Essays 7, 8 and 9 comprise a speech delivered by Martin S. Kaplan at the Humanity in Action International Conference in Berlin on June 23, 2017. See the About This Essay page for more information. The annual conference is the concluding program for the 160 HIA Fellows, who are comprised of university students, half from the U.S., and the others from Denmark, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Bosnia and other European countries. 

Part 2 – The American Century
Part 3 – Trump and the Future

Part 1 – Prelude to the American Century

Perhaps it is arrogant to define any era with the name of one nation or civilization. And perhaps it is judgmental to define at this point the end of an era.  But surely the United States has been “the indispensable nation” since the end of the Second World War, in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and had vast power and influence since the beginning of the 20^th Century.

The pre-existing mindset of American non-involvement in foreign conflicts began with the warning from President George Washington against entangling alliances with European nations, set forth in his 1796 Farewell Address.  Protected by the vast Atlantic Ocean, requiring weeks-long sailing voyages to and from Europe, the 13 States focused on the continent to the west to take over and settle.

But the American Revolution, based on claims of the inalienable rights of man, defined in the Declaration of Independence (1776) as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” had impact around the world. That expression of the concept of human rights became a keystone inspiration for the ensuing French Revolution (1789) and the wars for independence from Spain and Portugal (1808-33).

President James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, warning European nations against any further colonization in the Western Hemisphere, a policy followed ever since by both the United States and European nations, with rare exceptions.

The British historian Eric Hobsbawm, in three volumes of history, defines The Long Nineteenth Century as commencing with the French Revolution in 1789 and ending with the beginning of the World War in 1914. That was an era of growing industrialization, as well as social transformation with the expansion of certain human rights by Napoleonic France. The first part of the 19^th Century was dominated by Europewide conflict as Napoleon sought to conquer all of Europe.

Following Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Great Britain became the dominant power for the next 100 years, a relatively peaceful period known as the Pax Britannica, with no major conflicts within Europe except the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. During that 100-year period, Britain dominated the seas, massively expanded its empire throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East, while France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal continued to expand their colonies in the same regions. Only the Western Hemisphere was off-limits to European colonization, due to the Monroe Doctrine.

European aggression destroyed the social, economic and governing structures of entire regions, creating colonies with boundaries in blatant disregard of existing orders, often combining or dividing ethnic and cultural groups, creating conflicts arising after independence. Colonialism also changed indigenous forms of art to reflect European desires in taste.

We do not know how those regions may have developed if left to themselves. It is said that the French left language and culture to their colonies; while the British left the English language and laws, knowledge of human rights and self-government already embedded in Britain’s former colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I doubt that Belgium, Portugal, and Germany left little, if anything, of lasting value. All the European colonies finally obtained independence, mostly after suppression and brutal wars, but well over 100 years after the independence of South and Central America.

In the Nineteenth Century, the United States focused on internal economic development and continental expansion to the Pacific, including President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase (1803) from France of the vast lands west of the Mississippi; settlement of border disputes with Great Britain (1846) adding the Pacific Northwest; and war with Mexico in the late 1840s, obtaining the territories of California, Texas and four other states to complete the continental expansion.

Consumed for many years by internal conflict over slavery, the United States then endured the bloodiest war in world history until that time—the Civil War of 1861-65, during which over 600,000 combatants died, 2% of the entire nation’s population. The success of the North was followed by rapid industrialization and economic growth, fueled by immigration from Europe of large numbers of people of sufficient age to be ready, able and willing to work in the factories and farms of a burgeoning America. However, immigration of the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries of many people who were different from the ethnic stock and culture already present, led to social tensions, with hostility and prejudice against Irish, Italians, Jews and others from Eastern Europe.

While European nations had ceased the African slave trade and freed all slaves in their colonies by 1850, emancipation of slaves did not end in the South of the United States until the end of the Civil War. At the time of the Civil War the entire population of the South was approximately 10 million people, including 4 million slaves. Following the surrender of the South, the United States Government took full control of the rebel states pursuant to Reconstruction (1867-77). Many in the South engaged in guerilla warfare against U.S. troops, while former slaves participated in political activities for the first time in their lives.

After the U.S. withdrew troops and returned control to the rebel states in 1877, the South adopted economic and political suppression of freed slaves and their descendants, in fact virtual subjugation of African-Americans—free mostly in name. Many Americans refer to that period as one of ‘segregation’, but that is white-washing reality—and the subjugation lasted until the 1960s.

In 1899, the United States went to war with Spain, helping the last of its colonies to gain freedom, including Cuba. The U.S. also took control of the Philippines from Spain, brutally suppressing its people’s hopes for independence, which was not granted until after the Second World War.

The United States retained an isolationist mindset even after the Spanish-American War, and President Woodrow Wilson won re-election in 1916 promising to keep America out of the World War in Europe. In January 1917 Wilson set forth the Fourteen Points, which he proposed as a basis for settling the war in Europe. His efforts failed to end the war, leading Wilson to seek Congressional approval to enter the war in April 1917. Wilson had presented democracy and independence for most peoples as international goals of the United State. The American commitment to those values has grown and receded from time to time ever since in the policies and actions of the United States.

Part 2 – The American Century
Part 3 – Trump and the Future