Rodney Stark - How the West won: the neglected story of the triumph of modernity
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Abstract: Finally the Truth about the Rise of the West Modernity developed only in the West & mdash;in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. Only Westerners invented chimneys, musical scores, telescopes, eyeglasses, pianos, electric lights, aspirin, and soap. The question is, Why? Unfortunately, that question has become so politically incorrect that most scholars avoid it. But acclaimed author Rodney Stark provides the answers in this sweeping new look at Western civilization. How the West Won demonstrates the primacy of uniquely Western ideas & mdash;among them the belief in free will, the commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, the notion that the universe functions according to rational rules that can be discovered, and the emphasis on human freedom and secure property rights. Taking readers on a thrilling journey from ancient Greece to the present, Stark challenges much of the received wisdom about Western history. How the West Won shows, for example: & middot; Why the fall of Rome was the single most beneficial event in the rise of Western civilization & middot; Why the & ldquo;Dark Ages & rdquo; never happened & middot; Why the Crusades had nothing to do with grabbing loot or attacking the Muslim world unprovoked & middot; Why there was no & ldquo;Scientific Revolution & rdquo; & middot; Why scholars & rsquo; recent efforts to dismiss the importance of battles are ridiculous: had the Greeks lost at the Battle of Marathon, we probably would never have heard of Plato or Aristotle Stark also debunks absurd fabrications that have flourished in the past few decades: that the Greeks stole their culture from Africa; that the West & rsquo;s & ldquo;discoveries & rdquo; were copied from the Chinese and Muslims; that Europe became rich by plundering the non-Western world. At the same time, he reveals the woeful inadequacy of recent attempts to attribute the rise of the West to purely material causes & mdash;favorable climates, abundant natural resources, guns and steel. How the West Won displays Rodney Stark & rsquo;s gifts for lively narrative history and making the latest scholarship accessible to all readers. This bold, insightful book will force you to rethink your understanding of the West and the birth of modernity & mdash;and to recognize that Western civilization really has set itself apart from other cultures. & ldquo;Stark has a vigorous prose style and a gift for clear explanation. The pace is swift, and the narrative thrilling. & rdquo; & mdash; The New York Times & ldquo;Fun to read, full of anecdote and incident ... Mr. Stark is especially adept at challenging received ideas. & rdquo; & mdash; The Wall Street Journal & ldquo;Stark proves himself once again as a historical myth-buster. & rdquo; & mdash;CBN.com & ldquo;Rodney Stark turns what we & lsquo;know & rsquo; about history on its head. & rdquo; & mdash; Relevant & ldquo;Stimulating and provocative ... Deftly researched. & rdquo; & mdash; Publishers Weekly & ldquo;Wonderfully readable prose and politically incorrect conclusions. & rdquo; & mdash; World & ldquo;[Stark & rsquo;s] works are an encouraging corrective to the anti-Western history routinely taught in our schools. & rdquo; & mdash; New Oxford Review & ldquo;Compelling reading, adding depth and coherence to the often nebulous hyperbole of historical hypotheses. Highly recommended. & rdquo; & mdash; Library Journal Rodney Stark is the award-winning author of The Victory of Reason, The Rise of Christianity, God & rsquo;s Battalions, and many other books. He serves as Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences at Baylor University
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HOW THE WEST
WON
The Neglected Story of
the Triumph of Modernity
Rodney Stark
Wilmington, Delaware
Contents
Introduction
What You Dont Know about the Rise of the West
T his is a remarkably unfashionable book.
Forty years ago the most important and popular freshman course at the best American colleges and universities was Western Civilization. It not only covered the general history of the West but also included historical surveys of art, music, literature, philosophy, and science. But this course has long since disappeared from most college catalogues on grounds that Western civilization is but one of many civilizations and it is ethnocentric and arrogant for us to study ours.
It is widely claimed that to offer a course in Western Civilization is to become an apologist for Western hegemony and oppression (as the classicist Bruce Thornton aptly put it). More recently, faculty at the University of Texas condemned Western Civilization courses as inherently right wing, and Yale even returned a $20 million contribution rather than reinstate the course.
To the extent that this policy prevails, Americans will become increasingly ignorant of how the modern world came to be. Worse yet, they are in danger of being badly misled by a flood of absurd, politically correct fabrications, all of them popular on college campuses: That the Greeks copied their whole culture from black Egyptians. The truth is that, although the West wisely adopted bits and pieces of technology from Asia, modernity is entirely the product of Western civilization.
I use the term modernity to identify that fundamental store of scientific knowledge and procedures, powerful technologies, artistic achievements, political freedoms, economic arrangements, moral sensibilities, and improved standards of living that characterize Western nations and are now revolutionizing life in the rest of the world. For there is another truth: to the extent that other cultures have failed to adopt at least major aspects of Western ways, they remain backward and impoverished.
Ideas Matter
This book is not, however, simply a summary of the standard lessons of the old Western Civilization classes. Despite their value, these courses usually were far too enamored of philosophy and art, far too reluctant to acknowledge the positive effects of Christianity, and amazingly oblivious to advances in technology, especially those transforming mundane activities such as farming and banking.
In addition, while writing this volume I frequently found it necessary to challenge the received wisdom about Western history. To mention only a few examples:
Rather than a great tragedy, the fall of Rome was the single most beneficial event in the rise of Western civilization. The many stultifying centuries of Roman rule saw only two significant instances of progress: the invention of concrete and the rise of Christianity, the latter taking place despite Roman attempts to prevent it. |
The Dark Ages never happenedthat was an era of remarkable progress and innovation that included the invention of capitalism. |
The crusaders did not march east in pursuit of land and loot. They went deeply into debt to finance their participation in what they regarded as a religious mission. Most thought it unlikely that they would live to return (and most didnt). |
Although still ignored by most historians, dramatic changes in climate played a major role in the rise of the Westa period of unusually warm weather (from about 800 to about 1250) was followed by centuries of extreme cold, now known as the Little Ice Age (from about 1300 to about 1850). |
There was no Scientific Revolution during the seventeenth centurythese brilliant achievements were the culmination of normal scientific progress stretching back to the founding of universities in the twelfth century by Scholastic natural philosophers. |
The Reformations did not result in religious freedom but merely replaced repressive Catholic monopoly churches with equally repressive Protestant monopoly churches (it became a serious criminal offense to celebrate the Mass in most of Protestant Europe). |
Europe did not grow rich by draining wealth from its worldwide colonies; in fact, the colonies drained wealth from Europeand meanwhile gained the benefits of modernity. |
Also, both the textbooks and the instructors involved in the old Western Civ courses were content merely to describe the rise of Western civilization. They usually avoided any comparisons with Islam or Asia and ignored the issue of why modernity happened only in the West. That is the neglected story I aim to tell.
To explore that question is not ethnocentric; it is the only way to develop an informed understanding of how and why the modern world emerged as it did.
In early times China was far ahead of Europe in terms of many vital technologies. But when Portuguese voyagers reached China in 1517, they found a backward society in which the privileged classes were far more concerned with crippling young girls by binding their feet than with developing more productive agriculturedespite frequent famines. Why?
Or why did the powerful Ottoman Empire depend on Western foreigners to provide it with fleets and arms?
Or how was it possible for a relative handful of British officials, aided by a few regular army officers and noncommissioned officers, to rule the enormous Indian subcontinent?
Or, to change the focus, why did science and democracy originate in the West, along with representational art, chimneys, soap, pipe organs, and a system of musical notation? Why was it that for several hundred years beginning in the thirteenth century only Europeans had eyeglasses and mechanical clocks? And what about telescopes, microscopes, and periscopes?
There have been many attempts to answer these questions. Several recent authors attribute it all to favorable geographythat Europe benefited from a benign climate, more fertile fields, and abundant natural resources, especially iron and coal. Moreover, much of Europe was covered with dense hardwood forests that could not readily be cleared to permit farming or grazing until iron tools became available. Little wonder that Europe was long occupied by cultures far behind those of the Middle East and Asia.
Other scholars have attributed the success of the West to guns and steel, to sailing ships, or to superior agriculture. Why did science and capitalism develop only in Europe?
In attempting to explain this remarkable cultural singularity, I will, of course, pay attention to material factorsobviously history would have been quite different had Europe lacked iron and coal or been landlocked. Even so, my explanations will not rest primarily on material conditions and forces. Instead I give primacy to ideas, even though this is quite unfashionable in contemporary scholarly circles. I do so because I fully agree with the distinguished economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey that material, economic forces were not the original and sustaining causes of the modern rise. Or, as she put it in the subtitle of her fine book: Why economics cant explain the modern world. Quietly mocking Karl Marx, McCloskey asserted that Europe achieved modernity because of ideology.
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