Excuse my poor history knowledge, but the Europeans sailed here to find new lands, settled, and then after generations, they were overthrown by their descendants. The British empire still ruled around the world for centuries yet, the U.S. arguably is in a better state of economics, military, and such.
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TLDR: WW1 + WW2 changed the balance of power in the world
Prior to WW1 most European powers were still monarchies and had trading Empires across the world. By the end of WW1 the major European monarchies had almost all collapsed. The King of England was the only major monarch to have stayed in power after the war and arguably only because his powers were already very limited. Kaiser Wilhelm of Austria-Hungary (Germany) was deposed, the King of Spain was soon ousted in a Civil War, and the Czar of Russia was murdered by the Soviets along with his entire family. The French meanwhile had gotten rid of their monarchy in the Napoleonic era. The balance of Power in Europe was changing.
By far most of the devastation in the World Wars occurred in continental Europe.
By the end of WW2 Germany and Japan were defeated countries with their industrial base flattened
England had been bombed extensively, and was now functionally bankrupt
France had been invaded and was still in financial ruin from WW1, and Eastern Europe went from being under German occupation to being forced into the USSR.
Spain and China meanwhile were still embroiled in harsh civil wars.
The United States and Russia meanwhile fared the best having extensively built up their industry base during the war. The US in particular was never invaded and the continental United States never got significantly attacked. So they ended the war with all of those brand new factories unscathed, positioning them to become the worlds major export power.
The old European Empires of England, France, and Spain were collapsing and they were actively losing foreign territory. They simply couldn’t maintain their empires anymore. Many nations like India, Iraq, Iran, China, and all of Indochina were former colonies that were reformed into nations as a result of colonial collapse
Meanwhile the US and Soviet Union became the new Super Powers.
The US is the only remaining military super power after the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 90s
Because, to put it bluntly, Europe and Britain got absolutely destroyed in WWII, to the point that basically everything used to make things had to be rebuilt afterwards.
The US, in comparison, had to rebuild one naval base in Hawaii, and had factories galore that had been built and used in the war effort, that could now be put to use making cars, tvs, these new-fangled computer systems, etc.
The US had a headstart at basically everything after WWII, and that was used to turn it from a big, but ultimately not only powerhouse country, into *the* powerhouse country. Until the USSR got nukes.
The US basically had a tremendous amount of land and resources that were ripe for the taking. People were pretty free do do what they wanted without being under the thumb of an established government.
The US also is relatively isolated from the rest of the world, with 2 huge oceans, so attacking it is very difficult, and leaves it free to just grow and develop without much interference.
Also, think of all the people that immigrated here. People actively in search of a better life with enough motivation to pick up and leave everything they knew and start over. People like that generally have more motivation to work hard and get shit done.
Wwii eliminated most of the competition, and the war effort transformed the country into a manufacturing powerhouse. Also, the Bretton woods agreement locked us in.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “to the victor go the spoils”.
After thr world wars the United States didn’t pillage Europe for spoils but with most of the 1st world countries economies in shambles after WW2, the United States set up the Bretton Woods system, a global financial system that benefitted the United States greatly.
In short, the United States would secure the world’s gold, all currencies would be pegged to the dollar, the dollar would he pegged to gold, and all international trade would he done in dollars.
This artificially inflates demand for the dollar while driving down demand for all other currencies. For the past 70 years the United States has pretty much been importing real tangible goods while exporting currency.
USA had and still have a very large population, a quick google search give a number of 76 million at year 1900 while UK was at 30 million and obviously the difference is much larger today.
It was one of the first countries that started their industralization process in early 1800s, average height of americans seems to been significantly better than european countries at this time and life expectency on par or better than UK, quality of life for free people probably was higher in USA in early 1800s than in pretty much any european country. This obviously encouraged people to immigrate to USA, thus both growing its population and leading to future power development.
WW1 also helped USA as it weakned the other great powers, same can be said about WW2 which solidified USA as a super power. On other hand by around great depression some other countries like Sweden or Netherlands seems to have surpassed USA in human welfare messurements such as average height or life expectency and by 70s it seems USA wages have stagnated and life expectency seems to started to decline in 2015, if anything by the time it was considered a superpower, its quality of life lead was already erroding and now it seems to fallen behind many of the european countries.
But by 1930 it already had a population by 123 million, about 3 times UK population, only like Soviet Union could compete but it was very far behind in human welfare indicators, like having a life expectency in 1930 of 38 years while USA was at 58 years (so a 20 years difference).
So basically during the 1800s USA was perhaps the best country (or atleast amongst the absolute best) to live in and that allowed it to get a lot of immigrants, also it managed to avoid the destruction of two world wars, on other hand it seems like it did better before it became a great power in terms of human welfare compared to other countries, from being far ahead in 1800s to fallen significantly behind other developed countries 2 centuries later.
Among other things, we won the war. It is easy to be the big kid on the block when you were one of the few counties not mowed down with tanks.
The USA was already on that trajectory, but without WWII the British Empire wouldn’t have been so dramatically weakened to the point where they essentially ceded large parts of their territory to American interests or simply handed their colonies to the locals. Without any real competition American companies had a huge leg up. All of that great R&D to come out of the war was pressed into civilian service. Computing, nuclear power, communications infrastructure, the aviation industry, among others were all areas where the USA had a technical and capacity advantage. The Germans could make electronics with the best of them but much of their resources ended up going to building new housing and repairing war damage. The German government provided herculean assistance to the German auto industry because of how important it is/was to them. The USA had that (a huge auto industry) plus aviation, plus business electronics (so IBM, HP, etc), plus an industrial base of construction plus a large influx of immigrants.
The same reason it is quickly going the way of the Europeans…in the 20th century it had unrivaled industrial capacity and the technology advances that go with it.
* Favorable Geography – the US has an intricate system or rivers/waterways that allows you to move goods in land. This is of less importance now, but in the 1700 and 1800’s meant you could quickly build up forts and colonies in land and keep them supplied. Those same rivers and waterways also provide clean water which is crucial for developing large cities. 50% of the US population lives in the eastern time zone or basically the east coast/seaboard for that reason.
* Lots of rich land – lots of land in the US relative to its total population that provides farming and later on resources (minerals and oil).
* Lack of domestic enemies – the US has never had to seriously fight with their northern or southern neighbors. Europe by contrast is marked by centuries of war for many reasons but partly because of the lack of land which forced many European powers to colonize foreign lands or fight wars to gain territory. War is expensive and devastating to a country and the fact that the US hasn’t fought many is a plus.
* History of genocide/slavery – hard not to list this as a reason for why the US became a global powerhouse. If they never took the lands from Native Americans or tried to compensate them fairly, history may have turned out very differently. Large swaths of the US may now fall under sovereign rule of Native Americans instead, depriving America of rich farm/plain lands. Slavery made the US again very rich during the 1800’s. “In 60 years, from 1801 to 1862, the amount of cotton picked daily by an enslaved person increased 400 percent. The profits from cotton propelled the US into a position as one of the leading economies in the world, and made the South its most prosperous region.” (source: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/16/20806069/slavery-economy-capitalism-violence-cotton-edward-baptist#:~:text=In%2060%20years%2C%20from%201801,South%20its%20most%20prosperous%20region.)
* World Wars – both world wars decimated and destroyed most of Europe. It took them decades to rebuild. The US was untouched by the world wars domestically with the exception of Pearl Harbor. Rebuilding your country after a war is expensive and resource intensive. The US really took off in the period leading up to WW2 and after because our industries got ramped up quickly. (making war time goods at first and then shifting to consumer goods) After the war, while other nations were rebuilding, the US became the global leader in manufacturing.
* Strength/ubiquity of the dollar – one of the consequences of being a major manufacturing power is that other nations are forced to buy your products, and they will naturally do so in US dollars. Why US dollars? US dollars are more valuable because other nations will value them as well, knowing that they can always use it to buy US goods or trade it to other nations who will want to buy US Goods. It’s a reinforcing loop/cycle that ensures dominance of one currency.
Before WW1. They stole lands from the natives, slavery, didn’t keep their promises made to them, exploiting other nations, aggressive foreign policy.
After WW2 . Being the only western nation that didn’t get it’s whole industrial sector and cities reduced to rubble helped. USA used to be the factory of the world. Now thanks to that they are the financial centre of the world.
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