Why the West Rules—For Now by Ian Morris

Please consult the graph above, it should be clear now from Moriss own Composite Social Development Index . Or read on.

Ian Morris’s Why the West Rules—For Now presents an ambitious synthesis of world history through a comparative civilizational lens. At its core lies the “social development index,” a framework that attempts to quantify societal capacity through measures such as energy capture, urban scale, information processing, and military effectiveness. While necessarily reductive, this index builds upon the work of scholars like Vaclav Smil and succeeds in clarifying broad patterns across time. Some conclusions suggest a bit too much deterministic reading of history, bending some narratives to build the case.

Morris slightly prioritizes geography over culture as the primary engine of historical dominance. This emphasis is grounded in sound reasoning, but arguably underestimates the reciprocal influence of culture upon environmental adaptation. Contemporary phenomena, such as cultural conflicts unfolding independently of material constraints, suggest a more complex interplay than Morris allows. Still, his environmental framing offers a coherent narrative for the long-term divergence between East and West: and it is mostly a question of „what are the proportions in the mix?“. What strikes me as more interesting and problematic is complete lack of any interaction with the concept of institutions, mostly popularised by Acemoglu (Why Nations Fail) 

The book’s use of large-scale data and quantitative analysis lends it a certain sense of rigor uncommon in popular historical writing. While generally persuasive, Morris occasionally overreaches—particularly in his treatment of historical turning points, where major disruptions are sometimes dismissed as temporary delays within an inevitable trajectory. Justinian „just delayed the inevitable collapse of the Roman Empire“: but the thing is that the delay (maybe caused by him, maybe not) was for literal hundreds of years. Even five hundred years of decay do not seem like something to be glossed over. Also, some of the facts presented are a bit problematic: the portrayal of Hitler’s economic influence lacks engagement with more recent scholarship that challenges the conventional view of Nazi economic recovery (see Adam Tooze: Wages of War).

The East–West comparison is central to Morris’s argument, and he handles it with care and a degree of balance. However, given geopolitical developments in the decade since the book’s publication—including the resurgence of Russian militarism and the intensifying global competition over artificial intelligence—some of its forward-looking predictions already appear dated. That said, Morris’s inclusion of civilizational collapse as a plausible outcome remains striking and, unfortunately, increasingly relevant.

Stylistically, the book maintains an accessible tone without sacrificing academic substance. Compared to other popular historians, Morris offers a more grounded and methodical narrative with actual evidence than Yuval Noah Harari, and a more coherent structure than Jared Diamond. 

Some critics have argued that Morris downplays the role of violence, ideology, and imperialism in Western ascendancy. This critique seems overstated; Morris does, in fact, address the genocidal consequences of settler colonialism and the demographic upheaval wrought by imperial expansion“. A more valid criticism lies in the book’s occasional tendency toward historical determinism, where major social and political events are treated as little more than fluctuations within an overarching pattern. At some point this tendency leads to problematic simplifications – including the take (developed further by author in War! What is it good for?) that the war is a key development tool for humanity.

One of the book’s most compelling contributions is its explicit rejection of genetic or racial explanations for historical dominance. Instead, it constructs a model that integrates geographic and cultural dynamics in a plausible and reasonably coherent way. While the work is not without its limitations—especially in light of hindsight bias and the ever-evolving global context—it remains an important contribution to thinking about macro-history.