Open summary

Why did people build cities? One theory is that cities were built to provide security, but the reality is closer to the other way around. Through cooperation, division of labor, and the building of cities, people generated so much wealth that they had to start building walls in order to protect that wealth.

Recent studies show that the bigger the city, the more productive and innovative it is. And we can thank the early Mesopotamian cities for the first advances in a variety of fields such as chemistry, medicine, mathematics, zoology, and mapmaking. With division of labor and efficient farming, people were finally free to devote time to their speciality – and the rest of the city could reap the benefits.

Earlier in his life, the author believed that there was something unique about Europe – something that destined it to become the birthplace of modern civilization and the Age of Enlightenment. But the more he learned about the histories of other regions of the world, the more he realized that this was not the case. In fact, he discovered that there were a lot of places where modernity could’ve taken hold before seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. 

Many places the world over have followed a similar pattern. First, a time of openness and prosperity occurs, followed by something bad, like the appearance of an invading army. This gets blamed on the spirit of openness, and so society closes up and enters a dark period. This lasts until enough people call for a return to the freedom and well-being that came with open borders, trade, and tolerance.

An important discovery was made in 1085, when parts of northern Spain were conquered by Christian Europeans. In the city of Toledo, a Muslim library was found that contained translated intellectual and scientific works, including what was left of Aristotle’s work.

This conquered area of Spain became a beacon for intellectual Europeans, who were starving after years of being cut off from knowledge. As the historian David Levering Lewis puts it, “Muslim learning, having seeped into the Christian West for decades from Andalusia, commenced a torrential outflow.” Over the next two centuries, a gradual opening up of Europe took place. By 1500, this opening up began to overflow beyond Europe’s borders.

In 1707, with the union of England and Scotland, Great Britain came into being. And not long afterward, the United States of America was born when the new country split from Great Britain. Just as England gained a great deal of technology from Scotland, not the least of which was the steam engine, the US quickly became a hotbed of innovation. This was in part through its founding principle of being a nation open to immigrants, who were free to practice their religion of choice – and pursue their own ideas.

This, of course, was a founding principle that would be tested by the fact that the US also started out as a slave-owning nation, and one where certain immigrants wouldn’t always be so welcome. But these principles are nevertheless at the root of American success. The same can be said of the policy of free trade.

So far, the cycle of opening and closing trade hasn’t hit Europe, the US, Japan, and the other countries that have benefited from free trade in the past two centuries. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. 

For the most part, the benefits have been undeniable and plentiful. Since the early 1800s, the average worldwide life expectancy has risen from under thirty years to over seventy. Over the same time period, poverty has dropped from afflicting 90 percent of the world’s population to only around nine percent. Openness has rid the world of many diseases, and has led to countless medical and scientific discoveries. But since we are human beings, we also have a fear of openness, otherness, and uncertainty. And since the events of 9/11 and the economic crisis of 2008, those fears have only grown.

It’s no coincidence that governments tend to grow in times of uncertainty and fear. This is another human instinct – to look to the strongman for protection when things get dire. For the most part, the author notes that since WWII, people everywhere have become more liberal than the previous generation. There have been more calls for equal rights and autonomy from the state. But that doesn’t mean we’re free from our authoritarian impulses.

As the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it, when the right button gets pushed, people can become “focused on defending their in-group, [and] kicking out foreigners . . . . At those times, they are more attracted to strongmen and the use of force.” This isn’t an impulse we left behind after WWII; it’s one that we’ll have to contend with now and forever.

There’s an old saying among communist workers: “We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us.” But these days, China is something of an anomaly, existing somewhere on the border between authoritarian rule and free market entrepreneurship. And despite what the party narrative may be, that wasn’t planned by the government.

The fact is that farmers in the 1990s began operating as private businesses of their own accord, and the trend quickly caught on – to the point where the government had little choice but to sanction it. So China opened up, ever so slightly, with “economic free zones” being created and foreign advisors being quietly brought in. As a result, the economy blossomed. But can government-sanctioned capitalism last?