“I learned one big thing: to answer this question we need a broad approach, combining the historian’s focus on context, the archaeologist’s awareness of the deep past, and the social scientist’s comparative methods.”

Both the chronological scope of Morris’s argument and his use of scientific data call for applying a variety of different disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. However, he also admits that this can be problematic because of the limits of the expertise of a single author.

“I will conclude that biology and sociology explain the global similarities while geography explains the regional differences. And in that sense, it is geography that explains why the West rules.”

While Morris emphasizes The Role of Geography in Social Development, sociology and biology are still major factors in his understanding of history. Since he considers those as universal “constants” (29) and geography as what explains historical difference, though, it is fair to say that Morris thinks of geography as the only “driver” of history.

“The evolution of our species and its conquest of the planet established the biological unity of mankind and thereby the baseline for any explanation of why the West rules. Humanity’s biological unity rules out race-based theories.”

An important aspect of Morris’s theory is that it involves Critiques of Cultural and Racial Explanations for Dominance. However, he does not just argue that humans are not only the same biologically, but that human societies evolve along roughly the same lines, thus denying any basis to theories of racial or cultural superiority.

“I am not denying the reality of free will.”

Morris argues that free will or human agency play a role in history through collective decisions made by a populace or individual decisions within a personal life. However, he believes that, on a macro level, geographical determinants still reign supreme, suggesting that free will can never be exercised entirely independently of circumstances.

“Everywhere in the world, people who chose to stay put, breed more, and work harder squeezed out those who made different choices. Nature just made the whole process start earlier in the West.”

This is how Morris argues for a long-term theory of the rise of the West while maintaining his own Critiques of Cultural and Racial Explanations for Dominance. For Morris, social development follows certain universal and predictable laws. Circumstances like climate simply cause these laws to take effect at different times.

“Neither politicians nor statistics always lie; it is just that there is no such thing as a completely neutral way to present either policies or numbers.”

Morris’s approach relies on quantitative data. Such data is often seen as having the advantage of being more objective than qualitative evidence, such as interpretations of material objects. However, Morris admits here that there is often, if not always, a subjective element around quantitative data. For example, data only measures specific metrics chosen by the analyst, and such results still need to be interpreted.

“As social development moves upward it sets off a race between ever more threatening disruptions and ever more sophisticated defenses. Sometimes, as happened in the West around 2200 and 1200 BCE, the challenges overwhelm the responses available. Whether because leaders make mistakes, institutions fail, or the organization and technology are just not there, problems spiral out of control, disruption turns into collapse, and social development goes backward.”

The Interplay of Innovation, Environment, and Power is seen especially in how empires collapse. Nonetheless, at the foundation, Morris believes that collapse is driven in all cases by how social development itself generates the problems that leads to societal decline.

“Just as happened around 1200, the climate was changing, peoples were migrating, conflict was escalating, new states were pushing into the cores, and old states were coming apart. New collapses seemed entirely possible, but both cores instead restructured themselves, developing the economic, political, and intellectual resources to manage the challenges that faced them.”

A challenge to Morris’s theory of world history is that, when faced with the same pressures, some societies adapt while others collapse. This suggests that there are social and cultural differences after all. However, Morris would counter that there is a pattern behind both the rise and fall of empires because societies tend to develop along similar lines, in Morris’s view.

“Rather than a single genius changing history, this looks like desperate men trying out every idea that came along, with the best solutions winning.”

In Morris’s narrative, great political leaders and scientists are simply not revolutionaries who turn history in a new direction. Instead, they represent trends in social development itself, specifically social and intellectual needs of the period.

“Like all organizations, the Han and Roman empires had evolved to solve specific problems. They had learned how to defeat all rivals, govern vast territories and huge populations with simple technologies, and move food and revenue from rich provinces to the armies on their frontiers and the crowds in their great cities.”

Both the Roman and Han empires rose and fell apart within similar time frames. In Morris’s view, such similarities do further prove that in The Interplay of Innovation, Environment, and Power, environment is the most important factor. The Han and Roman empires were, in that sense, simply shaped by the environment.

“Like first-wave Axial thought, second-wave ideas were dangerous, challenging the authority of husbands over wives, rich over poor, and kings over subjects, but once again the mighty made their peace with the subversive, redistributing power and wealth in the process.”

Morris often discounts the importance of cultural and religious influences as drivers of history. This is perhaps most clear in his explanation of the Axial Age. The first Axial Age was because “the new age got the culture it needed” (265), and later Axial Age ideas became tools for states.

“The exams created unprecedented social mobility within the educated elite, and some historians even speak of the rise of a kind of ‘protofeminism’ as the new openness expanded to gender relations.”

In this passage, Morris discusses the loosening of cultural restrictions on women in 8th-century China. Although Morris links this to Buddhism, for him it is ultimately just another way that higher social development and more innovative thought manifested in that time and place, just as the harmful and sexist practice of footbinding in 12th-century China signified the social stagnation.

“As always, climate change forced people to adapt, but left it up to them to decide just how to do that.”

Climate change is a major way The Role of Geography in Social Development is revealed in Morris’s narrative. At the same time, this passage explains a major part of Morris’s thesis: It is not so much that climate change changes history, but how people adapt or fail to adapt to climate changes.

“Every indication was, in fact, that a Chinese industrial revolution was brewing within Kaifeng’s soot-blackened walls and would turn the huge Eastern lead in social development into Eastern rule.”

Morris does declare that the hegemony of the West in the 19th century was the most likely outcome. Nonetheless, Morris does also suggest there were historical hinge points when theoretically the East might have overcome the West, or the West may have stagnated in the modern era, such as with how arguably close China under the Song dynasty came to industrializing.

“Had von Däniken’s aliens from outer space been orbiting Earth again in 1350 they might well have concluded that human history was locked in a series of boom-and-bust cycles, bouncing against an unbreakable hard ceiling. But like all the spacemen I have imagined so far, they would have been mistaken, because another historical law was also operating.”

The “historical law” referred to here is that even similar events happening twice in history do not lead to the same outcomes. Morris suggests this is because civilization does, over time and even after numerous societal collapses, become more resilient over time as innovations and knowledge accumulate and cores become larger.

“Maybe instead of asking why particular princes and emperors made one choice rather than another, we should ask why western Europeans embraced risk-taking just as an inward-turned conservatism descended on China.”

Human agency does not play much of a role in history, if Morris is correct. Not only political actors but also cultural and scientific innovators are simply filling roles that have been created by social development and geographical factors.

“It perhaps makes more sense to conclude that China and Europe both had Renaissances for the same reason that both had first and second waves of Axial thought: because each age gets the thought it needs. Smart, educated people reflect on the problems facing them, and if they face similar issues they will come up with similar ranges of responses, regardless of where and when they live.”

Morris insists that his view of history does allow for people acting independently, but at the same time great leaders and innovators are deeply influenced by societal needs and historical shifts. This is why he claims here that “each age gets the thought it needs” to respond to the challenges it faces.

“I have suggested several times in this book that the motors of history are fear, sloth, and greed.”

Morris believes that the way people as a collective live their lives and respond to environmental challenges follows specific and predictable patterns. His view of human nature is generally pessimistic, as his analysis leaves little room for idealism, altruism, or genuine love of knowledge as motivating factors.

“Although they had no index to tell them that Western social development had whittled away the East’s lead, these men decided that China was not the ideal enlightened empire at all. Rather, it was the antithesis of everything European. Whereas Europeans had learned dynamism, reason, and creativity from ancient Greece and were now surpassing their teacher, China was the land where time stood still.”

As part of his Critiques of Cultural and Racial Explanations for Dominance, Morris traces modern historical theories of an innate Western superiority to this change of attitude toward the Chinese. The binary of the rational, individualistic West and the despotic East is the basis behind such stereotypes of the East. However, other historians would trace this further back to the classical era with the conflict between Greece and Persia.

“The industrial revolution was unique in how much and how fast it drove up social development, but otherwise it was very like all the upswings in earlier history.”

The Industrial Revolution is still in some ways an unprecedented event. However, here and elsewhere Morris argues that it still represented the pattern of social development going through recurring increases, and was a result of The Role of Geography in Social Development.

“Rising social development and expanding cores had always gone together as colonists carried new lifestyles outward and people on the peripheries copied, resisted, or ran away from them. The nineteenth century differed only in scale and speed, but these differences changed the course of history.”

For Morris, the rise of the West in the 19th century repeated earlier patterns going back to prehistory. One of the major ways that The Interplay of Innovation, Environment, and Power repeats in Morris’s understanding of history is through the relationship between cores and peripheries. This is especially true in how cores expand and become stagnant while peripheries further innovate and develop.

“History is not just one damn thing after another. In fact, history is the same old same old, a single grand and relentless process of adaptations to the world that always generate new problems that call for further adaptations.”

The “shape of history” (21) is not just about Longue Durée Patterns of Human History, but is also about using quantitative data as historical evidence. Morris believes that this data has been revealing such patterns across the span of thousands of years and can perhaps enable predictions for the future.

“It was never very likely, even in 1100, that the East would industrialize first, gain the ability to project its power globally, and turn its lead in social development into rule the way the West would subsequently do. It was always likely, though, that someone would eventually develop guns and empires capable of closing the steppes, and ships and markets capable of opening the oceans.”

Although Morris denies that his theory of history is “lock-in” (13), his understanding of Longue Durée Patterns of Human History leads him to believe that there are near-certainties in history. Historical change comes from The Role of Geography in Social Development, but Morris argues that history can still be predicted because societies ultimately develop innovations reacting to environmental circumstances in rational ways.