I assume it’s largely due to stuff such as their stinking rich economy before WW1, first language being english, population size, propaganda etc. but I’ve never seen a succinct explanation as to how the country basically became the absolute cultural giants they are today.
You basically cannot escape the USA and their influence everywhere you go, and in a sense they have overtaken us over here in the UK in terms of cultural relevance. Why isn’t this the case for other English speaking countries such as Australia and Canada?
Edit: Using the term ‘In a sense’ has riled up quite a few people. Yes, the USA is definitely far more culturally relevant than the UK nowadays.
Second Edit: Thank you all for your replies! I’ve learned quite a lot tonight 🙂
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The primary reason is WW2, which a few other people have touched on, but specifically it’s because the US was the sole major developed nation whose infrastructure and industry was undamaged by the war. Europe was devastated, Asia was devastated, Africa, South America, and Australia were full of developing nations and/or nations too small economically to exert any real influence. China was about to go through a period of civil war, Russia and the Eastern block were going to retreat behind the Iron Curtain and it would take decades for Western Europe and Japan to rebuild.
The US had mobilized a massive industrial base that freed of wartime production could now manufacturer other goods and export them around the world to countries that were still rebuilding. The US also was financing a lot of the recovery thanks to the Marshall plan which increased the leverage and influence of the US.
On top of that you’ve got the cultural influence of music, movies, and soon TV. Air travel would become increasingly common and allow for greater trade and influence as well.
The Cold War just further cemented the status of America as the standard bearer of the Western (aka 1st world, the Soviet Union and its allies were the 2nd world, everyone not allied with one or the other was considered 3rd world, and most of them were developing nations) countries. English was established as the official language in multiple areas including air travel and became defacto language in other areas.
Once something becomes entrenched as the standard it becomes hard to change it. See Microsoft Office for documents, Google for search, as recent examples.
And to top it all off, America invented the Internet. The fact that the internet started as an American designed system and was based on English/the Latin alphabet for the majority of its existence has further cemented English and America as central to the way the rest of the world operates. In Russia, in China, etc. you still had to type in English characters and mostly English words when using the internet at first. Eventually options were added to make it easier to display non-English characters, but the core protocols and infrastructure still depended on the basic ASCII character set (The latin alphabet plus numbers and some punctuation characters). URL’s for example still are limited to only ASCII characters (attempts have been made to add more International character support, but its complicated).
Economically, culturally, technologically, and lots of other “ly” words wise, the US has a ton of momentum behind it as the “leader”. Its going to take a lot to replace that and it might not come from a single source if it does happen.
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