This video was made possible by Squarespace. Build your professional web presence for 10%
off by going to squarespace.com/Wendover. The United States and its entire history can
be largely explained by its geography. Since its inception, the fundamental factor
influencing and guiding the country’s development is that it is far from everything else. The US is bounded to the east and west by
ocean and to the north and south by friendly and militarily weak countries and this has
meant that the US has almost never been threatened on the home-front. Many suspect that this is why the US has such
a defined government and political structure—because it had the time to develop the system while
it wasn’t worrying about potential invasion. But geography had a much deeper role in the
formation of the United States that stated back before the states were even United. It all started back in the colonial era. The 13 colonies were essentially split into
three geographically distinct groups that can explain why the areas look the way they
do today. The New England colonies were heavily forested
and had some fantastic natural ports like Boston and Newport. However, the area had a short growing season
and a rocky landscape which meant that crops never grew very well. Therefore, the area ended up as a center for
shipbuilding activity and fishing. To get their food they would trade with the
breadbasket of America—the Middle Colonies. This mid-Atlantic region was fantastic for
farming. The area has a long, warm growing season and
plentiful, arable soil. It also has navigable rivers stretching far
inland that could help transport goods. Philadelphia and New York were the two major
cities of the colonial era in this area and their locations reflects their roles. You’ll notice that both New York and Philadelphia
are at the mouth of significant, navigable rivers while Boston is not. The inland mid-Atlantic farmers transported
their goods via these rivers so the major cities grew as trading posts at the end of
these rivers. If New England had been a farming based economy,
it’s largest city would likely have developed here, at the mouth of the Connecticut River,
but, even though it was navigable, the river was of little use to the area. Having a major ocean-going port in Boston
was what was important for the maritime based New England economy. Further south were the Southern Colonies—home
to some of the oldest colonial settlements. Now, there’s this one line that you can
put on a map to explain why southern cities are where they are. It’s called the fall line. The technical explanation is that this is
where the soft sedimentary rock that forms the coastal plains meets the hard basement
rock that forms the land farther inland. The simpler explanation is, however, that
above this line rivers will have waterfalls and rapids. Below, they’ll be flat and navigable. Baltimore, Richmond, Durham, Raleigh, Columbia,
Augusta, and a bunch of smaller cities all sit almost exactly on the fall line. There are two reasons for this. The obvious one is that below these cities
the rivers were navigable so colonists could get to the cities, but what was perhaps more
important was that they were far inland which gave protection. Spain controlled Florida for much of colonial
history and had a significant military presence. At the time it was reasonable to think that
they would continue their expansion by moving up the coast so colonial cities in the South
chose their locations in part based on natural fortifications. But some of the most significant events in
US history happened because of one fact—the south is hot. Very early into colonial history settlers
in the south figured out that the area was fantastic for tobacco cultivation and England
loved tobacco. The only problem was, tobacco is a much more
labor intensive crop than wheat or beans or corn. So the farmers bought in help… just not
voluntarily. The American south became one of the biggest
destinations of the slave trade and plantation owners were getting filthy rich. A big reason slavery existed for so long in
the US was actually because the south was so physically big. You see, the job of supreme court justice
used to be part-time. In the 19th century the justices would only
come to DC for a portion of the year and, for the rest of the year they would travel
around an assigned area and hear cases alongside local judges. The problem was, the north was much more densely
populated and had better travel infrastructure than the south. The south was vast, sparsely populated, and
had a very rudimentary road system. Therefore, judges assigned to the north were
given a smaller area with a larger population while the southern judges were given a larger
area with a smaller population so they could get around their whole circuit in the same
time. Therefore, in the 19th century when considering
the constitutionality of slavery, the south, the slave owning area, was overrepresented
in the supreme court. The crucial Dred Scott case of 1857 which
cemented the legality of slavery in US territory was decided by a bench of five southern justices
and four northern ones even though only 8 million of the country’s 27 million free
inhabitants lived in southern states. Although some may call it a stretch, you can
at least partially attribute the civil war to the weather in the south that made tobacco
and cotton cultivation possible. So how did the US end up becoming the superpower
it is today? After the colonial era the United States had
to push out west to gain the strategic advantage of isolation. In 1800, what is now the US was essentially
divided into three sections ruled by three countries: the United States, France, and
Spain. In the colonial era nobody really ventured
west of the Appalachians. There was no real reason to and it was the
unknown. In fact, it wasn’t until 1789 that the first
explorer crossed the continent to the Pacific overland. The first problem preventing expansion was
Spain and France’s ownership of the Mississippi River region, or more specifically, New Orleans. You see, New Orleans was perhaps the most
important city on the continent because it lay where the most important river on the
continent met the ocean. The Mississippi River has an absolutely enormous
watershed that all drains here. He who controlled New Orleans controlled the
entire middle country. There were almost no roads going from east
to west in North America in the early 1800s so to get something from Pittsburgh to New
York, it was actually easier to ship by boat on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the
Atlantic than to make the 300 mile overland trek. Rivers were how people got things around so
without access to New Orleans the US had no access to the rivers and without access to
the rivers the US couldn’t get crops and other goods from this region to the outside
world. Luckily, France agreed to sell New Orleans
and the rest of their huge swath of land to the US in 1803 for the equivalent of $250
million 2017 dollars. This proved to be one of the best purchases
in history as the area now has an estimated value of $1.2 trillion. The US then got access to the Pacific in 1819
in the Pacific Northwest then fully in 1848 at the end of the Mexican American war upon
the secession of California and the southwest from Mexico. The United States now existed from sea to
shining sea. It was at this moment when people were convinced,
with merit, that the US was untouchable. No real superpower existed in the western
hemisphere which meant that nobody could truly threaten the existence of the United States. Any invading army would have to run supply
chains across oceans which greatly reduces power and, at least historically, there was
no threat of another superpower arising on the North America continent because of, once
again, geography. Mexico was largely a desert and had no solid
river system like the US to facilitate ease of movement. Without a solid transport system and ability
to easily grow crops it had little chance of gaining the population and level of development
necessary to rival the US. Canada also had its own problems. It didn't have any rivers crossing the country,
it’s climate didn’t allow for much farming, and mountainous terrain made roads difficult. Few realize that even today only one two-lane
road connects the entirety of eastern Canada to the entirety of western Canada. Just last year a bridge on the Trans-Canada
highway collapsed and so, for 17 hours, there was no way to drive from east to west and
the country was split in two. If ever Canada was invaded by land there would
be no solid way to facilitate troop movement and it would likely operate more as regions
than a cohesive country. The US is therefore in a privileged position
today where thousands of miles separates it from the serious issues of abroad. The North American continent is largely devoid
of international conflict and so the United States’ success can be accurately attributed
to its geographic isolation. When you don’t have to worry about protecting
against a potential invasion you can devote more time to education, development, science,
and politics. The United States is a country that worked
almost by chance. It just happened that the right mix of people
landed in the right place to create a world superpower so, without the fantastic geography
of the continent, the United States almost certainly would not be the superpower it is
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This reminds me I still have to read Gun, Germs and Steel that's been sitting on my shelf for a year.
Always great to see a new video!
Navigable rivers are a huge key to American success. Peter Zeihan described this in The Accidental Superpower. Transporting goods by water is 12 times cheaper than transporting them by land and the US has 17,600 miles of navigable rivers. This is more than the rest of the world combined. China and Germany each have about 2,000 miles. And all of the Arab world has 120 miles.
The Midwest is also the single biggest piece of arable land in the world and it has a built in transportation system with our rivers. We also have plenty of deep water ports which are vital for global trade and we used to have massive oil and coal reserves which meant we weren't tied to other countries for energy.
Fareed Zakaria wrote a great article in 2014 about it.
So in the South Park episode "Christmas in Canada" the "follow the only road" bit is geographically accurate.
Amazing video! I love the geography + countries videos.
People nowadays seem to underestimate the influence of geography in countries' histories.
Your videos are amazing, but this one and the next were entirely US-centric. You have a global audience, and might not want to alienate a huge proportion of it.