The mythical "Promised Land" overflows with milk and honey, and is God's reward for the most loyal peoples. For Americans, the American continent is their "Promised Land."
When the first European settlers set foot on this uncharted continent, they could never have foreseen that they would create a superpower that would be able to control the world in the future.
In-depth analysis of the rise of the United States to bring you enlightenment! From the Book of Genesis in the Bible"The Promised Land"Initially, a group of English Puritan separatists boarded the Mayflower and marched to the unknown American continent in accordance with God's will.
Although this was not the first ship of immigrants to sail from England to North America, it became a symbol of the development of American society, as the people on board brought with them the creed of the transformation of the old world into the new world.
So, what are the implications of this shift? Let's take a look.
Before landing on the North American continent, a group of Christians signed a common Mayflower Convention aboard the Mayflower. In this convention, they decided that they would govern themselves as they wished.
It was an era of imperial and theocratic rule, when people were in the desolate land of North America, laying the cornerstone of democratic governance for the future United States. This autonomous community, which had an initial democratic color, was undoubtedly an improvement compared with the natural theocracy and the natural imperial power of feudal society.
Although the words "freedom and democracy" have been misinterpreted by the West, especially the United States, they will always be the direction that mankind needs to strive for. The real "freedom and democracy" of the broad masses of the people has never been realized, and the bourgeois democracy in history is nothing but bourgeois democracy.
The Mayflower Convention is considered a birth certificate in the United States. However, it wasn't until 1776 that the United States was truly born when it won the Revolutionary War and proclaimed the creation of the United States of America.
Since 1607, when the British established their first colony off the coast of North America, the British continued to expand their territory, and by the thirties of the 18th century, they had 13 colonies on the east coast of North America.
The political system of these colonies mimicked that of the British, but the British mainland treated the colonies as a tool for acquiring wealth.
The northeastern part of the colony was a major industrial area with a strong commercial development; The central part has rich plains, rich in grain; The climate in the south is warm, and the plantation economy prevails.
The entire North American colonies became the sales market for Britain's raw materials and industrial products, and long-term economic exploitation caused the colonies to resented Britain.
In particular, Britain adopted a divide-and-rule strategy to sever ties between different colonies and sow discord between them in order to better maintain their colonial rule.
The customary methods employed by the British in colonizing India were also applied in the North American colonies. However, unlike Indian society, which had long been under the oppression of the caste system, the people of the North American colonies came to the New World to escape the wars and oppression of Europe, and they were more rebellious.
After brutal oppression and brutal exploitation, the North American colonies finally decided to take up an armed revolt against the British. Prior to this, the colonists had submitted a letter to the King of England, without mentioning independence.
However, the British **suppressed these by force**. Why does the ruling class always choose to suppress the masses by force, rather than giving up some benefits to the people?
This question has been true in ancient and modern times, both in China and abroad. The history of human society is, in the final analysis, the contradictory struggle between the ruler and the ruled.
In the battle with the British, the North American colonies were militarily insufficient, so the battle was difficult. To this end, they adopted the strategy of waiting for an opportunity to break the enemy and waiting for foreign aid.
And this foreign aid is France, which has long been hostile to Britain. In the summer of 1777, the British general Bogo went deep alone, was attacked by the American army, suffered heavy losses, and 5,000 British troops surrendered to the American army.
This victory greatly boosted the morale of the American army, prompting France, Spain, and the Netherlands to declare war on Britain one after another. As the situation reversed, Britain had to deal with both the European and North American theaters, and gradually felt powerless, and finally decided to armistice and was forced to recognize the independence of the United States.
If European countries had not declared war on Britain, the strength of the North American colonies alone would have been unable to resist the British attack, and the United States would probably cease to exist. Today, the United States, which has ended British colonial rule, has successfully gained independence, but it is still a small and weak country in urgent need of development.
The first difficult problem that the United States needs to face is to determine its own development path.
After independence, the United States faced great challenges on its economic basis. The industrial roads in the north and the plantation economy in the south had different interests, and two major interest groups in the north and south were gradually formed.
The agrarian economy of the South required a large amount of human labor for basic education, and the industrial development of the North also needed these people. This kind of development has made the United States face a huge development problem.
Although we modern people know that the development of industry is correct, at that time, in the face of practical interests, few people could willingly make sacrifices. The cotton industry on the plantations of the South was one of the largest agricultural exports, and its wealth came entirely from land and slave labor.
This made the North and South of the United States even more serious, and finally resolved this contradiction of interests through war.
The decline of the southern plantation economy is not accidental, and its exploitation of human power has touched the bottom line of society. The outbreak of the Civil War undoubtedly pushed the United States to a crossroads in history, and the development of capitalist industry became the only way to become a strong country.
Compared with the small peasant economy of feudal society, capitalist large-scale industrial production made greater use of human resources. The development of productive forces has made people's occupational division of labor more and more refined.
Whether it is the ancients' saying that "360 lines will produce the champions" or the diversified occupations in modern society, it shows that an important indicator of the level of productivity of a nation and a country is the degree of refinement of the division of labor.
The emergence of new occupations is precisely the result of the further deepening of the division of labor led to the development of productive forces.
The driving force of capitalism is profit, and unlike slave and feudal societies, the surplus of production is not enjoyed by only a few. The goal of the capitalist in producing goods is not for his own use, but for selling them for profit.
For example, a shoe factory produces tens of thousands of leather shoes not to be worn by the boss himself, but to put them on the market in exchange for more money to put into production.
Therefore, the capitalist logic of production is to buy raw materials, machines and labor with capital, and then to make a profit by selling goods, and so on. However, it is important to note that there is fierce competition for goods in the market, and once the goods pile up and cannot be sold, the economic crisis will come.
This is a great progress, which frees people from the scattered and ignorant nature of the past and concentrates on the production of goods. Efficient production brings great profit returns.
The end of the American Civil War in 1865 cleared all obstacles to the development of capitalism in the United States, allowing it to move towards industrialization and begin to catch up with Europe.
So, what is happening on the European continent at this time? In Europe in the 60s of the 19th century, the wave of the Industrial Revolution swept through Western Europe, the French Emperor Napoleon III tried to maintain his rule, and Prussia pursued the unification of the German state.
Prussia declared war on France in July 1870 in order to compete for supremacy on the European continent, and the French army was defeated shortly after, and Napoleon III surrendered 100,000 French troops to Germany at Sedan.
1.Why is France so weak? This was due to the fact that the reign of Napoleon III was not stable, and the Prussian army on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War was the strongest on the continent.
2.On September 2, 1870, shortly after the surrender of Napoleon III, on September 4, a revolution broke out in the city of Paris, proclaiming the establishment of the French Third Republic, with the formation of a new ** by the bourgeoisie.
The subsequent revolution of the Paris Commune shook the whole of Europe. 3.After the 70s of the 19th century, Britain gradually lost its industrial monopoly and was gradually overtaken by the United States.
This is not only because the accumulation of technical barriers in the first-mover countries during the industrial revolution is not high, but also because the United States during the post-war reconstruction of the domestic political stability, through the westward movement to annex a large amount of land, for the United States industrial and agricultural development to open up a vast raw material land and market.
4.From this point of view, the period of rapid economic development of the United States coincided with the continuous war in Europe, Britain, France, Germany, and other European countries fell into the cloud of war, and the complex political situation hindered the further economic development of European countries.
At the same time, the United States has a unique geographical advantage, and a large area of undeveloped western land has injected a steady stream of development impetus into the United States.
China's economy began to take off in the 21st century, when the United States had just experienced the "911" incident, shifted its strategic focus to the Middle East anti-terrorism, and chose to shake hands with China, giving us time for peaceful development.
At the same time, the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve in 2001 allowed international capital to discover China, a stable and huge potential market, and thus actively entered China.
Our factories and machines require hundreds of millions of working people to produce, and the larger this group, the more amazing the power it can unleash. "Who created the human world?
It is the masses of our laborers. ”
Capitalism is an inevitable stage in the development of human society, which not only perpetuates the remnants of the past society, but also gives birth to new social vitality. The capitalist mode of production and system are based on free competition, which is the cornerstone of capitalism, and without free competition, there can be no capitalism.
This kind of competition, which aims to obtain sales markets and profits, is manifested not only in the commodity market as a competition between companies, but also as a competition between countries.
In social life, if individuals are unable to bring profits to capital, they are ruthlessly abandoned and become part of the capital machine.
In fact, this kind of competition is only the manifestation of external forms such as individuals, enterprises, and countries, and its essence is the multiplication of capital.
What was originally a free-for-all market will eventually create only a few monopolistic groups. Similarly, in international competition, the most powerful countries form a global monopoly. Both world wars were caused by the competing interests of various countries, and the United States became the hegemon as a result.
With the development of monopolies, banking capital and industrial capital merged, the United States gradually plundered wealth on a global scale through financial capital, and the domestic economy and politics were controlled by a few.
The freedom and democracy of the War of Independence were also gradually disappearing in the process.
As World War I drew to a close, American society entered a phase of prosperity. But the Great Depression of 1929 shattered the country's long-standing prosperity and stunned the American elite.
This Great Depression not only swept the United States, but affected the entire capitalist world, eventually leading to the outbreak of World War II. This crisis has taught us that any superficial prosperity is short-lived and will eventually disappear like a dream bubble.