Everything We’re Told About the History of the West Is Wrong

In 1996 Samuel Huntington published ‘The Clash of Civilizations’. At the time its hypothesis was counter-intuitive. Despite the supremacy of the United States after the Cold War, the ascent of globalisation would not lead to the end of history, but a return to distinctive and competing civilisations. Rather than homogeneity we would see a growing emphasis on difference, rather than unhindered free markets we would see friction, and eventually rupture.

In 2025, with the continued rise of China to superpower status and a revanchist Russia, it’s tempting to think Huntington was right. Rather than a global civilisation – based on market competition and the rule of law – we are edging towards a world of multipolarity and civilisation-states. But what if civilisational thinking is itself mistaken? What if the idea of plural ‘civilisations’ is a product of the 19th century? Where does such civilisational thinking really come from? What even is a ‘civilisation’? And what, in particular, is ‘the West’?

Josephine Quinn is one of Britain’s most respected historians of antiquity. Chair of Ancient History at Cambridge, her most recent book, “How the World Made the West”, was a book of the year for The Economist, The Sunday Times and The Guardian. In this conversation Josephine and Aaron go from the very dawn of ancient European history, through the Bronze Age Collapse, to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. How similar were those people to us? And what lessons does the distant past hold for the challenges of the 21st century?