Farming human nature: the long potholed road to the rules-based liberal order
- The rules-based liberal order is a radical, universalist antidote to c5000 years of destructive traditional free for all selfish identity competition.
- We have farming of human nature to instead constructively harness competition, hence human capabilities: skills, ambition and imagination.
- It’s needed more than ever in a crowded, connected world, facing global challenges.
- But it remains an uncomfortable reality for many identities sorely afflicted by the past selfish illiberal West that the same West, ironically, also eventually uncovered the overarching remedy.
In trying to make sense of long history we strive to stay with the evidence and park our pre-conceptions.
1/ Summary: universalist rules-based liberal order, radical answer to millennia of traditional free for all competition
In comparatively recent historic times the rights and rules-based liberal order – liberal democratic private market capitalism – founded on authentic popular consent, has suddenly emerged as a radically successful collective institutional model [government overseen structures and processes] in its economic, health and political outcomes by:
- Effectively farming human nature, domesticating inherent competitiveness to constructively harness it – and human skills, innovation, ambition and imagination – for a far more rewarding collective outcome,
- Thus directly defusing the long traditional model of unregulated autocratic selfish identity competition [for power, resources, breeding] – which has plagued human history for millennia, delivered mostly chronic poverty and violence – by collectively corralling and supervising competition, crucially by making all identities equal before democratically determined rules, all free to express themselves but from behind the barrier, subject to the rules.
The model is not easy, above all requires a critical level of community commitment, thus still fails in many nations today where traditional identity loyalties predominate.
Also within the West today many are understandably indignant their ancestors were sorely afflicted by past [and present?] illiberal Western policies and behaviour – “people of colour”, First Nations peoples etc – so struggle to accept a model fashioned by the same West.
But those now seeking official preference for their identity as compensation will just be returning to the traditional illiberal model.
The outcome will always be sub-optimal because the liberal order is always vulnerable to illiberal autocracy, from within and without, from selfish people / identities, small and large, tempted to cheat, cross the line, to seek to impose their authority on others in their selfish interests, social behaviour which at great cost has near monopolised history till recent times.
However defusing the ruinous traditional model seems more urgent than ever now the technologically advanced world is suddenly connected like never before and apparently facing existential planetary challenges; and not least when two major nation states also remain wedded to the old order, openly hostile to a cooperative global liberal order.
2/ Perspective today: compelling observations
For eons humanity lived in small groups spread across the Earth, each with little knowledge or awareness of most others. Then from c1500 in particular, the start of the European Age of Discovery, this started to change, with gathering speed, and today technology [24/7 news, internet etc] knits near the whole of humanity, globally.
Secondly, it’s obvious humanity’s aggregate economic and technical advance is now adversely impacting the planet’s biosphere, perhaps even existentially for homo sapiens, and a myriad of other life, much / most of which is crucial to the ongoing welfare of homo sapiens.
Third, after near 5000 years of urban „civilisations“ the rules-based liberal order [applying, broadly, to ~ 40% of world population] within a few centuries has suddenly delivered radical advances in technology and material / health / freedom outcomes, which advance has also centrally contributed to planetary pressures.
In contrast life for most in the past 5000 years has been Hobbesean, and a life which lingers for many still today where strong local attachment to traditional identities has negated meaningful support for constructive cooperation for a greater collective outcome, for peace, prosperity and freedoms.
3/ Traditional political model: illiberal autocracy
a/ Illiberal autocracy fitted the mid 4th millennium BCE take-off: competitive human nature met a radical leap in technology & resources
Motivated mainly by survival in a restless natural world, minds among competitive innovating bright homo sapiens slowly advanced technology across eons: tools, fire, better tools etc. Sometime through the Middle Paleolithic [c300-50kya] the [important] religious impulse also began to manifest.
From mid 10th millennium BCE, in the wake of the last ice age, farming / agriculture emerged, taming cereals [and other plants] and animals, from small settlements mainly in the Levant, starting to end millions of years of human hunter gathering.
Then from mid 4th millennium BCE, c5000 years later, sustained adverse climate shift provoked a radical extension of humanity’s farming of nature, a second agricultural revolution, again in the Near East, based on intense large scale riverine irrigation [Iraq and Egypt] which triggered the relatively sudden emergence of literate affluent urbanised “civilisations”, generating unexpected large economic surpluses which soon also funded temples and especially – fatefully – armies.
A crucial ingredient was a radical take-off in technology, especially metals [bronze, later iron], also pottery / textiles etc, artisan manufacturing, and then especially writing, which encouraged the economic and cultural take off, facilitating commerce and government and crucially allowing science / knowledge / history / literature to be stored and passed down.
A recent paper by P Turchin et al. investigating theories to explain the radical “Holocene transformation”, drawing on a now large relevant database, broadly aligns with this overview: “The best-supported model indicates a strong causal role played by a combination of increasing agricultural productivity and invention/adoption of military technologies (most notably, iron weapons and cavalry in the first millennium BCE).”
Centralised elitist autocracy suited the new urbanised world [led by kings / emperors working with nobles and priests] and for c5000 years since the ubiquitous traditional political model for humanity has been selfish centralised illiberal autocracy, variations on it, which can be framed as unregulated, free for all, selfish identity competition / promotion, where identity [individual or group] is compounded of one or more of: 1/ birth / family / ancestors; 2/ tribe, clan, nation; 3/ race, ethnicity; 4/ „story“: religion, myth; 5/ gender.
From this model the overwhelming outcome for humanity across millennia has been chronic poverty and brief lives, and chronic violence, micro and macro, within states and between them.
China at the east rim of Eurasia has long remained an unstable, often violent, inward, dualistic monolith, a Han core later wrestling northern non-Han tribes. The militant, culture thin tribes north twice prevailed [Mongols c1279 and Manchu, c1640], but each time adapted to the monolith, moved into the Chinese house. So China remained a traditional under-performing inherently sub-optimal autocracy for millennia, achieving only some islands of relative calm and prosperity [eg early 6th C Sui dynasty, early 7th C Tang dynasty, and periods of the 11th C Song dynasty] in otherwise mostly a sea of strife. In a long history there were not even brushes with proto-democracy and then mid 20th C WW2 allowed Maoism to take charge and revert to staunch autocracy.
However at the west end of Eurasia liberal democracy did eventually arise from among a clutch of states, if from a long gestation. Unlike in China, a number of competing [if shifting] coherent independent hereditary political entities emerged and while the history was chronically violent, destructive across many centuries, the competition was eventually constructive in terms of advancing their economies and knowledge, and finally bearing the liberal model.
b/ Knowledge advance misappropriated by autocracy
A persistent problem in human history has been how the mostly slow but relentless advance in technology / knowledge has been misappropriated by competing ruling autocrats in pursuing their deemed self interests, funding extravagant lifestyles and especially opportunistic warfare, inflicting wide violence and denying material benefits to most common people.
So, ironically, technical progress also included progressively more lethal military means: spears and axes, bows and arrows, horses / stirrups, metals [bronze then iron], gunpowder and guns / artillery, high explosives, ships and planes, and finally nuclear weapons.
Thus in Europe the traditional might is right model kept generating wars which became deadlier as weapons became more effective and as economic resources to fund armies grew ever larger: Medieval wars [eg the Crusades, 100 Years War], 17th C religious wars [especially the 1618-1648 Thirty Years War], 18th C wars [spreading offshore to Americas and Asia], Napoleonic wars and especially 20th C WW1 and WW2.
4/ The rights and rules-based liberal order: eventual radical success
a/ Radical historic outcomes
Post WW2 period finally saw the emphatic radical success of government regulated / overseen, rules-based liberal democratic private market capitalism, delivering dramatic advances on an historically unparalled scale in 1/ health / longevity; 2/ alongside a leap in income / wealth; in technology and science; and 3/ meaningful individual freedoms; all broadly in stunning contrast with the preceding c5000 years.
The model is founded above all on authentic full franchise popular consent, however difficult to implement in practice, institutionally, in the face of near constant undermining by myriad competing private interests, identities, seeking official public advantage.
A compelling case study is modern Europe, which after millennia of traditional inter-state violence, and, later, centuries of imperial predation abroad, has been transformed, after two shocking wars finally discredited long running militant, imperialist nationalism, arriving abruptly at hitherto unforeseen peace and prosperity, now embodied institutionally in the 27 member, c450m people, European Union.
Ironic it is therefore that the Europe which oversaw such a destructive unjust experience, internally and externally, did also finally uncover the political answer, radical rules-based liberal democracy, bringing competing identities to heel by making them all submit to common rules, determined fairly, with authentic consent by the people.
This is an uncomfortable reality to accept for many representatives from non-Western peoples, “people of colour”, given the appalling relevant history in many non-West countries, especially the Americas, Africa and parts of the Near East and Asia.
It was also proved a shocking reality for the West because the same traditional model delivered self-inflicted calamities like European religious wars, the French Revolution, the US Civil War and the 20th C catastrophe of WW1 etc.
The post WW2 success of democracy among non-Western peoples in East Asia is a second radical outcome – starting with Japan [like Germany, defeated in WW2], thence S. Korea and Taiwan, both now enthusiastic democracies – above all demonstrating its universalist efficacy.
The cases of Taiwan and S Korea [and also the former East Germany] are revealing through showing that in divided countries where the same ethnic / cultural mix is kept constant adopting a liberal model achieves far superior economic and political outcomes than repressive autocracy.
Stefan Dercon recently [„Gambling on Development etc“, 2022] importantly observes that in recent times some less liberal even autocratic countries can also achieve meaningful development take-off if the governing „elite“ puts its mind to it, rightly highlighting that competent central government focussed on the goal is an essential ingredient for any country to so succeed. Bangladesh is cited, also obviously PR China’s lift off launched by Deng c1980, and „Communist“ Vietnam is another clear instructive case.
But these can be seen as exceptions which help prove the rule, in that they are far outnumbered by cases where the autocracy is much less „enlightened“, remains selfish, kleptocratic, regressive.
Secondly, no authentic liberal democracy has failed to take-off economically.
b/ How the liberal rules-based order works
The overarching liberal rules-based order model makes inherent common sense because it directly addresses the obvious failures in the traditional political model, ie by institutionally domesticating, refereeing the competition between any and all identities through making them all equal before consensual, democratically determined, government supervised / regulated rules, ie within a purpose-designed collective framework of structures and processes.
The model is the radical antidote to traditional free for all, selfish identity competition.
It is also by definition universalist by encompassing, applying to all identities.
They can all express themselves, constrained only by rules commonly agreed, determined democratically, collectively, by all the citizenry, on the basis that all agree to submit to them.
But this still leaves most identities availed of radical freedom of expression by history’s standards.
It turns destructive competition on its head to instead constructively harness its benefits – and human skills, innovation, aspirations and imagination – enabling humanity to more optimally manage, cope with, make most of the explosion in knowledge.
c/ International recognition today
In global forums today the liberal rules-based order is loudly abused by some obvious major antagonists, wedded to the autocratic old order.
But striking too is that in the same forums the core principles of the liberal model – human rights, free and fair elections, independent judicial processes, conflicts of interest, sound governance etc – are now widely acknowledged, approved, in words if not always deed.
This now includes many international organisations, starting with the United Nations and its many affiliates.
Curious too is how many obvious autocracies openly pay lip service to the same model by pretending to deploy liberal principles, thus pretend to operate representative parliaments / elections, also courts, when they are patently no such thing, are working arms of the executive, not independent.
d/ Signs of liberal societal behaviour in history
Liberal proto-modern behaviour arose in the past but rarely, only when given the opportunity, left alone by neighbours, eg especially in Homer’s Classical Greece for a few centuries from 8th C BCE in the wake of the climate forced eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age collapse, but tapping thought from the Near East; later in the peripheral northern forest Germanic / Norse tribes in Europe, importantly when they settled in Britain from 6th C CE; and later in Medieval / Renaissance Europe, especially in some Italian city states / communes from the 11th C [though „despotism“ prevailed by the 14-15th C], thence through rediscovery of Classics, as educated minds [including some inside the Church, in monasteries and universities] asked more questions, shaken too by the 1348 Black Death.
5/ Liberal order emergence: struggled with illiberal reaction within, and later without.
Self evidently the traditional autocratic might is right, identity promoting model has near monopolised history since the emergence of „civilisations c5000 years ago, overseen by competing hereditary monarchies and associated aristocracies, and in the West an institutionalised Christian Church then impressing at all levels of secular authority until the 17th C.
Thus in the West the long journey from 10th C Britain [where proto-democratic tribal behaviour arrived with the Germanic settlers] was compromised by birth rank and inheritance [fanning inequality]; by advancing military technology; by the Christian Church, complicit with autocratic secular leaders, exploiting human appetite for the tempting supernatural; and also by the genetic lottery, in all states throwing up incompetent kings and able ambitious opponents from any rank.
So the rules-based liberal order which eventually emerged was long plagued by ongoing selfish traditional / reactionary behaviour by the West, at great cost to itself as well as others:
a/ the wars in 16th C Renaissance Italy from c1500 when the opportunistic French monarchy was lured in.
b/ the Church‘s reaction to the emerging humanististc Renaissance, then the Reformation, culminating in the devastating 16th and 17th G religious wars .
c/ from c1500 CE, predatory European global imperialism, applying the traditional model, availed of latest technology / knowledge as the Age of Discovery revealed lucrative new domains abroad.
Since WW2, when the liberal order finally got traction there have been major ongoing problems coping with remnants of the Old Order, especially the Soviet Union and the PRC: the invasion / 45 year occupation of East Europe by the USSR, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the PRC still threatening hostilty to Taiwan, and now the shocking unprovoked Ukraine invasion by Putin’s imperialist neo-Soviet Russia.
Interesting is that the famous Faust story is a relevant foundational myth for the West and the liberal order, though ironically was born in the 15th C as [unconscious?] propaganda for a then anxious Church, wary of rising open minded curiosity of nature and humanity’s place in it, ie the radical essence of the liberal order.
So the original story decries this mindset as hubristic and ungodly, the fallen Man not knowing his place and redeemable only through God’s grace [and the Church’s services].
It painted Faust not just as feckless but also, revealingly, not as a rational authentic Renaissance man but as quasi-religious, like the Church looking for an answer not through rational enquiry but magic, another supernatural quick fix, making the story a false polemical parody.
However the pivotal bargain at the heart of the story – surrendering the dear and precious for the “miraculous” – can be overturned so that the liberal subscriber bargains not with Satan but with himself and fellow humanity, offering his precious mortal life, rationally working with others, constructively, to gain “miraculous” knowledge outcomes if he and like-minded competitive humanity take responsibility.
This bargain is also the heart of Mary Shelley’s uncannily prescient 1818 Frankenstein, where the ambitious, innovative Doctor did not finish the job, did not take full responsibility for his creative project.
6/ Outlook for liberal order: positive, but vulnerable
a/ Illiberal reaction
The rules-based liberal order is not destined to succeed teleologically.
But given the right opportunity, the right collective societal circumstances, then societies / communities will likely gravitate towards the model through popular understanding of its demonstrated logical advantages, ie from where it has succeeded.
To succeed it crucially needs critical mass in shared supporting values, in societal cooperation and culture in a common commitment to a consensual rules-anchored democratic framework to tame inherent human competition, instead harness it for constructive collective outcomes.
There is a strong case that its long term outlook globally is broadly positive:
b/ the model now at last has important traction globally, critical mass: including about 11% of world population with the core West, 13.5% with E Asia, 31% with India, and around 40% adding Indonesia, Brazil and others.
c/ where it has traction it has generally achieved emphatic relevant outcomes since WW2.
d/ most [but not all] people when educated and exposed to liberal values generally grow to favor and accept them.
However a quick glance at the world today also shows the model is not easy to implement, does not run itself, demands sustained vigilant leadership, is always vulnerable to undermining or attack by one or more covetous identities, and in particular will not succeed where traditional loyalties predominate, especially ethnic, nationalistic and religious.
Also the world today still has to cope with two large well armed openly hostile such states left over from the 20th C, one even now having launched a major unprovoked war in Europe against a democratic neighbour.
b/ “Unnatural shocks”
Also history is prone to unexpected shocks which can make life harder for the liberal order:
a/ exogenous natural factors: geology [volcanoes / earthquakes]; disease; climate change, both natural [evident major impacts on humanity in the deep past] and now apparently anthropogenic;.
b/ endogenous societal shocks.
a/ Events. In the 20th C the July 1914 micro gunshot put a match to a tense macro context, triggering WW1 after a few roomfuls of narrow minded leaders in 3 European capitals returned to traditional militant diplomacy without pausing to consider the implications of the latest military capability [weapons and much greater supporting economic resources] available to all sides. The results were calamitous, resonate to this day in Ukraine.
Secondly, it’s possible the devastating interwar Depression could have been avoided by better Central Bank coordination.
b/ Personalities can matter? The course of history might be quite different without Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and now Putin.
Striking is how serious societal unrest – and the gullibility of many people, quasi-religious mindsets susceptible to “saviours” – can be exploited by ambitious autocrats, like in the French Revolution [Terror, Napoleon], WW1 [Bolsheviks], the Depression [Hitler], and WW2 in China [Mao].
c/ Technology? Beyond concern for climate there is debate about the dystopic possibilities from ongoing technical innovation, across many industries, candidates like Artificial Intelligence.
However rational analysis is vulnerable to the religious impulse, risks revisiting traditional appetites for Apocalypticism.
References
Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J.A., 2012. Why Nations Fail. Profile Books.
Acemoglu, Daron & Robinson, James A., 2019. The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty. Penguin Press.
Andrewes, Antony, 1971. Greek Society. Pelican Books.
Allen, Robert C., 2009. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press.
Arnold, Guy, 2005. Africa: A Modern History. Atlantic Books.
Bailyn, Bernard, 2012. The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675. Knopf.
Bauer, P.T., 1984. Reality and Rhetoric, Studies in the Economics of Development. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
Bauer, Susan Wise, 2007. The History of the Ancient World, From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. Norton.
Blainey, Geoffrey, 1977. The Causes of War. Sun Books.
Boardman, J., Griffin, J., & Murray, O., 1986. The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford University Press
Bourke, Stephen, 2016. The Middle East, The Cradle of Civilization. Thames & Hudson.
Bowra, C.M, 1958. The Greek Experience. Cardinal.
Brown, Archie, 2009. The Rise and Fall of Communism. HarperCollins
Burroughs, William James, 2005. Climate Change in Prehistory, The End of the Reign of Chaos. Cambridge University Press.
Cartledge, P., 1993. The Greeks . Cambridge University Press
Clark, Christopher, 2012. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Allen Lane.
Colley, Linda, 1992. Britons, Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Pimlico.
Cook, Michael, 2003. A Brief History of the Human Race. Granta.
Corfield, Penelope J., 2022. The Georgians, Deeds & Misdeeds of 18th Century Britain. Yale University Press
Craig, Gordon, 1981. The Germans. Penguin.
Crone, P, 2003. Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World. Oneworld.
Cunliffe, Barry, 2001. The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe. Oxford University Press.
Davies, Norman, 1996. Europe, A History. Pimlico.
Davis, Ralph, 1973. The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Deats, Sara Munson, 2019. The Faust Legend, From Marlowe and Goethe to Contemporary Drama and Film. Cambridge University Press.
Dercon, Stefan, 2022. Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose. Hurst
Diamond, Jared, 1997. Guns, Germs and Steel. W.W. Norton.
Elliot, J. H., 2006. Empires of the Atlantic World, Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. Yale University Press.
Evans, Richard J., 2003. The Coming of the Third Reich. Allen Lane.
Evans, Richard J., 2005. The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939. Allen Lane.
Evans, Richard J., 2008. The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster. Allen Lane.
Evans, Richard J., 2015. The Third Reich in History and Memory, Little, Brown, 2015
Evans, Richard J., 2016 The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914. Allen Lane.
Gellately, Robert, 2013. Stalin’s Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War. Vintage.
Graeber, David & Wengrow, David, 2021. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Heather, Peter, The Restoration of Rome, 2013. Macmillan.
Fagan, Brian, 2003. The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization. Basic Books.
Fairbank, John King & Goldman, Merle, 2006. China, A New History. Belknap Harvard.
Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, 2007. Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration. Oxford.
Finley, M.I. (ed), 1981. The Legacy of Ancient Greece, A New Appraisal. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Fox, Robin Lane, 2005. The Classical World: An Epic History from Homer to Hadrian. Allen Lane.
Gaddis, John Lewis, 2000. The Cold War. Allen Lane.
Gay, Peter, 2007. Modernism, The Lure of Heresy, From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond. William Heinemann
Golden, Jonathan M., 2010. Dawn of the Metal Age, Technology and Society During the Levantine Chalcolithic. Equinox.
Gordon, Andrew, 2013. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford.
Gottlieb, Anthony, 2016. The Dream of Reason: From the Greeks to the Renaissance. Norton.
Gottlieb, Anthony, 2017. The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. Penguin.
Gress, D, From Plato to NATO, 1998, Free Press.
Hale, John, 1993. The Civilisation of Europe in the Renaissance. HarperCollins.
Harari, Yuval Noah, 2011. Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind. Vintage.
Heather, Peter, 2005. The Fall of the Roman Empire: a New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford University Press.
Heather, Peter, 2009. Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe. Macmillan.
Heather, Peter, 2014. The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders. Oxford University Press.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude, 2008. The Roads to Modernity, The British, French and American Enlightenments. Vintage.
Hirsch, Fred, 1977. The Social Limits to Growth. Routledge.
Hirst, John, 2009. The Shortest History of Europe. Black Inc.
Hobson, John M., 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge University Press.
Hosking, Geoffrey, 2002. A History of the Soviet Union. HarperCollins.
Israel, Jonathan, 1995. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806. Oxford University Press.
Israel, Jonathan, 2001. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650‑1750. Oxford University Press.
Israel, Jonathan, 2010. A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy. Princeton.
Jones, Colin, 2002. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon. Penguin.
Jones, Eric, 2003. The European Miracle: Environments, Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia. Cambridge University Press.
Jones, Prudence Jones & Pennick, Nigel, 1995. A History of Pagan Europe. Routledge.
Kennedy, Paul, 1988. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Random House.
Kindleberger, Charles P., 1973. The World in Depression 1929-1939. Allen Lane.
King, Margaret L, 2003. The Renaissance in Europe. Laurence King Publishing.
Lamb, H. H., 1995. Climate, History and the Modern World. Routledge.
Landes, David S, 1999. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. W. W. Norton and Co.
Lewis, Bernard, 2004. From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting The Middle East. New York. Oxford University Press.
Lindberg, David C. , 1992. The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450. Chicago.
Maddison, Angus. Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030AD. Oxford University Press.
McNeill, John Robert & McNeill, William Hardy. 2003. The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History. Norton.
McWhorter, John, 2021. Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. Portfolio .
Mithen, Stephen, 2006. After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000–5000 BC. Harvard University Press.
Morrris, Ian & Powell, Barry, 2009. The Greeks: History, Culture, and Society. Prentice-Hall.
Morris, Ian, 2010. Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future. Profile Books.
Morris, Ian, 2014, War! What is it Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Mortimer, Ian, 2014. Which Century Saw The Most Change and Why it Matters to Us. The Bodley Head.
Nisbet, Robert, 1975. The Twilight of Authority. Heinemann.
Nisbet, Robert, 1976. The Social Philosophers. Granada.
North, Douglas C, Thomas, Robert P., 1973. The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. Cambridge University Press.
Ober, Josiah, 2016. The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece. Princeton University Press.
Olson, Mancur C., 1984. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. Yale University Press.
Osborne, Roger, 2007. Civilization, A New History of the Western World, Vintage.
Osborne, Robin, 2004. Greek History. Routledge.
Pakenham, Thomas (1991). The Scramble for Africa. The Bodley Head.
Parker, Geoffrey, 1987. The Thirty Years War. Routledge.
Pincus, Steven C.A., 2009. 1688: The First Modern Revolution. Yale University Press.
Pinker Steven, 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Allen Lane.
Pinker Steven, 2018. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Allen Lane.
Pomeranz, Kenneth, 2001. Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton University Press.
Ponting, Clive, 2000. World History, A New Perspective. Pimlico.
Popkin, Jeremy D., 2006. A Short History of the French Revolution. Pearson Education.
Porter, Roy, 2000. Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World. Penguin.
Price, Simon & Thonemann, Peter, 2000. The Birth of Classical Europe, A History from Troy to Augustine. Viking.
Priestland, David, 2009. The Red Flag, Communism and the Making of the Modern World. Allen Lane.
Reynolds, David, 2000. One World Divisible: a Global History since 1945. Allen Lane.
Roberts, J.M., 1980. The Pelican History of the World. Penguin.
Roesdahl, Else, 1998. The Vikings. Penguin.
Sabine, George H., 1963. A History of Political Theory. Harrap.
Scarre, Chris, 2013. The Human Past: World Prehistory & the Development of Human Societies. Thames & Hudson.
Schom, Alan,1997. Napoleon Bonaparte, A Biography. Harper Collins.
Singer, Charles, 1997. A History of Scientific Ideas. Barnes & Noble.
Snyder, Timothy, 2010. Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books.
Stone, Norman, 1983. Europe Transformed, 1878-1919. Fontana.
Stone, Lawrence, 2001. The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642. Routledge.
Stringer, Chris & Andrews, Peter, 2005. The Complete World of Human Evolution. Thames Hudson.
Taylor, Alan, 2016. American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804, W. W. Norton.
Taylor, Alan, 2021. American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850, W. W. Norton.
Thomas, Hugh, 1997. The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870. Simon & Schuster
Treasure, Geoffrey, 1985. The Making of Modern Europe. Routledge.
Turchin, Peter et al., 2022. Disentangling the evolutionary drivers of social complexity: A comprehensive test of hypotheses. Science Advances, 24 Jun 2022, Vol 8, Issue 25.
Van de Mierop, 2007. A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 BC. Malden: Blackwell.
Vinen, Richard, 2000. A History in Fragments: Europe in the Twentieth Century. Little, Brown, & Co.
Ward-Perkins, Bryan, 2005. The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation. Oxford University Press.
Wasserstein, Bernard, 2009. Barbarism and Civilization, A History of Europe in our Time. Oxford
Watson, Francis, 2002. India: A Concise History (Revised and Updated Edition). Thames and Hudson.
Watson, Peter, 2006. Ideas, A History from Fire to Freud. Phoenix.
Watson, Peter, 2012. The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New. HarperCollins
Westad, Odd Arne, 2015. Restless Empire, China and the World Since 1750. The Bodley Head.
Wickham, Chris, 2009. The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000. Viking.
Wickham, Chris, 2015. Sleepwalking into a New World: The Emergence Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century. Princeton.
Wickham, Chris, 2016. Medieval Europe. Yale University Press.
Wilentz, Sean, 2006. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. Norton.
Whitmarsh, Tim, 2016. Battling the Gods, Atheism in the Ancient World. Faber & Faber.
Wright, Ronald, 2004. A Short History of Progress. The Text Publishing.
Wilkinson, Toby, 2010. The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt: The History of a Civilisation from 3000 BC to Cleopatra. Bloomsbury.
Aethelwulf 