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 🙂
In: Other
A lot of it was timing. Europe fought WW I and II and the outcome was that the english empire fell and India gained independence. Among other things it left english as a language that people knew. It also left a leadershiprole for the taking.
Some of it was the fact that US is very large and united under 1 banner, meaning that it could get advantages of democracy and cooperation and apply those to a vast area. It gave momentum to projects such as the railroad, radio and the car. USA was more liquid than other places on this earth, had more land ready for things such as Las Vegas, for building large factories and industrializing. Europe and other places alreaddy had houses on every hill and a small organic growth going on.
Beatles was a good example of how the english language had the potentiial to reach out and how modern US got momentum handed over from UK.
This paired with technology reaching a point where it could reach out over large distances. People sat tightly packed to watch the westerns. People heard a lot of stories from USA.
The United States is the world’s largest donor of foreign aid in terms of total dollars given. In 2023, the US government donated around $9.5 billion in humanitarian aid globally. From 2012 to 2022, the US distributed more than $640 billion in foreign aid worldwide.
They won WW2 and decided to export some of their culture to the rest of the world. It’s a geopolitical thing.
Get as many trading partners as possible to get even more rich.
Back that whole thing up with a massive war machine and subtly or not so subtly manifest destiny.
Largest fully developed country, massive entertainment industry.
The impact of TV and movies is colossal, imagine if “Hollywood” wasn’t American, it was German or something, we’d be using German slang not American.
At the end of WWII, the U.S. had created the greatest industrial power the world had ever seen. Every other potentially great industrial power on earth was in shambles because of the war – Russia, Germany, Japan, UK, France, etc. It was at that point that American culture became ubiquitous. You could be for it or against it, but you could not avoid it.
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.
Everyone is mentioning the economic reasons *why* America had such a robust culture, but I haven’t seen anyone really comment on how that culture spread so quickly and to almost every corner of the globe. The short answer to that is the Cold War. The US had soldiers and major military bases EVERYWHERE immediately after WWII ended and never really scaled that presence back until after the collapse of the USSR. For that entire period, the US had major military bases in Germany, Italy, Korea, and Japan, along with dozens of other smaller bases scattered around the world. There were constant military drills between US soldiers and allied nations and ports of call made by US ships at friendly ports all over the world. Millions of 18 year old Americans were shipped off and stationed the world over, in peacetime, and they brought their culture with them.
WW2 changed what everyone around the world thought about the US. Throw in new media, capitalism, and a glut of Baby Boomer teenagers in the 60s. It was too much to keep in one country. Mix in a little CIA propaganda in the Iron Curtain and American Culture becomes the standard.
Even in the US I could gage what would be cool where I grew up in the Midwest by keeping in tune with what my cousins on the West Coast were doing. I realized early on that culture spreads like wildfire. Eventually some of that fills in every nook and cranny.
Hollywood. After WWII, the California filmmaking industry was unharmed, and began saturating the world in American cinema. With their own culture in ruins, American culture became the defacto world culture
The United States is as big as Europe and has a population that nearly matches the European Union. Comparing the US to any other country besides China or India is kinda silly.
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