Why The West Won—For Now begins with an alternate universe scenario: In the 19th century, Britain has been conquered by China. Queen Victoria is reduced to a powerless figurehead while Qiying rules Britain and Albert is taken as a hostage to the imperial court in Beijing, where he spends the rest of his life completely acclimating to Chinese culture.

In our actual history, a dispute between British merchants selling opium and the Chinese government, which pushed to ban it, led to the Opium Wars that weakened the Chinese government. European governments took advantage of growing instability to encroach on China further. One attack on Chinese territory led to the British army acquiring a Pekinese dog which was presented to Queen Victoria, who named the dog “Looty” (11).

Comparing the reality where Looty was taken to Queen Victoria with the alternate timeline where Albert was taken to Beijing, Morris asks why “did history follow the path” (11) that led to Western instead of Chinese dominion. Morris notes that the answer most people would have is the technological supremacy of the West, but, Morris argues, that only leaves open the question of how the West was able to advance more than the rest of the world in technology.

By the 19th century, intellectuals wondered why suddenly Europe seemed to be “taking over the world” (13). Different scholars have argued over whether or not the West’s rise was inevitable or the result of relatively recent events, which Morris describes as “long-term lock-in” (13) and “short-term accident” (13) respectively. In addition, historians have sought the answer in “material forces” such as “climate” and “natural resources” (13) or cultural and political trends. Until the mid-20th century, the explanation was simply that Western and Christian values were superior.

The philosopher Karl Marx argued in the 19th century that Europe won because it embraced capitalism while China did not progress past an earlier stage of political development, despotism. However, historical facts did not support such views. For example, China’s naval technology was more advanced than that of Europe in the days of Christopher Columbus. The modern historian David Landes believes that China’s “dense population” (17) encouraged a strongly centralized government that did not have to compete with rival governments, which would have otherwise motivated a government to invest in things like naval exploration. 

The scientist, Jared Diamond, made the similar argument that Europe’s geography favored small kingdoms that had to compete with each other to survive. This would give Christopher Columbus multiple opportunities to find state funding for his voyages, while the famous Chinese admiral and explorer Zheng He had no choice when his government stopped supporting his own voyages. However, such long-term lock-in theories have been mostly rejected by more recent historians, who have instead argued that the West’s rise was because of developments that were relatively recent.

Morris rejects both long-term lock-in and short-term perspectives, at least partially. Instead of looking at geographical and topological developments over millions of years or at the last few centuries, Morris instead argues for an analysis of ancient social and political history to understand the “‘shape’ of history” (22). Another problem for Morris is that the scholars looking at the question of Western ascendancy have been too specialized. Instead, the question needs to be approached in a multidisciplinary manner.

The question of why the West won is not just about why the West became more advanced than other societies, but why the West became so successful that a few Western countries were able to dominate the world. Morris instead approaches the question through “measuring social development” (25), which shows that the West has for most of history been more developed, but the East was ahead of the West from about 550 to 1775 CE (25).

Further, Morris believes that patterns can be seen in history by using the “right tools” (26) or looking at certain factors, which are biology (specifically human traits like curiosity and inventiveness, and how we need and consume energy), sociology (“what causes social change and what social change causes” (27)), and geography (how material conditions and environments shape societies).

While Morris’s approach seems similar to older long-term lock-in theories, he nonetheless insists that advantages given by geography can be lost or become disadvantages at different stages of social development. For example, while western Europe was “a very long way from the real action in Mesopotamia and Egypt,” five centuries ago “social development had risen so much that geography changed its meanings” (33). Western Europe then benefited from what he calls the “advantages of backwardness” (34) when social development begins to benefit a region that had been previously disadvantaged by geography. Overall, Morris believes that geography drove social development, but “rising social development changed what geography meant” (35).