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This is slightly off topic, but it's close enough ...
America's global supremacy began in about 1898, with the Spanish American War, but you could cite Admiral Perry and the "opening" of Japan in 1853 as an earlier start. The important thing is that Britain peaked in around 1835; Germany began to ascend about then, but America passed them both sometime before 1900.
But while America was a great power, it was not the unchallenged "superpower" until 27 Dec 45 when the Breton Woods agreements were ratified and the IMF and World Bank were established.
The Bretton Woods negotiations (July 1944) had been long and hard but, in the end, Harry Dexter White, of the the US delegation, beat John Maynard Keynes, of the UK, on every single point and the US dollar was de facto the world's "reserve" currency and the financial centre of balance shifted from London to New York ... almost.
Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods, in July 1944,
at the last "great battle" of World War II.
The US plan was that New York, Wall Street, should supplant The City, in London as the centre of the world's financial system. It didn't quite work that way ... for a variety of reasons, including things we used to call "invisible exports," The City still remained, if not exactly dominant, at least not dominated by Wall Street.
The USSR, the Russians were, essentially, bit players, not even as important as Australia and Canada, at Bretton Woods.
Bretton Woods was much, much bigger and more important than any nuclear bomb, and the US dollar's status as the world's "reserve currency" meant that the entire world underwrote America's debt and financial growth for over 25 years, until Aug 71 and the Nixon Shock.
America's global supremacy began in about 1898, with the Spanish American War, but you could cite Admiral Perry and the "opening" of Japan in 1853 as an earlier start. The important thing is that Britain peaked in around 1835; Germany began to ascend about then, but America passed them both sometime before 1900.
But while America was a great power, it was not the unchallenged "superpower" until 27 Dec 45 when the Breton Woods agreements were ratified and the IMF and World Bank were established.
The Bretton Woods negotiations (July 1944) had been long and hard but, in the end, Harry Dexter White, of the the US delegation, beat John Maynard Keynes, of the UK, on every single point and the US dollar was de facto the world's "reserve" currency and the financial centre of balance shifted from London to New York ... almost.
Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes at Bretton Woods, in July 1944,
at the last "great battle" of World War II.
The US plan was that New York, Wall Street, should supplant The City, in London as the centre of the world's financial system. It didn't quite work that way ... for a variety of reasons, including things we used to call "invisible exports," The City still remained, if not exactly dominant, at least not dominated by Wall Street.
The USSR, the Russians were, essentially, bit players, not even as important as Australia and Canada, at Bretton Woods.
Bretton Woods was much, much bigger and more important than any nuclear bomb, and the US dollar's status as the world's "reserve currency" meant that the entire world underwrote America's debt and financial growth for over 25 years, until Aug 71 and the Nixon Shock.
