Book Review: The Square and the Tower by Niall Ferguson
By: Pulakesh Upadhyaya
Tags: Book Review, Summary

Networking has become a paradigm of interest in the present generation. Social scientists, computer scientists or economists have studied networks throughout the years but few, if any, historians have tried studying the history of the world (or at least Europe) as a history of networks. The central theme of Niall Ferguson’s book is networks of human beings from the past to the present, especially the powerful ones that were responsible for many milestones and events in history. Ferguson, thus, presents a historical account of networks.

The preface starts with a criticism of historians who have reduced the study of history to the study of institutions, especially those that preserve archives, followed by a critique of academics who are detached from the lives of ordinary people.

The book is a story of how different types of influential networks were formed (and destroyed) throughout history, and how hierarchical networks have interacted with other forms of more distributed networks, mostly in a disruptive manner. It begins with the Illuminati, a highly influential network that existed until 1787. The Illuminati is an overlooked subject in history and has been the source of unverified speculations. ‘What is known’ about secret societies clearly engages Ferguson more than ‘what is believed’ about them and he insists that The Illuminati is not as a ‘sinister conspiracy’ but a revealing footnote in history.

This serves as a useful analogy for modern networks. Ferguson shows how technology companies created networks that have defied national boundaries, and have provided the ground for collectivist politics. This point is particularly essential because web actors from different nationalities have influenced elections in other countries.

Ferguson is unsparing on tech companies that claim to understand how networks work, as he believes that the functioning of networks has not been looked into academically in a holistic manner. This book provides the history lesson that Silicon Valley desperately needed, as Eric Schmidt of Alphabet said. This is a point made well by Ferguson. The notion of history only as some sort of artistic reconstruction of the past isn’t a good idea. However, historians, as well as technical people, have to take joint responsibility to bridge this gap.

Networks are everywhere. From the network of organs to networks of cells, networks form a critical component of biology too. Human beings are recognized by their ability to network, and the evolution of the human brain has provided it with the capacity for social networking. Rampant individualism, Ferguson believes, is more of an exception to the rule of networking.

The most important forms of networks are hierarchies. Monarchial systems of government have existed throughout history, and have also been replaced by more democratic, distributed networks, which have again morphed into some sort of hierarchies, and so on. Initially, family clans and tribes were formed, leading to a more hierarchical division of power and labour. Delegating judicial and administrative power to the elites made sense in agrarian feudal societies, which made the majority toil in the fields to sustain the human race. As economic development persisted, it made it possible to build more stable distributed networks, partially thanks to technology.

Ferguson cites Max Boisot, who wrote that markets and bureaucracies are nothing but information-sharing networks. It seems relevant in the Indian subcontext because the history of India has been the history of markets and bureaucracies being at odds with each other.

The study of networks started with graph theory, with the mathematical formulation Konigsberg river problem by Euler. This is usually the first example in any graph theory course. The author uses scientific notions of centrality to study networks, especially degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality. The study of nodes with high centrality (hubs) forms an integral part of his book.

People like Mill and Tocqueville have observed how the rich associational networks made a lasting impact on American history and public life. Social networks are based on the law of homophily: we tend to form networks with people similar to us. This, in some ways, can be disturbing, because people have already started complaining about how Facebook and other tech companies ensured that these networking cliques become more rigid.

Mathematicians like Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz, according to Ferguson, show how small clusters lead to an ostrich mentality inside groups. Close networks of people can be disruptive and bad for the public good. Ferguson’s recent article about the network of Oxford and Eton (the infamous ‘Bullingdon’ club) in the Tory party being influential and harmful for the good of the party and the country comes to my mind as I write this summary.

Here is where people who form bridges between different networks become important. It is highly unlikely that the ideas of people go beyond three degrees of separation. However, if it catches the attention of nodes which are hubs, it might just result in something ‘viral’, in the present-day usage of the term. The stimulus itself is not as important as the structure of the network in ensuring virality.

Ferguson shows how real-world networks form a Pareto sort of a distribution. American adolescent networks are neither scale-free nor random, in that sense. Hierarchies, on the other hand, have a root node, which has a high betweenness and a closeness centrality and has access as well as control of information. It does not take much for a randomly distributed network to devolve into a hierarchy, which then becomes unstable because it can be destroyed by ‘cutting off the head’. Some authors like Francis Fukuyama believe hierarchies are stable and can provide a framework for economic growth and political order. Others like Dominic Cummings believe that for stability, human networks should become more like ant colonies. This debate continues for now.

Ferguson also remarks about how ‘revolutionary networks’ can easily turn into the hierarchies they pretend to destroy. Or in the case of Jacobins, they formed broken clusters of small hierarchical groups that destroyed each other. Most of history has been about hierarchical networks. He describes in detail how the Bolsheviks soon turned a distributed revolution to a hierarchical dictatorship. Stable elite networks, however, have proved to be dangers for the hierarchies.

Innovations are formed by the interaction of networks. Networks sometimes fuse or attack each other. An attack on hubs can break large networks apart. Hierarchies also attack stable social networks — a primary example is the influence of the Russian hierarchical networks on social media during the 2016 US Presidential elections.

Networks have led to innovations as well as the spread of disease. Partnership in business and collaboration has led to the rise of capitalism. Benedetto Cortugli of Italy was the first to defend merchants against the charges of avarice and greed, usually levelled by religious zealots. As the hub node in the network of merchants, he was the subject of attack by the religious hierarchies.

Networks enabled events like the voyages of Europeans, the spread of Christianity in the East, and the transfer of superior knowledge of medicine from the East to the West. The Spanish made inland conquests, but the Portuguese were mostly focused on building a network of ports. Networks with different hierarchical formats formed the basis for the integration of European rulers with locals in Latin American countries.

Networks were important in the spread of Protestant networks; efficient and resilient, they led to greater economic dynamism. Publishing of books increased considerably in Europe between the 1480s and the 1630s. Medical knowledge also spread quickly from one city in Europe to the other. Paris was a hub of innovation and science.

Networks of families like the Johnstones in Britain thrived in the 1700s because they formed hubs of networks, and they were elected to positions of power in Britain. They had members who lived in Canada, New York, India, Florida, Basra, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope. Some mastered Bengali, while some others created a business out of selling water from the Ganges. The Rothschilds formed similar networks. Ferguson also cites a case of one Walter Walker, son of an Assam tea-planter, and an officer in the Gurkha regiment who used networks to defeat the Konfrontasi in the Malaya.

Apart from tiny nuggets of information, Ferguson makes a comprehensive study of networks of revolution, tyranny, Westphalian world order, hegemony, imperialism, the British Empire, China, South Africa, apostles, the two World Wars, Jews, the mafia, Kissinger (Ferguson is his official biographer), the speedy Bolshevik revolution, and so on.

Ferguson then turns his attention to the development of the internet, a case of disruptive development. The internet, which has led to a distributed network of information, also grew out of the ideals of political freedom and lack of control on the hub like the government. The notion of a highly regulated and controlled internet in Russia failed significantly and can be seen as a reason why the country was disadvantaged by the 1990s.

Modern networks like the World Economic Forum have led to neo-liberal policies being adopted by people like Mandela who had faith in a national economy, as well as the formulation of the European Union. Networks were also responsible for catastrophic events like 9/11 and the financial crisis of 2008. Networks of political groups resulted in Brexit and the Trump Presidency.

Ferguson does a good job of explaining how the history of the world can be construed as a history of networks, and learning from history seems to be a good way to attempt to understand them. However, he also cautions that modern science and technology should not be ignored in the study of networks, and they can serve as important tools to deal with such voluminous information.

Information buffs will like this book. However, I have come across overly critical reviews of this gripping book, especially by Marxists who have seen their myopic view of the world challenged by Ferguson, because he adopts a technical perspective in the study of history.

The book rightly attacks the revolutionary left and their claims but seems largely silent on the hierarchical nature of imperialism. His paeans to the British Empire, his Churchillian neglect of the ills of the imperialist network and his utter disdain towards networks in developing countries which challenged the Empire notwithstanding, this book provides an important paradigm and a transitional shift in how history will be studied in the future.