In which John Green talks about the methods of writing history by looking at some of the ways that history has been written about the rise of the West. But first he has to tell you what the West is. And then he has to explain the Rise of the West. And then he gets down to talking about the different ways that historians and other academics have explained how the West became dominant in the world. Hell look at explanations from Acemoglu and Robinsons Why Nations Fail, Francis Fukuyamas The Origins of Political Order, and Ian Morriss Why the West Rules, for Now.
Transcript Provided by YouTube:
00:00
Hi, Im John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today were going to talk
00:03
how history gets written.
00:05
Mr. Green! Mr. Green! I want to write books about history when I grow up.
00:08
Well, were not about the process of writing history today, Me From the Past. Also, you
00:12
are a liar. So youre never going to be a history writer because, try as you might,
00:15
you cant stop making things up. Maybe someday, if youre lucky, youll write a historical
00:19
novel. Although, probably not because, you know, it involves research, which you also suck at.
00:31
So today were going to talk about how historians answer questions and the choices they make
00:36
in turning their ideas into books. We like to think of history as being the story of
00:39
what happens, so theres no ambiguity or whatever. Its just, you know,
00:42
in 1776, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
00:46
This is part of our thinking that, like, math is fact-based and literature is opinion. So
00:50
we imagine history as being, like, over toward the fact-y stuff. But in truth, literature
00:55
has a lot of facts in it. There are poems that are objectively good and others that
00:58
are objectively bad. And if youve ever been to a mathematician party and heard mathematician
01:02
arguments, youll know that math has a lot of opinions in it.
01:04
What? I go to a lot of math parties. Thats cool.
01:06
My point is, that that whole fact to opinion continuum we imagine in academics doesnt
01:11
really make sense. We just need to learn to ignore that and think instead about how to
01:15
examine the world critically.
01:17
So today were going to examine the ways that different historians have tackled a really
01:20
problematic issue: The Rise of the West. So what do rise and west even mean in that
01:25
phrase? Well, lets go to the Thought Bubble.
01:26
So The West is a geographical designation, kind of. It means, like, Western Europe, North
01:31
America, and Australia, which as you can see here are west of Asia? And also east of Asia.
01:37
In fact, everything is both east and west of everything else because its a globe.
01:41
But the West is also kind of a culture. Its a set of ideas influenced by Judeo-Christian
01:46
thought and Greek philosophy, with a little Enlightenment rationalism and Adam Smiths
01:50
economics thrown in. Anyway, its complicated, like all civilizations that span multiple
01:54
continents, but most of you at least have an idea in your head when I talk about The West.
01:59
And then theres the question of what we mean by rise when we talk about the Rise of the
02:03
West, which leads us back to the philosophical question of the nature of history itself.
02:07
I mean, is history a series of rises and falls, like the story of the Roman Empire, or is
02:12
it cyclical, like the Mandate of Heaven narrative that we saw when we looked at early Chinese
02:17
history? So you could say, in fact, that the phrase itself The Rise of the West is a
02:20
little bit Western. The whole things a bit nebulous.
02:22
And that makes it a popular subject for historians to tackle because you can hang a lot of ideas
02:27
on it. Like, Ian Morris, who teaches at Stanford, wrote a book called, Why the West Rules For
02:32
Now, which casts the question in terms of political, military, and economic dominance.
02:36
And Victor Davis Hanson made this idea of dominance more explicit in his book on military
02:40
history, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power, which also offers
02:45
a pretty straightforward reason why the West became so powerful: It won a lot of wars.
02:49
Thanks, Thought Bubble.
02:50
Another way to think about this question is in terms of, like, success and failure. Thats
02:53
how Daron Acemolu and James Robinson approached it in their 2012 book, Why Nations Fail: The
02:59
Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. These guys had two big ideas. First, that
03:03
success can be defined by wealth, as well as political power. And secondly, that when
03:07
we look at successes, we shouldnt look at individuals, or communities, or continents,
03:11
we should look at nation-states.
03:12
Now, this book isnt explicitly about the West, but if you look at the countries that
03:16
theyre talking about as successes and failures, it seems like theyre talking about kind of
03:20
the same thing we are. Their successful nations are all in what we think of as The West,
03:25
with a couple of important exceptions in Japan and Southern Africa.
03:28
So Acemolu teaches economics at MIT and Robinson teaches government at Harvard, which
03:32
is important because theyre not, like, academically trained historians. Some would say thats
03:36
an advantage, but you know who wouldnt say that? Historians. But anyway, if youre training
03:40
is in economics and government, then youre going to see history through the lens of economics
03:44
and politics, in the same that if youre trained as accountant you might see history as an
03:48
indeterminable series of ledgers to be balanced, which it kind of is. And if youre say a novelist
03:52
youll probably see history as a series of narratives and youll insert narrative. Even
03:56
when it doesnt necessarily exist.
03:57
How we frame historical questions is extremely important as is the way were trained and
04:02
the tools we use to try to seek answers.
04:04
So Acemolu and Robinson focus on institutions and claim that a nation is successful when
04:09
its economic and political institutions are inclusive.
04:12
This focus on institutions explains a lot and its very convincing, and it corrects
04:17
previous theories. For example, Montesquieus idea that tropical nations tend to be poorer
04:21
either because the people tended to be lazy and to lack inquisitiveness or because diseases
04:26
and poor soil inhibit economic growth. But according to Acemolu and Robinson the data
04:30
just doesnt support Montesquieus conclusions.
04:33
Yeah thats a little prob Oooh its time for the open letter! But first lets see whats
04:37
in the globe today. Oh! Its Montesquieu. Do you have a first name by the way? Oh, he
04:41
does, his full name is Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brde et de Montesquieu, which
04:46
explains why we only call him Montesquieu. Anyway, an open letter to Montesquieu.
04:50
Dear Montesquieu,
04:50
You had so many good ideas, separation of powers, thats a definite winner. You basically
04:55
coined the word despotism. Thats a great word, I mean before the word despotism, our
05:00
only word for that thing was like, government. But this idea that you had that poor people
05:05
were doomed to stay poor has proven astonishingly powerful, and its also entirely wrong. Fortunately,
05:12
Montesquieu, most of us have moved on from your theories about poverty, although, just recently.
05:16
Best wishes, John Green.
05:18
Okay, so lets talk about these inclusive institutions that are supposed to be so good
05:21
for nations. In economics its institutions quote That enforce property rights, create
05:26
a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills.
05:30
In other words, the kind we associate with modern market capitalism, you know, with some
05:34
regulations. You know, like in the U.S. we have very open markets, but still Walmart
05:38
isnt allowed to sell black tar heroin. They are allowed to sell guns though.
05:42
Inclusive political institutions are those that are characterized by pluralism which
05:45
means that they include a number of interests with different political perspectives that
05:49
can act as checks on executive authority.
05:51
So success isnt just about democracy or majority rule as we have lately learned in Iraq;
05:56
its about inclusive pluralism.
05:58
So the nations that Acemolu and Robinson see as successful are the ones with the most
06:02
inclusive economies and the most pluralistic governments.
06:04
Now they are able to draw a clear correlation, but its a bit harder to say that these particular
06:09
institutions caused those nations to become successful. This is the nature of correlation;
06:14
its possible that they could be right that institutions were necessary for a nation to
06:18
become rich and powerful, but there may be other institutions that matter as much or
06:22
more than the economic and political ones they identify.
06:25
Another guy whos written a lot about this stuff is Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama also believes
06:29
that institutions are the key to a nation states success, but in his book The Origins
06:33
of Political Order he identifies the rule of law as the institution that underlies all
06:38
success. To Fukuyama, the critical thing is that there be a rule of law that is superior
06:43
to rulers who temporarily happen to command the states armed forces and bureaucracy.
06:47
If no one is more powerful than the law and no one can change the law, then inclusive
06:51
economic institutions and pluralistic political ones sort of naturally come forth.
06:56
Now, thats not all that different from what Acemolu and Robinson described but there
07:00
is a twist in how Fukuyama gets there. He argues that the root of the rule of law in
07:04
Europe as the basis for its institutions is in religion, specifically the Catholic Church.
07:09
For him it was the Catholic Church that established the idea that there was a law that was binding,
07:14
even to kings, providing the limits that are the heart of Acemolu and Robinsons pluralistic
07:19
institutions. And this would push the origins of the Wests institutional advantages back
07:22
further than the advent of the nation state, right, because until recently, religion was
07:27
far more important to most people than, you know, nation states or capitalistic economic institutions.
07:33
Fukuyama, youll be surprised to learn, is a political scientist and classicist by training,
07:37
so its not that much of a surprise that he finds the roots of the Wests preeminence
07:42
in governance and classic religious thought.
07:44
Okay, lets look at one last example of a different approach to this historical question.
07:48
Uh, that guy Ian Morris, who we talked about earlier, he wrote the book Why the West Rules
07:51
For Now. He broke down his arguments into a mathematical formula based on four dimensions:
07:57
energy capture, how much humans have been able to use energy beyond their own muscles;
08:02
social organization, which he derives by measuring the largest city in a region;
08:06
information technology, not just the Internet, also like writing and books;
08:10
and war making capacity, which we can learn about through archaeology and also traditional history.
08:14
And then he combines these numbers to develop a social development index that describes
08:19
the West and the East at various points in history from 14,000 BCE to 2000 CE. Now, Morris
08:25
is not an economist or a mathematician; hes a classically trained historian, but here
08:29
he is using numbers, not very sophisticatedly and, uh, lots of criticism of them, but using
08:34
numbers nonetheless. And I think that speaks to how data-driven contemporary academics
08:38
is. We like things that can be quantified.
08:40
I mean, many of you are teenagers taking AP World History, and at the end of that, you
08:44
will take a test that gives you a number between one and five that tells you how much you know
08:48
about world history. My number was two, but hopefully yours will be higher, because I
08:52
am smarter now than I was then.
08:54
Now I do wanna note one other thing, which is that youve probably noticed that none
08:57
of these books question the assumption that the West has been dominant in the world stage
09:02
over the last couple centuries. That is also a question of perspective. Like, from the
09:06
perspective of non-human residents of Earth, the West has been a total failure. But theres
09:12
a certain set of data we look at when it comes to humans, like uh, GDP, the total size of
09:17
a countrys economy; or number of tanks; or innovation indexes; or life expectancy. Through
09:23
all of those lenses, the West has come out on top in the last 200 years. But that leads
09:27
us to larger questions about why we measure civilizations and determine winners and losers
09:32
in the first place and what that does to our thinking.
09:35
As Morris points out, one of the problematic things about reducing human social development
09:40
to a number is that it can dehumanize individuals. Now numbers are a great shorthand and they
09:44
can be very useful for comparisons, like, I would like to know if my life expectancy
09:49
would be longer in the United States or in Canada. Stan informs me that life expectancy
09:52
is longer in Canada, which doesnt make any sense. I always thought that Canada was Americas
09:56
hat. Turns out that we are Canadas pants. Anyway, Stan, we got to move to Canada.
10:01
But numbers are always incomplete, and too often we mistake what is easily quantifiable
10:06
with what is important. Also, when we ask the question about why the West rules or why
10:11
Western nations have succeeded, what are we gonna to do with the answer? Is it for Westerners
10:15
to congratulate ourselves on a job well done, or to explain away the astonishing inequality
10:21
in the world as being so deeply rooted in the past as to make any efforts to fix it futile?
10:26
Id like to think that by understanding what has made the West more successful in certain
10:30
ways, we can formulate policies that will lead to a general improvement, at least in
10:34
those ways, around the world. But what weve tried to provide here a series of perspectives
10:38
on a historical question to emphasize the fact that all history has its perspective.
10:43
Its common to use mathematical measures to analyze contemporary world problems and attempt
10:47
to find solutions, and thats a good thing in many ways. But when it comes to history
10:51
and politics, mathematical formulas also have their perspective, and we need to remember
10:55
that each of those perspectives is necessarily biased to look at some things and not others.
11:00
Whether its Crash Course or your world history textbook, its important to remember that
11:04
bias is inherent to the experience of writing and telling the story of history.
11:08
So when you see a number or a claim of success or failure, stop and ask yourself what sorts
11:13
of information went into that number or into that conclusion, and just as important, what
11:17
might have been ignored or missed? Thanks for watching. Ill see you next week.
11:22
Crash Course is made here in the Chad and Stacey Emigholz studio with the help of all
11:26
of these nice people. Its also possible because of your support through Subbable. Subbable
11:31
is a voluntary subscription service that allows you to support Crash Course directly so we
11:34
can keep it free for everyone forever, so please check it out. Thank you again for watching,
11:39
thanks to all of our Subbable subscribers, and as we say in my hometown,
11:42
dont forget to be awesome.
This post was previously published on YouTube.
Photo credit: Screenshot from video.
The post The Rise of the West and Historical Methodology: Crash Course World History #212 appeared first on The Good Men Project.