The United States has accomplished amazing things in the first 250 years of its nationhood. It went from being a peripheral colony to being the richest and most powerful country in the world. We are the nation of the Midwestern corn and wheat fields, the automobile, the personal computer, the Internet, Hollywood, television, jazz, rock 'n' roll, rap, social media, fast food and jeans. We are prosperous, influential and a military superpower.
However, being a great nation does not mean remaining one forever. Empires fall. Superpowers fail. The United States finds itself at a historic juncture. Can he do what it takes to give himself another 250 years? To improve its odds, the United States could draw on the lessons of history, particularly the stories of three nations that self-destructed.
Byzantine mismanagement
Today there is no place called Byzantium.
At its best, from 813 to 1045 AD. Byzantium was a vast empire that stretched from Sicily and southern Italy through the Balkans to all of Türkiye. Between 718 and 1453 AD. C., Byzantium always controlled a part of this region.
Byzantium was technologically advanced. Its literacy rate was higher than that of 18th century France. The Byzantines built aqueducts, designed clocks, wove magnificent silks, and made the largest mosaics in the world. The empire was fabulously rich.
What went wrong?
One emperor, Basil II, destroyed all this.
He did this by offering huge tax breaks to the rich.
Byzantium was under constant threat from geopolitical enemies. To survive, he had to be able to raise armies regularly. After the tax reduction, the Byzantine emperors found that they no longer had the funds to do so. Before Basil II there was an uninterrupted series of military victories; then a series of losses. The empire weakened until it finally fell into the hands of the Ottomans.
Basil II's tax breaks for the rich led to government deficits, insolvency, and default.
Spanish inequality
If rich countries always get richer and poor countries always fall behind, Spain should be the dominant power in the world today. In 1500, Spain was an economic and military giant. Their crucial asset was New World silver. Mexican and Peruvian silver represented more metal than that available in the rest of Europe. If Spain had invested these incomes in rational economic activity, the Industrial Revolution would have occurred in Spain and not in Great Britain.
Spain destroyed its own economy by promoting extreme social inequality. Spain's landed aristocrats wanted complete economic and political domination of the country. The aristocracy's control of the government meant that they could cut off all market competition to their companies. Without competition from agricultural imports, Spanish lords had no incentive to improve their agricultural efficiency. The other Western European nations improved agriculture between 1500 and 1800. Spain remained blockaded.
The nobility did not want merchants to compete with them for political power and so closed down merchants who favored reforms. Entrepreneurs seeking market freedom fought no less than four civil wars trying to remove the stranglehold on economic life by the aristocracy. A fifth civil war was an attempt by workers to reduce social inequality. The aristocrats won all five wars. The bloodshed was horrendous. The economic losses were catastrophic.
Inequality stifled Spain's ability to industrialize by destroying the size of its domestic market. England and the United States were less unequal, with internal markets thanks to working classes with money to spend. The impoverished peasants of Spain could not buy anything. The entrepreneurial spirit died. Spain stagnated.
Thus, after 1600, Spain continued to lag behind the rest of Western Europe. In 1600, it was the richest nation in the world. In 1900, Spain was poorer than Argentina and Venezuela.
british arrogance
The fall of Britain is not as dramatic as that of Byzantium and Spain. The UK still has a high standard of living. But in the Victorian era, Britain was the undisputed dominant power.
Their power came from superior technology. The Industrial Revolution was British. Britain invented the steam engine, mechanized spinning and weaving, the railroad, and the telegraph. The rest of the world struggled to catch up with British technology.
A century later, that advantage disappeared. The dominant technological powers were the United States and Germany; Its universities taught mathematics, science and engineering. American and German engineering became the best in the world.
Britain sent fewer children to university than its two economic rivals. Oxford and Cambridge were finishing schools for aristocratic gentlemen. Universities added mathematics and science to their curricula only reluctantly. Research in those areas was considered vulgar.
British engineers were working-class men who learned their technology on the shop floor. This worked well in 1750. In 1900, there was much more mathematics and science than could be learned in a factory. The technical skills of British engineers withered.
The United States and Germany became the world's dominant political and economic powers. It took two world wars between the United States and Germany to determine who would be the hegemonic power of the 20th century. If Britain had invested in its universities as the United States and Germany did, the United States and Germany would have been fighting for second place, not dominance.
Lessons for the US
George Santayana, the Spanish-American poet and philosopher, once wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What should the United States learn from these three self-destructing nations?
- Tax breaks are dangerous if they prevent your government from functioning. An ineffective government is a recipe for military, economic and social disaster.
- Inequality poisons future economic growth. The poor must have enough money to buy the products manufactured by their companies. The rich cannot be so powerful as to protect themselves from economic competition. Antitrust policy exists for a reason.
- Universities are the base of technological power. Technological power is the basis of economic growth. Give up your universities and your technological advantage at your own risk.
If we solve these three fundamental problems, the United States has a much better chance of being prosperous by the time it turns 500.
If we don't fix these problems, America may not be 500 years old.
Samuel Cohn is professor emeritus of sociology at Texas A&M University.
