ESMT Open Lecture with Niall Ferguson: "Civilization: The West and the Rest"

An ESMT European School of Management and Technology Open Lecture in cooperation with the American Academy in Berlin's Stephen M. Kellen Lecture Series and Ullstein Buchverlage
At this ESMT Open Lecture, Harvard professor Niall Ferguson discussed and debated issues raised in his latest book Civilization: The West and the Rest.
About the book
If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would have been most impressed by the dazzling civilizations of the Orient. The Forbidden City was under construction in Ming Beijing; in the Near East, the Ottomans were closing in on Constantinople.
By contrast, England would have struck you as a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war. The other quarrelsome kingdoms of Western Europe - Aragon, Castile, France, Portugal and Scotland - would have seemed little better. As for fifteenth-century North America, it was an anarchic wilderness compared with the realms of the Aztecs and Incas. The idea that the West would come to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium would have struck you as wildly fanciful. And yet it happened.
What was it about the civilization of Western Europe that allowed it to trump the outwardly superior empires of the Orient? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, was that the West developed six "killer applications" that the Rest lacked: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. The key question today is whether or not the West has lost its monopoly on these six things. If so, Ferguson warns, we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy.
Civilization takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world - from the Grand Canal at Nanjing to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; from Machu Picchu in the Andes to Shark Island, Namibia; from the proud towers of Prague to the secret churches of Wenzhou. It is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history.
About the speaker
Niall Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Born in Glasgow in 1964, Niall Ferguson graduated from Magdalen College with First Class Honors in 1985. After two years as a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and Berlin, he took up a research fellowship at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1989, subsequently returning to Oxford where he was appointed professor of Political and Financial History in 2000. Two years later he left for the US where he took up the Herzog Chair in Financial History at the Stern Business School, New York University, before moving to Harvard in 2004.
Niall Ferguson is a regular contributor to press, television, and radio on both sides of the Atlantic and a prolific commentator on contemporary politics and economics.
Find more information about our open lectures here: esmt.berlin/esmt-open-lectures

[@BritishMoralHQ]

0:09:35 it starts ..

[@axelfakelastname4565]

Thank you

[@conorjh89]

9.35 for the action

[@viktorfredeandersen1815]

"We can all share recipes 'till our heart's content, and find the perfect recipe .. you know, for bratwurst" lol With that smooth British accent

[@SENSUSCOMMUNE]

Good day! I would appreciate if you give a listen and leave a comment for the lecture on the "Death and Decline of Western Civilization" by prominent Russian historian Evgeny Ponasenkov - kzbin.info/www/bejne/rZ7FipyZd9uda6c. Thankyou.

[@user-nc4fb2hb9f]

무대 위의 의자와 뒤의 창과 커튼이 매우 멋지네요. 멋진 뷰 입니다. 매우 설레요. 좋네요.

[@antoniahowarth-wass5001]

Brilliant

[@Moonsabie]

I watched this on my Sony connected Apple TV

[@jonnymambo2697]

1:14:23 sounds like John Kornblum to me

[@richardouvrier3078]

Nacissistic? Niall Ferguson is easily the smartest historian in the world of public intellectuals.

[@TheWhitehiker]

starts at c. 10:00.

[@MLouah-gp9ef]

Becomes interesting*

[@TheWhitehiker]

@@MLouah-gp9ef there ya go.

[@andregregoire1175]

Ask the questions, what culture was imposed on the victims of armed economic expansion, who actually did it, and how they did it. My 3 simple answers are, the English with their superior race ideology, using guns.

[@oliverdesvaux]

Thank god they did too: would you want the Belgium Congo to have won the culture war, or Communist China?

[@tnndll4294]

Jihadists didn't do the same?

[@user-vp5iy8ec9q]

If no WW2, UK still empire-ing? or in parts? & empire to me is just influence, and can be good compare to some other influences. e.g. is china 1 party ccp & 1 man xi new world order better?

[@kurtsproat2759]

He is wrong about education. Asian education lacks creativity, knowing how do math doesn't mean a richer economy necessarily.

[@joshorourke4985]

Killer apps = CRINGE

[@kurtsproat2759]

also contradicts himself about the Arab spring. Democracy isn't a winning app. Arab countries would be better to copy the Chinese model

[@alisonreed6803]

Maybe the food, dude, but that's it, shyat.

[@tyejoyce2226]

I respectfully point out that Niall Ferguson does not refer to ‘Democracy’ as a killer app. In fact he purposely debunks that idea by referring to the fact that the ‘West’ was already dominating the ‘Rest’ prior Europe becoming democratic.

[@tyejoyce2226]

The last thing the Middle East requires is a ‘Chinese Style’ one party state. I don’t believe absolute control in the hands of one party has worked out too well these past 50 years in the Arab world.

[@kurtsproat2759]

I agree with you but that is why his statements are contradictory. Some degree of democracy is important in steering a nation in the right direction. Iraq under Saddam was briefly successful, but his stewardship failed. Park was responsible for S Korea's success but long term he could have ended up going down the same road as Saddam. Den Chao Ping had vision but can a select elite keep going in the right direction in China?

[@tyejoyce2226]

...

[@andrewhepworth881]

Is this Niall Ferguson for real? The great war was essentially, put simply, Germany looking to gain power and territory...and I don't need to say that in French. Alliances, good or bad were followed through for selfish gain. I wonder how much he gets paid to practise his French on stage?

[@njomen8188]

he forgot to mention the African contribution to the west European civilization, i mean free labor which was as much sort after like the oil boom of today. free gold, diamonds, copper, rubber, timber, and other minerals necessary for technological advances were all extracted free and at free labor from Africa. he should not also forget that the African civilization strive when European and Asia were still living primitive, the Moors who conquered Spain, the Nubia empire,the empire of Ghana, the empire of Mali, the empire of Songhai.

[@claracastilhooliveira3793]

Racist aren't you?

[@danielsmith7840]

@@claracastilhooliveira3793 No, just white suprem:)

[@tommyodonovan3883]

Africa is poor because it has the worst geography of any continent.

[@tommyodonovan3883]

Africa was the best place to live on earth up until 1400, that is the reason humanity originated in Mother Africa and its migrants populated the world, after that (1400), everything that made Africa (South of the Sahara) "safe," it's geography (no navigable rivers no natural sea ports/bays, vast deserts/jungles/pestilence) its isolation (1500 recognized/known languages) doomed Africa economically, technology, social... The last nail in Africa's economic coffin was the *Abolition of Slavery,* from 1850 (see English Parliament Abolition of Slavery Act) to 1950, only 100yrs, Africa's economy went into the basement and has never recovered. By 1880 Slavery World Wide had virtually ended, the various African War Lord's lost their main product, Human-Slaves, and therefore had nothing to exchange for foreign products/goods.

[@BerndG.-bu5yc]

Absolutely ! I would simply say, Eurocentric BS ! The Eurocentric British historian mentioned Europe being influenced by Christianity, but not Christianity itself being influenced by Ancient Egypt, that Ancient Greece & Rome were copies of Ancient Egypt, which was a black African civilization. And Eurocentrism is most toxic against people of African descent, the reason why Europe is the only region on the planet, where Africans or blacks didn't manage to survive for generations, say unlike other minorities like jews and gypsies. And that toxic Eurocentrism is now declining and being replaced by Afrocentrism in Africa and the Western hemisphere.

[@andrewhepworth881]

Narcissistic book promotion...nothing less.