Civilization: The West and the Rest

Ferguson identifies six features (“killer apps”) to which he credits the rise of the West since the 16th century. These features comprise competition and institutions that foster competitiveness, scientific advancement, private property along with the rule of law and representative government, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic. Yet the vehicle by which these features benefitted the West and were disseminated around the world was imperial expansion and conquest and settlement of colonies abroad. 

First, Ferguson argues that the West needed an imperial project to rise above “the Rest”:

Without the New World, it has been asserted, “Western Europe would have remained a small, backward region of Eurasia, dependent on the East for transfusions of technology, transmissions of culture, and transfers of wealth. Without American ‘ghost acre” and the African slaves who worked them, there could have been no ‘European Miracle,’ no Industrial Revolution (96).

Second, the author takes imperial expansion as part and parcel of perceived Western superiority, i.e., a positive force. He writes: “[T]here is no question that here, as elsewhere, Western empire brought real, measurable progress” and argues that it is in vogue to criticize colonialism without accounting for its benefits (172). Ferguson also suggests that not all European empires were created equal, and some were better than others.