Professor Niall Ferguson | The Cambridge Union
Channel: Cambridge Union
Date: 19/08/2012

Date recorded: 15/03/2011

"Civilisation: The West and the Rest "

If in the year 1411 you had been able to circumnavigate the globe, you would have been most impressed by the dazzling civilizations of the Orient. By contrast, Western Europe would have struck you as a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war. Yet for most of the next half millennium it was the West that came to dominate the Rest. In Civilization: The West and the Rest, Niall Ferguson examines the defining narrative of modern world history and warns we may be living through the end of Western ascendancy.

As a renowned and distinguished historian specialising in financial and economic history, Niall Ferguson's teachings and commentaries have been particularly relevant during the recent financial crisis. As well as lecturing at Harvard and LSE, he also writes for The Daily Telegraph and Foreign Policy magazine and is currently working with Education Secretary Michael Gove on a new history syllabus for schools. Professor Ferguson has a much-publicised ongoing feud with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman over how to tackle the global recession. He has also spoken of the EU being "a disaster waiting to happen", and is a harsh critic of Russia. This event is co-hosted by the Public and Popular History Seminar of the Cambridge History Faculty.