Why the West Rules--For Now (109 page)

594
“
We can rebuild him
”:
The Six Million Dollar Man
, ABC Television, 1974–78.

595
“
We’re not playing
”: Craig Venter, cited from Carr 2008.

595
“
network-enabled telepathy
”: Roco and Bainbridge 2002, p. 19.

599
“
Altered frequencies
”: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007, pp. 12–13.

600
“
the really scary stuff
,” “the even scarier stuff,” and “global weirding”: T. Friedman 2008, pp. 117, 122, 133. Friedman attributes the third expression to Hunter Lovins, cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

601
“
arc of instability
”: National Intelligence Council 2008, p. 61.

601
“
climate migrants
”: Stern 2006.

601
2006 Gallup poll
: “Don’t Drink the Water and Don’t Breathe the Air,”
The Economist
, January 26, 2008, pp. 41–42 (available at
http://www.economist.com
).

604
“
The world may be
”: World Health Organization, “Ten Things You Need to Know About Pandemic Influenza,”
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/pandemic10things/en/index.html
(accessed November 29, 2008).

604
“
The oil
”:
Summary of Report on Near Eastern Oil
, 800.6363/1511–1512 (National Archives, State Department, Washington, DC), February 3, 1943, cited from Yergin 1992, p. 393.

604
“
peaceful rising
” and “peaceful development”: B. Zheng 2005.

604
“
great drain robbery
”: cited from Kynge 2006, p. xiii.

605
“
a threat to world peace
”: Ipsos-Reid poll (April 2005), cited from “Balancing Act: A Survey of China,”
The Economist
, Special Report, March 25, 2006, p. 20 (available at
http://www.economist.com/specialreports
).

605
threat to global stability
: Gallup poll (October 2007), cited from “After Bush: A Special Report on America and the World,”
The Economist
, March 29, 2008, p. 9 (available at
http://www.economist.com/specialreports
).

605
“
PEOPLE AGONIZED
”:
China Daily
headline (May 1999), cited from Hessler 2006, p. 20.

605
“
strategic conspiracy
”: Chinese Communist Party resolution (2004), cited from “Balancing Act: A Survey of China,”
The Economist
, Special Report, March 25, 2006, p. 15 (available at
http://www.economist.com/specialreports
).

605
“
it is more likely
”: Graham and Talent 2008, p. xv.

606
“
No physical force
”: Norman Angell,
The Great Illusion
(1910), cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 190.

606
“
international movement of capital
”: Jean Jaurès, cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 190.

606
“
must involve the expenditure
”: Prime Minister Edward Grey in conversation with the Austrian ambassador to Britain, July 1914, cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 191.

606
“
total exhaustion
”: Grey, letter to the German ambassador to Britain, July 24, 1914, cited from Ferguson 1998, p. 191.

607
“
I do not know
”: Albert Einstein, interview with Alfred Werner,
Liberal Judaism
(April—May 1949), cited from Isaacson 2007, p. 494.

608
–609
estimates
: Richardson 1960; Smil 2008, p. 245,
http://www.thebulletin.org/content/doomsday-clock/overview
.

609
“
guys with gross obesity
”: Anonymous official in the Indian Foreign Ministry, cited from “Melting Asia,”
The Economist
, June 7, 2008, p. 30 (available at
http://www.economist.com
).

609
“
The first era
”: T. Friedman 1999, p. xix.

609
“
Globalization 3.0
”: T. Friedman 2005, p. 10.

610
“
The only salvation
”: Albert Einstein,
New York Times
, September 15, 1945, cited from Isaacson 2007, pp. 487–88.

610
“
If the idea
”: Albert Einstein, comment on the film
Where Will You Hide?
(May 1948), Albert Einstein Archives (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) 28–817, cited from Isaacson 2007, p. 494.

612
David Douglas, International Energy Agency
: statistics in this and the following paragraph cited from T. Friedman 2008, pp. 31, 73, 59–60.

613
“
But where are they?
” Enrico Fermi, Los Alamos, circa 1950, cited from Jones 1985, p. 3.

615
“
We will see
”: Steven Metz, interview with Peter Singer, September 19, 2006, cited from Singer 2009, p. 240.

615
“
the U.S.
”: Roger Cliff,
The Military Potential of China’s Commercial Technology
(2001), quoted in Singer 2009, p. 246.

618
“
human space
” etc.: Adams 2001.

621
“
They have ridden
” etc.: Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West,”
MacMillan’s Magazine
, December 1889.

621
archaeologists and television
: Diamond 2005, p. 525.

APPENDIX

634
jet bomber and Roman legionary
: Sean Edwards, “Swarming and the Future of Warfare,” unpublished PhD dissertation, Pardee Rand Graduate School, 2005, p. 136, cited from Singer 2009, p. 100.

Further Reading

In writing this book I have drawn on the painstaking work of generations of scholars who have assembled, analyzed, and interpreted mountains of data. The scholarly literature on Eastern and Western history is not only virtually endless but also highly argumentative, which means that it is almost impossible to make a statement on any major issue without it being challenged by at least some specialists. Space does not allow for exhaustive bibliographies for all the controversies, even if time allowed me to read them all; but in this section I list the works that have most influenced my thinking.

The works I list combine introductory studies aimed at general readers, more academic overviews, and detailed pieces of research that I found particularly useful. Whenever possible I mention recent works that include detailed bibliographies of their own. The most recent books are available in bookstores and many journal articles are available online, but for the time being most of these studies can be found only in research libraries. I have restricted my references to works in English whenever possible.

With the exception of short articles in newsmagazines, I refer to works by the authors’ or editors’ last names and the date of publication. Full details are gathered in the bibliography that follows.

Like countless historians before me, I have relied heavily on the Cambridge University Press multivolume histories covering different parts of the world. These are often the best place to find the basic facts, and rather than cite them over and over again, I will simply list the series I have used most heavily:

The Cambridge Ancient History
(2nd ed., 14 volumes, 1975–2001)

The Cambridge History of China
(10 volumes, 1979–)

The Cambridge History o
f
Egypt
(2 volumes, 1980–99)

The Cambridge History of Iran
(8 volumes, 1968–91)

The Cambridge History of Islam
(2 volumes, 1970)

The Cambridge History of Japan
(6 volumes, 1988–99)

The New Cambridge Medieval History
(7 volumes, 1995–2006)

The New Cambridge Modern History
(12 volumes, 1957–90)

The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia
(2 volumes, 1993)

In addition to these series there are also several invaluable single-volume Cambridge histories, which I cite by editors’ names and publication dates below.

INTRODUCTION

Our main source for the
Qiying’s
arrival in England is “The Chinese Junk, ‘Keying,’”
Illustrated London News
12, no. 340, April 1, 1848, pp. 220, 222. Anglo-Chinese relations in the 1830s–40s: Fay 1997, Waley 1958. Hong Xiuquan: Spence 1996.

Nature of Western rule: Mandelbaum 2005. Chinese economic takeoff: Jacques 2009.

Chinese-European relations in the sixteenth century: Spence 1983. Eastern theories of Western rule: Fukuzawa 1966 (originally published 1899); Y. Lin 1979.

Westerners have produced hundreds of long-term lock-in theories since the eighteenth century. Diamond 1997, S. Huntington 1996, and Landes 1998 are excellent examples of modern approaches.

Torr 1951 collects Karl Marx’s Chinese writings.

On Zheng and Columbus, see
Chapter 8
. Menzies 2002 presents the case for Zheng’s global circumnavigation. Chiasson 2006 claims (even more remarkably) to have found a Chinese colony at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. For the 1763/1418 map, see
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0123_060123_chinese_map.html
. Fifteenth-century Chinese maps: R. Smith 1996.

Goldstone 2009, Lee and Wang 1999, Pomeranz 2000, and Wong 1997 are the classic Orange County/short-term accident books; Arrighi 2007 explores the implications of their arguments. A. G. Frank 1998 is the most influential of the radical theories; Goody 2004 and Hobson 2004 may be the most extreme. Allen
et al.
2005 and Bengtsson
et al.
2005 provide quantitative evidence.

Controversies over the California School: the essays collected in
Journal of Asian Studies
61, 2002, pp. 501–662, and
Canadian Journal of Sociology
33, 2008, pp. 119–67, provide good examples.

Biology, sociology, and geography: among the studies that have most shaped my thinking are Conway Morris 2003, Coyne 2009, Dawkins 2009, Ehrlich and Ehrlich 2008, and Maynard-Smith and Dawkins 2008 (biology); Boserup 1965, Gerring 2001, North
et al.
2009, Smelser and Swedberg 2005, and J. Wood 1998 (social sciences/sociology); Konner 2002, Vermeij 2004, and E. O. Wilson 1975 (interface of biological and social sciences); and Castree
et al.
2005, de Blij 2005, Martin 2005, and Matthews and Herbert 2004 (geography). Acemoglu
et al.
2002 provide the toughest challenge to geography as an explanation for why the West rules. I would like to thank Jim Robinson for discussing the issues with me.