Debate: Niall Ferguson: ‘Westerners don’t understand how vulnerable freedom is’

So Niall Fergusson is releasing another “historical” book. The full 
interview is linked below but a few points which caught my attention:

“Civilization sets out to answer a question that Ferguson identifies 
as the “most interesting” facing historians of the modern era: “Why, 
beginning around 1500, did a few small polities on the western end of 
the Eurasian landmass come to dominate the rest of the world?” In 
other words, the book attempts to explain the roots of something ??? 
western power ??? that has long fascinated its author. ” Do we think 
this is a valid focus of history? What type of approach is being taken 
here? Does History tread a dangerous line when it becomes about 
explaining ascendancy?

Fergusson also discusses how he has tried to make the book accessible 
to 17 year olds like his own son

“Civilization, too, starts from the premise that western dominance has 
been a good thing. In order to explain how it came about, Ferguson 
deploys an unexpectedly cutting-edge metaphor. The west’s ascendancy, 
he argues, is based on six attributes that he labels its “killer 
apps”: competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism and the 
work ethic” Do we find this accessible or patronising?

The article then goes on to cover Fergusson’s views on topics such as 
the rise of the USA

“I think it’s hard to make the case, which implicitly the left makes, 
that somehow the world would have been better off if the Europeans had 
stayed home. It certainly doesn’t work for north America, that’s for 
sure. I mean, I’m sure the Apache and the Navajo had all sorts of 
admirable traits. In the absence of literacy we don’t know what they 
were because they didn’t write them down. We do know they killed a 
hell of a lot of bison. But had they been left to their own devices, I 
don’t think we’d have anything remotely resembling the civilisation 
we’ve had in north America.” So how is he interpreting the American 
West here? Would anyone agree with him? Who might take particular 
issue with this sort of statement?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/20/niall-ferguson-interview-civiliza…