TEXT C David Landes, author of
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor,
credits the world’s economics and social progress over the last thousand years
to "Western civilization and its dissemination." The reason, he believes, is
that Europeans invented systematic economic development. Landes adds that two
unique aspects of Europeans culture were crucial ingredient in Europe’s economic
growth. First, Landes espouses a generalized form of Max Weber’s
thesis that the values of work, initiative, and investment made the difference
for Europe. Despite his emphasis on Science, Landes does not stress the notion
of rationality as such. In his view, "what counts is work, thrift, honesty,
patience, tenacity." The only route to economic success for individuals or
states is working hard, spending less than you earn, and investing the rest in
productive capacity. This is the fundamental explanation of the problem posed by
his book’s subtitle: "Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor." For historical
reasons an emphasis on private property, an experience of political pluralism, a
temperate climate, an urban style-sEuropeans have, on balance, followed those
practices and therefore have prospered. Second, and perhaps most
important, Europeans were learners. They "learned rather greedily," as Joel
Mokyr put it in a review of Landes’s book. Even if Europeans possessed
indigenous technologies that gave them an advantage (spectacles, for example),
as Landes believes they did, their mom vital asset was the ability to assimilate
knowledge from around the World and put it to use--as in borrowing the concept
of zero and rediscovering Aristotle’s Logic from the Arabs and taking paper and
gunpowder from the Chinese via the Muslim world. Landes argues that a systematic
resistance to learning from other cultures had become the greatest handicap of
the Chinese by the eighteenth century and remains the greatest handicap of Arab
countries today. Although his analysis of Europeans expansion is
almost nonexistent, Landes does not argue that Europeans were beneficent bearers
of civilization to a benighted world. Rather, he relies on his own commonsense
law: "When one group is strong enough to push another around and stands to gain
by it, it will do so." In contrast to the new school of world historians, Landes
believes that specific cultural values enabled technological advances that in
turn made some Europeans strong enough to dominate people in other parts of the
world. Europeans therefore proceeded to do so with great viciousness and
cruelty. By focusing on their victimization in this process, Landes holds, some
postcolonial states have wasted energy that could have been put into productive
work and investment. If one could sum up Landes’s advice to these states in one
sentence, it might be "Stop whining and get to work." This is particularly
important, indeed hopeful, advice, he would argue, because success is not
permanent. Advantages are not fixed, gains from trade are unequal, and different
societies react differently to market signals. Therefore, not only is there hope
for undeveloped countries, but developed countries have little cause to be
complacent, because the current situation "will press hard" oil them.
The thrust of studies like Landes’s is to identify those distinctive
features of European civilization that lie behind Europe’s rise to power and the
creation of modernity more generally. Other historians have placed a greater
emphasis on such features as liberty; individualism, and Christianity. In a
review essay, the art historian Craig Clunas listed some of the less well known
linkages that have been proposed between Western culture and modernity,
including the propensities to think quantitatively, enjoy pornography, and
consume sugar. All such proposals assume the fundamental aptness of the
question: What elements of Europeans civilization led to European success It is
a short leap from this assumption to outright triumphalism. The paradigmatic
book of this school is, of course, The End of History and the Last Man, in which
Francis Fukuyama argues that after the collapse of Nazism in the twentieth
century, the only remaining-model for human organization in the industrial and
communications ages is a combination of market economics and limited, pluralist,
democratic government. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that other historians ______.
A.follow in the footsteps of Nazism and communism. B.are very cautious in linking Western culture and modernity. C.focus their attention on relatively specific topics. D.hold drastically different views from Landes.