Am I alone in thinking that a lot of what I read online these days bothers me? While an affirmative answer to that question can mean many things depending on whether the offense is of a political, religious, or moral nature, the bottom line is that there is a lot being written and electronically foisted upon us that is simply . . . well . . . garbage.
While I could go into various aspects of the false information routinely passed as truth across what serves as our primary medium for gathering and exchanging information—the internet—I’m going to address one that few of you probably ever think about. And yet, it affects so much of how we look at ourselves as Americans, how we conceive our nation’s place on the world stage and what will be written in our great-great-grandchildren's history books.
What I’m beating around the bush to introduce here is just how young the United States of America really is, and thus how short a time—relative to the age of recorded human history—we’ve lived in a world dominated by American policies and Western modes of thinking. Don’t buy it? America’s always been great, has always led the world by every measure imaginable, you say? Let’s get into it then!
The United States, as late as 1917, was considered by the major powers of the world—the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire—to be little more than a regional power. The U.S., it was felt, had lots of potential, a strategic position off by itself with no real hemispheric competitors, and a pair of formidable moats in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. That said, up until that point the U.S. had rarely reached out beyond its own neighborhood to participate in world affairs. The mixed results of the Spanish-American War in 1898 made many at home even wonder if we should be involved in the affairs of others.
The U.S. entry into World War I presaged involvement in World War II and the Cold War which followed. All three impacted the disintegration of bifurcate power constructs (Central-Allied Powers, Axis-Allied Powers, Communist-Democratic Powers) into the multi-polar world of today. A world dominated by policies conceived in Washington D.C., businesses headquartered in New York and Los Angeles, and a military for which no place on earth is truly unreachable. The most generous start point, then, for what would come to be a period of American dominance on the world stage is 1917, our entry into the Great War and signal re-engagement in world affairs.
You could easily argue, however, that President Wilson’s inability at the war’s end in 1918 to enforce his own policies on the victors of World War I—leading unequivocally to all that followed—makes a compelling argument that true U.S. dominance didn’t really coalesce until the older orders had well and truly destroyed themselves, meaning the 1943-44 time period. Regardless, those of you doing the math should not be surprised to find that the period of U.S. preeminence on the world stage is really only 75-101 years. Sounds like a long time, right? We’ll see . . .
The United States came into being as a political entity with the Signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, officially separating our national predecessors from their host nation, England. Those of our countrymen with good memories (or who watch a lot of Jeopardy) will note that King George III ruled England at the time—albeit with a Parliament growing stronger every year. King Louis XVI sat the throne in France, Frederick “The Great” led Prussia (Germany didn’t exist yet as a consolidated nation and wouldn’t for another century), Catherine “The Great” ruled Russia, and Sultan Abdul Hamid I reigned over a thriving Ottoman Empire that was far from being the “Sick old man of Europe” that we grew up reading about, spanning an area of control from modern Turkey south to Egypt and east to Iran.
As well, and way beyond the history we’re taught as children in the West, the Quinlang Emperor ruled a Manchu-dominated Qing China. King Yeongjo ruled a consolidated Korean kingdom called Joseon. And Japan remained under the domination of a military dictatorship headed by Ieharu Tokugawa. Long-standing civilizations reigned in India, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia as well though the British had begun by this time interfering in Indian politics and waging wars in the Bengal region, a prelude of the colonization to come.
At the time of the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, stripping English monarchs of absolute rule and setting the foundation stones for a future democratic political system in North America, King John I was the affected ruler there. France was consolidating a centralized state, making the most of English military losses on the continent. Russia existed only as a grouping of disparate principalities, none of which had any inkling they were about to be steam-rolled by an unknown group of tribal nomads from north of China called the Mongols. Speaking of which, Genghis Khan had by 1215 consolidated his power over other Mongol tribes, defeated Jin China in a long series of battles and sieges, and would soon be provoked into war with Central Asian kingdoms that would spark future invasions of both the Persian Empire and Eastern Europe. The Eastern Mediterranean itself remained dominated by the Byzantine Empire, the last remaining vestige of long-ubiquitous Roman rule.
China, with the northern Jin Empire brutally detached by the Mongols, survived as the Southern Song Empire with ties to multiple Indian and Southeast Asian states. The Song would also fall to the Mongols, but it would take some time as the empire boasted a population of around 200 million citizens! The Korean kingdom of Goryeo was about to successfully defend itself against seven separate Mongol invasions, a period that concluded in a treaty of alliance, setting up Kublai Khan’s two attempted invasions of Japan by the end of that century. Japan, ruled by the military bureaucracy based in Kamakura, was about to see the samurai elevated to heroic status by their staunch defense against the Mongol invasions, setting the scene for what would become 101 years of continuous civil war across the archipelago.
In 410 A.D. two German tribes, the Angles and the Saxons (from which the modern term Anglo-Saxon originated), migrated onto the British Isles. These Germans, mixing with Romans who’d stayed behind, the Celtic peoples from modern Ireland and Scotland, and later Normans from northern France, formed the dominant ethnic basis for the British people who would settle America’s original 13 colonies. Rome itself would be sacked by marauding Visigoths in this year, bringing a suitably violent end to the Western Roman Empire. Its Eastern Roman sister state would thrive until toppled by Ottoman Turks a full millennium later. Western Europe would be plunged, from this point, into “The Dark Age”, with long-standing consolidated Roman order shattering into countless minor polities, all vying for relative power and standing, a situation that would last until the Renaissance in the 13th Century.
To the East, the Emperor Arcadius ruled the Byzantine Empire from his palace in Constantinople. Basking in the temporary if rare absence of a strong Persian foe, these Romans ruled the entire Eastern Mediterranean to include present day Egypt and the Holy Lands. China had just split into northern and southern dynasties, the Jin and the Song. Korea was knee-deep into its volatile three-kingdoms period with endemic fighting between Koguryo, Baekche, and Silla. And Japan was in its early Yamato period, well before the invention of the samurai who would dominate Japanese development until the abolition of the class in 1876, some fourteen centuries into the future.
The establishment of Rome itself, really the furthest back one can make a convincing argument for the political and moral underpinnings of the modern United States, took place in the 800s B.C. By that time, the Assyrians had dominated what we today consider the Middle East for about five hundred years, building cities with tremendous fortifications in northern Iraq and defeating any nation brave enough to raise an army and challenge them. That civilization would last another two hundred years before being toppled by a coalition of Babylonians and Medes, and then replaced in rapid and dramatic fashion by the Achaemenid Persians, perhaps the world’s first superpower able to project forces into Europe, Asia, and Africa. It’s worth noting that by this time the Egyptian Empire had long been in decline, with a recorded history reaching back to 3,000 B.C. Celtic tribes ruled all of Western Europe at this point, though absent any central authority whatsoever. And Germanic tribes ruled most of Eastern Europe, again, without forming the large confederacies that would repeatedly challenge Rome in years to come.
In the east, China’s Zhou Dynasty held much power, but saw centralized authority disintegrating into what came to be called the “Warring States Period”. China’s ability to engage in regional and world affairs would be curtailed until the Han Dynasty re-consolidated the country and began a phenomenal period of expansion nearly two hundred years later. Korea was just beginning to form as a political entity under the title Gojoseon, the origins of which are still hotly debated by historians. The people of Gojoseon were most likely of Manchurian descent having moved across the Yalu River and settled south of the Korean Peninsula’s formidable and eminently defensible mountain ranges. Japan was coming to the conclusion of its Jomon period, bringing to an end the migrations that populated the archipelago. The meeting of Jomon from the north and Yayoi from the Southwest would form the basis for the Japanese ethnicity, with later infusions from China and Southwest Korea completing their general genetic makeup.
To sum up, then, let’s do some rudimentary comparison. The U.S. has held center-stage for about a hundred years. England dominated the world’s seaways and maritime trade routes for a hundred and thirty years. The Joseon Dynasty—one family—ruled Korea for five hundred years. Rome dominated Western Europe and the Mediterranean for about six hundred years. The Zhou ruled China and the Assyrians ruled Mesopotamia for eight hundred years each. And the Byzantines held sway for an astonishing 1100 years. The Egyptians . . . well, what can you say . . . the ancient Egyptians STARTED building pyramids in 2670 B.C. and didn’t lose their place in the world spotlight until around 500 B.C. for a grand total of over 2,100 years at the top!
Okay, so what? What does any of this prove? Well, it lays out just how little of human history actually centers on this great country of ours. That the U.S. has had a profound influence on the past century is undeniable, yet placing that impact into perspective can help prevent the type of hubris that historically gets empires into trouble and today turns Americans into “Ugly Americans”.
We’ve all grown up during a period of unprecedented technological progress, a world in which English is taught in every corner of the globe, and dollars are accepted everywhere. Go back in time and ask a citizen of Rome in 300 A.D.—a time when the Denarius was the preferred currency and everyone spoke Latin—and they’d probably feel the same way that we do now, that this is just the way the world is . . . and it’ll never end. And yet where is that citizen now? Or his Assyrian predecessor? Or his Shang counterpart? Or his samurai equivalent? They’re all gone with virtually nothing they would recognize as representative of their culture surviving into modernity.
Think about it for just a minute or two, on how many great empires have come and gone over the millennia, how many distinct cultures and unique ways of life. Is it possible to consider the vast sweep of human history and not feel a touch of humility? Is it possible to genuinely contemplate our own nation’s short history in this manner without feeling the sense of connectedness that we all—as humans—share?
Shouldn’t be, right?
M. G. Haynes