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History is complex. And interesting. And often we (and I) get it wrong. So I always enjoy a good discussion. :) The US profited hugely from slave trade and lab
by the_duke 10y ago
History is complex. And interesting. And often we (and I) get it wrong. So I always enjoy a good discussion. :)
The US profited hugely from slave trade and labor. (Which most Americans usually conveniently ignore) Which helped it build up. So colonialization and domination was a factor for the US before they became a superpower.
It's true that in the earlier 19hundres the US were more reclusive and isolated.
The US economy wasn't in a good state before and after WW2... The war gave a huge boost to the economy and lifted the US out of the Great Depression. That probably laid the groundwork for the huge military-industrial complex today.
The Marshall plan wasn't just good will and benevolence either. A major goal was to create an export market to trade with. The US economy really took off after WW2! ( I can dig up a paper on that). Of course, building up a power base in western Europe to oppose Russia was also important.
Also, the falling apart of the old, Europe based empires from the late 18th century to 1930 and then the WW2 left a power vacuum, which the US filled, together with Russia.
And the world got a lot smaller then, thanks to airplanes, better technology. Nuclear weapons.
- adventured 10y agoThe US economy was embarrassing the major powers of Europe post civil war, when it came to almost all forms of industrial output. It was not after WW2 that the US economy really took off, it had been growing at an extreme pace from 1870-1930 - in fact that was the fastest period of growth in US history by far. The great depression was not just a US specific event.
- maxerickson 10y agoA good lens to look at it might be that the industrial output of the US was a major factor in WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_World_War_II#Production_overview:_service.2C_power_and_type https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_Wor... The US produced more of an awful lot of the categories there. I guess it really shows up in the Navy.
- the_duke 10y ago@adventured: Interesting graphs: http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/images/2008/03/18/worldgdpregions.gif http://krusekronicle.typepad.com/kruse_kronicle/images/2008/... https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/long-term-real-growth-of-gdp-in-the-us-1871-2009-visualizing-economics-645x447.png https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/long-t... The US ("west offshoots" in the graph, but south america can be mostly ignored until the later 20th century) grew faster then western Europe, but they only really diverged before WW1. Europe never really recovered from the devastation that was WW1 until the 50ies. WW2 helped the US out of a big dip though.