I don’t think you read my post very carefully.
This idea that the dominant status of the US just sort of happened, suddenly, maybe beginning during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, seems to me a particularly non-American conception. I think most Americans would see it as the culmination of a long steady process that began in 1776. Granted, we are indoctrinated by our own history books, which have propagandistic titles like The Road to Freedom and the like. I don’t know which viewpoint is less delusional. Nevertheless, look at the pattern:
US 1800 vs. US 1850… Clearly US 1850 is the more powerful, formidable country
US 1850 vs. US 1900… Clearly US 1900 is the more powerful, formidable country
US 1900 vs. US 1950… Clearly US 1950 is the more powerful, formidable country
US 1950 vs. US 2000… Clearly US 2000 is the more powerful, formidable country
Maybe the US is a country to keep an eye on. And maybe there’s something about its Constitution, adopted just four years after the end of the war vs. Britain, that speaks to the success of the country since then.
I was thinking about after he recovers from the “crazy episode” and he says something like “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to get used to it” (when told of American Independence).
The constitution doesn’t count for anything. It has advantages and disadvantages (like other forms of government) which are still argued over today. The main disadvantage is a lack of flexibility. It’s not a slam dunk that having a written constitution is better than not having one.
Although you’re probably right that, in the case of the US, it provided a rallying point that all could agree on - a set of ground rules. However having a rallying point isn’t always a good thing. Religions have the same thing - a single document that brings people together. The rallying point is only as good as the document around which people rally but the mere fact of having a document means people will rally to it despite it’s flaws. This means the flaws never get dealt with because the document gets raised to the status of a holy icon, not to be messed with. People spend their time trying to fit laws around the document rather than just changing the document ie trying to gauge the intentions of the framers rather than concluding that the framers were wrong or that the document is out of date.
It does (rarely) get changed of course but this just proves the weakness of the system. It’s an admission that the document is not perfect but then no document ever is. Since you can never get a perfect document, what’s the point in having a document at all?
Um… so what? Just because the country was gradually becoming more formidable anyway from 1800-1900 it doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a quantum leap between 1900 and 1950.
Remember, it’s not just that America became powerful overnight, but that the dominant European powers were destroying each other at the same time.
I also think you’re giving the Constitution a bit too much credit. America has rarely faced a credible external threat during its history; even during the Cold War, nobody seriously thought that the Soviets were going to invade and occupy the country.
Moreover, historians tend to look at US history, see a system of government that on its face strongly resembles the one set down in the Constitution, and think that it must be some sort of perfect document for governance. Of course, this totally overlooks the fact that the country had to fight a long, bitter civil war in between. Imagine how differently things would look if the South had won.
Harvard and Yale have better history departments than the College of William and Mary.
What do you think I missed? I do not think you will find, for example, that “most decent high schools” in Britain will routinely offer a course in French History (a powerful neighbor to the south, which has played a large role in the development of Britain), or vice-versa. Nor, as this thread has amply demonstrated, do British schools spend much time on American history. Britain has plenty enough history of its own to be getting on with, thank you very much. I doubt that “most decent high schools” in Canada offer courses in Bulgarian history, or even Italian or Spanish history. The fact that, according to you, “decent” Canadian high schools routinely offer courses in U.S. history in my opinion shows excessive cultural deference to your powerful neighbor to the south.
Admittedly Canada as such does not have very much history of its own, but you could be exploring the roots of Canadian culture in British and French history (I expect you do, but there is plenty of material there to fill many curricula), and, I suppose, the history of what I believe you call the First Nations, instead of sucking up to U.S. cultural hegemony.
And yes, I know Canada and Canadians are sensitive about this sort of thing, and there have been real efforts to hold back excessive U.S. cultural influence. I sympathize. I was expressing surprise that these efforts have apparently not extended much to high school history class options.
Sure, US 2000 could kick the butt of US 1950, but do you think our power relative to other countries increased between those dates?
And since you can never achieve a perfect legal system, what’s the point in having laws at all…? I don’t quite follow the logic here. I agree with your other point about a rallying point not always being a good thing. I was not making a moral value judgment about the US Constitution or about the US in general, but merely suggesting a link between the document & the steady growth & increasing power of the country. Neither am I trying to imply that the US system is the solution or should be the role model for the world. Only that these relationships are worth studying & arguing over.
I’d have to say yes. There were two superpowers in 1950 & now there is one. Which is not to say there weren’t flaws in the system in 2000 - serious flaws - and obviously the geopolitical situation is very unsettled at the moment and we don’t know the full effect of these flaws vis a vis the US’s status.
Well, legal systems are in constant flux, ever evolving, but constitutions are static. You don’t ever aim for a perfect legal system because you know that that is impossible. Laws come from different sources. The US legal system uses other sources of law apart from the Constitution, like case law, common law and statute. The provisions contained within the Constitution could easily be incorporated into general law (probably already are mostly). There’s no particular need to have some kind of overarching uber-law dominating the whole scene.
Well what is the link then? You seem to be suggesting that the steady growth was as a result of the document. The document was good as a rallying point but beyond that …?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the American Constitution is great. As single documents go, it’s one of the best. But you definitely seem to be saying that merely having a document leads to success, and that’s just not true.
No. I’m not convinced. I think you do believe that. You think there’s a link between having a written constitution and success in the world.
He only drew a connection between the success of the US and its Constitution, though.
It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the Constitution was the biggest reason for America’s success.
I’d ascribe it to the constant flow of brilliant minds and brilliant ideas from all over the world… and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution are arguably the greatest draw for those minds.
Well, for what it’s worth, there was no American history course offered at my high school (or in Quebec’s secondary school history program). There were two compulsory and one optional course. The compulsory courses were a general history course (human civilization from prehistory to the modern world) in the second year of high school, and a Quebec and Canada history course (from the French colonization of Canada to the Conquest to the Confederation to today’s Canada) in the fourth year. The optional course was a 20th century history course in the fifth year. Oddly enough (given that I really enjoyed it; I had a great teacher) I can’t remember much from the latter other than the fact I wrote an essay on Richard Nixon and the Watergate Affair. So it did include some American history, but it wasn’t specifically about it.
I strongly suspect that this depends on a lot on where you went to school. Like everyone else who went through the California public school system, I had a world history class in high school. I was in the honors class and we had to do some crazy shit for tenth graders, like memorize every single country and body of water in Europe and be able to label them on a map.
What made it really tough was that this was in 1993 and accurate maps of Eastern Europe - especially the Balkans - were incredibly difficult to find. Everything our school had was outdated. Our teacher took us to the library one day so we could work on our maps and we spent forty minutes puttering around trying to figure out how many countries Yugoslavia had broken up into before someone found a recent issue of National Geographic with a good map.
That was a good class. Learned a lot.
To be honest, as a Brit living in Sweden, it strikes me as a bizarre concept to believe it could be a reason full stop.
Why? Stable government is certainly a factor in economic/industrial and social development.
It seems to me there is a circular process going on here in which people who have not studied the American Revolution see no conceivable reason to study the American Revolution.
I think it’s more that people who aren’t American see no reason to study the American Revolution.
Amounts to the same, I guess.
Well, not really. The first would be a circular process, since you’re implying that if they *did *study the American Revolution they’d see something of value… but the latter has no such implication.
The US managed to have a Civil War whilst it had a constitution.