The way to start a "golden age" is to build big and beautiful barriers to keep out foreign goods and people. At least that is the opinion of the most powerful man on the planet. Swedish historian Johan Norberg takes the opposite view. In Peak Human, Mr Norberg charts the rise and fall of the golden ages around the world over the past three millennia, from Athens to the Anglosphere to the Abbas Caliphate. He finds that the states that outperformed their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to foreigners and to ideas that worried the powerful. When they closed again, they lost their lustre.
Consider the Chinese Song Dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1279. The Song emperors took much more pride in the rule of law than their predecessors, who tended to rule at their whim. To enforce predictable rules, they hired many officials through meritocratic trials. The first Song emperor introduced "unconventional political reform": he "did not remove officials who disagreed with him".
"Crowded cities have created the conditions for an unprecedented exchange of ideas, goods and services," notes Mr Norberg. Artisans invented new industrial processes, such as burning coal to smelt iron. The invention of movable type in the 1840s made it so cheap to print books that one philosopher feared people would stop learning the classics by heart. By 1200, Song China had the world's richest economy, a merchant fleet with "the potential to discover the world" and a habit of tinkering that may have sparked the Industrial Revolution centuries before the European one. But then came the Mongols.
The popular image of Genghis Khan and his mounted hordes sweeping through the world, killing and burning, is accurate within reason. The Mongol dynasty, however, sought to preserve the technological marvels of its predecessors - even if it did not add much to them. It was only when the Ming emperors took over in 1368 that China really turned on itself.Free movement within the country was ended. Free exchange gave way to forced labour. Foreign trade was punished and even the building of seaworthy ships was banned. The Ming emperor, pining for the good old days, brought back the fashions of 500 years earlier. Men caught with the wrong hairstyle were castrated along with their barbers. Largely due to reactionary Ming policies, Chinese incomes halved between 1080 and 1400. The country only recovered in the late 20th century when it reopened.
Some of the golden ages Mr. Norberg describes will be familiar to readers, but he adds new details and provocative arguments. Athens was not only the birthplace of democracy; it became rich because it was liberal by ancient standards. The duty was only 2 %. Foreigners were welcome: a former Syrian slave became one of the richest men in the city. By a measure developed by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, ancient Athenians enjoyed more economic freedom than citizens of any modern state, narrowly beating Hong Kong and Singapore. (This freedom did not extend to women and slaves, a reservation that applied to all the Golden Ages until recently.)
Rome became strong by cultivating alliances and granting citizenship to conquered nations. He eagerly learned from those he defeated - Greek slaves taught Roman children logic, philosophy and drama. During Rome's golden age, one set of laws governed the vast empire, markets were relatively free, and 400,000 miles of roads transported goods from ship to villa. As one awestruck Greek orator said: if you want to see all the products of the world, either travel the world or come to Rome.
Emperor Augustus introduced a flat poll tax and a modest wealth tax. Extra income from hard work or innovation was suddenly subject to a zero marginal tax rate. Not surprisingly, Augustus's Rome became as rich as Britain and France 1500 years later.
Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, thinks Rome has collapsed because of "rampant homosexual behaviour". Mr Norberg offers a more convincing explanation. To bad luck - epidemics and barbarian attacks - were added political mistakes.
The emperors, who were short of money, devalued the coins and reduced the silver content. This caused wild inflation. Price controls were then imposed on everything from sandals to lions. Business went slack.
Intellectual freedom gave way to dogma and persecution of first Christians and then Christians themselves. In the end, Rome was too weak to withstand the onslaught of the barbarians. According to revisionists, the following Dark Ages were not so bad. Archaeological evidence, such as the sudden decline in the number of cargo shipwrecks, suggests that it was "the greatest social regression in history."
Mr Norberg deftly punctures widespread misconceptions. Islamic State fanatics worship the Abbas-like caliphate but would hate to tolerate it. The Italian Renaissance, which modern nationalists like Viktor Orbán see as proof of European and Christian cultural superiority, began as a rebellion against Christian orthodoxy and in imitation of pagan cultures. Despite what you will read in Blake and Dickens, the British Industrial Revolution was not miserable for workers: a study of diaries shows that the only consistently discontented group were poets and writers.
Could a history book be more timely? Of all the golden ages, the greatest is here and now. Half of the progress that has been made over the past 10,000 years in raising people's living standards has taken place since 1990. Openness went global after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it is now on a rapid decline as multilateral trade wars loom and more and more countries suppress free inquiry.
All previous golden ages ended the same way Rome did - bad luck and bad leadership. Many prosperous societies isolated themselves or had a "Socratic moment" and silenced their most rational voices. The book "Peak Human" makes no mention of Donald Trump; it was written before his re-election. The American president will not read it, but others should. The current age of globalisation might yet be saved. As Mr Norberg says: "Failure is not destiny, it is a choice."
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