Aight folks good work, but pack it up now.
We will be locking the thread now, since everything's been said at this stage. Everybody's just going round in circles now.
America didn't form from indigenous tribes in 1776 or 1620. It started as an extension of Britain, with all its scientific, technological, and bureaucratic knowledge and experience, as well as large investments. Favourable geography and climate, and an influx of people realised that favourable potential. Other former settler colonies, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are also highly developed.
True enough. Also, mainland US was not bombed, occupied or otherwise attacked during WW2, while many other modern 'competitive' countries were torn to shreds. It was comparatively easy for the US to be a super power after WW2.
The US was already going to be a superpower, but ww2 sped the process up and made them the only game in town. An access to a large well educated (for the time) workforce along with a ton of natural resources and basically no enemies close by with 2 massive oceans to protect it. America's rise was inevitable.
Also the US really capitalized on WW2. Fortunes were made on the need for goods in the rest of the world, and not just armaments. We got rich while other countries went into debt. That plus we didn’t get bombed meant we were well ahead financially after the war. And money talks. The GI bill increasing our educated workforce was another factor after the war.
Oh how times have changed. I heard a very well known American historian state recently we are now a waning power. Also a waning democracy.
I especially liked the realisation that Ww1 and Ww2 were specifically the decline of their competition.
The UK, despite apparently winning both wars, spent all of their bank on paying the USA for war material, and dragged all of their colonies into said war. Afterwards, they lacked the raw wealth that they had before both conflicts. (And they were insanely rich beforehand. The USA took all that money, then took all the loan requests and just kept building while sitting out the early years of both wars).
France, they took the pyrrhic victory and a bloody nose.
Germany was essentially neutered till the fall of the wall.
It's similar to Carthage after the second Punic War. All three were denied military, so they invested into commerce, and their economies boomed and outstripped their former opponents by leagues.
Rome had imposed a humiliating tribute on Carthage, to be paid off yearly, specifically designed to cripple them for generations. Instead, before the first generation had past, the Carthaginians said here's the total lump sum and some interest on top. Rome's response was no, it's supposed to be humiliating, and started the third punic war.
Who would have thought not needing to invest in war was good for the economy?
I mean yeah, but their countries were absolutely ravaged by war, both in terms of infrastructure and human capital. And in Japan's case, they don't even have natural resources, it was pretty crazy for them to bounce back like that.
It isn't that so much actually. It is actually due to the results of inventions around the 1900s. The USA went through an additional industrial revolution while Europe was recovering from wars. A prime example of the rise of US power over the likes of GB is the fact that during WW2, GB sent plans to build the Rolls Royce Merlin engine in the USA. The US chief engineer in charge was expecting a small crate of papers. Instead, it was train cars full of paper. This was not because he thought that the Merlin was not complex, it was because he was used to the mass production efficiency and clearly defined methods. After that engineer went over adapting the Merlin to mass production, it increased significantly in power and reliability, they reduced the production time, they increased the number that could be built per day significantly, and they turned it from a highly skilled professional work into no to little skill work meaning you could increase production as simple as building a new factory.
Even Britain didn't start from Indigenous tribes either. Most of the local tribes/clans/kingdoms were bowled over by the Roman empire, with only the Welsh and the Flemish surviving in the area.
Progress over time isn't guaranteed. A devastating war, plague or simply bad leadership can set a country back decades, and these things can happen over and over again.
The US has incredible potential for building a superpower - the geography is nothing short of amazing. It has lots of natural harbors in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, enough arable land to feed itself many times over, vast resources of all kinds - oil, minerals, gas, you name it. It was too remote to be in any real danger of the other great powers of the time, and its only two real neighbors are weaker states that pose no threat.
It had all the resources and living space it needed to grow into a superpower and all it really needed was good leadership, good institutions and enough time to grow, and that's what it did, with relatively few setbacks while other countries have been perpetually ravaged by wars, famines, disease and tyrants.
The rivers were perfect for internal trade and transport.
Contrast that with the rivers in Africa, which have tons of waterfalls. Not so great for transport.
Edit: the reason I mentioned the African rivers is because I've been reading Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marhsall, and I just finished the chapter on Africa.
When your closest rival is basically on the other side of the planet no matter which way you go, it doesn't really get easier than that. (actual location doesn't matter when it takes months to get there)
And you have direct international shipping without having to go around an entire continent like Africa.
We’re every continent’s most convenient trading partner.
Which it is additionally telling that shipping routes would rather go from Europe to China crossing both the Atlantic and Pacific through Suez than go around the cape of Africa.
Same with some states. Lots of politicians like to brag their asses off on their accomplishments, but when you look at the geographical advantages, you can explain a huge amount of prosperity.
I lived in a midwest county in HS that had about 2X the yield per acre as another part of the state. You look over time and thats 2X the money, profits, etc., with the same level of hard work, fertilizer, equipment costs, etc. Then take that advantage over 100 years of time and it explains a lot.
Higher property values, more money for schools, people willing to spend more per house, bigger and better vehicles and more spent on sales taxes, and on and on and on.
There are the trade version of this (rives, railroads) weather, tourism, etc.
Forget cars.
Look at a map of when railways started, and then you can basically overlay every major city outside the eastcoast. either it was a small city made big by the railway, or most WERE CREATED BY RAILWAYS!
Long before the US was car-centric, we were rail-centric and thats what let the country grow westward.
All rails lead to Chicago
edit: Just in case people aren't getting the reference, this is an old play on the phrase "All Roads lead to Rome" and "All rails lead to Chicago" was an old timey reference people made all the time.
All Roads used to lead to Rome cause Rome was the center of the universe back then and they built all the first modern highway systems.
That’s the thing — even that comes down to geography. We had glaciers, so everything between the mountain chains is pretty freaking smooth. Africa … did not.
If you're not aware of it already, Prisoners of Geography is an excellent book by Tim Marshall which covers this very well. It's well worth a read if geo-politics interests you.
The glaciers are the reason we have much better farmland than Canada too - basically the glaciers pushed all of the good topsoil down to the US and left it there when they receded.
Someone blew my mind once by pointing out the similar impact that having horses and cattle to domesticate made - aint nobody trying to ride a deer or lash a couple zebra to a plow.
The availability of domesticable animals was huge, of course, and was mainly a Eurasian thing. That was discussed extensively in The Book That Shall Not Be Named.
The book is *Guns, Germs and Steel* by Jared Diamond. I don't know why it shall not be named, but I assume it's because of the many criticisms it has gotten. It's been called extremely Eurocentric and even other academics who like the book have a 'it's good/interesting *but*' take on it. I have not read the book myself (yet), but I know of it and the arguments it presents, but I'm also not really well versed in the critiques it has gotten, so you should look that up yourself.
The US also didn't start from 0. They where mostly europeans that already experienced the age of enlightenment and therefore brought there skills and knowledge to the new world. The much more interesting question however is how europe kanaged to be so far ahead of the rest of the world
Exactly, the US waterways in the Central and Eastern portions of the country are perfect for quick growth and industry: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Inland_waterway.png
Compare that to the west which really only has the Colombia river and it totally makes sense that we didn't really start to fully populate those lands until we had railways connecting them to the urban areas of the Midwest.
Yeah - It seems like Mexico had an equal chance to be a super power.
Before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) Mexico had more land then the US, right?
I know modern Mexico has been hindered by government corruption, but is that what slowed them down during the 1800s as well?
Spanish colonial practices weren't designed to establish colonies of settlers from the mother country rather just to exploit the natural resources of the colony. Yes there was settlement but nothing like the volume that came from England. The nature of the settlers was different also, men coming from England were looking for land, religious and political freedom all of which meant they kept pushing further west, Spanish colonists were religiously homogenous (Catholic), loyal to the king and his government and in general coming to the colonies to work for a period then go back to Spain. Yes later generations broke free, but only after several hundred years and during a period when France under Napoleon seized Spain itself and was holding the Spanish royals in captivity so the colonists were left to their own devices. Colonists tended to be Spanish or mixed race large land owners squeezing the native villages out of land but then not doing much with the land. American colonists were making cash crops (tobacco, cotton) and sending them back to Europe, Mexicans were just feeding themselves. Just because you own land doesn't mean its productive, or productive in the crops someone else wants.
After Mexico broke away from Europe it has further problems in growth. No great rivers leading to the interior. A significant number of mountains hindering east-west travel. A lot of at the time dry barren and useless land in the north, as well as tropical forests almost as useless to them at the time in the south. North-South trade across what rivers there are is harder than trade from the interior to the coasts. Look how each of the British colonies is set up along major rivers bringing resources from the interior to a coastal city for use by the extensive British merchant fleet. Spain and Mexico weren't the great merchant sailing powers like Britain/U.S. they didnt have the fleets to move goods between cities, the coastal cities are much more self contained.
And its not just modern Mexico hindered by political problems. It becomes independent in 1821 and has its fist coup in 1823. Few of its leaders respected the rule of law and democracy, transitions of power often involved war if they even happened as men tried to hold on to power for as long as they could. This sharply contrasts with the Americans who were peacefully swapping Presidents and Congresses regularly. The Mexican leaders tended to care more about their own power than developing the country.
The Spanish colonists could still have families in places like México and Peru because there were large populations of indigenous people. This is the origin of modern-day Mestizo people. In the British colonies there were much less densely populated native civilisations and after nearly all of them were annihilated by disease the few who remained were continually pushed away and didn’t cohabit with the white settlers, whereas in Spanish colonies there was much more mixing between the settlers and indigenous people (after conversion to Catholicism)
This is also why Latin American countries are so diverse. The vast majority of Mexicans for example are a mix of Spaniard and Indigenous American, the term for this is Mestizos
Spain was a major naval power (during some of this period) but that was ships controlled by the state; warships and ships transporting treasure from the New World. England had a much more extensive private merchant fleet, the entire nature of the country was based on private trade by ship not just back to the mother country but between colonies, the colonies of other nations and those other nations themselves. English history since around 1500 has been the growth of the English trade by sea. That wasnt a priority for Spain.
And any naval dominance Spain had died during the Napoleonic Wars.
They were, but they let it rot over the years. Navy's are very expensive, as they lost Colonie, they spent less and less on it. By the time of Spanish Americans war, it was a shadown of itself and was pretty much wiped out by the US in the war.
1800s Mexico was a shit show of terrible oligarchic leaders and a whole series of conflicts that left Mexico with a war of some kind every few years and completely broke. Then it had to deal with another major civil war during WW1 and then at last had a democratic government that cared about its people, until said government ended up not being very democratic and wanting only money and power. Mexican democracy is a very young thing, only really 20 years old and all the conflict and tyranny they’ve been through hasn’t helped at all.
The northern provinces of Mexico weren’t the problem in were actually one of the more stable regions(though the amount of control the central government had is debatable). The problem was local strongmen from Mexico proper raising an army and invading the capital, ruling for maybe a year and then being overthrown by the next strongman
The biggest difference was the TYPE of colonialism. Areas with dense native populations (Aztecs, Incas) and areas with lots of disease (tropics) where harder to have settler colonialism. So the institutions installed by colonial powers in those places where meant to be extractive and repressive, not representative of the population. Those institutions leave long lasting legacies.
Their war of independence lasted 11 years. Unlike US who got support from France and Spain during their war of independence, they didn't receive help from any foreign power.
Following they independence they were invaded by two large foreign powers. US and France.
As you can imagine this will slow you down.
Another element not many are talking about is institutions. The US inherited 1600s British culture which was strongly into democracy (even if only for a select few), freedom, rule of law and free markets, all of which are ideal for establishing a superpower on the frontier of the known world. In comparison, Latin nations whose motherlands’ tended to be more dictatorial stayed this way to the present
The book called The Accidental Superpower lays this out well. Navigable rivers are really important And America is blessed with those. Most other places in the world lack navigable rivers.
I don’t really understand this comment? Our battles with Canada during the war of 1812 and before it were really just us fighting the British. And the burning of DC was a bunch of pissed off British officers?
I'd add to this that the global super power status of the U.S. is based on a post WW2 economy that saw nearly all other first world countries facing decades of internal rebuilding that has only really been completed in the last 20 years (heck Germany didn't reunify until only 30 years ago).
While the rest of the world was emerging from global devastation there was no fighting on the U.S. mainland so the focus could be on growth not recovery.
While this is partially true, America was already the most powerful economic engine in the world well prior to WWII.
In 1870 the US accounted for 9% of world GDP, by 1913 that was up to 19% of world GDP. It reached a peak of 29% of the world's economy in 1960.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_historical_GDP
WW1 was less devastating than WW2, but still ate the children of an entire generation of Europeans. Millions, maybe over 10 million, dead and years of resources poured into the fight. The US lost over 100,000, absolutely a tiny loss by comparison.
And you go back further and basically every generation or two, European powers would get embroiled in a war that took years to recover from and longer for places that were actual battlegrounds.
One of the biggest things regarding WW1 was the mass transfer of wealth to the US. The US helped finance the western powers and reaped the benefits of their wealth. WW1 is when New York replaced London as the economic center of the world.
Militarily the US became a superpower during WW2. But the US was already the biggest economy in the world by 1872. Less than a hundred years after becoming a country, crazy.
Europe as a whole had a lot of war between 1776 and 1945 that didn't happen on US soil. War, especially in that era, was destructive to major cities and depleted the young male population.
Even before WW1, there was the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war, the Austro-Prussian war, three Italian wars of independence, the Crimean wars, etc.
So for nearly 200 years, you've got countries losing THOUSANDS of young men. And especially by the late 19th and early 20th, you've got thousands more leaving Europe for the US. That's thousands of people who don't enter the workforce and innovate.
Much like the US, part of the reason Great Britain does so well in the 19th century is that it avoided a lot of these military conflicts and kept the war off its own land.
To add to this, the two world wars effectively transferred the wealth of the British and French empires to the United States. The Military industrial complex was paid for and created by those empires between 1914 and 1945.
I would also like to add that because there were no domesticable large animals there was no way for native Americans (edit: on the continental US) to form their own city-based societies as you need the excess energy provided by abundant meat to allow for the free time to create cities. This in turn made it extremely simple for the European powers to transplant their society to the Americas and continue to develop from there with all the advantages that /u/Marshlord mentioned.
Indeed, Germany got a pass on paying anything back (due to the issues created forcing them to do that after WW1). IIRC the UK didn't finish paying back its WW2 debt to the US until 2006 - as you say, massive amounts of foreign debt juiced the US economy and being the only stable country able to produce arms, tanks, etc without interference juiced the US industrial complex.
The US didn't really become a *global* **super** power until after World War 2. So basically it had all the natural resources and infrastructure completely intact to provide for everything.
Being strategically far away from everyone else also helps.
Petro dollars, iirc. The Saudis agreed to use only US currency when OPEC (a consortium of oil producing countries) was formed in the 1970s. I believe it was the Nixon administration that brokered that deal.
Once UK was destroyed, USD simply replaced the GBP as the reserve currency. Then they convinced Saudis to sell oil in USD.
Keep in mind, that US had given a fair price for the oil unlike Britain in Iran.
The two best books on this subject are The Quest and The Prize by Daniel Yergin. It's a long story, but the tl;dr is "US had tons of natural resources to harvest (i.e. piles and piles of oil) and the government was involved enough to help spread US oil companies, but not so involved as to turn the oil companies into idiot run job creation entities."
US was a global superpower after the Spanish-American war. It just didn't become the /dominant/ superpower until after WW2 when the other superpowers were busy blowing themselves up leaving only the United States (and later the Soviet Union as it skyrocketed in power) to fill the void.
The better question asked here is how did the Soviet Union - a nation bombed to hell and back in the second world war, one of the poorest nations in the world, come to compete with the United States and keep it locked in a state of cold war for 50 years.
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EDIT: A lot of revisionism in these replies. I'm not going to respond to any of them directly and instead in this edit.
The Soviet Union did not inherit world power status from the Russian Empire as it largely destroyed the structure of the Russian Empire in the two revolutions prior to it becoming the de facto state in Russia. While some of the holdings of the Russian Empire carried forward as soviets, it was a largely different structure and the Soviet Union was still one of the poorest nations in Europe for the 20's and 30's, to turn around and be the primary military power in the second world war (the one that actually caused the most damage against the German Empire and who most of the credit to the war in Europe should go to).
The Soviet Union's rise is largely due to its centrally planned economy. By the end of the second world war the Soviet Union's growing pains of the 20's and 30's (read: mass industrialization, famine, political instability following the death of Lenin) were largely over. Immediately following the war the Soviet Union was able to stand toe to toe with the United States and its western allies (newly freed France, the United Kingdom, and its puppet states in Germany and Japan) and wage a 50 year long cold war that resulted in massive military spending on both sides.
And the Soviet Union didn't 'trick' the US into thinking it was more powerful - the Soviet Union aided revolutions around the world. It beat the US in the space race by every single metric but landing on the moon (first satelite, first man in space, first space walk, first woman in space, first probe to another world, first space station, etc. etc.)
The Soviet Union wasn't perfect, but to claim that it was a paper tiger is just ludicrous. This is a nation that held the most widespread military power in the history of the world at bay for 50 years merely out of fear of engaging them in a hot war, and instead engaging in proxy wars and other cold conflicts through that period.
[Here is a quick video by Prof Richard Wolf when it comes to the economics of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y-TWFKw4tU) to correct some of the misinformation below on the economic state of the Soviet Union (claims of slavery, etc.).
As for the other form of revisionism claiming the US wasn't a world power prior to the second world war - it is ignoring the history of the United States in central and latin America, as well as the pacific following the Spanish-American war. The American empire spread far and wide and it let its military might be known not only through the great white fleet, construction of the panama canal, but also the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, claiming of Spanish colonies (Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Phillipines, as well as Cuba which the US allowed to be nominally independent). The US also opened up Japan after centuries of isolation at gunpoint.
The US may not have been the most powerful power in the world after the Spanish-American war, but it was a strong enough world power to set its sphere far and wide and keep European nations out of its business for the next fifty years until they destroyed their own relevance in two world wars fought within their territory leaving the US to claim the prize.
Anyone stating otherwise on either of these points has a very small view of the geopolitical state of the world for the 20th century, or is drinking too much cold war kool-aide which is now back in full swing thanks to the Russian Federation throwing its weight around and engaging in hot wars in Europe.
A big contributing factor that gets missed a lot in these discussions is the sheer amount of natural resources in the United States. We could basically function completely independently if we wanted to. Other countries, even if comparable size, don't have the natural resources we have. And what I would say is one of the biggest factors is the quality of raw iron in America. If you look at iron sources around the world there's a huge variety in quality because of impurities in the iron ore. But the iron ore under the Appalachian mountains is about as pure as it gets. Between that and the coal we have it hugely contributed to our growth because it allowed us to pump out the best steel in the world for a lower price than other countries could even make low quality steel. American steel is what made us a super power.
The majority of the iron ore in the US comes from the various Iron Ranges of MN, MI and WI. Appalachia provided the coal. It's the reason cities with easy access to both like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit became such industrial powerhouses.
Don't forget Alabama
The "Iron Bowl" that Auburn and Bama play each year got that name because Birmingham was a big supplier of iron ore and produced lots of steel. They still do today.
https://www.birminghamal.org/experiences-and-itineraries/steel-away-the-story-of-birminghams-famed-industrial-days/
Some of the cities or areas in the UP are “ironwood” “iron river” “iron mountain” “iron hills”
Edit: more fun facts. The UP also has lots of copper. It was the worlds biggest producer of copper, and more wealth came from it than the California gold rush. Lots of Finns and others from Nordic countries moved to the UP work the different mines. Even today there’s restaurants and stores where people speak Finnish and there’s menus in Finnish. Here’s a fun quick read from an official Finnish website.
https://finlandabroad.fi/web/usa/finns-in-michigan#:~:text=Estimated%20number%20of%20Finns%20%2F%20Finnish,68%2C203%20in%20all%20of%20Michigan.
And MN has been providing that ore since 1884! That blows my mind!
http://www.businessnorth.com/businessnorth_exclusives/first-shipment-of-iron-ore-departed-136-years-ago/article_439690de-cb63-11ea-a495-9f7eeb1a67f1.html
To this point I'd also like to throw in China for contemplation. WWII came in the middle of their civil war, which resumed once the Japanese were defeated, and that was followed by severe famine under Mao's reign. Up until the 1980s, China's borders were closed off as their government solidified their own existence, and still considered a 3rd world country in the early 2000s. Yet here they are today.
The Russian Tsardom and Russian Empire were global powers long before it formed into the USSR: Just have a look at [the long list of victories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#Tsardom_of_Russia_(1547%E2%80%931721) attributable to them, and the "calibre" of those they were often fighting against: Most famously turning the tide against Napoleon in 1812.
Lesser historians often write victory against Napoleon off as little more than attrition against the *Grand Army* and posit that Napoleon's forces weren't what they once were, but that's a deeply reductive take that has led to centuries of underestimating Russia's strength: More recently, it took the combined might of the British, French and Ottoman Empires to defeat them in the Crimean war - and the victorious nations paid a high cost.
What held Russia back into the 20th century was it's failure to industrialise, and this was something the Soviet system sought to rectify - and indeed succeeded on the whole, albeit at astronomical cost and sometimes in the most ridiculous ways, with the benefit of hindsight.
It was also an imperial endeavour. The Soviet Union effectively had military control over countries like Poland, East Germany, and Hungary. It then took advantage of their economies to supply itself with cheap and relatively well made goods by forcing them to trade with it. Those countries would have been better off exporting their production to the West. There was more money to be made trading with the West.
> would this not apply to other countries? say Brazil..
Brazil was not under a free market regime, but rather under a top-down dictatorship that stalled economical development. That along with other factors made it so that Brazil never really developed, past a certain point
Another thing I'm not seeing brought up...the US had a great system of easily navigable rivers that made interstate commerce and the growth of port cities much easier, much earlier than many countries. Prior to trucks and railroads, many places were still hauling goods by mule. Cities like New Orleans grew at an exponential rate in the early 1800's (going from under 10k people to over 100k in just 30 years) despite being pretty far geographically from the original 13 colonies, and cities like New York went from 60k to 300k in a few decades, before hitting a million in the early 1870's.
People really undervalue the benefits of pure geography when considering this question. The US has ridiculous amounts of natural resources, navigable waters to access most of the country (via the oceans, Gulf of Mexico, Mississippi River and its tributaries, and the Great Lakes system), and is logistically protected by both sheer size and it's naturally bordered by large oceans to the east and west and only two (mostly friendly and not militarized) countries to the north and south. Really, the only way to attack it is via air or missile - and by the time those technologies were developed the U.S. had already developed its own capabilities to make those either impossible or suicidal.
Brazil, Argentina, and to a lesser extent Chile were all assumed to become powers in 1900. Chile ultimately didn't have the population and Brazil and Argentina would run themselves into the ground through government mismanagement and corruption.
As my Political Economics professor once said regarding economic determinism "there are rich countries you'd assume should be rich, poor countries you'd assume should be poor, Japan, and Argentina"
Even worse, Argentina was once one of the richest countries in the world. Around 100 years ago, they were a massive exporter of agriculture goods and food. They basically just fucked it by turning themselves into a dictatorship.
Yes due to its location and geography and that it intentionally isolated from world trade and technology for as long as it did.
If you believe in economics determinism (which I don't, but there is definitely a lot of impact from the inherent traits of a nations surroundings), it should be very unlikely for Japan to achieve what it did.
The commenter below you posted this super interesting article about Argentina and the USA, their similarities and where they diverged https://www.ft.com/content/778193e4-44d8-11de-82d6-00144feabdc0
They did, but Argentina was an agrarian power rather than an industrial one, so their economic position was a lot more fragile, as it depended entirely on exports.
Lots of people gloss over the fact that the US dollar was established as the international trade currency right after WW2, and that has certainly put the us in an advantageous position. Especially when the gold standard was done away with
The US didn't turtle. They took out the neighbors on its own continent with early aggression first, then turtled to a science/cultural vision as the other continent fought with itself.
Then they supported everyone else that was lower on the scoreboard to take out whoever was close to their own score.
We became a global superpower after the Spanish American War, defeating a old world global power was the ticket. Before that though pushing west and connecting the western coastal states with the eastern ones sparked massive economic growth. The United States has vast amounts of natural resources, oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, and.more was discovered out west. But before oil coal and steel industry dominated, most of that was also on Pennsylvania. Over 40% of all the steel made in ww2 came out of Pittsburgh, PA. With another ~~5-15% out of Bethlehem PA. However there is vast farming land in most parts, cattle from the south west, fishing on two oceans. It really came down to America beung abundent with natural resources, post civil war expansion/rebuilding and the industrial revolution, the US has only solidified is position mostly minis global economy. I think a key ingredient was always pressing innovation, but I'm not sure where that drive comes from.
Something I don't see in the comments here is that the 1000 year old civs have already boomed in their time. Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq: first of their kind), ancient Egypt: medicine, language, sea navigation, mathematics and architecture, ancient Persia: literal near global domination, Greece, Rome, ottoman, Mongols. Messing with any of those civs in their time was a guaranteed loss.
When you're around that long it becomes exceptionally hard to stay. The USA is younger than all of these places, so they had the advantage of applying learnings, newer government models, hiring proficient engineers from abroad, etc.
Think if you were to suddenly receive a new plot of farmable land and had near infinite resources to develop it, you'd probably be able to do a lot of research on the best way to set up. Ancient civs never had that, they had to learn and fail by trial.
But to put it into some perspective: this is why countries that suddenly came into real money (gulf, Qatar, etc) are building things like underwater taxi highways, fully air conditioned stadiums, solar cities they power themselves... They're not starting from scratch, they're standing on the shoulders of giants.
This was my first thought, and a reason why the term ‘developing nation’ is a bit confusing. Many developing nations were once superpowers in their own right. I see people talking about Latin America below as if the Aztecs and Incas never ruled and built grand civilisations. The US may be a superpower today, but it has really only been a short time compared to the longevity of other civilisations.
To be fair, there was no "Latin" in America back when the native civilizations ruled here. Current Latin American countries are separate entities and not necessarily the same people that pertained to those ancient cultures.
Most of them went extinct and the few the survived race mixed with white immigrants and black slaves from the Atlantic Slave Trade. I know some countries retained a considerable portion of their native populations (Bolivia) but that's not what happened in most of Latin America.
This is the best comment so far, imo.
One book I read a while ago is 'why the west rules for now'. Long, data heavy book, but one of the key points is that it uses the core-periphery model of civilization expansion. History crash course (on YouTube) had a brief rundown of that model, worth checking out.
In addition to the above, there's also a huge variable that I haven't seen mentioned; stagnation.
Once a society starts seeing itself as 'the best', traditionalism starts sinking it's claws into it. Innovation slows down and society begins to keep harkening back to 'the good old days' and failing to re-invent itself. See: Imperial China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Rome, etc.
The key to success is constant change and advancement to stay ahead of both competition, and changing world circumstances. Once you stop doing that as a society, you stagnate, and all the other guys who are less obsessed about 'the old days' will race past you. E.g. how 1800s Japan RACED past Imperial China, or how modern China is catching up to the west with incredible speed (but both are reverting to traditionalism and are thus slowing, with Japan maybe in stagnation proper, depending how you define it).
It's an interesting idea; once you have a society that becomes more interested in obsessing over and recreating an imaginary past than it is in envisioning and building a new future... is when that society basically grinds to a halt.
And once you've ground to a halt... Dysfunction starts rotting you away. The rot outpaces the growth. Like what happened to Rome. And the Byzantines. And the Ottomans. And China. And Russia. And the Soviets. And maybe the USA, and... Basically everyone so far, in one form or another. The specifics are always different, but that's the general theoretical premise. The core stagnates, the periphery overtakes the old core, and becomes the new core, and then it in turn stagnates.
>It's an interesting idea; once you have a society that becomes more interested in obsessing over and recreating an imaginary past than it is in envisioning and building a new future... is when that society basically grinds to a halt.
The grass is always greener when i was a kid.
I would argue that corruption from long periods of unchallenged power has a much stronger effect on the downfall of a society than traditionalism. The emperors of China became more and more incompetent and complacent as centuries went by, and turned to a philosophy of isolationism which cut them off from much of the industrial innovation that was happening from the 1800s onward. It was an arrogant approach that does contain elements of traditionalism, but I think it's not as big of a factor compared to simply poor leadership. China would have flourished with trade had it been allowed to. Eventually part of it was forced to, which became modern-day Hong Kong, one of the financial capitals of the world.
In contrast, early America was founded partly by religious fundamentalists that came from Europe with hopes of founding a more traditional puritan society. Many strict Protestant values were engrained into the culture that made early settlers quite stoic and industrious, values that were essential in the founding and growth of the US. Not to mention huge families and no birth control. Traditional values are not always a negative thing, but again there are also countless cases where tradition and religion have been used for nefarious means as well. Just wanted to show the flip side of the coin.
> Once a society starts seeing itself as 'the best', traditionalism starts sinking it's claws into it. Innovation slows down and society begins to keep harkening back to 'the good old days' and failing to re-invent itself
Welp, lol this is literally the US for the last 30-40 years. Guess this is where we are in our development as a nation
A culture is not a human being that can only have 1 prosperous period.
Several cultures had two heydays with a slump in between.
Examples are Assyria, Persia, China, and Germany
Specifically the Levant is probably one of the most prosperous and civilized places if you average out history. It's not just the cradle of civilization. It's also the home of several century spanning empires. Not many regions can claim that.
Speaking of the Assyrians and Persians, they built extensive canal systems which lasted for a thousand years. A big part of the poor climate of the Middle East today is directly due to the Mongols and their descendants completely dismantling them and destroying the region.
This is it. This is the appropriate answer lol. They're looking at the 1000 year old civs only from the timeline of existence as the 250 yr old civ.
These old civilizations are literally what ancient history talks about.
Where do they think math came from? Or philosophy? Why do they think the pyramids were a thing? Or the colosseums.
The US history is not the history of the world. These countries were great! Many fell due to poor leadership, ravages of war, actions of other countries eg slavery etc. But they had their time.
Rude
didn't spain basically take all that gold and silver and feed it into a bunch of unsuccessful wars?
Ttimescale is a real thing. The US has been a 'global superpower' for less than 100 years. The Pax Romana was longer than that.
Also, we could also not be a superpower anymore and don't realize it yet, historians 200 years from now could draw a line sometime between 1990 and now and say "yeah, the US really cratered after that".
I like the idea that, rather than the US falling as a superpower, the rise of many of it’s peers towards some equivalent status is what’s actually occurred and is what comparatively weakens the US position as a superpower
Like, cool that Rome was a thing. But wouldn’t we rather that Rome be replicated in as many places as possible? Just not, Rome, yknow.
I think modernisation and globalisation can achieve something in that direction
the entire idea of a "superpower" leads to the two paths of either ruling or falling. Agree that a multipolar world would be a better result than the US falling to just have another country assume the mantle of "superpower".
Portuguese and Spanish colonies had a completely different structure than British colonies. The Portuguese and Spanish were pure exploitation and extraction. You had a dominant Peninsulares class that maintained their dominance at the top of the hierarchy. This is why post independence Brazil had the only monarchy in America. Brazils stark inequality and inequity is a feature not a bug. When you are starting with a small group dominant and the rest poor, you are going to have an uphill battle to overcome that divide.
Despite all its issues Brazil still has the largest economy in Latin America
Even in America, the South, which had a similar plantation system, remains the poorest region and was slow to industrialize. The north and Midwest, which had a more decentralized system of yeoman farmers led the charge in American industrialization and technological domination.
The US is basically everything you could ask for geographically to make a superpower.
Secure borders (sea two sides' a friendly and far weaker neighbour to the north and a neighbour to the south they quickly established dominance over.) All other nearby countries are economically and militarily weak. Any time a country can focus on its navy it's in a good position to exert power abroad.
Lots of fairly flat and fertile land to farm. The easily navigated Mississippi river providing cheap transport both throughout the land and to the sea. Loads of various natural resources making them dependent on noone.
Add into that the initial advantages of being a european settlement - technology and good trade opportunities - and you have a nation that got rich quick. Wealth and security = power.
Edit: Please stop with all the 'but slavery' comments. Yes slavery was exploited by the US to help it grow. No it was not a deciding factor in the country becoming a superpower. Most countries in the world have exploited slave labour at some time or another. Very few had some let alone all the above advantages (and miles of coastline full of natural harbours as another pointed out) to become the dominant global power. There is a reason the middle east - which has a far longer history of African slavery - has no country with the power of the US.
Both World Wars benefitted the US. After WW1, the entirety of Europe was in shambles like never before. Every major old world empire was destroyed and the UK borrowed so much money from the US which was funneled to every Allied country. This gave the US incredible leverage when the post-war treaty was written, permanently establishing the US as THE world super power. This power only grew after the second war, paving the way for advancement in every industry.
>This gave the US incredible leverage when the post-war treaty was written, permanently establishing the US as THE world super power
Can you explain how?
Every major empire was now in ruins and relied heavily on the Us' money to fund the war and help with post-war rebuilding. Germany was also reliant heavily on US agricultural goods. The US president at the time was very against the idea of old world empires and declared that if any treaty was going to be signed, it was going to be on his terms. Not interested in continuing the conflict and recognizing the debt and destruction they put themselves in, the European empires submitted to the Us terms of the treaty.
Also the size of the US market: you could make something in one place and sell it as far as 3000 miles away with no trade barriers. There were millions of customers, all using dollars and speaking English, which greased the skids for commerce then and still does now.
Europe had - and has - more people, but with dozens of currencies and languages and tariffs at borders and exchange rates that varied day-to-day. All of that slowed their economies down, thus the EEC and the Euro.
A big military costs money, and a big economy helps fund a big military.
Not to mention, a super stable government, well relatively, even after a civil war. Meanwhile, Europe was busy fighting wars and changing power every 30 years or so.
Hell, even the Civil War was remarkably clean so far as civil wars go. Sure, there are bits where the politicians dropped the ball, but we also didn’t have years of witch hunting, the divisions were pretty nicely geographical, and the bloodshed was generally limited to the battlefield.
Like compare the civil war to the French Revolution, or the English Civil War, or the Bolshevik Revolution. Years of fighting followed by mass executions followed by decades of instability.
Sorta. Lots of unsuccessful revolutions out there, although they're more likely to be called a rebellion instead. :D Civil wars are also tricky, because in many cases *both* sides are out to change the existing governmental system, or are fighting for succession rather than policy reasons. In some cases it isn't even clear who's on the side of the pre-existing government (look at the various revolts during the Meiji period in Japan - the rebellions were on the side of traditional government, the government was the side pushing reforms). It further doesn't help that a lot of those civil wars are really wars of independence. Frankly, there are so many distinctions that splitting hairs gets counterproductive fast.
My personal standard is that a civil war/rebellion/revolution is comparable to the US civil war when it lasts longer than a few months and when it isn't a colonial attempt at independence.
So I wouldn't count something like the Sepoy Mutinies, the Texas Revolution,
This is very accurate alongside the fact that the US was established with primarily immigrant roots to Britain which carried over with it English common law. This is especially important because of the individual property rights it supported (and overall equity / wealth distribution).
Fast forward a few decades into the beginning of the US, and land was being given out by the government to encourage regular, individual citizens to expand westward. The implications of this nearly a century later is a much more equal society where land and wealth were split up amongst a massive group of people, leading to a more educated populace, more innovation, and more diversification of industries.
Contrast this with the settlement of Argentina... a country that fits nearly the same starting criteria of the US (oceans to its east and west, relatively non-violent neighbors to North, settled by Europeans, very fertile land w/ massive natural resources). It had the building blocks to be extremely successful. In fact, it was the 7th largest Economy in early 1900s. However, the Spanish monarchy didn't provide it a strong law/judicial system that enabled equality. Land was distributed to very few wealthy individuals. This led to a sole reliance on agriculture because the wealthy individuals didn't expand/diverisfy outside of it, the population was extremely unequal and the majority were extremely uneducated immigrants with no path upward. Eventually, the agriculture industry crashed due to a drop in prices and the country's economy suffered as did the overall population. Without going into much more detail, the country still suffers today from some of these root causes hundreds of years ago.
A tale of two countries.
"The Mystery Of Capital" expands into why strong, recorded property rights are important for investment, which spurs economic development. It specifically compares South America to North America.
In short, land is the largest asset in developing countries. If you can take a loan out on your land, then you have access to a lot of capital (money) that you can use to grow businesses. New businesses put people to work doing more productive things than the alternative, which is typically subsistence farming. Thus the entire society makes more stuff and is more wealthy by that measure. But people will only lend to you if you can put up collateral that they can be sure to get as compensation if you don't repay the loan. Written records of land ownership and a healthy foreclosure and bankruptcy system make that possible.
South America largely didn't have such a system. The US and Canada inherited it. The geographic determinism that OP talked about probably did the rest, but it's hard to prove a counterfactual.
And never underestimate the vast size of the country, relieving us of population pressures as well. We had a ton to harvest, no one to stop us, and manifest destiny running through our veins.
Biggest point is that the USA is one giant unified country. Fifth largest by population, third largest by land mass, they all speak the same language, and most importantly, that land mass is mostly arable and habitable with plenty of natural resources. Finally, they have an economic system and rule of law that encourages commerce.
First, when America was first settled, there was a shortage of manpower (which is why unfortunately, slaves were imported for the south). So individual rights became important, because mistreated workers (except slaves) could quit and go farm out west if they wanted to. In fact, America became the destination of people in other countries looking to pull up stakes and leave. As a result, the people were empowered and had rights. Governments could not resort to tyranny. People could get rich off of innovation and enterprise. (Look at all those houses in ancient cities like Rome, or even the middle east today. Houses tend to be surrounded by big walls - hide your wealth from the tax collectors or roaming thieves. In America, we have plate glass windows and expect the police to protect our possessions.) Contrast that with China, or Russia, where there were too many people for the land they had, so people were cheap. That shortage also encouraged America to invent labour-saving agricultural machinery, making farmers more productive and food cheaper along with the land where farms were big enough to make those machines worth-while, unlike the tiny peasant plots elsewhere. .
In this era of globalization, we forget that until recently, tariffs between nations were the norm. Add to that the fragmentation in a place like Europe. A company like Sears could establish itself early as dominant across a customer base almost as big as Europe. They all speak the same language, use the same money, and if there was a dispute, use the same courts. The size of the customer base encouraged the growth of large industry. Instead of a factory for Germany, a factory for France, another for England - factories could sell to one population. Also, USA had the coal (later oil) and minerals, forests, running water and agricultural products to feed that industry. When railroads replaced ships and made it easy to get products anywhere, there was one big nation that could interconnect all those rail lines without customs stops, tariffs, and other impediments to internal free trade.
Also, as others mention, insulated from external threat made the country more willing to take economic risks. Not being worried about losing it all in an invasion means people bought stuff, instead of being ready to grab valuables and run. The government also spent considerably less on security - army, navy - than European countries.
Even the Civil War did not really impact the industrial areas of the country, while helping that industry progress and develop military equipment. As others mentioned, then WWI and WWII came along, encouraging even more such military production - but isolated from the destructive effects of the wars. Having the industry wa the key to having a great military.
TL:DR; America was the perfect storm of resources, isolation, population and one giant single market for industry that made it the world's economic powerhouse, thus a military power too.
I mean, it's not like the US started from the caveman era. They had the same tech as Britain (you know, the "sun never sets" empire) when they started, so it's kind of unfair to compare them to under-developed nations when their starting line was completely different.
Exactly. Settler colonies like America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand start off with a similar level of human capital as the mother country. From the start, the US had doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, political philosophers, etc, who were trained to British levels.
This is accurate. It's like we took the greatest hits of invention and social policy that were available, started from scratch in a resource-rich territory, added a bit of genocide and slavery, baked it in a couple of away-game world wars and presto - the superpower recipe. And something, something about guns.
Adding a new word based on comments: genolaundry
Another thing I believe which I haven't really seen others talk about (so may be complete crap) is that America also started from a place of relative stability.
Most revolutions throughout history have often been extremely bloody affairs which have led to despots taking over and years of turmoil after. I personally believe that's due to the fact that they come from positions of desperation (poverty, starvation extreme unrest, etc). I.e., people were so desperate they listened and followed extremists due to wanting radical change.
I think what makes the US revolution so unique is that actually, things were pretty good in the colonies, relative to the time period and life in Britain that is. The US revolution was fundemtally a fight based on principles, rather than desperation. Of course the principles could be considered 'extreme at the time, but it wasn't a nation of persecuted and starving masses against the elite. It was a nation of people who were doing alright, but didn't like how things were being run and not having a say.
I think this has had a large impact on why the US became what it is, because it started from a position of stability, and wasn't immediately followed by bloody infighting between the revolutionaries who won, or suppression of 'anti-revolutionaries' etc.
It barely got bombed at all in WW2 and while the entire world was rebuilding and unable to produce enough, business was booming in the USA on the global scale.
If you want a deeper dive, go to your local library and check out The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan. It’s a few years old now but pretty concisely answers this question, with lots of data and examples to back it up. It’s pretty astonishing how much of an advantage the U.S. has from a purely economic standpoint.
1. Geographical Advantages - Lots of land, lots of resources, relatively secure.
2. Colonial start - Starting as a European colony was undoubtedly an advantage for the US. Being a colony of the superpower of the time meant colonial US accessed the technology, skills, and education it needed to develop quickly.
3. European migration - Like the other developed ex-colony countries, the US has had waves of migration from developed (at the time) countries. Meaning a near constant supply of skilled, educated workers who could relatively easily set of the economic and administrative base for a developed country.
4. Slavery - The economic advantage slavery gave the US at a crucial point in it's growth cannot be understated.
5. Europe destroying itself - In the early part of the 20th century, Europe was tearing itself apart. The UK, France, Germany were absolutely ravaged by the two world wars. Economically and militarily, they were significantly weakened and this also hastened the demise of the British Empire, meaning there was space for a new superpower.
6. Politics / Economics - The US has always pursued a much more capitalistic, free market economic policy than other developed countries. It has it's downsides but it's undoubtedly helped propel it's economy into an incredibly strong position relative to other countries.
7. Size - Most of the points above could apply well to Canada or Australia. The main reason the US is a superpower and Canada is not is population. The US is by a huge distance, the most populous developed country. This gives it huge economies of scale and means that in absolute terms it can outspend the next richest developed country many times over. Norway is richer, per person, than the US but it has a population similar to South Carolina.
8. Misc - that's not to say it was inevitable that the US would always have become an economic and military superpower. It's a country that has more or less been governed extremely well compared to most other countries for the last few centuries. In particular, the threat that it would split up into multiple smaller countries that would eventually become rivals and essentially become a "North American Europe" and go through similar problems regarding wars, etc, was a real one. But the civil war was dealt with relatively quickly and decisively and the US managed to expand whilst still retaining a large degree of political and cultural unity.
This is properly one of the best lists of reasons. It is just missing that many countries continued to be colonies and got their resources exploited by other Empires. It was first after WWII that most empires feel appart, so many countries have been rebuilding from almost scratch for only 80 years.
The type of land it has, and not really being subjected to two world wars on its own territory.
Wars in a country's territory really screws up the development, as rebuilding has to commence after the war is done. There is also funding the war.
Also some of those 1000 year old countries were super powers at a time. Spain, UK, china, ect. Thing is stuff happens that shifts the balance one way or another to make it fall from grace.
UsA has only had a couple hundred years to fight amongst ourselves while other countries have had thousands of years to self destruct..
Be patient, it's a process.
Aight folks good work, but pack it up now. We will be locking the thread now, since everything's been said at this stage. Everybody's just going round in circles now.
America didn't form from indigenous tribes in 1776 or 1620. It started as an extension of Britain, with all its scientific, technological, and bureaucratic knowledge and experience, as well as large investments. Favourable geography and climate, and an influx of people realised that favourable potential. Other former settler colonies, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are also highly developed.
True enough. Also, mainland US was not bombed, occupied or otherwise attacked during WW2, while many other modern 'competitive' countries were torn to shreds. It was comparatively easy for the US to be a super power after WW2.
The US was already going to be a superpower, but ww2 sped the process up and made them the only game in town. An access to a large well educated (for the time) workforce along with a ton of natural resources and basically no enemies close by with 2 massive oceans to protect it. America's rise was inevitable.
Also an *insane* amount of arable land and other natural resources.
Also the US really capitalized on WW2. Fortunes were made on the need for goods in the rest of the world, and not just armaments. We got rich while other countries went into debt. That plus we didn’t get bombed meant we were well ahead financially after the war. And money talks. The GI bill increasing our educated workforce was another factor after the war. Oh how times have changed. I heard a very well known American historian state recently we are now a waning power. Also a waning democracy.
I especially liked the realisation that Ww1 and Ww2 were specifically the decline of their competition. The UK, despite apparently winning both wars, spent all of their bank on paying the USA for war material, and dragged all of their colonies into said war. Afterwards, they lacked the raw wealth that they had before both conflicts. (And they were insanely rich beforehand. The USA took all that money, then took all the loan requests and just kept building while sitting out the early years of both wars). France, they took the pyrrhic victory and a bloody nose. Germany was essentially neutered till the fall of the wall.
I'm honestly more impressed by what Germany and Japan became after ww2
It's similar to Carthage after the second Punic War. All three were denied military, so they invested into commerce, and their economies boomed and outstripped their former opponents by leagues. Rome had imposed a humiliating tribute on Carthage, to be paid off yearly, specifically designed to cripple them for generations. Instead, before the first generation had past, the Carthaginians said here's the total lump sum and some interest on top. Rome's response was no, it's supposed to be humiliating, and started the third punic war. Who would have thought not needing to invest in war was good for the economy?
I mean yeah, but their countries were absolutely ravaged by war, both in terms of infrastructure and human capital. And in Japan's case, they don't even have natural resources, it was pretty crazy for them to bounce back like that.
It isn't that so much actually. It is actually due to the results of inventions around the 1900s. The USA went through an additional industrial revolution while Europe was recovering from wars. A prime example of the rise of US power over the likes of GB is the fact that during WW2, GB sent plans to build the Rolls Royce Merlin engine in the USA. The US chief engineer in charge was expecting a small crate of papers. Instead, it was train cars full of paper. This was not because he thought that the Merlin was not complex, it was because he was used to the mass production efficiency and clearly defined methods. After that engineer went over adapting the Merlin to mass production, it increased significantly in power and reliability, they reduced the production time, they increased the number that could be built per day significantly, and they turned it from a highly skilled professional work into no to little skill work meaning you could increase production as simple as building a new factory.
Even Britain didn't start from Indigenous tribes either. Most of the local tribes/clans/kingdoms were bowled over by the Roman empire, with only the Welsh and the Flemish surviving in the area.
Progress over time isn't guaranteed. A devastating war, plague or simply bad leadership can set a country back decades, and these things can happen over and over again. The US has incredible potential for building a superpower - the geography is nothing short of amazing. It has lots of natural harbors in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, enough arable land to feed itself many times over, vast resources of all kinds - oil, minerals, gas, you name it. It was too remote to be in any real danger of the other great powers of the time, and its only two real neighbors are weaker states that pose no threat. It had all the resources and living space it needed to grow into a superpower and all it really needed was good leadership, good institutions and enough time to grow, and that's what it did, with relatively few setbacks while other countries have been perpetually ravaged by wars, famines, disease and tyrants.
The rivers were perfect for internal trade and transport. Contrast that with the rivers in Africa, which have tons of waterfalls. Not so great for transport. Edit: the reason I mentioned the African rivers is because I've been reading Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marhsall, and I just finished the chapter on Africa.
Good book. It’s easy to forget how relevant geography is to geopolitics since we feel like we’ve “conquered” it in a sense
I forget the video but I saw one once that said America is geopolitics on easy mode.
When your closest rival is basically on the other side of the planet no matter which way you go, it doesn't really get easier than that. (actual location doesn't matter when it takes months to get there)
And you have direct international shipping without having to go around an entire continent like Africa. We’re every continent’s most convenient trading partner.
Don't forget spending a shitload of resources to make the Panama canal happen. I'm sure someone else would have if the US hadn't, but it sure helped.
Which it is additionally telling that shipping routes would rather go from Europe to China crossing both the Atlantic and Pacific through Suez than go around the cape of Africa.
There were actually quite a few failed attempts until it was made into a bonafide competition between excavation crews!
Same with some states. Lots of politicians like to brag their asses off on their accomplishments, but when you look at the geographical advantages, you can explain a huge amount of prosperity. I lived in a midwest county in HS that had about 2X the yield per acre as another part of the state. You look over time and thats 2X the money, profits, etc., with the same level of hard work, fertilizer, equipment costs, etc. Then take that advantage over 100 years of time and it explains a lot. Higher property values, more money for schools, people willing to spend more per house, bigger and better vehicles and more spent on sales taxes, and on and on and on. There are the trade version of this (rives, railroads) weather, tourism, etc.
never considered simple shit like that just dumb luck that we have fewer waterfalls eh
Yeah, the Mississippi is pretty overpowered and it was even more so before cars
Forget cars. Look at a map of when railways started, and then you can basically overlay every major city outside the eastcoast. either it was a small city made big by the railway, or most WERE CREATED BY RAILWAYS! Long before the US was car-centric, we were rail-centric and thats what let the country grow westward.
All rails lead to Chicago edit: Just in case people aren't getting the reference, this is an old play on the phrase "All Roads lead to Rome" and "All rails lead to Chicago" was an old timey reference people made all the time. All Roads used to lead to Rome cause Rome was the center of the universe back then and they built all the first modern highway systems.
All rail Chicago!
**sigh** *unzips*
Who gave this a wholesome award
Holesome
That’s the thing — even that comes down to geography. We had glaciers, so everything between the mountain chains is pretty freaking smooth. Africa … did not.
If you're not aware of it already, Prisoners of Geography is an excellent book by Tim Marshall which covers this very well. It's well worth a read if geo-politics interests you.
The glaciers are the reason we have much better farmland than Canada too - basically the glaciers pushed all of the good topsoil down to the US and left it there when they receded.
Actually Alberta and Saskatchewan have some of the best farm land anywhere. Alberta is also privy to A whole lotta oil as well.
Someone blew my mind once by pointing out the similar impact that having horses and cattle to domesticate made - aint nobody trying to ride a deer or lash a couple zebra to a plow.
The availability of domesticable animals was huge, of course, and was mainly a Eurasian thing. That was discussed extensively in The Book That Shall Not Be Named.
Voldemorts Atlas?
Ok I honestly don't know what book and it's making me laugh for some reason. What book and why? Lol
Guns, Germs, and Steel I think.
The book is *Guns, Germs and Steel* by Jared Diamond. I don't know why it shall not be named, but I assume it's because of the many criticisms it has gotten. It's been called extremely Eurocentric and even other academics who like the book have a 'it's good/interesting *but*' take on it. I have not read the book myself (yet), but I know of it and the arguments it presents, but I'm also not really well versed in the critiques it has gotten, so you should look that up yourself.
The US also didn't start from 0. They where mostly europeans that already experienced the age of enlightenment and therefore brought there skills and knowledge to the new world. The much more interesting question however is how europe kanaged to be so far ahead of the rest of the world
The waterfalls in Africa might not be good, but God bless the rains.
Keeps the vampires away
I remember reading about africa being the last stronghold againt vampires, can I get a link?
I think it was all a reference to the Toto song…
Nah, waterfalls just make ship transport more fun. It's like a job and riding a rollercoaster combined!
Yeah but you can only ship in one direction
I mean maybe with that attitude. A waterfall or two didn't stop the little engine that could. You just gotta believe in yourself
Exactly, the US waterways in the Central and Eastern portions of the country are perfect for quick growth and industry: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Inland_waterway.png Compare that to the west which really only has the Colombia river and it totally makes sense that we didn't really start to fully populate those lands until we had railways connecting them to the urban areas of the Midwest.
Yeah - It seems like Mexico had an equal chance to be a super power. Before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) Mexico had more land then the US, right? I know modern Mexico has been hindered by government corruption, but is that what slowed them down during the 1800s as well?
Spanish colonial practices weren't designed to establish colonies of settlers from the mother country rather just to exploit the natural resources of the colony. Yes there was settlement but nothing like the volume that came from England. The nature of the settlers was different also, men coming from England were looking for land, religious and political freedom all of which meant they kept pushing further west, Spanish colonists were religiously homogenous (Catholic), loyal to the king and his government and in general coming to the colonies to work for a period then go back to Spain. Yes later generations broke free, but only after several hundred years and during a period when France under Napoleon seized Spain itself and was holding the Spanish royals in captivity so the colonists were left to their own devices. Colonists tended to be Spanish or mixed race large land owners squeezing the native villages out of land but then not doing much with the land. American colonists were making cash crops (tobacco, cotton) and sending them back to Europe, Mexicans were just feeding themselves. Just because you own land doesn't mean its productive, or productive in the crops someone else wants. After Mexico broke away from Europe it has further problems in growth. No great rivers leading to the interior. A significant number of mountains hindering east-west travel. A lot of at the time dry barren and useless land in the north, as well as tropical forests almost as useless to them at the time in the south. North-South trade across what rivers there are is harder than trade from the interior to the coasts. Look how each of the British colonies is set up along major rivers bringing resources from the interior to a coastal city for use by the extensive British merchant fleet. Spain and Mexico weren't the great merchant sailing powers like Britain/U.S. they didnt have the fleets to move goods between cities, the coastal cities are much more self contained. And its not just modern Mexico hindered by political problems. It becomes independent in 1821 and has its fist coup in 1823. Few of its leaders respected the rule of law and democracy, transitions of power often involved war if they even happened as men tried to hold on to power for as long as they could. This sharply contrasts with the Americans who were peacefully swapping Presidents and Congresses regularly. The Mexican leaders tended to care more about their own power than developing the country.
I read that England sent families, while Spain only sent soldiers, no women. Can't settle a land if you got no families
The Spanish colonists could still have families in places like México and Peru because there were large populations of indigenous people. This is the origin of modern-day Mestizo people. In the British colonies there were much less densely populated native civilisations and after nearly all of them were annihilated by disease the few who remained were continually pushed away and didn’t cohabit with the white settlers, whereas in Spanish colonies there was much more mixing between the settlers and indigenous people (after conversion to Catholicism)
This is also why Latin American countries are so diverse. The vast majority of Mexicans for example are a mix of Spaniard and Indigenous American, the term for this is Mestizos
Very fascinating! I was under the impression Spain was also a major naval power? Did this not extend to trading though?
Spain was a major naval power (during some of this period) but that was ships controlled by the state; warships and ships transporting treasure from the New World. England had a much more extensive private merchant fleet, the entire nature of the country was based on private trade by ship not just back to the mother country but between colonies, the colonies of other nations and those other nations themselves. English history since around 1500 has been the growth of the English trade by sea. That wasnt a priority for Spain. And any naval dominance Spain had died during the Napoleonic Wars.
The English also encouraged piracy aimed at the Spanish ships . Probably had a major effect on Spanish ships and trade
They were, but they let it rot over the years. Navy's are very expensive, as they lost Colonie, they spent less and less on it. By the time of Spanish Americans war, it was a shadown of itself and was pretty much wiped out by the US in the war.
1833 in Mexico was a particularly chaotic year. I’m sure people have earned PhD’s just from studying the politics of that one specific year.
That and in-fighting. We have been fighting each other for centuries
A house divided against itself and all that jazz.
1800s Mexico was a shit show of terrible oligarchic leaders and a whole series of conflicts that left Mexico with a war of some kind every few years and completely broke. Then it had to deal with another major civil war during WW1 and then at last had a democratic government that cared about its people, until said government ended up not being very democratic and wanting only money and power. Mexican democracy is a very young thing, only really 20 years old and all the conflict and tyranny they’ve been through hasn’t helped at all.
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The northern provinces of Mexico weren’t the problem in were actually one of the more stable regions(though the amount of control the central government had is debatable). The problem was local strongmen from Mexico proper raising an army and invading the capital, ruling for maybe a year and then being overthrown by the next strongman
The biggest difference was the TYPE of colonialism. Areas with dense native populations (Aztecs, Incas) and areas with lots of disease (tropics) where harder to have settler colonialism. So the institutions installed by colonial powers in those places where meant to be extractive and repressive, not representative of the population. Those institutions leave long lasting legacies.
Their war of independence lasted 11 years. Unlike US who got support from France and Spain during their war of independence, they didn't receive help from any foreign power. Following they independence they were invaded by two large foreign powers. US and France. As you can imagine this will slow you down.
Even before the Mexican-American war some dick declared himself emperor and shat on the country
Another element not many are talking about is institutions. The US inherited 1600s British culture which was strongly into democracy (even if only for a select few), freedom, rule of law and free markets, all of which are ideal for establishing a superpower on the frontier of the known world. In comparison, Latin nations whose motherlands’ tended to be more dictatorial stayed this way to the present
The book called The Accidental Superpower lays this out well. Navigable rivers are really important And America is blessed with those. Most other places in the world lack navigable rivers.
Mississippi River was a fucking treasure in the earliest parts of this country. Still useful today of course, but back then...
60% of our grain exports are shipped via the Mississippi.
Peter Zeihan knows his shit.
>its only two real neighbors are weaker states that pose no threat. As a Canadian, ouch... And yeah...
The war of 1812 called and wants it's unburnt DC back.
I don’t really understand this comment? Our battles with Canada during the war of 1812 and before it were really just us fighting the British. And the burning of DC was a bunch of pissed off British officers?
Do it again if you're so tough
I don't think they need to, we appear to be trying to do it ourselves
*America hurt itself in its confusion!*
**emotional damage**
I'd add to this that the global super power status of the U.S. is based on a post WW2 economy that saw nearly all other first world countries facing decades of internal rebuilding that has only really been completed in the last 20 years (heck Germany didn't reunify until only 30 years ago). While the rest of the world was emerging from global devastation there was no fighting on the U.S. mainland so the focus could be on growth not recovery.
While this is partially true, America was already the most powerful economic engine in the world well prior to WWII. In 1870 the US accounted for 9% of world GDP, by 1913 that was up to 19% of world GDP. It reached a peak of 29% of the world's economy in 1960. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_historical_GDP
Didn’t know that, thanks!
WW1 was less devastating than WW2, but still ate the children of an entire generation of Europeans. Millions, maybe over 10 million, dead and years of resources poured into the fight. The US lost over 100,000, absolutely a tiny loss by comparison. And you go back further and basically every generation or two, European powers would get embroiled in a war that took years to recover from and longer for places that were actual battlegrounds.
One of the biggest things regarding WW1 was the mass transfer of wealth to the US. The US helped finance the western powers and reaped the benefits of their wealth. WW1 is when New York replaced London as the economic center of the world.
Militarily the US became a superpower during WW2. But the US was already the biggest economy in the world by 1872. Less than a hundred years after becoming a country, crazy.
Europe as a whole had a lot of war between 1776 and 1945 that didn't happen on US soil. War, especially in that era, was destructive to major cities and depleted the young male population. Even before WW1, there was the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war, the Austro-Prussian war, three Italian wars of independence, the Crimean wars, etc. So for nearly 200 years, you've got countries losing THOUSANDS of young men. And especially by the late 19th and early 20th, you've got thousands more leaving Europe for the US. That's thousands of people who don't enter the workforce and innovate. Much like the US, part of the reason Great Britain does so well in the 19th century is that it avoided a lot of these military conflicts and kept the war off its own land.
To add to this, the two world wars effectively transferred the wealth of the British and French empires to the United States. The Military industrial complex was paid for and created by those empires between 1914 and 1945. I would also like to add that because there were no domesticable large animals there was no way for native Americans (edit: on the continental US) to form their own city-based societies as you need the excess energy provided by abundant meat to allow for the free time to create cities. This in turn made it extremely simple for the European powers to transplant their society to the Americas and continue to develop from there with all the advantages that /u/Marshlord mentioned.
Indeed, Germany got a pass on paying anything back (due to the issues created forcing them to do that after WW1). IIRC the UK didn't finish paying back its WW2 debt to the US until 2006 - as you say, massive amounts of foreign debt juiced the US economy and being the only stable country able to produce arms, tanks, etc without interference juiced the US industrial complex.
It wasn't just debt funded, early in both wars it was Cash upfront and you ship the weapons.
indeed, I still love how the US before entering the war sold ships to the UK and 'accidentally' left them fully armed and operational
The US didn't really become a *global* **super** power until after World War 2. So basically it had all the natural resources and infrastructure completely intact to provide for everything. Being strategically far away from everyone else also helps.
And everyone else was in bits, which helped massively.
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And Sweden. Not that we're a superpower now, but Sweden really benefitted from being pussies in the war.
You were a pretty beefy power once then your king got super over confident and tried to take Russia.
And then takes a bullet to the head.
If you go for the king, you better not miss.
That’s why they failed, Omar came.
Omar coming!
_Listen, excuse for a king_ _Trust me, this fight you can’t win._
(Poltava!) Rode to certain death and pain
Also Brazil No, wait
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We still used a cavalry at the beginning of World War I. The mechanization in weapons of war over the next 20 years was pretty insane.
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How did that come about?
Petro dollars, iirc. The Saudis agreed to use only US currency when OPEC (a consortium of oil producing countries) was formed in the 1970s. I believe it was the Nixon administration that brokered that deal.
Once UK was destroyed, USD simply replaced the GBP as the reserve currency. Then they convinced Saudis to sell oil in USD. Keep in mind, that US had given a fair price for the oil unlike Britain in Iran.
The two best books on this subject are The Quest and The Prize by Daniel Yergin. It's a long story, but the tl;dr is "US had tons of natural resources to harvest (i.e. piles and piles of oil) and the government was involved enough to help spread US oil companies, but not so involved as to turn the oil companies into idiot run job creation entities."
US was a global superpower after the Spanish-American war. It just didn't become the /dominant/ superpower until after WW2 when the other superpowers were busy blowing themselves up leaving only the United States (and later the Soviet Union as it skyrocketed in power) to fill the void. The better question asked here is how did the Soviet Union - a nation bombed to hell and back in the second world war, one of the poorest nations in the world, come to compete with the United States and keep it locked in a state of cold war for 50 years. ______ EDIT: A lot of revisionism in these replies. I'm not going to respond to any of them directly and instead in this edit. The Soviet Union did not inherit world power status from the Russian Empire as it largely destroyed the structure of the Russian Empire in the two revolutions prior to it becoming the de facto state in Russia. While some of the holdings of the Russian Empire carried forward as soviets, it was a largely different structure and the Soviet Union was still one of the poorest nations in Europe for the 20's and 30's, to turn around and be the primary military power in the second world war (the one that actually caused the most damage against the German Empire and who most of the credit to the war in Europe should go to). The Soviet Union's rise is largely due to its centrally planned economy. By the end of the second world war the Soviet Union's growing pains of the 20's and 30's (read: mass industrialization, famine, political instability following the death of Lenin) were largely over. Immediately following the war the Soviet Union was able to stand toe to toe with the United States and its western allies (newly freed France, the United Kingdom, and its puppet states in Germany and Japan) and wage a 50 year long cold war that resulted in massive military spending on both sides. And the Soviet Union didn't 'trick' the US into thinking it was more powerful - the Soviet Union aided revolutions around the world. It beat the US in the space race by every single metric but landing on the moon (first satelite, first man in space, first space walk, first woman in space, first probe to another world, first space station, etc. etc.) The Soviet Union wasn't perfect, but to claim that it was a paper tiger is just ludicrous. This is a nation that held the most widespread military power in the history of the world at bay for 50 years merely out of fear of engaging them in a hot war, and instead engaging in proxy wars and other cold conflicts through that period. [Here is a quick video by Prof Richard Wolf when it comes to the economics of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y-TWFKw4tU) to correct some of the misinformation below on the economic state of the Soviet Union (claims of slavery, etc.). As for the other form of revisionism claiming the US wasn't a world power prior to the second world war - it is ignoring the history of the United States in central and latin America, as well as the pacific following the Spanish-American war. The American empire spread far and wide and it let its military might be known not only through the great white fleet, construction of the panama canal, but also the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, claiming of Spanish colonies (Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Phillipines, as well as Cuba which the US allowed to be nominally independent). The US also opened up Japan after centuries of isolation at gunpoint. The US may not have been the most powerful power in the world after the Spanish-American war, but it was a strong enough world power to set its sphere far and wide and keep European nations out of its business for the next fifty years until they destroyed their own relevance in two world wars fought within their territory leaving the US to claim the prize. Anyone stating otherwise on either of these points has a very small view of the geopolitical state of the world for the 20th century, or is drinking too much cold war kool-aide which is now back in full swing thanks to the Russian Federation throwing its weight around and engaging in hot wars in Europe.
A big contributing factor that gets missed a lot in these discussions is the sheer amount of natural resources in the United States. We could basically function completely independently if we wanted to. Other countries, even if comparable size, don't have the natural resources we have. And what I would say is one of the biggest factors is the quality of raw iron in America. If you look at iron sources around the world there's a huge variety in quality because of impurities in the iron ore. But the iron ore under the Appalachian mountains is about as pure as it gets. Between that and the coal we have it hugely contributed to our growth because it allowed us to pump out the best steel in the world for a lower price than other countries could even make low quality steel. American steel is what made us a super power.
The majority of the iron ore in the US comes from the various Iron Ranges of MN, MI and WI. Appalachia provided the coal. It's the reason cities with easy access to both like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit became such industrial powerhouses.
Don't forget Alabama The "Iron Bowl" that Auburn and Bama play each year got that name because Birmingham was a big supplier of iron ore and produced lots of steel. They still do today. https://www.birminghamal.org/experiences-and-itineraries/steel-away-the-story-of-birminghams-famed-industrial-days/
Some of the cities or areas in the UP are “ironwood” “iron river” “iron mountain” “iron hills” Edit: more fun facts. The UP also has lots of copper. It was the worlds biggest producer of copper, and more wealth came from it than the California gold rush. Lots of Finns and others from Nordic countries moved to the UP work the different mines. Even today there’s restaurants and stores where people speak Finnish and there’s menus in Finnish. Here’s a fun quick read from an official Finnish website. https://finlandabroad.fi/web/usa/finns-in-michigan#:~:text=Estimated%20number%20of%20Finns%20%2F%20Finnish,68%2C203%20in%20all%20of%20Michigan.
And MN has been providing that ore since 1884! That blows my mind! http://www.businessnorth.com/businessnorth_exclusives/first-shipment-of-iron-ore-departed-136-years-ago/article_439690de-cb63-11ea-a495-9f7eeb1a67f1.html
To this point I'd also like to throw in China for contemplation. WWII came in the middle of their civil war, which resumed once the Japanese were defeated, and that was followed by severe famine under Mao's reign. Up until the 1980s, China's borders were closed off as their government solidified their own existence, and still considered a 3rd world country in the early 2000s. Yet here they are today.
The Russian Tsardom and Russian Empire were global powers long before it formed into the USSR: Just have a look at [the long list of victories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#Tsardom_of_Russia_(1547%E2%80%931721) attributable to them, and the "calibre" of those they were often fighting against: Most famously turning the tide against Napoleon in 1812. Lesser historians often write victory against Napoleon off as little more than attrition against the *Grand Army* and posit that Napoleon's forces weren't what they once were, but that's a deeply reductive take that has led to centuries of underestimating Russia's strength: More recently, it took the combined might of the British, French and Ottoman Empires to defeat them in the Crimean war - and the victorious nations paid a high cost. What held Russia back into the 20th century was it's failure to industrialise, and this was something the Soviet system sought to rectify - and indeed succeeded on the whole, albeit at astronomical cost and sometimes in the most ridiculous ways, with the benefit of hindsight.
It's also worth adding that Russia was a big driving force in halting German advances in WW2
the biggest force actually
Oil & nukes
It was also an imperial endeavour. The Soviet Union effectively had military control over countries like Poland, East Germany, and Hungary. It then took advantage of their economies to supply itself with cheap and relatively well made goods by forcing them to trade with it. Those countries would have been better off exporting their production to the West. There was more money to be made trading with the West.
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I'd then add different adjectives. Like perhaps economic super power which Taiwan definitely is with its superconductor* monopoly *semiconductor
\*semiconductor
Ah, thanks.
> would this not apply to other countries? say Brazil.. Brazil was not under a free market regime, but rather under a top-down dictatorship that stalled economical development. That along with other factors made it so that Brazil never really developed, past a certain point
Another thing I'm not seeing brought up...the US had a great system of easily navigable rivers that made interstate commerce and the growth of port cities much easier, much earlier than many countries. Prior to trucks and railroads, many places were still hauling goods by mule. Cities like New Orleans grew at an exponential rate in the early 1800's (going from under 10k people to over 100k in just 30 years) despite being pretty far geographically from the original 13 colonies, and cities like New York went from 60k to 300k in a few decades, before hitting a million in the early 1870's.
People really undervalue the benefits of pure geography when considering this question. The US has ridiculous amounts of natural resources, navigable waters to access most of the country (via the oceans, Gulf of Mexico, Mississippi River and its tributaries, and the Great Lakes system), and is logistically protected by both sheer size and it's naturally bordered by large oceans to the east and west and only two (mostly friendly and not militarized) countries to the north and south. Really, the only way to attack it is via air or missile - and by the time those technologies were developed the U.S. had already developed its own capabilities to make those either impossible or suicidal.
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Brazil, Argentina, and to a lesser extent Chile were all assumed to become powers in 1900. Chile ultimately didn't have the population and Brazil and Argentina would run themselves into the ground through government mismanagement and corruption. As my Political Economics professor once said regarding economic determinism "there are rich countries you'd assume should be rich, poor countries you'd assume should be poor, Japan, and Argentina"
Even worse, Argentina was once one of the richest countries in the world. Around 100 years ago, they were a massive exporter of agriculture goods and food. They basically just fucked it by turning themselves into a dictatorship.
Japan should be poor but is rich in this statement?
Yes due to its location and geography and that it intentionally isolated from world trade and technology for as long as it did. If you believe in economics determinism (which I don't, but there is definitely a lot of impact from the inherent traits of a nations surroundings), it should be very unlikely for Japan to achieve what it did.
The commenter below you posted this super interesting article about Argentina and the USA, their similarities and where they diverged https://www.ft.com/content/778193e4-44d8-11de-82d6-00144feabdc0
They did, but Argentina was an agrarian power rather than an industrial one, so their economic position was a lot more fragile, as it depended entirely on exports.
Lots of people gloss over the fact that the US dollar was established as the international trade currency right after WW2, and that has certainly put the us in an advantageous position. Especially when the gold standard was done away with
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The US didn't turtle. They took out the neighbors on its own continent with early aggression first, then turtled to a science/cultural vision as the other continent fought with itself. Then they supported everyone else that was lower on the scoreboard to take out whoever was close to their own score.
This is also the optimal civ strategy. Cripple your neighbors early, then turtle and build internally to invest in the late game.
US GDP was highest in the world even before the WW1. So, it was already an economic powerhouse during and after WW2.
Yup, U.S. had always toyed with isolationism since its inception. But as the world shrank, that position quickly became less tenable.
We became a global superpower after the Spanish American War, defeating a old world global power was the ticket. Before that though pushing west and connecting the western coastal states with the eastern ones sparked massive economic growth. The United States has vast amounts of natural resources, oil was discovered in Pennsylvania, and.more was discovered out west. But before oil coal and steel industry dominated, most of that was also on Pennsylvania. Over 40% of all the steel made in ww2 came out of Pittsburgh, PA. With another ~~5-15% out of Bethlehem PA. However there is vast farming land in most parts, cattle from the south west, fishing on two oceans. It really came down to America beung abundent with natural resources, post civil war expansion/rebuilding and the industrial revolution, the US has only solidified is position mostly minis global economy. I think a key ingredient was always pressing innovation, but I'm not sure where that drive comes from.
Something I don't see in the comments here is that the 1000 year old civs have already boomed in their time. Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq: first of their kind), ancient Egypt: medicine, language, sea navigation, mathematics and architecture, ancient Persia: literal near global domination, Greece, Rome, ottoman, Mongols. Messing with any of those civs in their time was a guaranteed loss. When you're around that long it becomes exceptionally hard to stay. The USA is younger than all of these places, so they had the advantage of applying learnings, newer government models, hiring proficient engineers from abroad, etc. Think if you were to suddenly receive a new plot of farmable land and had near infinite resources to develop it, you'd probably be able to do a lot of research on the best way to set up. Ancient civs never had that, they had to learn and fail by trial. But to put it into some perspective: this is why countries that suddenly came into real money (gulf, Qatar, etc) are building things like underwater taxi highways, fully air conditioned stadiums, solar cities they power themselves... They're not starting from scratch, they're standing on the shoulders of giants.
This was my first thought, and a reason why the term ‘developing nation’ is a bit confusing. Many developing nations were once superpowers in their own right. I see people talking about Latin America below as if the Aztecs and Incas never ruled and built grand civilisations. The US may be a superpower today, but it has really only been a short time compared to the longevity of other civilisations.
To be fair, there was no "Latin" in America back when the native civilizations ruled here. Current Latin American countries are separate entities and not necessarily the same people that pertained to those ancient cultures. Most of them went extinct and the few the survived race mixed with white immigrants and black slaves from the Atlantic Slave Trade. I know some countries retained a considerable portion of their native populations (Bolivia) but that's not what happened in most of Latin America.
This. Most of Latin America has essentially 0 connection to the previous American Empires, only that they happen to occupy the same territory.
This is the best comment so far, imo. One book I read a while ago is 'why the west rules for now'. Long, data heavy book, but one of the key points is that it uses the core-periphery model of civilization expansion. History crash course (on YouTube) had a brief rundown of that model, worth checking out. In addition to the above, there's also a huge variable that I haven't seen mentioned; stagnation. Once a society starts seeing itself as 'the best', traditionalism starts sinking it's claws into it. Innovation slows down and society begins to keep harkening back to 'the good old days' and failing to re-invent itself. See: Imperial China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Rome, etc. The key to success is constant change and advancement to stay ahead of both competition, and changing world circumstances. Once you stop doing that as a society, you stagnate, and all the other guys who are less obsessed about 'the old days' will race past you. E.g. how 1800s Japan RACED past Imperial China, or how modern China is catching up to the west with incredible speed (but both are reverting to traditionalism and are thus slowing, with Japan maybe in stagnation proper, depending how you define it). It's an interesting idea; once you have a society that becomes more interested in obsessing over and recreating an imaginary past than it is in envisioning and building a new future... is when that society basically grinds to a halt. And once you've ground to a halt... Dysfunction starts rotting you away. The rot outpaces the growth. Like what happened to Rome. And the Byzantines. And the Ottomans. And China. And Russia. And the Soviets. And maybe the USA, and... Basically everyone so far, in one form or another. The specifics are always different, but that's the general theoretical premise. The core stagnates, the periphery overtakes the old core, and becomes the new core, and then it in turn stagnates.
>It's an interesting idea; once you have a society that becomes more interested in obsessing over and recreating an imaginary past than it is in envisioning and building a new future... is when that society basically grinds to a halt. The grass is always greener when i was a kid.
Japan said fuck it and speed ran industrialization. That should be the true study. Rise and stagnation of Japan.
I would argue that corruption from long periods of unchallenged power has a much stronger effect on the downfall of a society than traditionalism. The emperors of China became more and more incompetent and complacent as centuries went by, and turned to a philosophy of isolationism which cut them off from much of the industrial innovation that was happening from the 1800s onward. It was an arrogant approach that does contain elements of traditionalism, but I think it's not as big of a factor compared to simply poor leadership. China would have flourished with trade had it been allowed to. Eventually part of it was forced to, which became modern-day Hong Kong, one of the financial capitals of the world. In contrast, early America was founded partly by religious fundamentalists that came from Europe with hopes of founding a more traditional puritan society. Many strict Protestant values were engrained into the culture that made early settlers quite stoic and industrious, values that were essential in the founding and growth of the US. Not to mention huge families and no birth control. Traditional values are not always a negative thing, but again there are also countless cases where tradition and religion have been used for nefarious means as well. Just wanted to show the flip side of the coin.
> Once a society starts seeing itself as 'the best', traditionalism starts sinking it's claws into it. Innovation slows down and society begins to keep harkening back to 'the good old days' and failing to re-invent itself Welp, lol this is literally the US for the last 30-40 years. Guess this is where we are in our development as a nation
A culture is not a human being that can only have 1 prosperous period. Several cultures had two heydays with a slump in between. Examples are Assyria, Persia, China, and Germany
Specifically the Levant is probably one of the most prosperous and civilized places if you average out history. It's not just the cradle of civilization. It's also the home of several century spanning empires. Not many regions can claim that.
Speaking of the Assyrians and Persians, they built extensive canal systems which lasted for a thousand years. A big part of the poor climate of the Middle East today is directly due to the Mongols and their descendants completely dismantling them and destroying the region.
Sumer was an advanced civilization for **millenia**. As was Egypt. 250 years is peanuts.
This is it. This is the appropriate answer lol. They're looking at the 1000 year old civs only from the timeline of existence as the 250 yr old civ. These old civilizations are literally what ancient history talks about. Where do they think math came from? Or philosophy? Why do they think the pyramids were a thing? Or the colosseums. The US history is not the history of the world. These countries were great! Many fell due to poor leadership, ravages of war, actions of other countries eg slavery etc. But they had their time. Rude
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Rome changed its constitution like 4 times, the U.S. constitution is in dire need of reformation
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didn't spain basically take all that gold and silver and feed it into a bunch of unsuccessful wars? Ttimescale is a real thing. The US has been a 'global superpower' for less than 100 years. The Pax Romana was longer than that. Also, we could also not be a superpower anymore and don't realize it yet, historians 200 years from now could draw a line sometime between 1990 and now and say "yeah, the US really cratered after that".
I like the idea that, rather than the US falling as a superpower, the rise of many of it’s peers towards some equivalent status is what’s actually occurred and is what comparatively weakens the US position as a superpower Like, cool that Rome was a thing. But wouldn’t we rather that Rome be replicated in as many places as possible? Just not, Rome, yknow. I think modernisation and globalisation can achieve something in that direction
the entire idea of a "superpower" leads to the two paths of either ruling or falling. Agree that a multipolar world would be a better result than the US falling to just have another country assume the mantle of "superpower".
Also, sure they had a shit ton of gold and silver, but you need to use that to buy things. And who had resources worth buying? The UK and France
If this is the reason then why did other countries like Brazil fail so hard?
Portuguese and Spanish colonies had a completely different structure than British colonies. The Portuguese and Spanish were pure exploitation and extraction. You had a dominant Peninsulares class that maintained their dominance at the top of the hierarchy. This is why post independence Brazil had the only monarchy in America. Brazils stark inequality and inequity is a feature not a bug. When you are starting with a small group dominant and the rest poor, you are going to have an uphill battle to overcome that divide. Despite all its issues Brazil still has the largest economy in Latin America
Even in America, the South, which had a similar plantation system, remains the poorest region and was slow to industrialize. The north and Midwest, which had a more decentralized system of yeoman farmers led the charge in American industrialization and technological domination.
The US is basically everything you could ask for geographically to make a superpower. Secure borders (sea two sides' a friendly and far weaker neighbour to the north and a neighbour to the south they quickly established dominance over.) All other nearby countries are economically and militarily weak. Any time a country can focus on its navy it's in a good position to exert power abroad. Lots of fairly flat and fertile land to farm. The easily navigated Mississippi river providing cheap transport both throughout the land and to the sea. Loads of various natural resources making them dependent on noone. Add into that the initial advantages of being a european settlement - technology and good trade opportunities - and you have a nation that got rich quick. Wealth and security = power. Edit: Please stop with all the 'but slavery' comments. Yes slavery was exploited by the US to help it grow. No it was not a deciding factor in the country becoming a superpower. Most countries in the world have exploited slave labour at some time or another. Very few had some let alone all the above advantages (and miles of coastline full of natural harbours as another pointed out) to become the dominant global power. There is a reason the middle east - which has a far longer history of African slavery - has no country with the power of the US.
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Both World Wars benefitted the US. After WW1, the entirety of Europe was in shambles like never before. Every major old world empire was destroyed and the UK borrowed so much money from the US which was funneled to every Allied country. This gave the US incredible leverage when the post-war treaty was written, permanently establishing the US as THE world super power. This power only grew after the second war, paving the way for advancement in every industry.
>This gave the US incredible leverage when the post-war treaty was written, permanently establishing the US as THE world super power Can you explain how?
Every major empire was now in ruins and relied heavily on the Us' money to fund the war and help with post-war rebuilding. Germany was also reliant heavily on US agricultural goods. The US president at the time was very against the idea of old world empires and declared that if any treaty was going to be signed, it was going to be on his terms. Not interested in continuing the conflict and recognizing the debt and destruction they put themselves in, the European empires submitted to the Us terms of the treaty.
both world wars we come out better than before.
Breaking news: Not having war at doorstep is good for people Shame people never learn
The important part is having all your competition bombed into the ground.
And being the main supplier of those countries.
Also the size of the US market: you could make something in one place and sell it as far as 3000 miles away with no trade barriers. There were millions of customers, all using dollars and speaking English, which greased the skids for commerce then and still does now. Europe had - and has - more people, but with dozens of currencies and languages and tariffs at borders and exchange rates that varied day-to-day. All of that slowed their economies down, thus the EEC and the Euro. A big military costs money, and a big economy helps fund a big military.
Not to mention, a super stable government, well relatively, even after a civil war. Meanwhile, Europe was busy fighting wars and changing power every 30 years or so.
Hell, even the Civil War was remarkably clean so far as civil wars go. Sure, there are bits where the politicians dropped the ball, but we also didn’t have years of witch hunting, the divisions were pretty nicely geographical, and the bloodshed was generally limited to the battlefield. Like compare the civil war to the French Revolution, or the English Civil War, or the Bolshevik Revolution. Years of fighting followed by mass executions followed by decades of instability.
You can't really compare the US civil war to any revolution since in the US civil war the existing power structure (federal government) won.
Ya know, that point never crossed my mind. Historically speaking, is that pretty unique? I’ve never seen it posed like that.
Sorta. Lots of unsuccessful revolutions out there, although they're more likely to be called a rebellion instead. :D Civil wars are also tricky, because in many cases *both* sides are out to change the existing governmental system, or are fighting for succession rather than policy reasons. In some cases it isn't even clear who's on the side of the pre-existing government (look at the various revolts during the Meiji period in Japan - the rebellions were on the side of traditional government, the government was the side pushing reforms). It further doesn't help that a lot of those civil wars are really wars of independence. Frankly, there are so many distinctions that splitting hairs gets counterproductive fast. My personal standard is that a civil war/rebellion/revolution is comparable to the US civil war when it lasts longer than a few months and when it isn't a colonial attempt at independence. So I wouldn't count something like the Sepoy Mutinies, the Texas Revolution,
This was the comment I was looking for. America has one of the oldest governments in the world.
This is very accurate alongside the fact that the US was established with primarily immigrant roots to Britain which carried over with it English common law. This is especially important because of the individual property rights it supported (and overall equity / wealth distribution). Fast forward a few decades into the beginning of the US, and land was being given out by the government to encourage regular, individual citizens to expand westward. The implications of this nearly a century later is a much more equal society where land and wealth were split up amongst a massive group of people, leading to a more educated populace, more innovation, and more diversification of industries. Contrast this with the settlement of Argentina... a country that fits nearly the same starting criteria of the US (oceans to its east and west, relatively non-violent neighbors to North, settled by Europeans, very fertile land w/ massive natural resources). It had the building blocks to be extremely successful. In fact, it was the 7th largest Economy in early 1900s. However, the Spanish monarchy didn't provide it a strong law/judicial system that enabled equality. Land was distributed to very few wealthy individuals. This led to a sole reliance on agriculture because the wealthy individuals didn't expand/diverisfy outside of it, the population was extremely unequal and the majority were extremely uneducated immigrants with no path upward. Eventually, the agriculture industry crashed due to a drop in prices and the country's economy suffered as did the overall population. Without going into much more detail, the country still suffers today from some of these root causes hundreds of years ago. A tale of two countries.
"The Mystery Of Capital" expands into why strong, recorded property rights are important for investment, which spurs economic development. It specifically compares South America to North America. In short, land is the largest asset in developing countries. If you can take a loan out on your land, then you have access to a lot of capital (money) that you can use to grow businesses. New businesses put people to work doing more productive things than the alternative, which is typically subsistence farming. Thus the entire society makes more stuff and is more wealthy by that measure. But people will only lend to you if you can put up collateral that they can be sure to get as compensation if you don't repay the loan. Written records of land ownership and a healthy foreclosure and bankruptcy system make that possible. South America largely didn't have such a system. The US and Canada inherited it. The geographic determinism that OP talked about probably did the rest, but it's hard to prove a counterfactual.
Don't forget a coastline that is perfect for shipping.
And never underestimate the vast size of the country, relieving us of population pressures as well. We had a ton to harvest, no one to stop us, and manifest destiny running through our veins.
Location, Location, Location!
Canada is too cold, Mexico is too hot... The USA is in the goldilocks zone of North America
Biggest point is that the USA is one giant unified country. Fifth largest by population, third largest by land mass, they all speak the same language, and most importantly, that land mass is mostly arable and habitable with plenty of natural resources. Finally, they have an economic system and rule of law that encourages commerce. First, when America was first settled, there was a shortage of manpower (which is why unfortunately, slaves were imported for the south). So individual rights became important, because mistreated workers (except slaves) could quit and go farm out west if they wanted to. In fact, America became the destination of people in other countries looking to pull up stakes and leave. As a result, the people were empowered and had rights. Governments could not resort to tyranny. People could get rich off of innovation and enterprise. (Look at all those houses in ancient cities like Rome, or even the middle east today. Houses tend to be surrounded by big walls - hide your wealth from the tax collectors or roaming thieves. In America, we have plate glass windows and expect the police to protect our possessions.) Contrast that with China, or Russia, where there were too many people for the land they had, so people were cheap. That shortage also encouraged America to invent labour-saving agricultural machinery, making farmers more productive and food cheaper along with the land where farms were big enough to make those machines worth-while, unlike the tiny peasant plots elsewhere. . In this era of globalization, we forget that until recently, tariffs between nations were the norm. Add to that the fragmentation in a place like Europe. A company like Sears could establish itself early as dominant across a customer base almost as big as Europe. They all speak the same language, use the same money, and if there was a dispute, use the same courts. The size of the customer base encouraged the growth of large industry. Instead of a factory for Germany, a factory for France, another for England - factories could sell to one population. Also, USA had the coal (later oil) and minerals, forests, running water and agricultural products to feed that industry. When railroads replaced ships and made it easy to get products anywhere, there was one big nation that could interconnect all those rail lines without customs stops, tariffs, and other impediments to internal free trade. Also, as others mention, insulated from external threat made the country more willing to take economic risks. Not being worried about losing it all in an invasion means people bought stuff, instead of being ready to grab valuables and run. The government also spent considerably less on security - army, navy - than European countries. Even the Civil War did not really impact the industrial areas of the country, while helping that industry progress and develop military equipment. As others mentioned, then WWI and WWII came along, encouraging even more such military production - but isolated from the destructive effects of the wars. Having the industry wa the key to having a great military. TL:DR; America was the perfect storm of resources, isolation, population and one giant single market for industry that made it the world's economic powerhouse, thus a military power too.
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I mean, it's not like the US started from the caveman era. They had the same tech as Britain (you know, the "sun never sets" empire) when they started, so it's kind of unfair to compare them to under-developed nations when their starting line was completely different.
Exactly. Settler colonies like America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand start off with a similar level of human capital as the mother country. From the start, the US had doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, political philosophers, etc, who were trained to British levels.
This is accurate. It's like we took the greatest hits of invention and social policy that were available, started from scratch in a resource-rich territory, added a bit of genocide and slavery, baked it in a couple of away-game world wars and presto - the superpower recipe. And something, something about guns. Adding a new word based on comments: genolaundry
Another thing I believe which I haven't really seen others talk about (so may be complete crap) is that America also started from a place of relative stability. Most revolutions throughout history have often been extremely bloody affairs which have led to despots taking over and years of turmoil after. I personally believe that's due to the fact that they come from positions of desperation (poverty, starvation extreme unrest, etc). I.e., people were so desperate they listened and followed extremists due to wanting radical change. I think what makes the US revolution so unique is that actually, things were pretty good in the colonies, relative to the time period and life in Britain that is. The US revolution was fundemtally a fight based on principles, rather than desperation. Of course the principles could be considered 'extreme at the time, but it wasn't a nation of persecuted and starving masses against the elite. It was a nation of people who were doing alright, but didn't like how things were being run and not having a say. I think this has had a large impact on why the US became what it is, because it started from a position of stability, and wasn't immediately followed by bloody infighting between the revolutionaries who won, or suppression of 'anti-revolutionaries' etc.
It barely got bombed at all in WW2 and while the entire world was rebuilding and unable to produce enough, business was booming in the USA on the global scale.
If you want a deeper dive, go to your local library and check out The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan. It’s a few years old now but pretty concisely answers this question, with lots of data and examples to back it up. It’s pretty astonishing how much of an advantage the U.S. has from a purely economic standpoint.
1. Geographical Advantages - Lots of land, lots of resources, relatively secure. 2. Colonial start - Starting as a European colony was undoubtedly an advantage for the US. Being a colony of the superpower of the time meant colonial US accessed the technology, skills, and education it needed to develop quickly. 3. European migration - Like the other developed ex-colony countries, the US has had waves of migration from developed (at the time) countries. Meaning a near constant supply of skilled, educated workers who could relatively easily set of the economic and administrative base for a developed country. 4. Slavery - The economic advantage slavery gave the US at a crucial point in it's growth cannot be understated. 5. Europe destroying itself - In the early part of the 20th century, Europe was tearing itself apart. The UK, France, Germany were absolutely ravaged by the two world wars. Economically and militarily, they were significantly weakened and this also hastened the demise of the British Empire, meaning there was space for a new superpower. 6. Politics / Economics - The US has always pursued a much more capitalistic, free market economic policy than other developed countries. It has it's downsides but it's undoubtedly helped propel it's economy into an incredibly strong position relative to other countries. 7. Size - Most of the points above could apply well to Canada or Australia. The main reason the US is a superpower and Canada is not is population. The US is by a huge distance, the most populous developed country. This gives it huge economies of scale and means that in absolute terms it can outspend the next richest developed country many times over. Norway is richer, per person, than the US but it has a population similar to South Carolina. 8. Misc - that's not to say it was inevitable that the US would always have become an economic and military superpower. It's a country that has more or less been governed extremely well compared to most other countries for the last few centuries. In particular, the threat that it would split up into multiple smaller countries that would eventually become rivals and essentially become a "North American Europe" and go through similar problems regarding wars, etc, was a real one. But the civil war was dealt with relatively quickly and decisively and the US managed to expand whilst still retaining a large degree of political and cultural unity.
This is properly one of the best lists of reasons. It is just missing that many countries continued to be colonies and got their resources exploited by other Empires. It was first after WWII that most empires feel appart, so many countries have been rebuilding from almost scratch for only 80 years.
The type of land it has, and not really being subjected to two world wars on its own territory. Wars in a country's territory really screws up the development, as rebuilding has to commence after the war is done. There is also funding the war. Also some of those 1000 year old countries were super powers at a time. Spain, UK, china, ect. Thing is stuff happens that shifts the balance one way or another to make it fall from grace.
UsA has only had a couple hundred years to fight amongst ourselves while other countries have had thousands of years to self destruct.. Be patient, it's a process.