The USA has the largest network of navigable rivers through arable land with the Mississippi. Water transport is still the cheapest form around, and that free c

The USA has the largest network of navigable rivers through arable land with the Mississippi. Water transport is still the cheapest form around, and that free capital (in the form of transportation infrastructure) would make any nation that commands it a dominant economic power. In the hypothetical world where the Columbian Exchange happened with technological parity and no colonization, the nation controlling the current US territory would still end up the richest in the world.