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A few things: 1. America's early expansion was designed to gain control over the entirety of the Mississippi river, which has the largest lockless waterway sys
by kstenerud 7y ago
A few things:
1. America's early expansion was designed to gain control over the entirety of the Mississippi river, which has the largest lockless waterway system serving the longest "useful" land area in the world with cheap boat transportation. This cheap transportation is the primary reason for American early development success, and continues to benefit America immensely to this day.
2. Every other developed country suffered massive losses in the world wars. America suffered no damage to her land or infrastructure, and was able to use her superior position at the end of the war to gain even more economic advantage over allies and foes alike.
3. America binged importing top scientific talent at the end of the second world war, most notably from Germany by offering them amnesty from war crimes (which massively boosted their rocketry, medical, and electronics industries).
The rest is largely snowball effect.
- TACIXAT 7y agoAny reading on 1? I was thinking about how America gained ground in the world, from early colonial, to the industrial revolution, to the internet giants. I haven't read much about the Mississippi in relation to that era of our industry.
- kstenerud 7y agoEncyclopedia Britannica has a decent introduction [1]. There are a number of books that cover the early development of nations, but the name of the book that dealt with waterways in depth escapes me at the moment. Possibly something by Marvin Harris or Jared Diamond? [1] https://www.britannica.com/place/Mississippi-River/History-and-economy https://www.britannica.com/place/Mississippi-River/History-a...
- jcranmer 7y agoI think saying that American expansion was designed to control the Mississippi River is a stretch. The main expansion that occasioned it was the Louisiana Purchase, which was completely unintentional: the Americans went to France to ask for New Orleans, and were willing to pay up to $10 million for it, but Napoleon opened with an offer of all of Louisiana (doubling the size) for the bargain price of $15 million. Louisiana wasn't a primary focus of the US foreign policy, particularly in the early 1800s. Instead, the US was more concerned with staying out of the deteriorating situation in Europe (during the Napoleonic Wars), and the main expansion targets would have been Canada and Florida.
- VintageCool 7y agohttps://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-states-part-1-inevitable-empire https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-united-st...
- flukus 7y agoOn number 2, America also got a lot of cutting edge tech (jet engines, nuclear tech, crypto, radar) handed to them for free by the British because America had the capacity to do something with them. This was a huge boost for American industry post war.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoTrue, believe there was some obligation to build the stuff and return to Britain fighting the war however. Left the US in an incredible advantage after WWII.