Why is America so powerful today?

What historical forces have propelled our nation from a set of tiny colonies on a distant shore, to the status of Sole Superpower? Morals? Ideals? Geography? The mandate of heaven?

I'll try to make it brief, however.:)

19th century--a combination of rampant expansionism under the guise of "Manifest Destiny," and rapid industrialization. We had room to expand contiguously, whereas the Europeans didn't. Access to coal reserves in Appalachia (still abundant today), iron in northern Minnesota, and the discovery of oil in Titusville, PA (and later, in TX and OK) provided an easy energy source and most, if not all, of the raw resources necessary for industrialization. We overtook Britain as the world's largest industrial power late in the nineteenth century. Also, the relatively quick Spanish-American War in 1898 made us an actual colonial power, and demonstrated to the rest of the world that America was becoming a world power; the US was no longer the "backwater" nation that Europeans thought it was in the first half of the nineteenth century.

20th century--Industrialization continued in the early part of the twentieth century, but the Great Depression put some rather powerful brakes on it. America's decisive role in both of the World Wars, especially the second one, cemented America as a military superpower. The short-lived monopoly on nukes after Japan helped this along quite nicely. The world wars, along with decolonization in the 50's and 60's also diminished the world power status of the prominent European nations, such as Britain, France, and, most obviously, Germany. After the USSR collapsed, the United States was simply the only superpower left standing.

The only 'moral' that had much to do with the rise of America, imo, was the greed inherent in capitalism; it drove wealthy people to invest and reinvest their already extensive capital in new production so they could get even richer, especially during the so-called "Gilded Age" in the last half of the nineteenth century. Of course, this rapid industrialization was built on the backs of millions of people who worked for next to nothing, too.x(

This is a very brief, condensed version; I'm leaving a lot of stuff out. You could spend your entire life studying and answering the question that you just asked.:)

There was another thread on this somewhere, I tried to provide an answer there. Of course I'm not a history student or anything, but I did pay attention in class. Of course, every year History was always taught over from: the beginning of time - 1950. Stupid US education system. If they had just taught me things sequentially instead of wasting time reteaching crap I already knew... ah, whatever.

Anyway you mentioned everything I thought was important. Do you think Democracy/freedoms actually played a role in drawing immigrants (they never taught me Euro history), or did it just add to the "land of gold" mentality, and once they got here their lives weren't that much better?

except that it provided lots of cheap labor for the new factories.

However, I suggest that you google the Irish potato famine (1848). Also, Chinese (and some Japanese, I think) were 'imported' to provide labor for building the transcontinental railroad. The United States experienced several waves of immigration from Ireland, Germany (most likely people displaced by Germany's 1870-71 war of unification, though I'm not sure), and Eastern Europe. Most immigrants sought refuge from either harsh economic conditions, persecution based on some minority religious or ethnic status, or some combination of the two. The refuge from persecution certainly did play a part, and immigrants tended to settle in neighborhoods dominated by others of their ethnicity/religion. However, America wasn't always "the land of the free" as various nativist and racist elements fought against immigration and at times persecuted immigrants.

Are you still floating around in the secondary school system? Are you in college? Past college? There are ways to fill in the gaps, but they depend largely on how much education you've had. I agree with your criticisms of school curricula, btw; fortunately, I had a couple of teachers who were willing to "bend" the idiotic curriculum a bit.:)

That's about it though. Maybe a little of the persecution issues.

I'm in college now, year 2. One of the first things I did was to take a European history course. It was supposed to be medieval Euro history, and we did study the formation of France, Germany, and England... but only up to 1000 or so. We mostly focused on Rome, Christianity, and Church history. The guy was a church historian. That was interesting in its own right, giving some insights into fanatical minorities. Also interesting was the great schism, where the eastern and western orthodox churches excommunicated each other... even to this day... and the period known as the "pornocracy".

Um anyway... I still don't really know what to study. I wish I had been less of a "rebel" in high school, so I could have taken advantage of things like advanced placement(I finally learned at the end of senior year that AP courses mean college credit. :wow: )

So now I kinda have to pick courses that will be useful in some line of work. Makes it a little tough to learn. There's still a little time left for filler courses.

should cover at least some of the immigration issues.

Also, see if you can take any post-Napoleonic Wars European history courses. The course catalogs should give you an idea of what time period you're studying.

I'm also in my 2nd year of college--got a 5 on my AP US History exam.:)
And I was still a rebel in high school.:evilgrin:

It's just that for some of us, that meant never going to class. ;)

I actually tied some string to this and wore it around my neck to school the day after we started bombing Iraq.:evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin::evilgrin:

Edit: Though I was fortunate enough to have *mostly* liberal history teachers, the rest of the school was pretty much repuke, so I really stuck my neck out. Students were more curious than hostile, though.:)

--1683(?) first German settlers, Mennonites, recruited by Penn's agents to settle in PA (pacifist like Quakers); they're the 'Pennsylvania Dutch' (Deutsch heard as Dutch)

--after the failed revolutions of 1848; many settled in Wisconsin, Minnesota, down to Missouri; Carl Schurz, one who settled in MO, was a cabinet member

--after 1933

interesting that there was both an Irish and a German immigration in 1848 and after

democracy,freedom,choice!!!!!!

:thumbsup:

WWII was the worst thing that ever happened to Americans.

Two prerequisites put America in position to allow world empire to fall into our laps: 1) cheap, abundant resources; and 2) class mobility.

Cheap energy and abundant natural resources offered Americans nearly unlimited potential for exploitation. But it was the absence of Europe's system of rigid class barriers that enabled us to thrive. This allowed the genius, innovation, and potential of the great masses to be unleashed. This made America an economic success and a beacon to the world.

On the eve of WWI, the United States Navy ranked 13th in the world, slightly behind Bulgaria's. International businessmen had been trying for decades to get the American people to cast off their inherent isolationism with few successes. By winning WWI we were able to strip away a portion of Great Britain's Empire as repayment. Following WWII, we took over the rest of GB's empire and made them our junior partners-- a relationship that exists to this day.

I say winning WWII was the worst thing because it made us moral victors in our own eyes and the eyes of the world. It broke our mistrust of foreign adventurism and imprinted in the minds of our citizens that we are an indispensable, truly moral force in the world. It was under the force of this moralism that allowed our unscrupulous leaders to send us down the path followed by all empires-- a brief period of high prosperity followed by resentment, over-reaching, and long decline.

human greed.

It gave us advantages over competing nations in Europe, who had to pay high tariffs on essential goods and raw materials needed to industrialize.

One thing you left out was the massive amounts of British investment in U.S. industry. They provided a massive cashflow to purchase capital equipment that could not have otherwise been bought.

Glad you didn't leave out the cheap labor. The late 19th century made the U.S. "big," but it wasn't a place I would like to have been an average person in.

As per your discussion of the effect of the world wars, I'd put a slightly different spin on it. I think our "decisiveness" has much less to do with our competitors in Europe being smashed to bits during the wars, while our industrial base was left untarnished. In fact, we were hardly decisive at all. We were reactionary. Sure our pauses (or lapses of moral judgement) gave us great military and economic advantage thereafter, but it undermines our moral standing among the rest of the world when our leadership role is brought into question.

... competition between countries for land and resources, and sadly Calvinism and the Protestant work ethic.

America had an historic shortage of labor-- which lead to industrialists lobbying to open the flood gates of immigration between 1880-1920. They often had to pay out of their own pockets to ship workers around where they were needed -- or in areas where workers became too "demanding." It helped stimulate the development of labor-saving devices and the study of workplace efficiency.

The dramatic swings in the business cycle inherent before the regulation of capitalism was responsible for the many transitory episodes of surplus labor...

... but the labor was hardly expensive during the gilded age. Pre revolution especially in formative settlement areas the population had a huge population of indentured servants. Those who paid their passage could work them to death with little worry because they expendable, and there were always more willing to make the trip across the Atlantic for a chance for land. Hell, I think the indentured servants had about a 25% survival rate in Jamestown.

Slavery for that matter became relatively cheap mid 19th century which helped to develop the textile industry. It also allowed for the dumping of gobs of money into other forms of industry.

You are right about the economic swings. The panics of the 19th century drove farmers into the cities in search of work. At any rate though those farmers, and the immigrants that followed were paid horribly.

gave us enough time to grow and flourish.

by Jared Diamond.

Gives a good foundation ... not strictly American, but the thesis has some applications to this question.

Slavery when textiles were as important as oil is today.

And the economic exploitation has continued in different guises.

Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and JFK are huge reasons why. Also because of our vast amounts of resources, including natural and human capital.

We were isolated from attack when necessary. We had abundant natural resources. We had large amounts of "unpopulated" land (as compared to Europe), in which to expand. We had the freedom of upward mobility. And we also had the force of greed, and the exploitation of resources,both people and environmental, that come with it.

1. The Atlantic
2. The Pacific
3. White people willing to wipe out the late stone age civilizations sitting between reasons 1 and 2.

Sad, but true.

and then we had the natural resources which we have now destroyed and then because the European nations were busy warring, we had the opportunity to grow unimpeded. That is the reason we will now go down very quickly. China will rise as it is now doing so quickly, becuase we are spending our treasury warring and we are shipping all of our jobs and manufacturing to them. We are basically giving our wealth and technology away to Asia in pursuit of greedy goals of corporate CEOs. We are like England right now before WW 1. But we are exhausting our wealth so fast we will very quickly be like England in 1918.