I’ve been reading some US history lately and it strikes me how (seemingly) amazingly lucky we were early on to get the caliber of individuals we did to guide this emerging nation through difficult times, and all the twists and turns of the American Revolution, the Civil War etc. Plus in things like picking up Louisiana and Alaska, it seems the dice usually rolled our way.
Is this just the way history is written by historians to make an engaging story, and make it seem that these people were provided by the hand of providence, or were we really “lucky” from an Olympian, arms length historical perspective?
I believe that much of our ‘luck’ is of the self made kind. However, looking at some of the key presidents we’ve had…when they were most needed…I’d have to say that we have been fortunate during critical periods of our history. Guys like Lincoln and Roosevelt and Washington himself came along as the right (perhaps the only) man who could and would see us through and keep us going. We are also very lucky that the Europeans (and others) were such bastards early in our history as it ensured we got the cream of the crop as far as immigration goes.
My guess is that this is an instance of what I would call false probability. What I mean by that is, suppose I go out and hail a cab, and I notice that the cab is #17382. “Wow!” I say to myself, “what are the odds of having exactly that number cab?” Well, 1, because it happened. Had I gotten cab #04834, I would have said to myself, “Wow! What are the odds of having exactly that number?”
In other words, had the history of the USA turned out differently, we’d still be asking ourselves the same question.
If we’re looking at early (but not necessarily exclusively early) America, I’d say our success was based as much more based on our “luck” in having leaders who were willing to brutally exploit others as on our luck in having leaders of a certain caliber of individuals.
I would suggest that the homogeneity of the US as a whole is the most important factor in its success as a nation. Almost every nation has had a civil war in its history, but if we’re comparing the US to Europe, the latter has had literally hundreds of such wars, each one stemming from “Them and Us”-ing of some kind or other.
To have such an enormous nation so comparably uniform in language and culture IMO not only decreases such squabbling but, more importantly, offers huge advantages to trade: any given product or service can be offered pretty much identically to a vast monotonic market, whereas in Europe and elsewhere the initial market was much smaller and expansion would require some modification (if only the language of the packaging).
So, if the US had been as fragmented as Europe in terms of numerous languages, cultures and ‘tribes’, I suspect it would have been a different story. And of course, America was hugely diverse when it became independent. You might call the way America shifted from diversity to homogeneity “lucky”, but bear in mind that others might call it “genocide”.
That is generally true of many similar New World countries though, like Canada, Australia, Brazil, and others. None have been as successful.
The most obvious example of American “luck” is geography. It’s a huge, remarkably fertile and resource-rich place, especially on the East Coast where the nation started. Canada, equally large and blessed with remarkable stability, is at least half uninhabitable due to Arctic conditions and at least a quarter more is technically habitable but generally unpleasant. Much of Australia is murderous, alien desert. Brazil was near-impenetrable, malarial jungle throughout much of its interior. New Zealand is too small to be powerful. Etc., etc. None had the geographic advantages of the United States.
Some of our power and greatness is due to the character of our people and to great leaders, but some of it was sheer, dumb luck. We were lucky enough to have ample resources, a lot of arable land, and a location that made foreign invasion all but impossible.
And we were VERY lucky to be the only world power that WASN’T devastated by the Second World War. That’s what put us in a position to be one of the only superpowers (and later, the only superpower… until China and India build up a bit more).
