Is it too soon to be asking in what part of the world will the next golden age be located?

 

The question posed above occurred to me as I was reading the final pages of Johan Norberg’s latest book, Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages.

Johan Norberg is a senior fellow at the Cato institute. He is a historian of ideas and a prolific author. If Norberg has a fan club, I might qualify for honorary membership. I have written about some of his previous books on this blog (here and here) and have read others.

Norberg explains what he means by a golden age in these terms:

“A golden age is associated with a culture of optimism, which encourages people to explore new knowledge, experiment with new methods and technologies, and exchange the results with others. Its characteristics are cultural creativity, scientific discoveries, technological achievements and economic growth that stand out compared with what came before and after it, and compared with other contemporary cultures. Its result is a high average standard of living, which is usually the envy of others, often also of their heirs.”

The author suggests that the most important precondition for a golden age is “an absence of orthodoxies imposed form the top about what to believe, think and say, how to live and what to do.” He doesn’t present the golden ages he has identified in utopian terms. He acknowledges that countries concerned all practiced slavery, denied women basic rights and “took great delight in exterminating neighbouring populations”.

As implied in the epigraph, Norberg argues that civilizations decline when they lose cultural self-confidence. He suggests that episodes of creativity and growth are often terminated because of the perceived self-interest of people who fear change and feel threatened by it. Free speech is replaced by orthodoxies and free markets are replaced by increased economic controls. The fears of those seeking stability and predictability often become self-fulfilling.

 In my view, Norberg has done an excellent job in explaining why golden ages have emerged and disappeared at different times in different parts of the world.

However, I think there may be an omission in the author’s identification of golden ages. I will briefly discuss that before focusing on the question of whether the Anglosphere is in decline.

Identifying golden ages

Norberg discusses seven golden ages in his book. Since he doesn’t provide a summary timeline showing their duration, I asked ChatGPT to construct the following:

• Athens: 480–404 BC
• Rome: 27 BC–AD 180
• Abbasids: 750–950
• Song dynasty: 960–1279
• Renaissance Italy: 1490–1527
• Dutch Republic: 1609–1672
• Anglosphere: c. 1688 onward.

If that timeline is broadly correct, it suggests that the largest gap between golden ages occurred between the end of the golden age of Rome and the beginning of the golden age of the Abbasids. What was happening at that time? Although the golden age of Rome may have ended around 180, following the death of Marcus Aurelius, the decline and fall of the Roman empire took a few more centuries. The last emperor of the Western Roman empire was deposed in 476. Plato’s Academy in Athens apparently continued to function until 532, when the seven last philosophers left to seek refuge with the Persian king. Interest in Greek philosophy grew in Persia during the 6^th and 7^th centuries, partly because of the presence of scholars associated with schismatic Christian sects.

As I was pondering what was happening between 180 and 750, I began to wonder whether India’s golden age might have been worth discussing in this book. While visiting India last year I read William Dalrymple’s book, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World. As well as discussing India’s impact on religion and culture throughout much of Asia, Dalrymple. points out that over the period from about 250BC to AD 1200, India was an important centre of commerce and trade, and an innovator in fields such as astronomy and mathematics.

India was the source of the numerical system with 10 digits including zero, that we use today. Norberg mentions that important contribution, but Dalrymple discusses it at greater length.

Another fascinating topic discussed by Dalrymple is the close relationship between the merchant classes of early India and the Buddhist monastic movement. Dalrymple emphasizes the importance of trade between India and the Roman empire. He notes that as the Roman empire crumbled, India’s trade with Europe was replaced by expansion of its trade with south-east Asia.

Is the Anglosphere in decline?

The Anglosphere refers to those nations where the English language and cultural values are dominant. Few would dispute that over the last couple of centuries the Anglosphere, first led by Britain and then the United States, played a leading role among nations in demonstrating the benefits of liberal democracy, free markets, technological innovation, and free international trade. Life in the Anglosphere has been far from ideal even in respect of those criteria, but there can be no doubt that we have been living in an age of widespread prosperity that is without historical precedent. As Norberg points out, the whole world has benefited from the spread of golden-age conditions fostered by the Anglosphere, with global extreme poverty declining from 38 to 9 percent in just the period since 1990.

However, Norberg notes that “many ominous signs of decline are clearly present in our time”. He mentions the “hubristic overreach” of U.S. attempts to reshape the Middle East through military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the financial crash of 2008, and the growth of “crippling public debt”. He suggests that a series of crises, including the Covid pandemic, have fostered “a sense that the world is dangerous and that we need to protect ourselves from it”. He writes:

“Most worryingly, rich counties have experienced a major backlash against globalization and trade, and immigrants have become scapegoats, just as they were in so many other eras of decline, potentially shutting us out from our most potent source of constant revitalization.”

Norberg notes that both China and Russia “have recently taken a totalitarian turn and are working hard to devastate neighbours”. He suggests, nevertheless, that Russia and China will have a hard time trying to challenge the Anglosphere-led world order because it will be difficult for them to find reliable friends among advanced states. 

Unfortunately, in the short time since the book was written, the government of the United States has adopted an international stance that seems to be inconsistent with the continued existence of an Anglosphere-led world order. Countries that have long regarded themselves as allies of the U.S. are now forced to contemplate seriously how they can best protect their own interests if the U.S. pursues isolationist policies.

The book ends on a somewhat optimistic note. The author observes that there are roughly fifty prosperous, open societies around the world. If one of them fails, “that will not stop others from picking up the torch”. He adds:

“That prompts the question of where the next golden age will come from.”

After considering various possibilities, however, he suggests that “perhaps this is the wrong way to look at it because we now have a “truly global civilization” in which every literate person anywhere in the world can draw upon the accumulated knowledge of humanity and learn skills in any field. In that context, “no one country can hold a monopoly on the ideas that can make them prosper”.

I agree with the general thrust of that argument. The technology required for future golden ages is not deposited in a library that can be easily destroyed. However, the geographical location of societies that are open and prosperous is still an issue worth considering. It isn’t much consolation for citizens in the United States, Britain or Australia to know that their children and grandchildren may be able to draw upon the accumulated knowledge of humanity and learn skills in any field, if institutional change impinges adversely on their incentives to do such things. Opportunities for human flourishing depend on whether political entrepreneurs will restore and maintain sufficient economic freedom.

It is in that context that I ask: Is it too soon to be asking where the next golden age will be located?

I suggested an optimistic answer to that question in Chapter 6 of Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing. Looking beyond looming economic crises, I am still optimistic that the governments of most liberal democracies will eventually introduce institutional reforms to enable the drivers of progress to restore growth of opportunities.