That the West is currently in a life and death struggle with Islam and the Left is very clear . The rise of China, the reality of nuclear Korea and the nuclear power-in-waiting Iran are also unlikely to have escaped your notice. There was a time though when the West rose to such a zenith its global hegemony was undisputed.

Western predominance did not occur overnight. In 1500 Beijing was the biggest city in the world with a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. Paris was the only European city in the world’s top ten most populous. The Chinese were the first to revolutionise textile production, the spinning wheel and the silk reeling frame. The country can also boast the inventions of gunpowder, playing cards, the toothbrush, chemical insecticide, the fishing reel, the wheelbarrow and cavalry. They also started printing with a press long before Gutenberg’s movable metal type dwarfed the capacity the Chinese had in this area. It was also China that first used the magnetic compass. These achievements, especially when bolstered by the country’s impressive system of waterways and canals, are indicators of just how pioneering the Chinese were before the much needed recrudescence of the West way after the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Chinese were no latecomers to seafaring. Emperor Yongle wanted tribute in return for the presents he bequeathed to peoples overseas. The Sultan of Malindi returned the present of a giraffe to the Chinese which Yongle received in Nanjing. The giraffe was heralded as a symbol of “perfect virtue, perfect government and perfect harmony in the empire and the universe”. Despite China’s endeavours in the field of intercontinental relations things changed after Yongle’s death in 1424.

For reasons not entirely known, China’s nascent maritime ascendancy was strangled. The Haijin Decree banned Oceania voyages. By 1500 the act of building a ship was punishable by death if the vessel had more than two masts. This retarding of innovation by the Chinese is one pointer to why global dominance turned occidental.

The Spanish brutally conquered the Aztecs in the early 16th century, abundant deposits of silver and gold were found in South America and this gave the Spanish Crown a huge incentive to assert acentralised control over their possessions.The Dutch and the Portuguese established trading networks in the Indian Ocean. The British began to colonise the Atlantic Seaboard in the early seventeenth century, the colony of Jamestown was established in 1607. The fact that English and then British expansion was centred on the exchange of commodities as opposed to the acquisition of precious metals was one of the many reasons why Spain lost the contest with Britain. The eagerness of the West to find pastures new can be contrasted with not only Chinese insularity but also that of their neighbour Japan, a nation that in 1635 even banned its people from travelling abroad.

The penetration of India by Western commerce was a hugely important factor in shaping the world in which we now live. It was natural that the Hindu reaction to the rise of British power was different to that of the Muslims. The British conquest ended a long period of Hindu suppression and inequality whilst bringing the spirit of enquiry to the country. Bengal was captured with substantial Indian assistance after Siraj ud Daula (the Muslim Nawab of Bengal) had threatened to castrate leading members of the Hindu banking oligarchy. From this point the East India Company continued to purchase Indian produce such as raw cotton which was processed in Britain as the Industrial Revolution transformed most of the world into raw material exporters. This revolution also brought China into a triangular trade with Britain and India. It is worth noting the sheer determination required for Europeans to even think of pursuing opportunities in India. In 1740 one in two Europeans could expect to die there from disease or other causes.

From 1800 Europe transformed itself like never before. Alex de Tocqueville observed, “The generation did not resemble their fathers … They live in a state of incessant change.” Technological rise was matched by population explosion as many European countries doubled in size from 1800-1850. Coach and mail services started, internal migration increased as did trade, which trebled from 1800-1840 due largely to shipping. By the end of 1830 Britain was the only economy fully industrialised and luxuries became available to a wider range of people. The adoption of steam, electric power as well as developments in metallurgy and chemistry often inspired distant people to emulate European, but primarily British, methods. The improved steam engine (1764), the longitude chronometer (1761), the water frame (1769) were all invented in our country in the same decade.

Accident? I think not. Property rights and the common law, which many argue made it easier to form corporate bodies, in all likelihood go a long way to explaining the success of our great nation.

The American invention of the telegraph was diffused across the globe and in 1882 Britain, France and Germany transmitted some 77 million messages. In India by 1860 1,000 miles of track had been laid and by 1870 this had risen to 5,000; in contrast, there were hardly any railways in China by 1890.

In the 19th century British designs centred on free trade as a means by which the whole world could prosper. Palmerston like many thought that if this was to be achieved slavery would have to end, and end everywhere. Historian Ronald Hyam has written that the Royal Navy squadron assigned to obliterate the slave trade had a deterrent greater than the less than ten percent of slaves it managed to avert from their destinations on an annual basis: “Perhaps forty three percent more slaves might otherwise have been shipped between 1811 and 1870.” Because of Britain Brazil began enforcing anti-slavery legislation and this went a long way to dismantling the trade. Although the British could turn nasty on occasions when free trade was denied them – by recalcitrant China for instance before the Opium Wars of 1839-42 – free trade was deemed an agency of civilisational improvement, and although native economies were disrupted people of all shades benefited.

The British succeeded in opening up new areas of influence but in Africa were met with resistance: views of regeneration were not always shared and many Africans evinced a fanatical dedication to slavery. Admittedly, the potential that Europeans had to edify people in practices in which we had great prowess was tempered by aggressive, plutocratic designs and race-based theories that manifested themselves in ways that (to put it simply) went way too far in Africa in the late nineteenth century. The genocide policy of Germany towards Namibia is probably the most poignant example of this.

Transatlantic slavery was by no means the only area in which the British evinced humanitarian ambition. Christian missionaries were appalled by customs such as female infanticide and suttee, both of which the British abolished through legislative acts.

European breakthroughs in medicine meant that in nearly all African and Asian countries life expectancy began to improve before independence. Life expectancy at birth in India was on average below 30 in 1900, by 1940 it was nearly 40. In Africa rates of improvement have declined since independence.

The Islamic world posed no meaningful threat to Western progress in the imperial epoch. The Ottoman Empire came nowhere near challenging British power. Scriptural conservatism and an intellectual life that neglected empirical enquiry are among the decisive reasons for this; as was the denial of a free press and failure to keep up with European military advances. They did try and catch up eventually, however. Wide ranging Ottoman reforms in 1839 changed the distinction between Muslims and unbelievers to the point where unbelievers had protection of person and property guaranteed. (The latter two securities have existed in Britain since 1215.) The promotion of secular education to train new bureaucrats and army officers in technical Western methods was also adopted. This chimes with Egyptian and Japanese efforts to Westernise themselves. Japan in the late nineteenth century copied modes of Western statecraft including military organisation, clothing and the system of resident ambassadors; the Japanese realised it was in their interests to reinvent themselves along Western lines. They used equipment bought from Britain to crush Russia militarily at the turn of the 20th century; a century in which two world wars undermined Western confidence and the civilising mission ideology.

The United States of America emerged as the premier world power following World War II, a conflict that saw their GDP quadruple amid the exigencies of combat. It was in this century that American exceptionalism reached a remarkable apex. The USA has brought us the skyscraper (1885), the aeroplane (1903), the microwave oven (1945), the first mobile phone (1973) and the space shuttle (1981) as well as a host of other innovations too numerous to name individually in this piece.

The United States of America is of course British derived. As are Australia, Canada and New Zealand. All are liberal democracies that have been economically successful and welcoming to others. Many people throughout the Anglosphere are now starting to realise, however, that maybe too much tolerance to the intolerant is not a healthy thing.

And while the West has continued at least in some way to innovate, the same can’t be said for the Arab world, as the following comparison shows. Israel between 1980 and 2000 registered 7,652 patents compared with 367 for all Arab countries combined. This is not the only field in which the region finds itself scratching around. The UN’s first Arab Human Development Report published in 2002 found that 65 million Arab adults are illiterate and that Greece translates five times more books from English (the world’s foremost language) annually than the entire Arab world. It would appear that the Dar Al-Islam is not the most enlightened or enterprising corner of the globe (and it could further be argued that today the ummah is the most jingoistic construct to exist on Earth).

The story of the West is one of intrepid maritime adventure set against insularity on the part of a clever Chinese rival. The Industrial Revolution changed the world for ever, making it smaller and increasing consumption, enabling new markets and new products to emerge. Empirical enquiry, which was a cornerstone of the European Enlightenment as well as a catalyst for British expansion, enabled this tiny island off the coast of northern Europe to spread new ideas and change the world.

The humanitarian aspect should never be forgotten. Missionary Christianity sought to offer education and eradicate slavery, and without the Royal Navy who is to say that the transatlantic slave trade would not still be going? Medicine also flourished around the world because of the West.

The fact that Europe as a continent has managed to bring itself to ruin via mechanised slaughter on two occasions has somewhat sullied what should be a much better picture, but the West is not the only continent ever to erupt in bouts of internecine warfare or invade or coerce other countries. On reflection however, the phalanx of Western power has improved the world from 1500 more than any force before or since. Our ideas and our liberal democracy flourish around the globe. If today we are living through the West’s death throes then it is tragic to think that this cataclysm is being expedited almost wholly through open border treason.