The 20th Year
It’s already 2021. Roughly 10.5 percent of America has only experienced America since September 11th. To be more explicit. The events of September 11th catalyzed a politics of paranoia and polarization. This is the only country that 10.5 percent of the populace knows.
Once twenty years into a new century, the dominant trends that will define the next eighty years will be clear and present.
By 1720, the growing power of mercantilism was now undeniable. Spain signs the Treaty of the Hague. It was a de-escalation of hostilities between the waning empire and four other European states. It was also another signal to the world that the tide was turning on the world’s first global empire.
In North America, the Tuscarora tribe was in the midst of reverse migration in the United States. Europeans drove this tribe from the North Carolina tidewater region. The Tuscarora tribe had migrated south from the Great Lakes. They were in the Iroquoian-language family. After the war with the Europeans, members of the Tuscarora tribe migrated north. Years later, they fought alongside colonists and other Native tribes in the American Revolution. Today, the Tuscarora Reservation in Niagara County, New York, is federally recognized. The 2010 census recorded a population of 1,152.
In France, there was a resurgence of the bubonic plague. Specifically in Marseille and surrounding towns. The disease took the lives of approximately 100,000. The cause was shipping from the plague-ravaged Levant region that docked into Marseille. Despite quarantine orders, the economic interest of traders came first. The quarantine lifted. Days later, the disease broke out in the city.
France was entering hardship after the reign of King Louis XIV, the Sun King. The country was in debt for the lavish decisions of the previous monarch. This includes wars and an opulent palace at Versailles. Yet, the looming financial disaster was most accentuated with the Mississippi Bubble.
In 1716, Phillippe II, Duke of Orleans, with inspiration from Scottish financier John Law, devises a scheme. They decide to begin a national bank and issue notes to stimulate the economy. There was initial success in foreign enterprises. Some ventures in parts of the Mississippi River Valley garnered much attention at first. But rampant speculation and inflation soon followed—the bubble burst by the end of 1720. The government had admitted that the banknotes had inflated value and worth more than their mineral backing. This, of course, caused a bank run with investors looking to convert notes into gold or silver. So, the bank halted all sales of notes. Many were left in dire economic straits.
1720 had clear signs of power shifts amongst the great powers. Also, there was a growing excitement within the American colonies. Former subjects of distant monarchies began coalescing around shared values and shared enemies.
Frenchmen were beginning to feel the shocks of growing inequality by 1720. It would only take another generation or two for a revolution to occur. All this, of course, helped British interests in North America and abroad. Challenging traditional political establishments were becoming the norm in the “Enlightenment” years.
Fast forward one hundred years.
The Missouri Compromise becomes law. The seeds of discord are sown for a very morbid American Civil War. The “Mason-Dixon line” had formed, and the geographic delineation between free and slave states was now crystallized. America would struggle to build a nation with so much ethnic and racial diversity, and for the rest of the century, “compromises” continued to happen. They usually favored industry and majoritarian populations over human rights and justice.
So to drive the point home, let’s fast forward another one hundred years.
The year is 1920. This is the year that the disastrous Treaty of Versailles went into effect. It thrust Germany into further radicalization. Any long-term attempts at democracy within that nation went into further dissolution.
This year was also the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union. Grassroots efforts for full labor and civil rights defined the 20th century. The League of Women Voters is also formed. In August, the 19th Amendment ratified, making it illegal to deny the right to vote based on sex.
1920 was the first Negro National League baseball game. The ballgame occurred in Indianapolis. This was a watershed moment in a long-term process challenging racial discrimination in America.
The first year of the decade saw the “Red Scare” heat up in America. Communist purges take place in many cities. Thus setting up the conditions for McCarthyism and other Cold War excesses.
The Ottomans signed the Treaty of Sevres with the Allied Powers of the First World War. This partitioning of the Ottoman Empire would define the foreign policy aims of Western nations into the present day. The Irish War of Independence was also raging this year. On November 21, 1920, there was a “Bloody Sunday.” In unfair retaliation to the shooting of undercover British agents in Dublin, the Royal Irish Constabulary fired at a crowd during a football match. 14 died, and 60 were left wounded. The political divide between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland remains a sore spot in the U.K.
At the end of the year, Mexico saw a new government come to fruition in the October election. The country was in the midst of revolution and had experienced many coups. The new leader, President Alvaro Obregon, started implementing modest land reforms. The involvement of the United States as a major financial interest informed the conflict. The gains of the peasant class were not a major factor of consideration in many instances. Thus a trend would continue into the rest of the century. The U.S. would become involved in many other Central and Southern American conflicts over nationalism. And it wasn’t always to help the side of “the people.”
The 20th year of a new century means a lot like every year.
But 20 years in, the forces that will define the century have coalesced. The conditions for the century’s greatest achievements and its most heinous tragedies have been set in motion.
It was hard not to reflect on the United States in 2020. The nation experienced a cornucopia of challenges and crises that year. First was the inefficient public health system. It stems from a popular but sometimes irrational disdain for the comforts of modern and wealthy governments. America also was an epicenter for an international social awakening. Racial apartheid and retrograde attitudes can mire global progress. It has been much discussed in homes and various forms of media. The social clarity that has evolved from the events of 2020 has inevitably altered social relations and patterns.
So many changes will make Americans and the globe concerned and curious.
The future lies in uncertainty.
Our story tells us that we to can act as the Phoenix of legend. We can rise from the ashes because we remain dynamic people. America is being called to change and embrace new economic, social, and cultural norms. Our world is shrinking and becoming a technological zoo. We must accept the challenges before us and realize that becoming negative over unbalanced nostalgia or fear is against this country’s nature.
Americans don’t fear the future. We embrace it.
