The Rise & Evolution of the USA: Visualized

~20 maps & charts to understand Americaʼs rise from zero to superpower

Salvador Dalí’s visualization of rising American power: “Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man” (1943)

Over the course my adult life, I have often heard predictions of the imminent demise of the American Empire. Eminent thinkers like the French sociologist Emmanuel Todd and the “European dreamer” Jeremy Rifkin have written books characteristic of the genre. Predictions of American decline must go back at least to the 1960s with the failures of the Vietnam War and economic rise of Japan.

And yet… We’re still living in Amerika. We still live in a world significantly defined by American technological breakthroughs, American pop culture, and American political decisions having momentous consequences in conflict zones like Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, and the Taiwan Straight.

In this post, I collect maps and charts showing the rise and evolution of the United States. The focus is on attributes critical to world power. In my estimation, a nation’s power depends on interlocked economic, demographic (population size, human capital), and techno-scientific fundamentals, enabled and leveraged by institutions, social trust, and sufficient solidarity to deploy that power abroad.

The maps and charts are organized according to three broad themes:

1. The United States’ territorial, demographic, and economic growth.

2. The growth of American government (spending, debt…) and military power.

3. America’s recent and potential future evolution, looking at demographic, energy, economic, and party-political trends.

I. Territorial, demographic and economic growth

1. From seaboard to continental republic

Not shown: The U.S. purchases of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million in 1867 and the annexation of Hawaii in 1898.

One of the basic and remarkable facts of American political history has been territorial expansion. Settlers constantly rushed westwards to secure their own properties and/or in search of natural resources like gold. Many U.S. presidents saw expansion of the young republic across North America as a “manifest destiny” and a critical need for security, prosperity, and greatness.

This expansion was achieved through a mixture of purchases (e.g., Thomas Jefferson’s buying of the vast territory of Louisiana from Napoleon for $15 million), military conquests (e.g., James K. Polk’s seizure of California and the whole Southwest in the Mexican-American War), and independent states asking to join the Union (e.g., the Republic of Texas). This political expansion was often facilitated or enabled by the demographic expansion of white Anglos. E.g., the Republic of Texas was founded and seceded from Mexico after the territory had been swamped by white Anglo settlers.

By expanding across North America, the United States guaranteed its status as a secure continental hegemon. Neither Mexico, nor Canada could seriously threaten the U.S. and, so long as the Union held, North America would not tear itself apart in conflict between different political units, as was the norm in Europe.

2. From 13 to 50 states

When the United States was founded, the conventional wisdom in political thinking—following Aristotle and Montesquieu—was that republics could only survive as small homogeneous states like Athens and Geneva. The Roman experience had seemed to show that geographically expanding republics must degenerate into autocratic empires.

The American Founding Fathers were keenly aware of how unprecedented their experiment in continental republicanism was and how uncertain were their odds of success. In an influential essay known as Federalist 10, James Madison flipped traditional republican thinking on its head: he argued that the United States’ remarkable scale and political, economic, and social diversity would strengthen the Republic by preventing the takeover of any single political faction.

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution purposely designed a system whereby new territories could be admitted as states on an equal footing with the original 13 states. The Constitution’s combination of a relatively weak federal government (originally very much focused on domestic stability and national security) and the “Great Compromise” on representation—combining representation proportionate to population in the House of Representatives and equal representation of states in the Senate—proved capacious enough for a vast Union of 50 states with a territory about as large as all of Europe. The system has however also been notoriously prone to gridlock.

There continue to be debates about the admittance of new possible states such as the District of Columbia (the capital) and Puerto Rico (though Republicans do not like the idea of new blue states). Memes also circulate about even more exotic states in the future, such as Greenland, a self-governing Moon base, or a Mars colony.

3. The transportation revolution

Source

When the United States was founded in 1776, speed of transportation was largely limited to that a of horse-and-buggy and sailships. So-called “internal improvements” in the form of roads, canals, and later railroads were crucial to facilitating population movements, communication, and trade across the vast territory, leading to the creation of a vast internal market.

The expansion of railroads was extremely capital-intensive, but crucial to consolidating the new nation economically and socially.

Source

In 1800, it would take someone in New York a month or more to get to New Orleans or places in the interior. By 1830, the time needed to reach New Orleans was cut in half. By 1857, one could get to New Orleans in less than a week and in a month one could reach the West Coast itself.

4. Regional population growth: The South falls and rises again

U.S. history has been marked by exponential demographic growth. This growth has been regionally uneven (see this animation showing population density over time), changing the cultural and political balance of power within the nation. The rise of the Midwest in the first century of independence, and the relative decline of the South, paved the way for the nation’s rejection of slavery and Northern victory in the Civil War. Since the 1960s, the West and South have grown in demographic clout. Differential growth between regions continues as Americans vote with their feet, typically for cheaper and economically growing (often red) states.

5. From zero to superpower: exponential population and GDP growth

As Benjamin Franklin and Alexis de Tocqueville noted early on, the demographic growth of Anglo-America was exponential—doubling in size in every generation or so—and, if sustained, would lead to a world power. By 1850 or so, the U.S. had already gone from being a string of peripheral colonies to a power equaling the old mother country of England. By 1900, the U.S., which had still largely taken a restrained approached to world affairs, was big enough and had enough latent power to start jockeying with the other great powers and reshape the international order.

II. Growth of big government and military power

The nature of the U.S. regime has significantly changed over time. This is difficult to visualize but suffice to say that the U.S. federal government gradually consolidated with the Constitution (1789, after thirteen years of largely inept continental government), federal supremacy secured with Northern victory in the Civil War (1865), and the growth of federal government with Progressive innovations (federal laws on health, consumer rights, antitust, federal income tax…) and the steadily expanding necessities of war and welfare.

6. Rise of federal spending: war and welfare

Source: Cato Institute

Major wars have consistently thrown constitutional niceties out of the window (paper currency, censorship, federal control of the economy…). However, long-term growth in federal spending has been driven by various welfare programs Americans have become attached to: Social Security, Medicare and other health programs, income security, etc.

7. Gov’t debt: From wartime necessity to peacetime norm

Until comparatively recently, U.S. national debt was driven by wartime necessity, with long periods of debt reduction thereafter. Since the 1980s, growing federal debt has been a striking feature of U.S. government. This has been driven by a combination of periodic tax cuts (Reagan, Bush II, Trump), wars (especially Bush II’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq), various stimulus measures (financial crisis, COVID-19 crisis), and the steady growth of locked-in welfare spending (often associated with demographic aging, as with Social Security and Medicare).

8. From civilian power to permanent military establishment

Source

Outside periods of war, the U.S. military was consistently tiny until intervention in World War II. I believe in 1939, as Hitler’s armies spread across Europe, the U.S. Army was smaller than Belgium’s.

World War II and especially the Cold War led to a fundamental change in America’s military and foreign policy orientation, with constant intervention abroad, entangling alliances (NATO being the deepest and most stable), and a permanent military-industrial complex, large standing army, national security state, and vast arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Regular intervention abroad—using diplomatic, military, and economic tools like aid—became a staple feature of U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. intervened not only in Latin America and Europe, but also across Africa and Asia, taking over “security responsibilities” in the lands of the collapsed European and Japanese colonial empires.

9. The rise and decline of nuclear arsenals

During the Cold War, mutually assured destruction (MAD) in the form of a nuclear holocaust between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was a constant possibility. Since then, U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles have significantly shrunk.

10. The decline in U.S. military casualties

Source

Since World War II, Americans have grown increasingly averse to military casualties. Many largescale military interventions have had only mixed success (Korean War, Gulf War) or ended in outright failure (Vietnam War, Afghanistan War). U.S. leaders have often had an exaggerated idea of what American military efforts at “nation-building” and “spreading democracy” abroad can achieve (critics noting the U.S. often fails to solve problems closer to home, especially racial ones). The U.S. has steadily technologized warfare, culminating in drones, whose use became pervasive under President Barack Obama. Other “light footprint” tools for intervention include support for coups, deployment of miltiary advisors, and economic aid.

11. U.S. military bases

Despite the end of the Cold War and the winding down of the War on Terror, the U.S. continues to have a vast system of military bases overseas.

III. Twenty-first century prospects

12. The decline of white America

Source: USA Facts/Census Bureau

We have been living in one of the periods of highest immigration (legal and illegal) to the U.S., against which Donald Trump’s elections represent a backlash. In the 1920s, anti-immigration activists previously managed to reduce inward flows for about a generation. Regardless of Trump’s impact in reducing immigration, non-whites will become the majority of the population around the 2040s.

Post-white America is unlikely to be characterized by racial equality: Whereas Jews have long outperformed Christians educationally and economically in America, Asians today outperform whites, who in turn outperform Hispanics and black people. There is no indication of these disparities being closed, including in liberal states like California.

13. America’s brain gain

While immigrants to the U.S. are more likely to not have a high school diploma, the U.S. is also massively attracting foreign university students, notably Indians and Chinese, especially in the hard sciences. This brain gain is bullish for the U.S.’s continued techno-scientific prowess.

Of political relevance, Asians, especially Indian-Americans, are emerging as major players in America’s new tech and political elites. Indian-origin CEOs of tech giants are now common and people of Indian descent are rising in both political parties.

The “Asianization” of American elites may have geopolitical consequences. Ethnic jockeying for influence over foreign policy has long been a staple of U.S. politics, as seen in fights over policy on Israel and Ireland. Generational and ethnic change suggests future generations of American leaders may be far less sympathetic to Israel (already visible on college campuses and within the Democratic Party, and more covertly within the Republican Party).

14. The rise of obesity

Americans are notoriously unhealthy given how much they pay for their health system. Overweightness and obesity are widespread, contributing to a wide range of health issues including diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. National security officials have warned that Americans are increasingly “too fat to fight.” There are signs semaglutide and other weight-loss drugs may finally be able to reverse this trend.

15. The (still) almighty dollar

Currency composition of allocated reserves. Source: IMF

The U.S. dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency is a great symbol of global economic power. It is not entirely clearly clear how significant the advantages of reserve currency status are. So far, the Eurozone and the BRICS have yet to dethrone the dollar (Russian President Vladimir Putin recently presented a fairly ugly “BRICS bill” as a prototype multinational currency).

16. The return to energy independence

Rising domestic oil and gas production has made the U.S. energy independent again, a huge economic and geopolitical advantage.

17. America’s changing top 10 companies

U.S. companies, many of them founded over the past four decades, dominate the listings of the most valuable companies in the world as measured by market capitalization.

18. Land of unicorns

Unicorns are privately held startups valued at over $1 billion. The number of unicorns is a significant metric both of an economy’s ability to create new valuable companies and of the companies likely to drive future value creation globally.

19. Political polarization: dating edition

Many figures and developments show a worsening polarization of American political life. While arguably both sides have become more radical, liberals are more often unwilling to associate with conservatives and, especially, Trump supporters, finding them morally repulsive. Americans increasingly inhabit their own distinct, non-overlapping academic, media, and social echo chambers. This is very bad for the cohesion of American society. Media and academic institutions may “cancel” or deplatform views they consider unacceptable, though after all voters can still speak their minds freely in the privacy of the voting booth.

20. Who runs America

The graphs so far suggest America will continue to have substantial economic, technological, and geopolitical power in the years to come. But what kind of politicians will wield that power?

The Democrats used to dominate Congress from the 1950s until the 1980s. Since then, the two-party system has increasingly produced divided government (one party controling the presidency and another the legislature) and rejection of the incumbent party.

The Democratic Party has become more “woke”—emphasis on LGBT and racial minority issues—which has led to high tolerance for illegal immigration and alienation of voters who care about more bread-and-butter issues, like the economy and crime. The Republican Party has become a Trumpian “national-populist” party, with unpredictable consequences in many areas, including the economy, foreign policy, and law.

Concluding thoughts: strong fundamentals despite polarization

America’s rise, while foreseen by the Founders and thoughtful observers like de Tocqueville, was not inevitable. The necessary conditions—a vast sparsely-inhabited continent and a remarkable Anglo-American culture combining economic dynamism and institutional-legal stability—were there, but these did not guarantee success. American leaders, especially George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, succeeded in consolidating the United States as power. In so doing, the U.S. for the most part avoided falling into the trap of stagnation that afflicted the postwar United Kingdom, the late Soviet Union, and most of the rest of the developed world today.

America had the scale and natural resources to naturally outcompete smaller European nations and Japan. Unlike other continental nations like Brazil and Russia, America had the human capital and institutions—namely property rights and the rule of law—to limit systemic corruption and thrive economically. While America is diverse in many ways, it is far less politically and linguistically diverse than Europe and Africa, whose attempted continental unions are much more fractious. That leaves only China today, which has its own handicaps, and India in the future as possible peer-competitors.

The combination of population growth (compared to Europe and East Asia), brain gain, cheap energy, relatively low taxes and regulation (compared to other G7 economies), and vast investment capital are all very bullish for the U.S. economy. The U.S. dominates many cutting-edge fields critical to future innovations and growth, such as tech, AI, biotech, and space. In many of these fields, only China is a plausible competitor.

While America has serious problems, so far the prophets of decline have focused too much on short-term disasters, such as failed wars, rather than on long-term fundamentals.

As I see it, the chief threat to America’s future as a power is its often-vicious political polarization and the politicization of legal institutions. Polarization, after all, led to the Civil War, which almost caused the permanent breakup of the U.S. While there are serious threats to unity—not least conflicts between the federal government and states over immigration policy—it would seem that a second war of secession is unlikely, if only because the states are too economically interlocked. For example, most red states that might want to secede are significant net recipients of federal funds which they will not want to lose.

America is by no means immune to forces causing decline generally: the country faces serious medium- and long-term demographic and economic challenges. However, these challenges are likely even worse in the rest of the developed world, namely Europe and East Asia. Meanwhile, besides China, the BRICS nations have yet to achieve the economic and political capacity of developed nations. It follows that, so long as the Union holds, America will remain a preeminent global power for the foreseeable future.