Running Time:
6 x 48 minutes
Grade Level:
7 - Adult
Captions:
Closed Captions
AVP Release Date:
November 2011
Producer:
BBC / Channel 4
Niall Ferguson explores how Western civilization - a clear minority of mankind - secured a lion's share of the world's resources, and examines whether the West is about to be overtaken by the rest.
Ferguson reveals the 'killer apps' of the West's success - competition, science, the property owning democracy, modern medicine, the consumer society and the Protestant work ethic - the real explanation of how, for five centuries, a clear minority of mankind managed to secure the lion's share of the earth's resources.
Ferguson's conclusions are surprising and provocative. He reveals that while the killer apps have finally been downloaded by the rest, in the process Western civilization has lost faith in itself. And it is that loss of self-belief that poses the biggest threat to its continued predominance.
This series sets history firmly in the present, relying on parallels between our own time and the past. Although there is an underlying chronology linking the six programs, each episode deals with a specific theme and is therefore capable of standing alone. Viewed in succession, they add up to a concise but comprehensive history of the world from 1400 to the present.
Closed Captioned
Instructor's Guide
- Program 1: Competition
Running Time: 48 minutes
The first program in the series begins in 1420 when Ming China had a credible claim to be the most advanced civilization in the world: 'All Under Heaven'. England on the eve of the Wars of the Roses would have seemed quite primitive by contrast. Yet the lead that China had established in technology was not to be translated into sustained economic growth. In China a monolithic empire stifled colonial expansion and economic innovation. In Europe political division bred competition. The question for our own time is whether or not we have lost that competitive edge to a rapidly ascending Asia
- Program 2: Science
Running Time: 48 minutes
In 1683 the Ottoman army laid siege to Vienna, the capital of Europe's most powerful empire. Domination of West by East was an alarmingly plausible scenario. But Islam was defeated: not so much by firepower as by science.
Niall Ferguson asks why the Islamic world didn't participate in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, and if the West is still capable of maintaining its scientific lead at a time when educational attainment in science subjects is declining.
- Program 3: Property
Running Time: 48 minutes
Professor Ferguson asks why North America succeeded while South America for so many centuries lagged behind.
The two had much in common (not least the subjugation of indigenous peoples and the use of slavery by European immigrants), but they differed profoundly on individual property rights, the rule of law and representative government.
There were two revolutions against royal rule between 1776 and 1820, yet Simón Bolívar was never able to be George Washington, and Latin America remained politically fragmented, socially divided and economically backward even as the United States rose to global primacy.
However, Niall Ferguson asks whether North and South are converging today, linguistically and economically.
- Program 4: Medicine
Running Time: 48 minutes
Niall Ferguson looks at how late 19th-century advances in modern medicine made it possible to export Western civilization to the 'Dark Continent': Africa.
The French Empire consciously set out to civilize West Africa by improving public health as well as building a modern infrastructure. Yet in other European empires - notably Germany's in southwest Africa - colonial rule led to genocide. What was the link from medical science to racial pseudo-science?
The imperialists talked of their civilizing mission, but their rivalry ultimately caused world wars that endangered the West's global dominance.
Today, have Western aid agencies learned lessons from the past? Or is China in the process of building a new African empire?
- Program 5: Consumerism
Running Time: 48 minutes
Today the world is becoming more homogenous and, with increasingly few exceptions, big-name brands dominate main streets, high streets and shopping malls all over the globe.
We dress the same; we want the same latest technological kit; we drive the same cars. But where did this uniformity come from? The answer is the combination of the industrial revolution and the consumer society.
Originating in Britain but flourishing most spectacularly in America, the advent of mass consumption has changed the way the world worked. Led by the Japanese, one non-Western society after another has adopted the same model, embracing the Western way of manufacturing and consuming.
Only the Muslim world has resisted. But how long can the burkha hold out against Levi's?
Niall Ferguson examines whether we are now seeing the first effective challenge to the global dominance of Western consumerism.
- Program 6: Work
Running Time: 48 minutes
The sixth element that enabled the West to dominate the rest was the work ethic. Max Weber famously linked it to Protestantism, but the reality is that any culture, regardless of religion, is capable of embracing the spirit of capitalism by working hard, saving, and accumulating capital.
The question is why that ethic seems now to be fading in the West. Europeans no longer work long hours, and Americans have almost given up saving completely. The real workers and savers in the world are now the heirs of Confucius, not Calvin.
Perhaps, ironically, the biggest threat to Western civilization could turn out to be this Westernization of the world, if the consequence of Asian economic growth is to change the global climate for the worse. Yet these fears may underestimate the ability of Western civilization to solve the world's problems.
In the final program of the series, Niall Ferguson argues that the real threat to our survival is our loss of faith not in religion but in ourselves.
Clip Length: 1 minute 54 seconds
Reviews:
"Based on financial-historian and professor Niall Ferguson's book Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011) and hosted by Ferguson, this extraordinarily refreshing and thoroughly enlightening six-part BBC series examines 'how Western civilization became the dominant civilization' and ponders 'whether the West is about to be overtaken.' Ferguson introduces six "killer apps" that contributed to the rise of Western civilization: competition, science, democracy, modern medicine, consumer society, and work
ethic. In the sampled first title, Competition, he concentrates on the first app, showing how the fall of the Ming dynasty and the emergence of the spice trade in the fifteenth century contributed to European expansion and dominance. Ferguson then posits, "Can the West sustain this power, or is a new shift already underway?" Beautiful footage from around the world, lively dramatizations, and lovely stills (art prints, photographs, and more) combine with superb background music. An engaging on-camera host,
Ferguson presents rich historical details in a manner that never gets in the way of telling a good story. Remaining programs Science, Property, Medicine, Consumerism, and Work tackle each killer app in more detail. This lavishly produced history of Western civilization makes an excellent companion to the book and is suggested to supplement history collections."
Read More Reviews
Reviews:
"Based on financial-historian and professor Niall Ferguson's book Civilization: The West and the Rest (2011) and hosted by Ferguson, this extraordinarily refreshing and thoroughly enlightening six-part BBC series examines 'how Western civilization became the dominant civilization' and ponders 'whether the West is about to be overtaken.' Ferguson introduces six "killer apps" that contributed to the rise of Western civilization: competition, science, democracy, modern medicine, consumer society, and work
ethic. In the sampled first title, Competition, he concentrates on the first app, showing how the fall of the Ming dynasty and the emergence of the spice trade in the fifteenth century contributed to European expansion and dominance. Ferguson then posits, "Can the West sustain this power, or is a new shift already underway?" Beautiful footage from around the world, lively dramatizations, and lovely stills (art prints, photographs, and more) combine with superb background music. An engaging on-camera host,
Ferguson presents rich historical details in a manner that never gets in the way of telling a good story. Remaining programs Science, Property, Medicine, Consumerism, and Work tackle each killer app in more detail. This lavishly produced history of Western civilization makes an excellent companion to the book and is suggested to supplement history collections."
"In his new TV-series-accompanying book, 'Civilization: The West and the Rest'... the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson is always dashing and often quite brilliant. Ferguson is determined to revive Max Weber's old idea that a "Protestant ethic" was behind the great Western leap forward, and links the decline of the West to the decline of Protestant faith. His recurrent thesis is that everything was going splendidly with the West until about five years ago, when bad financial policies and lax immigration rules brought unwelcome debt and dubious Muslims into the heart of Europe."
- New Yorker (Book Review)"Niall Ferguson also knits the small in with the big, the personal with the momentous, in his Civilization: is the West History? (Channel 4, Sunday). Through the stories of poor English settlers in North America, and conquistadors and then liberators in South America, he explains how it came about that the United States is now the dominant force in western civilization. And it all comes down to what he describes as his "killer app" number three: property.
In the South, after the land was snatched from the indigenous people, it was owned by the king back in Spain, then by a few greedy noblemen such as this Jeronimo de Aliaga dude. Even liberation from Europe didn't lead to democracy, and land is still the big issue in much of Latin America today. In North America, settlers such as Abraham Smith and Millicent Howard worked to earn the right to both land and suffrage, freedom through property. And that's how the American Dream started, though it's not a untarnished one because freedom was possible only if you were white.
Ferguson's is a no-nonsense approach: here's how it is, you better believe it. It's not especially charming, but it certainly isn't boring - it's a rollicking roller-coaster ride through time, so much fun it doesn't even feel like school."
"very good series.... Interesting and informative. Well researched and delivered"
"provocative and lavishly illustrated with dramatic re-creations, artwork, and location footage, backed by Ferguson's engaging narration...Highly recommended. Aud:H,C,P."
- Video Librarian * * * (3 1/2 Stars)
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