3/28/14 Weekend Homework Assignment

Niall Ferguson's TED Talk Question: Which factors led to the Great Divergence, and how did the Westerners gain an advantage over the rest of the world, allowing them to dominate Easterners?

Answer: Niall Ferguson believes that there were six major aspects about the Western civilization that set the Westerners ahead of the Easterners and led to the Great Divergence.  Ferguson chooses to represent these six characteristics, competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society, and worth ethic, as metaphorical "apps," which seem simple on the outside, but contain a great complexity.  There were hundreds of kingdoms within each state during the 1500s in Europe, which provoked innovation and bettered society, whereas in the eastern half of the world, there were far fewer states that required one to pass civil service exams before being able to compete amongst each other.  Western science gave man control over nature through the experimental method, allowing men to apply physics to ballistics, allowing for better weaponry.  However, in Eastern Asia, there is not as much technology or scientific discoveries.  Having the rule of law based on property rights made the difference in between the Eastern and Western hemispheres.  Having more land open to the people rather than passed down hereditarily resulted in more land being used, helping push the Western world ahead of the Eastern world.  Modern medicine aided in fighting infections diseases and increased life expectancies by almost two percent in the Western world rather than in the Eastern world, where there was no concept of medicine.  This allowed for population growth in Western portions of the world, while disease and plagues decimated Eastern populations.  Consumer society was far greater in Western parts of the world, so that people were able to buy the goods produced by businessmen, thus giving a purpose to the industrial revolution.  However, in Eastern portions of the world, people were more inclined towards poverty such as Mahatma Gandhi, who was in a way, a proponent of poverty.  Work ethic can only arise if institutions are present to create the will to work.  In the western half of the world, people originally had better work ethics than people in the Eastern half of the world.  This may have primarily been because there were more institutions in the Western half of the world than in the Eastern half of the world.  It is for these six reasons that the Eastern half of the world fell behind the Western half of the word, resulting in the Great Divergence.


The Stages of a Revolution in <2 Sentences Each:

1. Stage 1: The community is split into two groups of people; those who support the person in authority, such as the king or ruler, or those who are rebelling against the authority.  The schism is result to an unfair taxation or the ruler's inability to rule, thus angering its constituents.
2. Stage 2: The factions are again split into moderates and radicals, and the vast majority of the population supports the moderates because the radicals are...too radical; however, the radicals have a greater sense of righteousness, which enables them to take over and instate terror.  
3. The Final Stage of Revolution: In the final stage of revolution, the community begins to moderate itself and shun those who are radicals, causing in most cases a dictatorship to be reinstated in which members of the previous ruling council are brought back.  Imperial nationalism is a direct consequence of the fervor of the radicals diminishing.