The US seems to be somewhat unusual for a former colony since it just like 100-150 years after its independence had surpassed pretty much all European great Powers in economic and technological development. It is not clear to me how US managed to do such enormous growth so quickly, did it simply get alot of things right from the start that others did not?
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A lot of ground, a lot of resources, good climate, a big influx of people that want to work hard and no big scary countries nearby.
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Add to that two large riverine (Great Lakes and Mississippi-Ohio) networks which also meet conveniently (that's why Chicago gained prominence). Thus unlike the South American countries it was possible to establish something more than a dozen kms from the coast.
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I'd also add the British heritage. Those factors which led to the industrial revolution.
All those combined created a monster
All those combined created a monster
1.- They were just a poor colony without resources, so nobody cared about them and allowed these poor colonies to have their own industry.
2.- They were prostestant, and the work ethic of protestants was vastly superior compared to the catholic one, protestants even disregarded basic christian values and prioritized development over faith (for example, intead of investing time and resources converting the natives, they just wiped them out). That was a "good" thing for them in the long run.
3.- They have a great river system that allowed them to have easy transport of goods across their territory.
4.- Europe in the 18-19 century was a total mess, so the new world got tons of migrants across the sea, the US was attractive not only because they developed early but also because they had the most stable democratic system of the entire continent. No "caudillos", no civil wars every 5-10+ years, every man could become rich in the US if they had the capability of doing so, a big difference from the spanish speaking countries where blood matters more than merit.
5.- Said protestant values allowed them to develop their proto concept of Lebensraum, or Manifiest Doctrine... they expanded west and genocided the native population, invaded Mexico and took vast amounts of territory from other nations without much opposition... that expansion went unchecked because there where no other nation on the continent capable of stopping them, just like Russian expansion eastwards...they had a lot of "empty" space in the west, but with "good" climate and good soil. (*)
6.- Said "empty" space have a few geographical obstacles for development, but the industrious nature of 'murican culture made them overcome that. No other new world nation had achieved something similar... Brazil is still trying to take over the Amazon, Mexico has a lot of arid and mountanous territory (Yucatan has no riches and you cannot grow nothing there), and Argentina is full of Argentinians (
), and im only talking about the big three other nations, Panama is mostly a swamp, Chile, Peru and Bolivia are mostly mountains, Guatemala is a jungle..etc...etc7.- Europe was also a total disgrace in the XX century, that allowed them to make profit of both World Wars and becoming the first nation to become a Great Power in less than 250 years of history and the World hegemon later on. No other nation in the world will ever achieve that in human history.
So basically: Location, culture and religion.
Chile and Argentina tried to do exactly the same, Argentina attracted lots of italian migrants while Chile attracted Germans and Croats, but the cold climate, ubication and overall poverty of Chile didnt allowed the country to become developed in the XIX century... in the case of Argentina they were one of the most rich countries of the world at the start of the XX century but then...thats is for other topic, i will just say that they are full of Argentinians ( ).
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The "Protestant Work Ethic" thing is almost certainly rubbish. As seen in plenty of countries with a mix of Catholic / Protestant religions, under similar circumstances, they are about equally productive.
Anyway, Canada, Australia, some other colonial nations that largely were left alone through the 19th and 20th century also did quite well. USA, well, it's the same in bigger with more natural resources, so I'm not sure there's much of a special case there. If you don't burn your country to the ground once every few decades with massive wars, you'll prosper, surprise surprise ...
... well, there was the US Civil War, admittedly. And the Australians lost their one war against the emus. So maybe you can afford a bit of war. Just not, you know, massive country-smashing wars. Especially when you're also running out of natural resources (or don't have them in the first place) and your population is kinda small (as it is for most European nations).
Anyway, Canada, Australia, some other colonial nations that largely were left alone through the 19th and 20th century also did quite well. USA, well, it's the same in bigger with more natural resources, so I'm not sure there's much of a special case there. If you don't burn your country to the ground once every few decades with massive wars, you'll prosper, surprise surprise ...
... well, there was the US Civil War, admittedly. And the Australians lost their one war against the emus. So maybe you can afford a bit of war. Just not, you know, massive country-smashing wars. Especially when you're also running out of natural resources (or don't have them in the first place) and your population is kinda small (as it is for most European nations).
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Well, i dont think Max Weber work is rubbish (1), in fact explain pretty well why protestant nations went ahead of the catholic ones (with sole the exception of France, but they got defeated by Germany at the end of the XIX century so...), and the US Civil war can be explained as a war between the XVIII and the XIX centuries spirits, obviously progress won and the agrarian-slaver culture of the south loss. Canada and Australia were also founded by the British who ...surprise surprise....were who also created the colonies that gave birth to the US.
(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
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Yes yes, I know Weber, and I love the guy, but it's an early 20th century work. They thought a whole bunch of things that are crap in retrospective in those days. ^^
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The united states special fortunes are down to three main things:
1.) Massive internal market with unrestricted, untariffed, free trade.
2.) Cheap to free land available for the (white) working classes for much of the early history, placing a floor on wages and avenue for productivity increases to not be absorbed into rents.
3.) Extensive natural transportation networks and a climate that wasn't too harsh for the settler population.
1.) Massive internal market with unrestricted, untariffed, free trade.
2.) Cheap to free land available for the (white) working classes for much of the early history, placing a floor on wages and avenue for productivity increases to not be absorbed into rents.
3.) Extensive natural transportation networks and a climate that wasn't too harsh for the settler population.
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Well, Weber was right. Bear in mind that major Catholic countries (France, Spain, Italian states) had much better historical start of their economies, they were just better developed, so and richer, since the Roman times, what means they gathered a large amount of capital. Most Protestant states, German ones included,were still making their pile, but soon surpassed the Catholics.
I'd rather put the attention on literacy among the Protestants, than a "work ethic" though. That was also the reason why some Catholic countries started later to catch up, when they eventually managed to drop the yoke of backwardness by replacing the overwhelming position of the Church by rationalism.
Protestant countries also had an under siege mentality, because... well the fact that you're paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you.
Thus they had to be somewhat more efficient to survive.
Well Belgium, a catholic country, was literally under siege for most of the renaissance/baroque period. And they were pretty rich in the 19th and early 20th century, though maybe a bit less so in the late 20th (but only comparatively). So... maybe?
See? Belgium was pretty good in terms of economics development ;-)
The Belgian (whatever it means) rulinf class needed a content middle/lower class.
Many of the above points are valid and possibly the most important factors.
Some things that haven't been mentioned yet but certainly played a part:
1. The US was full of white people during an era when the moneyed classes were unquestionably racist. It had experience with well-respected autonomous government where other colonies ended up under some combination of utterly contemptuous foreign rule, continuation of corrupt local rule, and being intentionally set up to fail, as with India's Muslim/Hindu divides or with the borders in Africa and the Middle East being drawn with nearly complete disregard to the local populations.
Another factor of this is that (until relatively recently) the US deeply felt that the Enlightenment, the Rights of Man, and the Common Law were its own heritage and embraced them wholeheartedly, whereas many former colonies see them as something thrust in from the outside that need to be repudiated or, at least, leavened with indigenous religion, paternalism, aristocratic classes determined by birth, &c. It's understandable but mostly detrimental to those other countries.
2. Partially from the above and partially from its legitimate commitment to Enlightenment ideals, the usual rule of law in the US was very attractive to foreign direct investment, particularly the English and Dutch. The most important of America's banks and railroads were owned and controled by foreign powers for decades and the investment bubbles following the collapse of canals or this or that set of railroad booms tended to wipe out more foreign investors than local ones.
3. It had an utterly charmed economic path. The US had Alexander Hamilton to steer a course through its early money trouble, and he had Washington to protect his work from populist opposition. The land speculation most of the upper class was obsessed with early on was ultimately beneficial for developing the interior, and a continent's worth of cheap, healthful land kept fertility high for decades on top of the immigrant arrivals. The merchant houses in the NE that had depended on the triangular trade were able to switch over to whaling and then the Chinese market opened by Britain for its own reasons. Even when Andrew Jackson fought the Bank of the US intended to better protect foreign investment and the upper class, he was also willing to beat up South Carolina over their resistance to the tarriffs that paid for his army and government. The South's cotton was white gold for the planters and the federal coffers, which is why they thought they could survive on their own and why the North absolutely refused to let them go. It was dependant on open international trade, but the British were underwriting that with their navy and free trade policy for their own reasons. There was plenty of actual gold in California, as there had previously been in Carolina & Georgia and would later be in Nevada & other western states. By the time those ran dry and the Civil War and British planting in Egypt and India and the bole weevil cratered the cotton market, protectionist policies and corporatist favoritism by local political machines had built a powerful industrial machine. The timing of the US buildup matched the second (electrical) industrial revolution and allowed its new factories to be much more productive than those in Britain. By the time that was starting to putter out, the US turned out to have the largest and most easily accessed petroleum deposits then known. Europe was committing geopolitical suicide in the World Wars, which bought everything the US could produce, left the dollar the king of international currency just as everything went fiat, left the US in ownership of its own industries and infrastructure, and drove federal investment into the new high-end sectors (automotive and aerospace industry, microelectronics, computers, &c.) that have dominated commerce since. Even DARPA's toss-off nuclear-resistant communication network ended up transforming international society as the internet, which left the US long in control of its standards and flagship companies.
If you compare the US to other former colonies, you'll see some foundering at every single stage of each of those economic and financial transitions.
4. You'll notice some important parts of that economic history involved the US's protectionism and investment in its own industry. That was important to protect it from the bigger fish until the US had become its own whale; by that point, the US had the clout to reshape international commerce in a less protective direction further enriching itself.
5. Another major factor that Ming alluded to is that the US mostly has a very healthful climate. This doesn't just mean it's like Europe and less likely to kill Europeans than Africa was. Africa has dozens of endemic diseases that grew up alongside humanity and our cousins that still continue to wreck life for people there. China and the US periodically end up with epidemics from trade, their markets, and our factory farms but mostly we live our day to day life without everything in the environment trying to introduce parasites. Africa has lots of governmental, sectarian, and educational issues but, if the Gates Foundation & others can really make a dint in its endemic diseases, life will still unquestionably improve for millions regardless of their former status as colonies.
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I suspect the main reason why US is so rich is because it is a large country with a large population. This mean its population can be much more specalized than seen in European countries and thus achieve higher productivity and I suspect China will eventually surpass Europé in terms of GDP per capita in the long run due to having a massive country and a massive population. US population have a much higher % of population having University education than European countries on average have.
I think that point gets too little attention. Look at the amount of their wealth European countries (had to) burn for their militarys. And military investments are quite unproductive, worse, they take workers out of actually productive jobs.
And when you actually have war, the cost is not only horrifying from a humane perspective, but from an economical one, too, all that capital and labor being senselessly destroyed.
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I still haven't seen anything that says to me that it's anything but incidental. Do people really believe that a Catholic Netherlands or USA would be vastly different merely for being Catholic?! (actually modern USA looks wealthier where the Catholics are ^^)
Weber himself didn't make that argument, if I remember that right. He basically just said "I observed these economically successful countries and they are also Protestant." He didn't say "this means anything for a case where they wouldn't be, or for any other country that is not." Which makes it pretty meaningless when we talk about why the USA became successful.
Weber himself didn't make that argument, if I remember that right. He basically just said "I observed these economically successful countries and they are also Protestant." He didn't say "this means anything for a case where they wouldn't be, or for any other country that is not." Which makes it pretty meaningless when we talk about why the USA became successful.
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If you want to start a converstaion on the effect of the Roman Catholic Church as an invasive host inside political entities, I am your man. Fair warning: the water is deep, murky, and you won't like what I have to say. Pick a point in history and we can start there, but we will end with a full blown demonstration of the hand-in-glove of Nazi Germany and the Roman Catholic Church under Eugenio Pacelli before, during, and after WWII as a trump card and its effect upon humanity.
My wife is Catholic, I was married in the Roman Catholic Church. I'm not fanatically opposed to Roman Catholics per se and there is great wisdom hidden in their writing. But, I can expan at length and make a solid case the organization has political agendas that are diametrically opposed to the concept of Christianity and operate as a negative influence in the countries where it is dominant.
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Not just the British heritage, but the Dutch.I'd also add the British heritage. Those factors which led to the industrial revolution.
All those combined created a monster
The colony of New Amsterdam was founded on one of the greatest places in the world-the island of Manhattan. When the British took it over, it had a place where Dutch and British trading routes intersected.
Once the Erie Canal was built Manhattan was the point of trade for the whole of the North American continent which could be opened to international trade.
Adding to that, the USA had an open immigration policy, which just so happened to be on an entire continent which had the richest lands in the world. And it was not only fertile ground, but the government promoted business generation regardless of origin (unless you were not white).
The combination of factors led the USA to have the leading role in the world. There are more factors (state financed public education being the most important, imho), but this has been the subject of many books by more learned persons than myself, so I will stop.