Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Around 1750, English entrepreneurs harnessed steam and coal, transforming the world. Factories, railroads, and gunboats drove Western power in the nineteenth century, while computers and nuclear weapons secured global supremacy in the twentieth. As China and India emerge as economic powers in the twenty-first century, questions arise about whether the West will maintain its superpower status. Archaeologist and historian Ian Morris examines why the West has dominated the globe for two centuries and whether that dominance will endure. He argues that Western dominance stems not from racial or cultural differences or individual achievement, but from how geography has shaped ordinary people's responses to crises involving resources, disease, migration, and climate. As geography and human ingenuity continue to interact, the world will transform, altering Western power in the process. Spanning fifty thousand years of history, the book synthesizes findings from ancient history, archaeology, and neuroscience to explain Western global dominance and project developments over the next hundred years.