O Ocidente e o Resto

Entrevista com o historiador Niall Ferguson.
Ferguson considers to be the most interesting question of Western historiography: how 11 empires came to control 58% of the world’s land surface and 79% of economic output. Ferguson enumerates six advantages—or “killer apps”—of the West: competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism, and work ethic. Together, they allowed the West to pull ahead of the “Rest”; however, Ferguson warns, these advantages are no longer the West’s preserve. Just as Westerners are beginning to lose faith in their cultural institutions, Easterners are “downloading” the apps that once created the conditions for Western supremacy. The 21st century, Ferguson concludes, may be defined by the precipitous decline of the West and the ascendancy of the East.