The Rise of the West and Historical Methodology: Crash Course World History #212

Summary

In this Crash Course World History episode, John Green explores the complexities of writing history, challenging the notion of history as a purely factual account. He delves into the concept of 'The Rise of the West,' questioning its geographical and cultural implications. Green discusses various historians' perspectives, including Ian Morris's focus on political and economic dominance, Victor Davis Hanson's military history approach, and Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson's institutional analysis in 'Why Nations Fail.' He also touches on Francis Fukuyama's view on the rule of law and its religious origins. Green emphasizes the importance of critical examination, the influence of one's academic training on historical interpretation, and the limitations of quantification in assessing historical success.

Takeaways

• 📚 The video discusses the complex process of writing history and the subjective choices historians make when turning their ideas into books.
• 🌍 The term 'The West' is examined, highlighting its geographical and cultural dimensions, and how it is often associated with certain ideas and philosophies.
• 🔍 The concept of 'rise' in 'The Rise of the West' is explored, questioning whether history is a series of rises and falls or a cyclical pattern.
• 🏛️ Different historians have varying approaches to explaining the dominance of the West, with some focusing on political, military, and economic dominance.
• 🤔 The video challenges the idea that history is purely factual, arguing that it is as interpretive as literature, and that critical examination is key.
• 🏛️ Acemoğlu and Robinson's book 'Why Nations Fail' is mentioned, which posits that inclusive economic and political institutions are the keys to a nation's success.
• 📊 Ian Morris's book 'Why the West Rules -- For Now' is discussed, which uses a mathematical formula to analyze historical development across various dimensions.
• 🏛️ Francis Fukuyama's perspective is presented, arguing that the rule of law, rooted in religion, is the foundation of successful institutions.
• 🌐 The video points out the bias inherent in historical analysis and the importance of questioning the data and perspectives presented.
• 🌟 It emphasizes the importance of understanding historical perspectives not just to congratulate the West but to inform policies for global improvement.

Q & A

What is the main theme of the Crash Course World History episode discussed in the transcript?

The main theme of the episode is the examination of how history gets written, focusing on the different perspectives and approaches historians use to answer questions and turn their ideas into books.

What does John Green suggest about the nature of history in relation to facts and opinions?

John Green suggests that the traditional view of history as purely factual and literature as purely opinionated is flawed. He argues that literature contains facts and that math, often seen as fact-based, involves opinions. He encourages thinking critically about the world instead of relying on this false dichotomy.

What does the term 'The West' encompass according to the transcript?

The term 'The West' refers to a geographical area, including Western Europe, North America, and Australia, but it also represents a cultural set of ideas influenced by Judeo-Christian thought, Greek philosophy, Enlightenment rationalism, and Adam Smith's economics.

What is the philosophical question John Green raises about the nature of history itself?

John Green raises the philosophical question of whether history is a series of rises and falls, like the story of the Roman Empire, or if it is cyclical, similar to the Mandate of Heaven narrative in early Chinese history.

How does Ian Morris define the concept of 'Why the West Rules' in his book?

Ian Morris defines 'Why the West Rules' by casting the question in terms of political, military, and economic dominance, suggesting that the West's success can be attributed to its ability to win a lot of wars.

What are the two main ideas proposed by Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson in their book 'Why Nations Fail'?

The two main ideas proposed by Acemoğlu and Robinson are that success can be defined by wealth and political power, and that the focus should be on nation-states rather than individuals, communities, or continents when examining historical success and failure.

What is the significance of inclusive institutions according to Acemoğlu and Robinson?

Inclusive institutions, as defined by Acemoğlu and Robinson, are economic and political institutions that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, encourage investments, and include a variety of political perspectives. They argue that nations are successful when they have such inclusive institutions.

How does Francis Fukuyama's view on the origins of successful institutions differ from Acemoğlu and Robinson's?

While Acemoğlu and Robinson focus on inclusive economic and political institutions, Fukuyama identifies the rule of law as the key underlying institution for a nation's success. He traces the origins of this rule of law in Europe back to the Catholic Church, which established the idea of law binding even to kings.

What method does Ian Morris use to analyze the historical development of the West and the East?

Ian Morris uses a mathematical formula based on four dimensions: energy capture, social organization, information technology, and war-making capacity. He combines these to develop a social development index that describes the West and the East at various points in history.

What is the critique John Green offers regarding the quantification of human social development?

John Green critiques the quantification of human social development by pointing out that reducing it to a number can dehumanize individuals. He argues that while numbers are useful for comparisons, they are incomplete and should not be mistaken for what is truly important.

What is the role of bias in historical writing according to the transcript?

The transcript suggests that bias is inherent in the experience of writing and telling the story of history. It emphasizes the importance of questioning the information that goes into historical conclusions and recognizing what might have been ignored or missed due to the inherent bias in historical perspectives.

Outlines

00:00

📚 The Complexity of Writing History

In this segment, John Green introduces the topic of how history is written and the challenges historians face in interpreting the past. He humorously dismisses his past self's aspiration to become a history writer due to the difficulty of avoiding subjective interpretations. Green emphasizes that history is not as straightforward as it's often perceived, challenging the common belief that history is purely factual and literature is opinion-based. He suggests that the distinction between fact and opinion is not as clear-cut as people think and encourages a critical examination of the world. The main focus is on how historians approach the concept of 'The Rise of the West,' a subject that is inherently complex and open to various interpretations. Green highlights the geographical and cultural ambiguities of 'The West' and the philosophical questions surrounding the term 'rise.' The segment concludes with a reference to different historians' perspectives on the topic, such as Ian Morris and Victor Davis Hanson, who offer different explanations for Western dominance based on political, military, and economic factors.

05:03

🌍 Perspectives on the West's Success

This paragraph delves into various perspectives on what has contributed to the success of Western nations. Green discusses the concept of inclusive institutions as defined by Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson, who argue that nations are successful when they have economic and political institutions that are inclusive. He contrasts this with Francis Fukuyama's view, which places the rule of law at the center of a nation's success, tracing its origins back to religious institutions like the Catholic Church. Green also mentions Ian Morris's approach, which uses a mathematical formula to measure social development across different historical periods. The paragraph raises questions about the assumptions underlying these theories and the potential biases in measuring civilizational success. It concludes with a critique of reducing complex human societies to mere numbers and the implications of such an approach for understanding and addressing global inequalities.

10:08

🔍 The Bias in Historical Perspectives

In the final paragraph, Green reflects on the inherent bias in historical narratives and the importance of recognizing multiple perspectives when analyzing historical questions. He points out that using mathematical measures to analyze historical success or failure can be limiting and may overlook important aspects of human experience. Green encourages viewers to question the data and assumptions behind historical claims and to consider what might be left out or ignored. He suggests that understanding the factors contributing to the West's success could inform policies aimed at global improvement, but also warns against using historical analysis to justify inequality or inaction. The segment ends with a call to be critical of historical narratives and to seek a more comprehensive understanding of the past.

Keywords

💡History Writing

History writing refers to the process of researching, documenting, and narrating past events and experiences. In the video, John Green discusses how historians approach the task of writing history, emphasizing that it involves interpretation and the selection of certain facts over others. The theme of how history is written is central to understanding the video's exploration of historical perspectives and the subjectivity inherent in historical narratives.

💡Fact-Opinion Continuum

The fact-opinion continuum is a concept that suggests a range between pure facts and pure opinions, with many statements falling somewhere in between. The video challenges this idea by arguing that disciplines like literature contain facts and that mathematics involves opinions. This concept is used to illustrate the complexity of categorizing historical writing as purely factual, highlighting the subjective nature of historical interpretation.

💡The Rise of the West

The term 'The Rise of the West' is used to describe the historical phenomenon where Western countries, particularly Western Europe, North America, and Australia, have become dominant in various aspects such as economy, military, and culture. The video discusses different interpretations of what 'rise' and 'west' mean, showing how historians grapple with defining and explaining this concept.

💡Inclusive Institutions

Inclusive institutions are economic and political systems that are open to the participation of a wide range of people and encourage a level playing field. In the video, Acemoğlu and Robinson argue that nations are successful when they have inclusive institutions, which is a key concept in understanding their argument about the success of certain nations.

💡Correlation vs. Causation

Correlation refers to a statistical relationship between two variables, while causation implies that one variable causes the other. The video discusses the difficulty in establishing causation in historical analysis, using the example of inclusive institutions and national success. It cautions against assuming that correlation necessarily implies causation.

💡Perspective

Perspective in historical writing refers to the viewpoint or framework through which a historian interprets and presents historical events. The video emphasizes that all historical narratives have a perspective, which shapes the selection and interpretation of historical facts. This keyword is crucial for understanding the video's message about the subjectivity of history.

💡Montesquieu

Montesquieu was an influential French philosopher whose ideas about government and society have been both praised and criticized. In the video, John Green critiques Montesquieu's theories about the causes of poverty, showing how historical ideas can be both influential and controversial.

💡Pluralism

Pluralism in political institutions refers to the presence of diverse political perspectives and interests that can check and balance each other. The video discusses how pluralism is a key feature of successful political systems, contrasting it with more centralized or authoritarian forms of governance.

💡Rule of Law

The rule of law is a principle that all individuals, including those in power, are subject to and equal before the law. In the video, Francis Fukuyama is mentioned as arguing that the rule of law is a foundational institution for the success of nation-states, with its origins in religion and its impact on governance.

💡Social Development Index

The Social Development Index is a measure used by Ian Morris in the video to quantify the development of societies based on factors like energy capture, social organization, information technology, and war-making capacity. This index is an example of how historians can use quantitative methods to analyze historical data and trends.

💡Quantification

Quantification in the context of the video refers to the process of measuring and expressing historical phenomena numerically. The video discusses the trend towards data-driven analysis in academia and the challenges of reducing complex historical developments to numerical values.

Highlights

History is not just a collection of facts but involves interpretation and perspective.

The concept of 'The West' is geographically and culturally complex, encompassing both a set of ideas and a group of nations.

The term 'rise' in 'The Rise of the West' is philosophically ambiguous, reflecting different views on the nature of history.

Ian Morris's book 'Why the West Rules -- For Now' discusses Western dominance in terms of political, military, and economic aspects.

Victor Davis Hanson's 'Carnage and Culture' attributes Western power to military victories.

Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson's 'Why Nations Fail' links national success to inclusive economic and political institutions.

Montesquieu's theories on the causes of poverty have been largely discredited by modern research.

Inclusive institutions are those that enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage technological and skill development.

Francis Fukuyama in 'The Origins of Political Order' argues that the rule of law is the key to a nation's success.

Fukuyama traces the origins of Western institutional advantages to the Catholic Church's influence on the concept of rule of law.

Ian Morris uses a mathematical formula based on four dimensions to measure social development.

The use of numbers and quantifiable data in historical analysis reflects the data-driven nature of contemporary academia.

The assumption of Western dominance is not universally accepted and can be viewed from different perspectives, such as environmental impact.

Quantitative measures can dehumanize individuals and may not capture all that is important in assessing historical success or failure.

Understanding historical perspectives can inform policies aimed at global improvement rather than just self-congratulation.

Bias is inherent in historical writing and storytelling, and it's important to question the data and perspectives behind claims of success or failure.

Transcripts

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we're going to talk how history gets written.

"Mr. Green! Mr. Green! I want to write books about history when I grow up."

Well, we're not about the process of writing history today, Me From the Past. Also, you are a liar.

So you're never going to be a history writer because, try as you might, you can't stop making things up. Maybe someday, if you're lucky, you'll write a historical novel.

Although, probably not because, you know, it involves research, which you also suck at.

[Theme Music]

So today we're going to talk about how historians answer questions and the choices they make in turning their ideas into books.

We like to think of history as being the story of what happens, so there's no ambiguity or whatever.

It's just, you know, in 1776, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

This is part of our thinking that, like, math is fact-based and literature is opinion. So we imagine history as being, like, over toward the fact-y stuff.

But in truth, literature has a lot of facts in it. There are poems that are objectively good and others that are objectively bad.

And if you've ever been to a mathematician party and heard mathematician arguments, you'll know that math has a lot of opinions in it.

What? I go to a lot of math parties. That's cool.

My point is, that that whole fact to opinion continuum we imagine in academics doesn't really make sense. We just need to learn to ignore that and think instead about how to examine the world critically.

So today we're going to examine the ways that different historians have tackled a really problematic issue: The Rise of the West.

So what do "rise" and "west" even mean in that phrase? Well, let's go to the Thought Bubble.

So "The West" is a geographical designation, kind of. It means, like, Western Europe, North America, and Australia, which as you can see here are west of Asia? And also east of Asia.

In fact, everything is both east and west of everything else because it's a globe.

But the West is also kind of a culture. It's a set of ideas influenced by Judeo-Christian thought and Greek philosophy, with a little Enlightenment rationalism and Adam Smith's economics thrown in.

Anyway, it's complicated, like all civilizations that span multiple continents, but most of you at least have an idea in your head when I talk about "The West."

And then there's the question of what we mean by "rise" when we talk about the Rise of the West, which leads us back to the philosophical question of the nature of history itself.

I mean, is history a series of rises and falls, like the story of the Roman Empire, or is it cyclical, like the Mandate of Heaven narrative that we saw when we looked at early Chinese history?

So you could say, in fact, that the phrase itself "The Rise of the West" is a little bit Western. The whole thing's a bit nebulous.

And that makes it a popular subject for historians to tackle because you can hang a lot of ideas on it.

Like, Ian Morris, who teaches at Stanford, wrote a book called, "Why the West Rules -- For Now," which casts the question in terms of political, military, and economic dominance.

And Victor Davis Hanson made this idea of dominance more explicit in his book on military history, "Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power",

which also offers a pretty straightforward reason why the West became so powerful: it won a lot of wars.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

Another way to think about this question is in terms of, like, success and failure. That's how Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson approached it in their 2012 book, "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty."

These guys had two big ideas. First, that success can be defined by wealth, as well as political power.

And secondly, that when we look at successes, we shouldn't look at individuals, or communities, or continents, we should look at nation-states.

Now, this book isn't explicitly about the West, but if you look at the countries that they're talking about as successes and failures, it seems like they're talking about kind of the same thing we are.

Their successful nations are all in what we think of as "The West," with a couple of important exceptions in Japan and Southern Africa.

So Acemoğlu teaches economics at MIT and Robinson teaches government at Harvard, which is important because they're not, like, academically trained historians.

Some would say that's an advantage, but you know who wouldn't say that? Historians.

But anyway, if you're training is in economics and government, then you're going to see history through the lens of economics and politics,

in the same that if you're trained as accountant you might see history as an indeterminable series of ledgers to be balanced, which it kind of is.

And if you're say a novelist you'll probably see history as a series of narratives and you'll insert narrative. Even when it doesn't necessarily exist.

How we frame historical questions is extremely important as is the way we're trained and the tools we use to try to seek answers.

So Acemoğlu and Robinson focus on institutions and claim that a nation is successful when its economic and political institutions are inclusive.

This focus on institutions explains a lot and it's very convincing, and it corrects previous theories.

For example, Montesquieu's idea that tropical nations tend to be poorer either because the people "tended to be lazy and to lack inquisitiveness" or because diseases and poor soil inhibit economic growth.

But according to Acemoğlu and Robinson the data just doesn't support Montesquieu's conclusions.

Yeah that's a little prob... Oooh it's time for the open letter! But first let's see what's in the globe today.

Oh! It's Montesquieu. Do you have a first name by the way? Oh, he does, his full name is Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, which explains why we only call him Montesquieu.

Anyway, an open letter to Montesquieu. Dear Montesquieu,

You had so many good ideas, separation of powers, that's a definite winner. You basically coined the word despotism. That's a great word, I mean before the word despotism, our only word for that thing was like, government.

But this idea that you had that poor people were doomed to stay poor has proven astonishingly powerful, and it's also entirely wrong.

Fortunately, Montesquieu, most of us have moved on from your theories about poverty, although, just recently.

Best wishes, John Green.

Okay, so let's talk about these inclusive institutions that are supposed to be so good for nations. In economics it's institutions quote

"That enforce property rights, create a level playing field, and encourage investments in new technologies and skills."

In other words, the kind we associate with modern market capitalism, you know, with some regulations.

You know, like in the U.S. we have very open markets, but still Walmart isn't allowed to sell black tar heroin. They are allowed to sell guns though.

Inclusive political institutions are those that are characterized by pluralism which means that they include a number of interests with different political perspectives that can act as checks on executive authority.

So success isn't just about democracy or "majority rule" as we have lately learned in Iraq; it's about inclusive pluralism.

So the nations that Acemoğlu and Robinson see as successful are the ones with the most inclusive economies and the most pluralistic governments.

Now they are able to draw a clear correlation, but it's a bit harder to say that these particular institutions caused those nations to become successful.

This is the nature of correlation; it's possible that they could be right that institutions were necessary for a nation to become rich and powerful,

but there may be other institutions that matter as much or more than the economic and political ones they identify.

Another guy who's written a lot about this stuff is Francis Fukuyama. Fukuyama also believes that institutions are the key to a nation state's success, but in his book "The Origins of Political Order" he identifies the rule of law as the institution that underlies all success.

To Fukuyama, the critical thing is that there be a rule of law that is superior to rulers who temporarily happen to command the state's armed forces and bureaucracy.

If no one is more powerful than the law and no one can change the law, then inclusive economic institutions and pluralistic political ones sort of naturally come forth.

Now, that's not all that different from what Acemoğlu and Robinson described but there is a twist in how Fukuyama gets there.

He argues that the root of the rule of law in Europe as the basis for its institutions is in religion, specifically the Catholic Church.

For him it was the Catholic Church that established the idea that there was a law that was binding, even to kings, providing the limits that are the heart of Acemoğlu and Robinson's pluralistic institutions.

And this would push the origins of the West's institutional advantages back further than the advent of the nation state, right,

because until recently, religion was far more important to most people than, you know, nation states or capitalistic economic institutions.

Fukuyama, you'll be surprised to learn, is a political scientist and classicist by training, so it's not that much of a surprise that he finds the roots of the West's preeminence in governance and classic religious thought.

Okay, let's look at one last example of a different approach to this historical question.

Uh, that guy Ian Morris, who we talked about earlier, he wrote the book "Why the West Rules -- For Now." He broke down his arguments into a mathematical formula based on four dimensions:

energy capture, how much humans have been able to use energy beyond their own muscles;

social organization, which he derives by measuring the largest city in a region;

information technology, not just the Internet, also like writing and books;

and war making capacity, which we can learn about through archaeology and also traditional history.

And then he combines these numbers to develop a social development index that describes the West and the East at various points in history from 14,000 BCE to 2000 CE.

Now, Morris is not an economist or a mathematician; he's a classically trained historian, but here he is using numbers, not very sophisticatedly and, uh, lots of criticism of them, but using numbers nonetheless.

And I think that speaks to how data-driven contemporary academics is. We like things that can be quantified.

I mean, many of you are teenagers taking AP World History, and at the end of that, you will take a test that gives you a number between one and five that tells you how much you know about world history.

My number was two, but hopefully yours will be higher, because I am smarter now than I was then.

Now I do wanna note one other thing, which is that you've probably noticed that none of these books question the assumption that the West has been dominant in the world stage over the last couple centuries.

That is also a question of perspective. Like, from the perspective of non-human residents of Earth, the West has been a total failure.

But there's a certain set of data we look at when it comes to humans, like uh, GDP, the total size of a country's economy; or number of tanks; or innovation indexes; or life expectancy.

Through all of those lenses, the West has come out on top in the last 200 years.

But that leads us to larger questions about why we measure civilizations and determine winners and losers in the first place and what that does to our thinking.

As Morris points out, one of the problematic things about reducing human social development to a number is that it can dehumanize individuals.

Now numbers are a great shorthand and they can be very useful for comparisons, like, I would like to know if my life expectancy would be longer in the United States or in Canada.

Stan informs me that life expectancy is longer in Canada, which doesn't make any sense. I always thought that Canada was America's hat. Turns out that we are Canada's pants.

Anyway, Stan, we got to move to Canada.

But numbers are always incomplete, and too often we mistake what is easily quantifiable with what is important.

Also, when we ask the question about why the West rules or why Western nations have succeeded, what are we gonna to do with the answer?

Is it for Westerners to congratulate ourselves on a job well done, or to explain away the astonishing inequality in the world as being so deeply rooted in the past as to make any efforts to fix it futile?

I'd like to think that by understanding what has made the West more successful in certain ways, we can formulate policies that will lead to a general improvement, at least in those ways, around the world.

But what we've tried to provide here a series of perspectives on a historical question to emphasize the fact that all history has its perspective.

It's common to use mathematical measures to analyze contemporary world problems and attempt to find solutions, and that's a good thing in many ways.

But when it comes to history and politics, mathematical formulas also have their perspective, and we need to remember that each of those perspectives is necessarily biased to look at some things and not others.

Whether it's Crash Course or your world history textbook, it's important to remember that bias is inherent to the experience of writing and telling the story of history.

So when you see a number or a claim of success or failure, stop and ask yourself what sorts of information went into that number or into that conclusion, and just as important, what might have been ignored or missed?

Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

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