God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World [Hardcover]

The themes here are huge, bold and politically incorrect and Mead lays them out right from the beginning:

1. Todays world is dominated by an anglo-american, maritime, liberal capitalist system (that has in very recent times disassembled the Soviet Empire and rechanneled the 2.5 billion lives of China and India)
2. This system has a long unbroken history: it was started by the Dutch, evolved by the British and is carried on by the US. Or, as Mead puts it: UP to UK to US.
3. The 300+ year economic, social and military success of this anglo-american system derives from a distinctive culture, with parliamentarian/puritan roots, dating from the Glorious Revolution of Cromwell.

Trying hard not to sound triumphalist, Mead poses six questions:

1. What has been the distinctive AA agenda?
2. Why has the anglosphere prevailed? The AA culture has been distinctively open, outward-looking and receptive to change: in scientific theory, technology, financial institutions. Mead notes the importance of, variously, the puritan work-ethic, religious dissenters, pluralism, tolerance and moral drives. He singles out the `meme' of belief in the free play of natural forces: Newton's laws, Adam Smiths invisible hand, Darwin's theory of evolution. This creates a society that is both individualistic and optimistic
3. How?
4. Why have we persistently believed that history is ending (ie that a single world system is emerging)? Tennyson's `parliament of man'; Norman Angell and the Garton Foundation, the League of Nations, the Kellog-Briand Pact, the UN
5. Why have we always been wrong?
6. What does AA power mean for the world?

Mead offers answers that combine a sweeping command of politics, history, religion and literature with a light, deft touch. Along the way he quotes from eclectic sources: Tennyson, Defoe, Heidegger, Voltaire, Macaulay, Weber, Longfellow, Bergson, Popper, Tolkein and Marx.

He offers amusing conceits: for example, the extended metaphor of the Walrus (the UK) and the Carpenter (the US) and the oysters (everyone else); the metaphor of the UK as Goldilocks and Germany as Gretel; his explanation of Hollywood and fast food in terms of Occam's razor.

Although Mead hardly mention Iraq, his argument almost certainly is intended to address the issues of Islamic terrorism, naïve intervention and anti-American hatred generally and places Bush's `Axis of Evil' speech in a long historical context, from Cromwell onwards.

Mead is broadly optimistic: although history is not going to end, the great AA project, even if mutable, looks unstoppable.

Mead's arguments are of course deeply insulting to almost everyone who is not part of the anglosphere: he dismisses the conventional narrative of modern western history that focuses on the rise and fall (and possible rise again) of Europe. It is hard to believe, for example, that he will have many admiring French readers.

What are the possible counter-views? For a start, Mead is unfashionably devoid of liberal self-loathing: he has few apologies to make for the fact that the AA empire has been built on colonialism, slavery and exploitation (the poor oysters). Unfortunately there is no way to prove that if the AA system had not prevailed, the alternative would have been better. (Perhaps, like the Chinese the English should have burned their boats and left everyone alone).

Then there is the unprovable view that the whole pax Americana is coming to an end with the rise of China. But should we worry that China is rising since it may well be on the way to adopting the AA system itself?

Memo: We might note that:

(a) By 2010, 100m Chinese are estimated to become `middle class' with an average income per head of $18K by 2010
(b) 300m or 25% of Chinese have studied or are studying English. This equals the combined population of the US and UK

A provocative book, fizzing with ideas.

Is America's current cultural and economic hegemony unique in world history? This was the simple question I had in mind when I bought God and Gold. Walter Russell Mead convincingly argues that American power is not unique. Indeed, the American international system is in many ways a continuation of the tradition of English-speaking power that goes back to the late 17th century: the global, maritime, international, liberal capitalist system. By showing the deep similarities between the United States and Britain (a fact that is apparent to any casual observer of Anglo American history) Mead challenges the widely held view that American role is unique, mushrooming after World War II. Instead, Mead asserts, it is the result of processes that have been shaping world history for last 300 years. Even though Britain passed the baton or power over to America after World War II, it was a well used baton. (Mead states somewhat bashfully that the Anglo Americans have been on the winning side of every major conflict since the Glorious Revolution.)

In addition to answering my question, the book attempts to answer six other questions - much to my delight. These are:

- What is the distinctive agenda that Anglo-Americans bring to world politics?
- Why did the Anglo-Americans prevail in the military conflicts that shape our modern world?
- How were the Anglo-Americans been able to put together the resources to build an enduring world order?
- Why have the Anglo-Americans so frequently believed that history is ending - that their power would bring about a peaceful world order?
- Why have they been wrong all the time and what is the future of Anglo-American power?

According to Mead, while the rest of the Europe was enmeshed in bloody wars of religion, the Dutch adopted a system of open and tolerant societies at home, capitalism and a global trade network based on sea power. This international system established the tiny Western European country as the dominant power in early modern Europe. Subsequently, the system was adopted by the British after the Glorious Revolution.

Mead makes the case that 17th century Britain was in many ways a `Goldilocks' society: far enough from Europe not to be embroiled in the costly wars of religion yet close enough to make seafaring trade easy; Britain did not have to build a large standing army because of its position as an island, whereas the Continental powers such as Spain and France had to maintain large armies to play geopolitical game of musical chairs; there was sufficient competition among the various religious sects to prevent the imposition of one form of Christianity on the country and the position of monarch was relatively weak compared to that of Louis XIV. The book then answers the other four questions in a clear and logical manner.

Having read so much on the supposed decline of America, I was interested to read Mead's position on the future of Anglo-American power. He rejects both the Hegelian view (as expressed by Fukuyama) in which the world culminates in a secular vision of St. Augustine's City of God and the Huntingdonian view a la Samuel Huntingdon, in which a Armageddonian clash of civilisations is inevitable. Even with the rise of India and China, it is unlikely that American power will decline due to the US' economic heft (28% of world GDP) and its best kept secret: an open, creative and entrepreneurial spirit. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that Chinese society will be able to manage the stresses that its rapid development will put on the social and power structures in the country.

Mead argues that the US' interests are best served in ensuring a peaceful and prosperous China (and India) by tying them into the global economic order. Unipolarity, as espoused by the Neo-conservatives, is neither desirable nor the most typical form of Anglo-American power. Instead of isolationism, the US would best engage the world. Finally, Mead appeals for a renaissance of a US foreign policy based on the thinking of Reinhold Niebuhr to wit: "[the US] can only incarnate the democratic cause the more truly, the more it can overcome its pretension of embodying it perfectly".

What I really like about God and Gold is that while the author states categorically that the Anglo American international system has made the English-speaking world wealthy and powerful, he also acknowledges, but largely skips the fact, that the international system has left many victims in its wake; one needs only to think about the history of slavery, racism, colonialism and brutal genocides in the 19th and 20th century. However, since the book does not pretend to be a comprehensive, objective history of the English speaking people, this omission is understandable. Mead's objective, as he makes clear in the book's introduction, is to ask some hard questions about WASP power and provide answers to those questions alone.

In an age when it has become vulgar to speak positively about Western civilisation, it is very refreshing that Mr Mead has written an excellent book, which cuts through all the fluff and gets to the heart of such an important issue. I was challenged by Mead's thesis that a unique combination of geography, religion and common law traditions coupled with ingenuity, political pluralism, rule of law and respect for the individual, which was set in motion in 17th century Britain, has culminated in the economic system that we have today. It is a well-written, thoughtful book and provocative book. Therefore, it deserves my 4 stars.

This is a very good piece giving an historic perspective of how and why capitalism became dominant and why anglophones got the best of it. Writer was adviser to Henry Kissinger. Lots of interesting facts make reading pretty easy.