Posted on 09/06/2026 1:20:28 PM PDT by SmokingJoe
This video details the historical shift of economic power from the British Empire to the United States across the late 19th and 20th centuries. It argues that this transition was not an accident but a result of deliberate industrial, financial, and political strategies. Key Stages of the Economic Shift:
American Industrial Ascent (1860s - 1890s): Following its Civil War, the United States utilized Alexander Hamilton's protectionist blueprint, infrastructure investment, and the rise of powerful industrialists (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan) to overtake Britain’s manufacturing output by the 1880s (3:30 - 6:50).
Impact of World War I (1914 - 1918): The conflict drained Britain's treasury, turning it from the world's largest creditor into its largest debtor, while the United States emerged as the primary global creditor (7:35 - 9:55).
World War II and the 'Arsenal of Democracy' (1939 - 1945): Through the Lend-Lease program, the U.S. gained long-term strategic leases on British military bases and forced the liquidation of British overseas assets, while American industrial production peaked to support the Allied effort (12:00 - 15:15).
Bretton Woods and the Dollar (1944): The conference established the dollar, pegged to gold, as the new global reserve currency, effectively dethroning the pound sterling (16:25 - 18:40).
The Suez Crisis (1956): The final blow to British imperial prestige occurred when the U.S. threatened to crash the pound, forcing Britain to withdraw from Egypt and signaling the end of Britain’s status as an independent great power (21:10 - 22:50).
Core Takeaways:
The video concludes by noting that while the shift seemed peaceful, it was driven by the aggressive, calculated application of economic leverage. It serves as a warning for modern policymakers to study these historical patterns, as the rise of new powers may repeat the cycle of displacement for the current economic superpower.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Long story short (based on my previous understanding)
Soviets wanted to take Brittain down a peg so they backed the US Dollar to replace the British Pound via the Bretton Woods Accords.
And there you go. US Dollar became king.
it didn’t help that the UK allowed the cream of their male gene pool to be slaughtered in WWI and WWII, and the went totally socialist after the wars were “won” ...
Not quite.
Watch the video.
Had nothing to do with the Soviets.
They would have been okay if they didn’t embrace socialism after 1945.
I had dinner in the hotel where they had the Bretton Woods conference.
Did not have to pay in gold.
America lost the “cream of their male gene pool to be slaughtered” in the Civil War (approx 700,000 killed) and still came back even stronger.
Because we weren’t socialist back then.
Because the United States chooses its leaders by consent of the governed, not by consent of the monarch. The nature of the monarch has a long-lasting influence on the nature of the government.
-PJ
“”””” It argues that this transition was not an accident but a result of deliberate industrial, financial, and political strategies.”””””
At one time Americans could share in long term plans and strategies that benefited our nation, we were enough alike that we could hash out a rough agreement of a plan, with a future pay-off.
Visit the American Precision Museum in Windsor, Vermont and you will get a lot of knowledge of how we out paced the rest of the world.
However, when they sat down together in 1941 to examine possible parts discrepancies between the allies arising from this difference, they didn't find any: the Swedish tool maker who manufactured the world's standard measuring instruments had emigrated to America in the teens and had decided to just use the American definition. As the Brits bought his tools, they had switched over to the American inch without knowing it.
“Can we regain our manufacturing power in the future”
Trump/Musk are working hard at it.
Having said that, China has a population up to 4 times that of America and China produces 1.4 million engineers per year vs US 135,000 engineers.
And the Chinese Engineers are very good, makes China hard to beat.
We’ll see.
So it’s wrong then. Got it.
That could explain why Communists such as Harry Dexter White supported the Bretton Woods Accords.
and yet the romans and greeks did not ...
“So it’s wrong then”
Yup.
It was the development of machines and measurement equipment to make interchangeable parts.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.