Which was my point. I do not discount settlement as an important factor; I just doubt that it is clearly the only factor.
Some of my points are more to do with growth in the post-colonial eras, but I think that has more to do with current US / Australia / Canada / New Zealand success than our ‘roots’ as a colony.
Yes, the US was started by white settlers from developed Western European countries; yes, we were more of the ‘in it to stay’ mentality rather than ‘pillage as much as you can while the pillaging is good.’
I agree with this completely but for one thing - what about slavery? The US was definitely ‘started’ by primarily white settlers from developed western European countries, but we also depended largely on cheap or slave imported labor for manpower-intensive jobs such as farming, and on the influx of other ‘poor’ immigrants, especially Irish and Italian immigrants, for manufacturing. This gave the US a huge industrial and agricultural base to build from.
I also disagree that the early years in the US were egalitarian in anything but name. There were rich white men, and everyone else. Indentured servitude was common, slavery rampant, cheap imported labor from China / Asia common, and none of it was ever done for Egalitarian reasons. The middle class didn’t really start to come about in any meaninful or culturally-changing way until much later, some would say until the Labor Unions movement started picking up real steam in the mid 1900s…
I think also the way that most of these ‘successful’ colonies were willing to savagely repress and kill the indiginous peoples to support vast expansions also helped out a bit. Without that, the US for one would have never been able to support our massive agricultural power and our huge amount of available natural resources without killing off a whole load of natives and destroying the buffalo herds on the plains.
And thanks for the book cite; I will definitely be looking that one up on Amazon! If it’s anything like Guns, Germs, and Steel it will be great…
I think the legal system plays a role. I’d much rather be facing charges in Canada, for example, than Mexico. I think something about the English common law makes a more productive environment. This rich tradition of the law, its stability, and knowing that your basic property rights are generally protected makes for stable governments, nations with stable governments are more fertile grounds for business. Contrast the stability of the English and US governments with say Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and all of Latin America for the past two centuries. Not that justice and properity are exclusive virtues of the English speaking world, but there really aren’t any English speaking banana republics or dictatorships.
I agree with MrManfrengenfrensen. The key difference has been freedom. When people are free to pursue their own happiness in their own way, they spontaneously produce whatever the society demands. Societies with repression, suppression, and oppression born of central planning tend to be economically lethargic.
I really wish Jared Diamond would write a second book that theorizes about what determines cultural dominance in the modern age.
What of France? It had a strong showing in it’s North American colonies until the seven years war. It did not have common law. Many of its leadership in the early pahses were based on those spoilt in it for the quick riches and out as soon as they could and yet they thrived. Their legal system was not common law and they were a Catholic nation.
I think you over estimate the power of democratic institutions of the European nations of the period of early and middle colonial history. Many colonists were sent as indentured servants and some forced by edict. Your average British, French or Spanish citizen lived by the will of the nobility. The middle class you speak of didn’t exist for quite a long time. For the most part the colonial rulers were nobles and lesser nobles, many of them on a form of contract.
I think it is a myth that there was some form of egalitarianism. We are talking about a Europe that was still slowly emerging from the Medival period. The Merchant or middle class didn’t gain power until after the colonies became self sufficient enough to decide they wanted their own say in governing policies after about a 250 year period of colonization.
OK, here’s how big a dork I am. I spent most of last night trying to figure out which colinies where the “Toher” colonies. I kept thinking that this must be when I fell asleep in history class and “Toher” was a name for a dynasty or somethin…
It finally dawned on me a few minutes ago that it was a simply typo and ‘toher’ was ‘other’…
In my defense - well no, I have none, I’m just a :wally
The British, partly by virtue of their excellent navy, were able to seize and hold the best territories. Countries like France lost out, because their navy was not as good as the British. Smaller powers (like Holland) had not enough resources to maintain a large enough fleet to challenge England.
The real puzzle to me…very late in the colonial era, countries like Germany and Italy decided to get in on the game…and wound up with some pretty worthless pieces of real estate! Take the poor Italians…they tried to settle a worthless piece of desert (Libya), and then compounded their error by marching in to Ethiopia! They got their asses kicked…but WHY did they ever want a rocky, mountainous, poor and landlocked place like Ethiopia? For what it cost them, it was a very bad bargain.
Finally, the last colonial empire to go was the portuguese…Angola and Mozambique were part of the empire untilthe early 1970’s…Angola was a pretty tragic case…the Portugues had built it into a modern country…Luandsa was a beautiful, modern city. When they pulled out, the country went into civil war, which goeson today. 
You’re going to have to explain Scotland & Ireland to us there.
For a start Scotland is part of Britain, so can hardly be a colony of it! And for a second it was never colonised, unless you want to go back to either the Romans, the Scots, the Vikings or the Picts.
Ireland is a different matter, as it was invaded rather than colonised. The Irish were a European nation before this.
After Captain Cook “discovered” Australia in 1770 the next British ships to make landfall there did so in 1787. This was the first convict fleet consisting of 11 vessels and 1050 people, of whom 736 were convicts. These first convicts were the people who would begin to clear the land, plant the crops, mine the coal, cut back the forests, lay the roads and build the settlements. Over the next 60-70 years many other convicts followed and built upon their predecessors work in making the country an attractive proposition for free settlers. It wasn’t, however, until the 1830’s that the number of free settlers grew larger than that of the convicts.
All in all I would say that that It could be argued that the convicts had a damned big impact on Australia’s founding and it’s history.
Prestige. Only prestige. They took the last pieces of real estate left.
Cook discovered Australia ???
Then who is this Abel Tasman fellow, what are Tasmania and New Zealand called after?
“Egalitarian” may be the wrong word to use. But I was contrasting the society in early British North America or Australia with places such as most of colonial Latin America and India. There was relative equality for the majority, as well as a high degree of social mobility. For example: Am I correct in saying that some of the most prominent Anglo-Australian families have their roots in the convict settlers?
I differ on the point that the middle class had yet to exist during the early colonial period. I do believe that in England during the 1600s there was a definite segment of society that we could call “middle class” today, and their demands drove the Puritan movement and the English Revolution to a great degree.
As far as “democratic” institutions, I may be overreaching. I had in mind such concepts as the English Revolution and Civil War, and the Bill of Rights in 1688. These are not quite democratic movements, but they certainly pointed English speaking peoples in that direction.
The example of India shows that grafting British culture onto a population (or at least the local elite who run the show) will suffice even if the native population remains in place.
This may explain the significance of “replacing the native population” versus “ruling the native population” – the former situation makes the local settlers less dependent on the mother country’s military protection, and thus in a better position to tell the mother country to take its merchantilist policy and shove it (as the Americans did about a decade after the French threat was removed from their hinterlands).
I think folks are missing a quite obvious point here. Most of North America, a large portion of Australia, and all of New Zealand are temperate climate. For the still predominantly agrarian economy that obtained during the period that these areas were colonized, that was an extremely important factor. In fact, to this day, there are fairly few fully economically developed nations that are not in temperate zones. Obviously, Britain’s superior naval power contributed to the fact that they got these particular colonies. Note also, the fact that these were temperate climates made them more desirable as voluntary, life-long emigration targets.
All had comparatively sparsely settled indigenous populations, which when combined with greater numbers of European immigrants, ensured that in fact, as pointed out earlier, the European settlers were in fact the majority in numbers as well as power. The resources of the European settlers could be devoted far more to developing their own ecomony, rather than suppressing an indigenous population.
I do think there were elements of English heritage that made success more likely, but I think the temperate climate was far and away the biggest factor.
If you’re going to lecture an Aussie on antipodean history, be careful with your facts. The First Fleet arrived in 1788.
Your claim that free settlers only outnumbered convicts in the 1830s is somewhat misleading, as was the “couple of years” in my quick reply (sorry about that). It is correct that the numbers of convicts arriving was beaten by the number of free settlers arriving around that time, but remember that most convicts were emancipated after some years. Therefore, there were a lot more free people than convicts a decade or two after the First Fleet.
Personally, I believe that the work ethic and egalitarianism of the emancipated people / settlers is important to Australian history, and that the convicts, at least during their term of service, had comparatively little influence on Australian values.
Errr…What is your definition of “so succesful”, exactly?
Fixed the title.
New France was not a functioning colony to the extent that British North America was; for the most part it was a life support system for the fur trade. There was almost no political structure in Nouvelle-France at all in 1759 beyond the most rudimentary overseas control and the influence of the Church; it was a near-pure resource exploitation colony, kept afloat by the seemingly unlimited quantity of furs pouring in from the interior trade routes. Had Britain not taken the colony over it’s very likely it would have suffered when the fur market dried up.