CHAPTER 1 Inheritance: nations and empires, before 1898

Inheritance: nations and empires, before 1898

There were two superpowers in the twentieth century: the USA and the USSR. At

the beginning of the next century, from most points of view, there appears to be

only one, the USA. In the future, there may be others: China seems a prime

candidate. And in the past, before the superpowers, there were the ‘great

powers’, mainly the European empires but including both the USA and the USSR’s

predecessor, Tsarist Russia. Already in 1835, in a famous prediction, Alexis de

Tocqueville talked of them as ‘two great nations’ apparently tending towards the

same end, if starting from different points, each of which seemed to be ‘called by

some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half

the world’. As we shall soon see, we have to go far further back than 1835 in order

to understand the origins of the two twentieth century superpowers.

Geography and history (before 1492)

If, as was often alleged during the years of the Cold War, the twentieth-century

struggle was indeed one between godless Communism and Christian democracy,

there could be little doubt that the Almighty weighted the scales in favour of his

principal adherents and against his chief adversaries when he arranged the basic

conditions of the USA and the USSR.

Early modern colonisation (1492–1776)

Certainly, these voyages bring us to another phase in our search for the origins of

the ‘two great nations’. Russia was ‘discovered’ in 1553, and in a manner recalling

the more famous ‘discovery’ of America in 1492.

Democratic revolution (1776–1815)

The American Revolution was a consequence of a crisis of empire. From 1754 to

1763, Great Britain fought France for domination in North America and elsewere

‘Two great nations’ (1815–56)

During the years before and after Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous prediction of the

future superpowers as ‘two great nations’ predestined to share world domination,

the American people went forth and multiplied. In what seemed no time at all,

the USA acquired vast lands to the west of the Mississippi, at the expense of

Spain, Russia and Great Britain and, above all, of Mexicans and other Native

Americans.

Two great empires (1856–98)

Both future superpowers suffered the experience of war on their own soil early in

the second half of the nineteenth century. Russia was invaded again little more

than forty years after Napoleon had reached Moscow. On this occasion, hostilities

from 1854–6 were confined mostly to the Black Sea and the Crimea.