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 – that globalisation would not lead to the end of history, but return us to distinctive, competing civilisations – was counter-intuitive. But In 2025, with the 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 moving towards a world of multipolarity and civilisation-states.

But what if civilisational thinking is itself mistaken? What even is a ‘civilisation’? And what, in particular, is ‘the West’?

Josephine Quinn is one of Britain’s most respected historians of antiquity. Her latest 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 talk about the dawn of ancient European history, the Bronze Age Collapse and fall of the Roman Empire. How similar were ancient people to us? And what lessons does the distant past hold for the challenges of the 21st century?