Niall Ferguson explores the rise of western civilisation and how it came to shape the modern world, and asks how much longer western dominance can last?

Part 1, A Tale Of Two Rivers - The opening programme in the series begins in 1420 when Ming China had a credible claim to be the most advanced civilization in the world: “All Under Heaven”.  England on the eve of the Wars of the Roses would have seemed quite primitive by contrast. Yet the lead that China had established in technology was not to be translated into sustained economic growth. In China a monolithic empire stifled colonial expansion and economic innovation. In Europe political division bred competition. The question for our own time is whether or not we have lost that competitive edge to a rapidly ascending Asia.

Part 2, Science - In 1683 the Ottoman army laid siege to Vienna, the capital of Europe’s most powerful empire. Domination of East over West was an alarmingly plausible scenario. But Islam was defeated: not so much by firepower as by science. Niall Ferguson asks why the Islamic world didn’t participate in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, and if the West is still capable of maintaining its scientific lead, at a time when educational attainment in science subjects is declining.

Part 3, New Worlds, Professor Ferguson asks why did North America succeed while South America for so many centuries lagged behind?  The two had much in common (not least the subjugation of indigenous peoples and the use of slavery by European immigrants), but they differed profoundly on individual property rights, the rule of law and representative government. There were two revolutions against royal rule between 1776 and 1820, yet Simón Bolívar was never able to be George Washington, and Latin America remained politically fragmented, socially divided and economically backward even as the United States rose to global primacy. Niall Ferguson asks if North and South are converging today, linguistically as well as economically?

Part 4, Medicine - Niall Ferguson looks at how 19th-century advances in medicine made it possible to export Western civilization to Africa, with mixed results, and how China is building a new African empire.

Part 5, Consumerism - Today the world is becoming more homogenous and, with increasingly few exceptions, big-name brands dominate main streets, high streets and shopping malls all over the globe. We dress the same; we want the same latest technological kit; we drive the same cars. But where did this uniformity come from? The answer is the combination of the industrial revolution and the consumer society. Originating in Britain but flourishing most spectacularly in America, the advent of mass consumption has changed the way the world worked. Led by the Japanese, one non-Western society after another has adopted the same model, embracing the Western way of manufacturing and consuming. Only the Muslim world has resisted. But how long can the burkha hold out against Levi’s? Niall Ferguson examines whether we are now seeing the first effective challenge to the global dominance of Western consumerism.

Part 6, Work - The sixth element that enabled the West to dominate the rest was the work ethic. Max Weber famously linked it to Protestantism, but the reality is that any culture, regardless of religion, is capable of embracing the spirit of capitalism by working hard, saving, and accumulating capital. The question is why that ethic seems now to be fading in the West. Europeans no longer work long hours, and Americans have almost given up saving completely. The real workers and savers in the world are now the heirs of Confucius, not Calvin. In the final programme of the series, Niall Ferguson argues that the real threat to our survival is our loss of faith not in religion but in ourselves.

As China approaches global economic supremacy, Harvard professor Niall Ferguson - whose three-part television series on the growing superpower is linked below - reveals his fears for an ominously powerful nation.

Part 1 - Niall Ferguson shows how the vast apparatus of the Chinese state has always been called on to subjugate individual freedom to the higher goal of unity. He also examines how, on the other hand, centralised control produces tensions that threaten to destroy the country.

Part 2 - The succession of revolutions orchestrated by Mao Zedong killed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. And yet this hard-line communist and murderer of businessmen is revered in China today as the founder of a modern-day capitalist superpower. Why? To answer this question Niall travels from Beijing to Mao’s birthplace at Shaoshan to the new supercity of Chongqing and to the rural backwaters of Anhui to track down survivors of the madness of Chairman Mao, newly minted billionaires and the Mao worshippers who believe tomorrow belongs to them.

Part 3 - Niall Ferguson asks what China’s growing global presence and aggressive nationalism mean to all of us. China’s supercharged economic growth signals a seismic shift in political power from West to East.

Make sure you watch the whole thing for context, but the concluding arguments of this documentary are actually quite shocking. To paraphrase, China’s rise is not the first time in history that growing power has pursed a more aggressive foreign policy to stave off the pressure for domestic political reform; rapid growth, internal instability, youthful nationalism and overseas expansion, mirror Germany’s first bid for world power 100 years ago, an attempt that lead to the first world war.