When today is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by the United States, what other topic is possible for a history graduate?
The film Nashville, in the bicentennial year, had a song with the line: “We must be doing something right to last 200 years” and much the same could be said today updating the number. A star-studded history slashed with numerous stripes and the jury out on whether there are more stars or stripes. Too complex a narrative for this space with any number of US histories available – instead this column will explore some might-have-beens.
US independence might have been declared 250 years ago but nationhood was still seven years removed from confirmation – the initiative of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia was more wishful thinking, a morale-booster with the war not going well outside the Boston area and it would go worse until Saratoga 15 months later, with the entry of the European powers France and Spain the real game-changer. New York was lost for the duration of the war a couple of months after Philadelphia – even afterwards there was a vague idea of making Manhattan a kind of Hong Kong within the new republic as a prosperous entrepot. Georgia was then basically Savannah (Atlanta still almost half a century away from foundation) and the interests of its merchants lay in staying within the British Empire since almost all its trade was with the West Indies. But Whitehall was too disheartened by the lost war to crave any enclaves with Georgia and New York given no choice but to join the rest.
The Declaration of Independence was thus less inevitable than it might appear in historic hindsight. Benjamin Franklin’s initial interpretation of “No taxation without representation” was that Americans should pay taxes and have MPs in Westminster like the Irish, a proposal he took to London, only to be spurned by the Lord North government. Obviously at some stage the colonies were always going to grow too much to stay with mother but the continent might also have been one big Canada, arriving at self-government by an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process.
The infant republic was light years away from becoming a military superpower since in many ways it embraced the principles of anarcho-capitalism now preached by President Javier Milei. The allergy to tyranny led to the standing army being held down to 3,000 until the War of 1812 (much of which surrendered under General Willliam Hull at Detroit at the start of the conflict) – the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms causing so many problems today was partly conceived as a way of covering this gap. In the first decade of the 19th century paying the Barbary pirates an advance ransom of millions to stay away from American shipping was considered more economical than building a US Navy worthy of the name by a government determined to stay small. Had Britain used the troops mobilised against Napoleon with the same determination as Spain in an initially successful bid to recover its empire, history might have been slightly different.
The seemingly relentless progress of “Manifest Destiny” in the following half-century might just have been halted by the Civil War. The Southern Confederacy was never going to resist an industrialised economy with twice its population capable of fielding an army of two million against less than 900,000, even if three in blue died for every two in grey (perhaps because southerners were better shots than urbanised northerners due to the strength of hunting) – European diplomats at that time should have identified a country capable of mobilising three million as a future superpower but somehow did not. A wonder the war lasted four years but if the Confederate army putting up such a stiff fight (it is a melancholy conclusion that three of the most impressive struggles against odds in military history – the Southern Confederates, the Boers in their war and the Germans in the Second World War – were all inspired by racism) had been joined by the Royal Navy (then bigger than all other navies put together), the USA might well have stayed disunited. And Britain, experts in “divide and rule,” had every reason to support the Confederacy – not only to nip a future rivalry for global supremacy in the bud but also because 80 percent of the cotton for Lancashire mills was picked by southern slaves. Perhaps what saved the Union was the British political cycle – Lord Palmerston’s Liberal government, then in power, could not join the fight to preserve slavery without contradicting basic principles.
But the republic stayed united and within a decade of the Civil War its economy had overtaken Great Britain and the entire British Empire by around 1895 – from that point onward, it was more a question of the US impact on world history than the reverse.
The difference the persistence of US isolationism would have made in both world wars is obviously huge – what if Adolf Hitler’s insanity had stopped short of gratuitously declaring war on a United States intent on concentrating against Japan after Pearl Harbor? The number of “What ifs?” in US history is endless, both at home and abroad – how would it have evolved if JFK had not been assassinated? But the point should have been made by now – it only remains to congratulate all US citizens now resident here on this quarter millennium of a country, which must be doing something right to last 250 years.
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Today’s 250th anniversary supersedes the World Cup but cannot banish it from this page altogether. A compressed summary of the group phase sees 32 countries – 13 European, nine African, eight American (five of them South American), one Asian and one Oceanian, according to this column’s continental breakdown – progressing further with 16 eliminated: seven Asian, four American (including ex-champs Uruguay), three European, one African and one Oceanian. With 18 of the 22 participants from the two champion regions advancing as against 14 of the 26 from the rest of the world, the former’s traditional domination thus persists, despite various surprises. Yet something for almost everybody – only six countries failed to notch a single point with only Panama goalless while at the other end 17 of the countries advancing from the group phase had yet to taste defeat with twice that number winning at least one match. Only Argentina, France and Mexico had maximum points but 10 of the 12 group seeds finished top with all moving forward.
This column’s history of the World Cup and its hosts will also be cut short, just wrapping up the past century from last week. Argentina was finalist in three of the four World Cups in the extended decade 1978-1990, winning twice in the golden age of Diego Maradona (between “Hand of God” in 1986 to the “cut legs” disgrace of 1994 with probably the world’s most admired goal in the former tournament). The exception was the 1982 World Cup in Spain (the first of four 24-team contests), won by Italy after three mediocre draws in the group phase – Spain and Portugal might take note now. A Germany in full process of reunification in 1990 frustrated Argentina with a penalty converted by the late Andreas Brehme (a typicaI sneaky Sensini foul in this columnist’s opinion at the risk of irking local readers considering it non-existent). In turn Brazil was finalist in all three World Cups between 1994 and 2002, winning twice with the goals of Ronaldo – France was the last host to finish champions in 1998.
None of the hosts in this period (Spain’s Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, Mexico’s Miguel de la Madrid, Italy’s Giulio Andreotti, US President Bill Clinton and France’s Jacques Chirac) was anywhere near being an outright fascist like Benito Mussolini or as controversial as Donald Trump now. This century next week.
