 CE. The map shows three major groups of invaders (Huns, solid lines; Goths, broken lines;
Vandals, dotted lines) with the dates of their main movements. There were countless smaller
migrations too.
Figure 6.8
The divided East and West: (a) the Eastern Jin and China’s major immigrant kingdoms, around
400 CE; (b) Byzantium and Europe’s major immigrant kingdoms, around 500 CE
Figure 6.9
Counting souls: the growth of Christianity and Chinese Buddhism, assuming constant rates of
change. The vertical scale is logarithmic, as in Figures 3.6 and 3.7, so the constant average rates
of growth (3.4 percent per annum for Christianity, 2.3 percent for Buddhism) produce straight
lines.
Figure 7.1
The great reversal: the East turns its decline around and for the first time in history pulls ahead of
the West
Figure 7.2
The East bounces back, 400–700. Figure 7.2a shows the states of Western Wei, Eastern Wei, and
southern China’s Liang dynasty in 541. The Sui dynasty united all three in 589. Figure 7.2b
shows the greatest extent of the Tang Empire, around 700.
Figure 7.4
The last of their breeds? First Justinian of Byzantium (533–565) and then Khusrau of Persia
(603–627) attempt to reunite the Western core; Heraclius of Byzantium strikes back against
Khusrau (624–628).
Figure 7.6
Jihad: the Arabs almost reunite the Western core, 632–732. The arrows show the major Arab
invasion routes.
Figure 7.7
The fault line shifts: the heavy dashes represent the major economic-political-cultural fault line
between 100 BCE and 600 CE, separating Rome from Persia; the solid line shows the major line
after 650 CE, separating Islam from Christendom. At the top left is the Frankish Empire at its
peak, around 800; at the bottom the Muslim world, showing the political divisions around 945.
Figure 7.8
Coming in from the cold: the migrations of the Seljuk Turks (solid arrows) and Vikings/Normans
(broken arrows) into the Western core in the eleventh century
Figure 7.9
The antimilitarist empire: the division of China around 1000 among the Song, Khitan, and
Tangut states. China’s main coalfields are marked with dots.
Figure 8.1
A shrinking gap in a shrinking world: trade, travel, and turbulent times bring East and West
together again
Figure 8.2
Creating monsters: the Jurchen and Song empires in 1141. Dotted areas show China’s main
coalfields.
Figure 8.3
Where the nomads roam: the boundaries of the Mongol Empire when Genghis Khan died in
1227 and (heavy broken lines) the wars his sons and grandsons waged between then and 1294
Figure 8.4
The Second Old World Exchange: eight overlapping zones of trade and travel that carried
progress and disaster from one end of Eurasia to the other
Figure 8.5
Size matters: horizontal lines mark areas in the Eastern and Western cores ruled by states around
100 CE, on the eve of the first Old World crisis, and diagonal lines show where states had spread
by 1200, just before the second crisis
Figure 8.6
The revival of the West, 1350–1500. The shaded area shows the extent of the Ottoman Turkish
empire in 1500—by which time the Western core was moving decisively northward and
westward.
Figure 8.7
The fifteenth-century world as seen from China, showing the Ming diplomatic offensive in the
Indian Ocean (solid line) and the route Chinese ships could have taken to reach the New World
(broken line)
Figure 8.8
The world as seen from Europe, and the paths taken by fifteenth-century European explorers
Figure 8.10
A third way of seeing the world: how physical geography stacked the odds in favor of western
Europe by putting it just three thousand miles from America, while China had the misfortune to
lie twice as far from the New World
Figure 9.1
Some boats float better than others: in the eighteenth century the rising tide of social
development pushed East and West through the ceiling that had always constrained organic
economies, but pushed the West harder, further, and faster. In 1773, according to the index, the
West regained the lead.
Figure 9.2
A crowded world: the East in an age of rising tides, 1500–1700
Figure 9.3
For richer, for poorer: the real wages of unskilled urban workers in six Western cities plus
Beijing, 1350–1800. Every city and every industry had its own story, but almost everywhere we
can measure it, after roughly doubling between 1350 and 1450 workers’ purchasing power fell
back to pre-1350 levels by 1550 or 1600. For reasons that will become clear later in the chapter,
after 1600 cities in Europe’s northwest increasingly pulled away from the rest. (Data begin at
Paris and Valencia only around 1450 and at Beijing around 1750, and— not surprisingly— there
is a gap in the figures from Constantinople around 1453, when the Ottomans sacked the city.)
Data from Allen 2006, Figure 2.
Figure 9.4
The Western empires: the Habsburg, Holy Roman, Ottoman, and Russian empires around 1550
Figure 9.5
The end of the steppes: the empires strike back. By 1750 Russia and China had shut down the
steppe highway.
Figure 9.6
The oceanic empires, 1500–1750. The arrows show the major “triangular trades” of slaves,
sugar, rum, food, and manufactured goods around the Atlantic.
Figure 9.8
All the world’s a stage: the global setting of the War of the West, fought by Britain and its allies
against France between 1689 and 1815. Crossed swords mark some of the major battles; the
British Empire as it was in 1815 is marked by dots.
Figure 10.1
Power for sale: the cradle of the nineteenth-century industrial revolution
Figure 10.2
Universal ferment: social development across the last two thousand years, showing the Western-
led takeoff since 1800 that made mockery of all the drama of the world’s earlier history
Figure 10.3
Workers of the world, divide: despite their woes, British workers earned much more than non-
British between 1780 and 1830 and did better still after 1830. The graph compares the real wages
of the unskilled in London, Florence (fairly typical of southern Europe’s low wages), and Beijing
(exemplifying Chinese and Japanese wages).
Figure 10.4
Around the world: Western rule shrinks the globe.
Figure 10.5
Just say yes: the British East India Company’s soaring opium sales in Guangzhou, 1730–1832
Figure 10.8
The world at war, 1914–1991. Gray shading shows the United States and its major allies around
1980; the Soviet Union and its major allies are indicated by diagonal lines.
Figure 10.10
Be all that you can be: the health of United States Army veterans, 1910–1988
Figure 10.11
Knowing which way the wind blows: Was the twentieth century both the high point and the end
point of Western rule? The West’s lead in social development increased from 101 points in 1900
to 336 in 2000, but the ratio between the Western and Eastern scores shrank by one-third, from
2.4:1 in 1900 to 1.6:1 in 2000.
Figure 11.1
The shape of history revisited: Eastern and Western social development and the hard ceiling,
14,000 BCE–2000 CE, shown on a log-linear scale
Figure 12.1
Written in stone? If Eastern and Western social development scores carry on rising at the same
speed as in the twentieth century, Western rule will end in 2103.
Figure 12.2.
The big thirst: the National Intelligence Council’s “arc of instability” (stretching from Africa
through Asia), plotted against regions likely to face water shortages by 2025. The darkest-shaded
areas will face “physical scarcity,” defined as having more than 75 percent of their water
allocated to agriculture, industry, and/or domestic use. Medium-dark areas will be “approaching
physical scarcity,” with 60 percent of their water taken up by these purposes, and the lightest
areas will face “economic scarcity,” with more than 25 percent of their water committed. Rich
countries such as the United States, Australia, and China can pipe water from wet areas to dry;
poor ones cannot.
Figure A.1
Energy alone: how East and West compare if we just look at energy capture per person
Table A.1
Energy capture, kilocalories/person/day (selected dates)
Table A.2
Population of the largest settlement in each core, thousands (selected dates)
Table A.3
War-making capacity, expressed in points on the social development index (selected dates)
Table A.4
Information technology scores
Figure A.2
Error revealed: the implications of systematic errors in social development scores. (a) raises all
Western scores by 10 percent and reduces all Eastern scores by the same amount; (b) raises all
Eastern scores by 10 percent and reduces all Western scores by the same amount.
Figure A.3
Even greater error: (a) raises all Western scores and reduces all Eastern scores by 20 percent, and
(b) raises all Eastern scores and reduces all Western scores by 20 percent