The Founders and for the first half of the US's history were more ethnically and culturally homogenous but one of the successess of the US is that it has been able to incorporate people from all sorts of different cultures and ethnicities into it. As much as we struggle with racism this is a country that unlike many wasn't founded on ethnicity, culture or religion. Part of the American genius has been to look beyond the narrow interpretation with which the founders considered all men beyond white Anglo-Saxon Protestant property owners to truly all men. So while like other countries we have our struggles with identity being an American doesn't mean being of an ethnicity as a Frenchman is or of a religion as a Pakistani.
In regards to slavery, I think there are two areas in which you could expect benefit: free labor and immigration. I think we profited little from free labor, but much more from immigration. The increase in profit for a plantation I don't think was very great, because the alternative -- paid labor -- would not have cost much more than what it would cost to house and feed slaves. Antebellum sharecroppers did not live much better than slaves, economically. However, the population was probably insufficient to staff the labor-intensive agriculture industry in the early years of development. So, forcing people to come and work was very beneficial early and was a great boon to Southern agriculture and national wealth. I don't think it mattered in this regard that they were enslaved versus a free servitude once they were here and couldn't go back. So, I think slavery did help in building American power, but not in the way people usually say.
luck, coincidence, destiny? the right things happened at the right time, other nations have been less fortunate in their independence and goals for economic stability
This was the "new world" and attracted the boldest and brightest of the Aryan race... Well, that was Hilter's reasoning for America's greatness
First of all, I want to address some of the things that others have brought up, that I partially disagree with: Geography - I think this gave us a foundation for success, but many African and South American countries had even better geographical conditions, especially separation from imperial wars, and we did better than they did. Natural Resources - With one notable exception, the Continental United States certainly isn't the most resource wealthy country, actually comparatively poor with gold, silver, diamonds, etc. Slavery - At the time of our founding, most of the world practiced slavery. The Southern United States exploited slaves, and that helped them economically, but much of our growth happened after slavery. These three certainly helped, but they weren't unique attributes for the United States. I believe that four things really led to our growth as a nation, and that for most of our history, that growth was accompanied by expansion of human rights: 1. A fundamental belief in the defense of property rights, including labor (slavery excepted) and intellectual property. This promoted unprecedented wealth creation and technological innovation. For most countries of history to that point, even constitutional monarcies, the rulers could appropriate any property, person's service, or idea that they thought beneficial. In the more benevolent states, they might have fair compensation laws, but they could take it. Now the tendency of the State is to erode these protections, so what kept that from happening was: 2. Federalism. We were founded on the fundamental belief that the Eastern seaboard was too big, and too heterogenous to have the same government throughout. This became more true as the country expanded. The Federal government needed to be their for protection, to facilitate trade, and a few other functions, but most of the governing had to be done locally. So as a government began to tear down property right protection (or do any other offensive thing), Americans would vote with their feet. From the very beginning, Americans, especially poor and middle class Americans, didn't sink their roots very deep. And if they couldn't find another civilized place to suit themselves, they would move to the: 3. Frontier. In discussing natural resources, I said that the United States aren't particularly rich in most of them. The notable exception to this is that the US is very rich in arable land. So from the beginning, Americans looked west, and moved to Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, California, Oregon, Alaska. For some, they'd set up to farm near rivers (eventually railroads) and grew cash crops to sell back east, but anyone that wanted to could move west, stake out a claim, subsistence farm, and if they could defend the land, it was theirs. For empires, arable land is often overlooked as a natural resource, but it may be the most important. And as Americans moved West they were replaced by: 4. Immigration. But it isn't just the fact that we had immigrants that helped, it's which immigrants we got. With a few notable exceptions (slave trade and Chinese most notable), the US never sought after immigrants. We rarely went to a country, loaded up a bunch of workers and brought them to work. We had a relatively lax immigration policy that would accept most of the immigrants that showed up. So we didn't get the best and the brightest, nor did we get the hardest-workers. Most immigrated because of crappy conditions wherever they came from, but not usually as refugees. For the most part, immigrants were the most dedicated to getting to the United States to better their life. And so, in an almost Darwinian sense, we got the best possible group for dedication and creativity, and created an atmosphere where dedication and creativity were rewarded. We were able to expand human rights (and create the impetus for it around the world) because we saw that making people free made it better for the whole. So those that weren't enslaving people weren't interested in protecting those that were, and some were even interested in fighting for the enslaved.
considering that any where in the world at that time, farm labor was pretty much serfdom, or slavery, or indentured servitude, I think you have a point that slavery holds no distinction over any other type of labor in terms of growth of the nation. but you still profited from it. the question is, if there was no slavery, would the country have been able to draw the number of people needed to work in the fields.
Just as an aside, cheap labor wasn't the justification for slavery. Slaves were expensive, and they weren't particularly good workers. Even in colonial times, universities in Virginia had done studies and proven that free black wage earners were 30% more productive than slaves, which more than offset their wages. Captive labor was the justification for slavery. There weren't many workers available, and when a few plantation owners owned most of the land in a colony, opportunities for laborers to better themselves were few, so there wasn't much motivation to move to the South for a job, especially when you could stake a claim on your own land to the west.
The answer is no. The country would look much different today if not for slavery. I still think it would have been a successful country, but the huge cotton and tobacco cash crops would have never existed.
I don't think our beliefs in property rights promoted innovation and wealth creation as much as a lack of interference from the church. In looking back on great empires, rome, greeks, egyptians, there was little interference of progress from a backwards thinking catholic church that held down europe up until the renaissance period. coincidently, the discovery of america happened during that same period.
weslinder, Just wanted to say this is a thought provoking and informative thread. It reminds of the ideas discussed in Guns, Germs, and Steel, but in a much shorter time frame and on a smaller scale.
I think the main reason is because of immigration and the distance people had to come and the obstacles they overcome to get into this country. It naturally filters out lazy unmotivated people. The American dream attracted the brightest and most motivated people to come to our country which allowed us to get ahead.
Which ones? Let's start with South America. First off, South America has a couple of major geographical strikes against it and was basically incapable of being settled except for its periphery up until very modern times. Most of the various regions of south america were (and in some cases still are) basically isolated from each other by impassable barriers. The entire continent is bisected by the spine of the Andes which are much higher and formidable than anything in North America. On the other side of that you have the world's densest rain forest in the Amazon. In the south you have the Atacama, among the world's driest deserts. To the north you have another impassable barrier in the Darien swamps of Panama and colombia (which actually remain pretty impassable.) While we're on the subject, settling in a subtropical climate amplifies the risk of disease manyfold - I'm aware that disease was a staple of early american colonies, but things like Malaria and Yellow fever were a whole different ball game and weren't even understood by medical science until around the turn of the century. Other than some of the flat coastal areas of Brazil, Argentina, Uraguay etc (which coincidentally were the most rapidly developed -Argentina's per capita GDP was comparable to that of the US around 1900) very little of South America was geographically accessible to European settlers, who also had to travel twice as far to get there. Finally, let's also not forget who colonzied Latin America - two of the poorest countries in Europe who basically looked upon them as vehicles for extracting its abundant mineral wealth and little else.
Sam beat me to the comment regarding geography which I totally agree with him. Lets also not forget that the indigenous population of North America was relatively sparse and during the history of the US as a country never was a serious threat. Compare that to Africa and Asia where stability was never fully achieved as long as there was a continued tension between conquerers and those conquered. Also in Africa and Asia colonial powers fought with each other much more than they did in North America where after the war of 1812 there wasn't a major conflict on the US territory between Colonial powers with each other or the US. While the US might be poor in resources compared to the South Africa and Russia it was much richer in resources than all of Europe and had a climate and geography that made it relatively easy to exploit those resources along with enough of a population to successfully exploit them. Compare that to Canada which in mineral and timber wealth is greater than the US but with less of a population and much of the minerals in a very inhospitable climate its harder to exploit them. Yet at the start of the US even using 18th C. technology timber and agricultural products were easily harvested and exported along with mineral wealth in the Applachian and Great Lakes Area. It also didn't hurt that at the time that these resources were becoming readily available the industrial revolution happened.
We were basically a wealthy suburb of Europe: all their very best ideas and people with none of the religious, imperial or cultural baggage holding us back. And we're not too populated for our geographic size, which means less tension and less competition for lots of natural resources.
A leadership class that wasn't steeped in royal nobility. Sure, they were aristocrats; but they still had to work to keep or expand what they had, and couldn't just wage or participate in wars to gain or keep wealth. Because they weren't the sovereign power, they didn't have the church or the military doing their bidding, and actually had to think up workable legal and governmental systems that were accountable to private citizens (since they were their equal).
There were many different factors as everyone has pointed out. I do believe that our natural resources played a large part. Also the fact that a large number of the natives were taken out through disease and war helped the settlers thrive. While the geographic reasons should not be underestimated. What gets me, is the historical view of immigrants in the past. They are looked at as the "best and brightest" when they were no more brighter than those in the countries they left. Yes, they played a part in the founding of this nation, but in their time immigration was a major concern as well. There was a time when being an Irish immigrant was looked at similar to mexican immigrants today. Best and brightest immigrants seemed to be moreso in the early twentieth century than any other time.
