“Open” is clear, colourful and convincing, marshalling evidence from a range of eras and civilisations.The Roman Empire ceased to prosper when it ceased to be open.Christianity became the established religion, and sought to crush all others.“This new intolerance…led to vicious conflicts… between Christians and pagans, who saw their old gods being banned and their temples torn down.”Persecuted pagans joined Rome’s enemies, even welcoming barbarian invaders as liberators.Human history, in Mr Norberg’s telling, is a cacophony of drawbridges being lowered and then raised.Mathematics and medicine flourished under the cosmopolitan Abbasid caliphate,but froze when religious conservatives won control.By driving out Jews, Muslims and heretics, he argues, the Inquisition helped impoverish Spain (between 1500 and 1750 the Spanish economy actually shrank).China’s Song dynasty, which welcomed Muslim traders, Indian monks and Persians,developed paper money,water-powered textile machines and the makings of an industrial revolution 400 years before the West.But later dynasties turned inward and stagnated.Ming officials smashed clever machines, banned overseas trade on pain of death and curbed movement within China itself.
