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God And Gold (2008)

by Walter Russell Mead(Favorite Author)

3.76 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0375713735 (ISBN13: 9780375713736)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Vintage

review 1: A brilliant analysis of the last 300 years of history, placing the Dutch-Anglo-American maritime order at the heart of the international system. Mead gives the reader a really perceptive look at the dynamics of international relations by taking a step back, by assessing the twin motors of English-speaking society: dynamic religion and democratic capitalism. Whilst some chapters can get bogged down in arcane historical discussion - especially those on religion - 'God and God' is nevertheless a 'must read' for anyone interested in how the West (in particular the Anglosphere) have come to dominated the international system, and what the future holds for that system as well.
review 2: God and Gold could be the primary, and only text, for a graduate seminar in globa... morel studies. It is a learned, complex, and yet accessible study of how "modernity" (sometimes referred to as "the west") was given birth by three successive maritime nations--Holland, the U.K, and the U.S.-- each adept in promoting prosperity through trade, innovations in finance (joint stock companies, stock markets, houses of exchange and corresponding banks) and sea-based geo-political supremacy.In Mead's account Holland and the U.K. were colonialists/imperialists and the United States is a more abstract hegemon of open global systems that keep Eurasian powers in check while keeping Africa and Latin America under a regime of semi-benign neglect. He contends that the U.K., whose history he has thoroughly and impressively mastered, set the stage for U.S. predominance in part through mastering the art of 1/ religious tolerance, 2/ preserving and protecting irrational but socially useful traditionalism and 3/ advancing the cause of scientific rationalism. These factors underpin what Mead, following Karl Popper, terms an "open society," that is, a society wherein natural, human, and divine law can work out their differences with a focus on marketplace advances as opposed to battlefield settlements.There are times when this book bogs down or becomes cloudy. One less than bright spot is the late entrance of the theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, founded on an acceptance of the doctrine of original sin, which Mead offers as a means of tempering American arrogance. I find it hard to take the theological dimension of American culture as seriously as Mead proposes, but rather than be arrogantly dismissive myself, let's say I'm skeptical, skepticism being a concept Mead introduces but does not fully develop in terms of Anglo-Saxon, or, as he prefers, anglican culture.Closed societies, in Mead's paraphrase of Popper and Henri Bergson, tend to be overemphatic in one of the three principal dimensions of modern social life: the religious, the traditional, or the scientific/logical. Interestingly, he finds European nations (perhaps because they are so sick of irrational warfare) to be more in line with the scientific/logical dimension of things than the United States. Widely known statistics do show that the U.S. is more "God-fearing" and "God-believing" than Europe, but the paradox remains that the vitality of American religious experience co-exists with an almost totally secular, technologically based social style--we are materialistic, positivistic, and massively contradictory.Ultimately, it would seem that openness can be phrased and developed in many different ways: skepticism is one way, tolerance is another, suspicion of absolute authority a third. Mead, following Niebuhr and others, essentially argues that the unknowability of the divine--God's mystery--is a healthy, humbling, tempering factor, to which Americans ought to pay more attention.Working at the Council on Foreign Relations, where foreign policy tends to be framed within narrow, governmental terms (national interest, state sovereignty, international law and organizations, etc.), Mead stands out as someone who is prepared to think broadly about global affairs and give culture its due in assessing historical events. He doesn't write the history of wars and call it history; he looks much further afield. less

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