What The British Empire Could Teach The US

What the British Empire could teach the U.S.

The moment that the U.S. influence on the rest of the world seems threatened, it is worth to rehearse a comparison between the American empire and what preceded it. It will reveal, among other points that Britain had in the mid-20th century the wisdom to realize that their power had limits. Will The U.S. be capable of the same?

In recent history, only two powers become global empires, Britain, 18th century to the mid-20th century, and the United States since then. Spain and Holland also formed powerful empires, but without achieving this global dimension. The British and later the Americans, distributed resources around the world and boasted international ambitions supported by a vast network of military bases.

The military power of Britain came from their naval supremacy. The United States, in their capacity for destruction by bombing. But to ensure the permanence of a global empire requires more than military victories: requires the ability to organize and control the environment around.

Britain and the United States have benefited from an additional asset that could only exist in a globalized economy: both dominated the worldwide industry. The importance of their production apparatus, these nations have become the "workshop of the world". So much so that, during the 1920s and after the Second World War, the United States accounted for about 40% of world industrial output. Today, that figure is between 22% and 25%.

The two empires became models that other countries sought to copy. Exerted a disproportionate cultural influence, especially through the formidable spread of the English language. Located at the crossroads of international trade, its budgetary, financial and commercial decisions conditioned the content, volume and destination of these flows.

Beyond these common features, there are numerous differences between the two nations. The most obvious with respect to each size. Britain is an island, not a continent, and never had borders in the North American sense of the term. It was part of several European empires - the Roman period, after the Norman Conquest, and during a short period when Mary Tudor married Philip II of Spain in 1554 - but has never been the center of one of them. Moreover, every time Britain produced a surplus population, emigrated or founded this colony, making the islands a major source of emigration.

The Europeans who colonized the U.S. saw its territory as a gift from God. That is why the Constitution explicitly excludes Indians of the political body formed by those who would benefit from "natural right to the assets of Liberty"

In contrast, the United States is essentially a land of welcome, which filled spaces thanks to its huge population increase and the major waves of immigration, mainly from Western Europe, until 1880. Along with Russia, was the only empire not to experience a diaspora.

The American empire is the logical product of its expansion, based on an almost total identification between country and continent. For European immigrants, accustomed to relatively high population densities, the American spaces must have seemed at the same time endless and empty. Reinforced by the almost total destruction of local populations by diseases that the settlers spread, voluntarily or not.

The certainty that Europe had about the fact that this land was a gift from God made it remove the nomads to impose its economic system and its intensive agriculture. That is why the U.S. Constitution explicitly excludes the Indians of the political body formed by those who would benefit from "natural right to property of freedom."

The United States never saw themselves as part of an international system formed by nations with comparable powers, which sets up another difference regarding Britain and Europe in general. The notion of the colony was also incompatible with this view, since the entire North American continent, Canada included therein, should eventually turn into a single country.

That's why the American hegemony beyond its territory-continent, could not take the form of the British colonial empire or of the Commonwealth. With the exception of Hawaii, the United States has never really tried to incorporate areas that were already populated or that had not been colonized by Anglo-Saxons, like Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Pacific Islands.

Not having ever sent settlers around the world, the U.S. could not do the domains arise, these "white colonies" with or without native populations that progressively gained autonomy, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa . Moreover, since the civil war and the victory of the north, all the secession of the the Union became unthinkable in the legal, political and even ideological plan. Therefore, the U.S. could only express power beyond its borders in the form of a system of satellites or vassal states.

The U.S. were born in a very lasting revolution. Alexis de Tocqueville had already understood that the political orientation of a venture of this kind would forcibly be populist and anti-elitist.

Outra diferença fundamental entre os dois países é que os Estados Unidos nasceram de uma revolução que talvez tenha durado mais do que todas aquelas animadas pelas esperanças do Século das Luzes, como afirma Hannah Arendt. É a partir da convicção messiânica de que a sua sociedade “livre” seria superior a todas as outras que os EUA fundam sua justificativa para a constituição do império. Uma sociedade destinada a transformar-se em um modelo para o mundo inteiro. Alexis de Tocqueville já havia compreendido que a orientação política de um empreendimento desse tipo seria forçosamente populista e antielitista.

Now England and Scotland made their revolutions in the 16th and 17th centuries, but they did not last. They were recycled in a capitalist regimen facing modernity, but very hierarchical and unequal, directed until the 20th century by large families of landowners. Ireland proved that a colonial empire can exist within such a structure, like did Britain.

The British were convinced of its superiority with respect to other societies, but had neither the messianic conviction nor the will to convert foreign people to their way of government or Protestantism. The British Empire was not built for or by missionaries. On the contrary: in their main province, India, the activities of the latter were actively discouraged.

Another difference: since the Domesday [1], in the 11th century, the kingdom of England, and after 1707, Britain, constituted themselves around a judiciary and a highly centralized government, which formed the most ancient nation of Europe. In the United States, freedom is opposing the central government, and even