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Civilizations, as Niall Ferguson points out, are complicated things. They can flourish for centuries and then slip suddenly into poverty and relative decline.1 There is no better illustration of this pattern of civilizational collapse than the relative decline of China beginning in the nineteenth century—a decline that is, frankly, baffling given China’s economic power just two centuries ago. As late as 1800, as the United States was still struggling in its infancy to find its footing, the international system looked very different. Both the Chinese and Western European economies were highly commercialized and stood on the cusp of industrialization. The living standards...
