Civilization: Is the West History? (2011) s01e03 Episode Script

1
NIALL FERGUSON:
This is a tale of two ships.
On board one,
landing in northern Peru in 1 528,
were 1 3 Spaniards accompanying
the conquistador Francisco Pizarro.
Their ambition was to annex a vast
new continent for the King of Spain.
On board the second ship,
landing in North America a century later,
were ordinary English labourers
who simply wanted to earn
a little land for themselves
by the sweat of their brows.
The two ships symboIise
this taIe of two Americas.
On one, conquistadors.
On the other, indentured servants.
One Iot dreamt of pIunder,
mountains of Inca goId.
The other lot knew they had
years of hard slog ahead of them.
A fundamental difference between
these two sets of shipmates
would change the entire course
of Western history
propelling one of the Americas
to the very top of the league table
of prosperity and power.
What was it?
In this series
I'm identifying six unique factors.
I'm caIIing them the kiIIer appIications
that put the West on top of the rest.
The first two were competition
and science.
In this fiIm,
I'm turning to kiIIer app number three
and showing why
the property-owning democracy
arose in North America but not in South.
I'm aIso asking if we Iose our monopoIy
over apps Iike these,
couId Western civiIization
be consigned to history?
lt was a new world,
but it was to be the West's world.
lt was Europeans that reached out
across the Atlantic Ocean
to take possession of a vast land mass
that prior to 1 507
simply didn't appear on maps.
America.
lt was Europeans -
above all from Spain and from England -
who, furiously vying for souls,
gold and land,
were willing to cross oceans
and conquer whole continents.
This was one of history's
great natural experiments.
Take two European cultures, export them
and impose them on a wide range
of different lands and peoples -
Britain's culture in the north,
Spain's in the south -
and then see which does better.
ln the end,
there could be only one winner.
Looking at the worId four centuries on,
it's pretty cIear that the United States
is now the dominant force
in Western civiIization.
But just how and why did that come about?
WeII, you might be forgiven for thinking
it's because the peopIe here
were more industrious,
or because the soiI was more fertiIe,
or because there was more oiI or goId
underneath that soiI.
But, actuaIIy,
it was none of those reasons.
The key to the rise of America
was an idea -
an idea that changed the worId.
ln 1 67 0 a modest English ship,
the Carolina,
arrived at an island off the coast
of what today is South Carolina.
Among those on board were servants
who had decided to risk their lives
on a transatlantic crossing
to escape a life of grinding poverty
in England.
Ahead of them lay years of hard toil
in alien surroundings.
But at the end of it,
they wouId receive one of the worId's
most attractive assets -
prime North American reaI estate
pIus a say in the process of Iaw-making.
ReaI estate pIus representation -
that was the North American dream.
Yet, at the outset, it wasn't these
poor English migrants in North America
but the conquistadors in South America
who seemed destined for greatness.
Because South America
was where the money was,
and the Spaniards had got there first.
During the 1 6th century,
the work of colonising
the Americas was left
almost entirely to the people of Spain.
Great native empires
were subjugated by Spanish adventurers.
Here in Peru,
Pizarro and his conquistadors overthrew
the mighty Andean empire of the lncas.
One of the Spaniards
who had sailed on that first ship,
and one of Pizarro's
most trusted confederates,
was a young captain from Segovia
named Jeronimo de Aliaga.
For de Aliaga,
Peru was as weird as it was wonderful.
This is Machu Picchu -
the Iegendary Iost city of the Incas.
WeII, not so much Iost,
just never found by the Spaniards,
despite the fact that it's onIy 50 miIes
away from the Inca capitaI Cuzco.
By the time Jeronimo de AIiaga
and his feIIow conquistadores
came to this region of Peru,
they'd aIready captured and kiIIed
the Inca emperor AtahuaIpa
and Iaid cIaim to his entire empire
in the name of the Spanish king.
Machu Picchu is an extraordinary,
mysterious pIace.
It's a sobering reminder
that no civiIization is immortaI,
no matter how powerfuI and mighty
it may seem to itseIf.
While the indigenous population
was ravaged
by alien diseases
and systematic slaughter,
a quarter of a million Spaniards
came to the Americas
to impose their version
of Western civilization,
lured by tales of vast wealth.
Everywhere they looked, it seemed,
there was gold and silver.
As Pizarro's chief accountant,
Jeronimo de Aliaga
was in the best position to grasp
the extent of this new-found wealth.
Between 1 500 and 1 800,
precious metal worth roughly
£ 1 00 billion at today's prices
was shipped from the New World to Europe.
Men like de Aliaga
became very rich indeed.
To give concrete expression to his wealth,
and to the subjugation
of the native people,
de Aliaga built
this magnificent house in Lima
on the foundations of an lnca temple.
lt's been occupied
by his descendants ever since.
Secure in the conviction
that their mission had the bIessing
of both God and the Pope,
the Spaniards seemed to be
on the verge of creating
a spectacuIar new version
of Western civiIization.
It was a civiIization that wouId be
run from a few spIendid cities
by a tiny, super-rich, Spanish-born eIite.
The cities of Spanish America
grew and flourished.
Hundreds of lavishly adorned churches
were built.
Franciscans and Jesuits flocked
to South America in their thousands
to convert what remained
of the indigenous population.
But while the church was influential,
ultimate power
resided with the Spanish Crown,
and, crucially, it owned all the land.
This was in complete contrast to the story
of land ownership in North America.
ln 1 67 0, a penniless young couple
who'd signed up for years of servitude
stepped off the first ship
to land on the shores of Carolina
after a harrowing journey
across the Atlantic from England.
How very different America
must have seemed
to Abraham Smith and MiIIicent How
when they arrived here on the forbidding
shores of CaroIina in 1670.
The Spaniards had found goId and siIver
IiteraIIy in mountains in Peru and Mexico.
CaroIina seemed to be
just a boneyard of dead trees.
When How and Smith arrived here,
they found no El Dorado.
lnstead, settlers in North America
had to plant corn to eat
and tobacco to trade.
For many years,
Britain's American colonies
remained a patchwork
of farms and villages,
with a few towns
and virtually no true cities.
And here the natives were far from docile.
You could have been forgiven for thinking
that Jeronimo de Aliaga's Spanish America
was the land of the future,
while Millicent How and Abraham Smith's
British America
was destined to remain a rural backwater.
Western civilization, it seemed,
was destined for South America alone.
But it didn't quite turn out that way.
Land.
Thousands of square miles of virgin land.
The New World represented
a vast addition of territory
to the West European monarchies.
The key question that faced
the new settlers in the Americas -
Spaniards in the South,
Britons in the North -
was how to allocate all this new land.
Their answers to this question
would decide the future leadership
of Western civilization.
The answers could scarcely
have been more different.
When the captain of the first ship to
arrive in Carolina stepped onto the beach,
he brought with him
a revolutionary blueprint for a new world,
which had the issue of land at its heart.
This is a truIy remarkabIe document.
The Fundamental Constitutions Of Carolina,
designed by the phiIosopher John Locke
to bring order
to this newIy settIed wiIderness.
It's funny, because Locke envisaged
not a democracy here, but an aristocracy -
a hierarchicaI society
compIete with margraves and barons.
AII of that,
the coIonists more or Iess ignored.
The thing that caught their eye, though,
was Locke's assumption
that practicaIIy everybody here
wouId end up owning some Iand,
even if it was as IittIe as 50 acres.
That was to prove the bIueprint
for a whoIe new way of organising society.
This emphasis on
the widespread distribution of land
as the basis for Britain's new colonies
reflected Locke's
deeply held political conviction
that freedom was inseparable
from the ownership of private property.
Everything, therefore, hinged on how
the land in Carolina would be divided up.
For months it was thought that
the first fIeet bound for CaroIina
had been Iost at sea.
But when the good news came through
that they'd made it,
this document, the Barbados Proclamation,
was drawn up
to reguIate the distribution
of the Iand there.
And the criticaI point was
there was a guaranteed minimum.
''To every freeman that shaII arrive there
to pIant and inhabit
''before the 25 March, 1672, 100 acres Iand
to him and his heirs for ever.''
And there were pIenty of those acres
to go round.
There was just one problem
in realising Locke's vision.
Without a large native population,
the new colony faced
a severe labour shortage.
The answer was to bring in
more Europeans
who, in return for their passage and keep,
would initially work for nothing.
And in Britain,
there was no shortage of volunteers -
men and women
like Abraham Smith and Millicent How,
who'd signed their lives into service
with a deed of indenture.
And here it is,
dated 20th September, 1669.
''Know aII men that I,
MiIIicent How of London, spinster,
''the day of the date hereof
do firmIy bind and obIige myseIf
''as a faithfuI and obedient servant
in aII things whatsoever, to serve
''and dweII with Captain Joseph West,
''merchant, in the pIantation
or province of CaroIina.''
And once you'd signed, you saiIed.
Over the entire Colonial period,
some three-quarters of European migrants
to British America
came as indentured servants.
Life in England
had been tough for Smith and How.
But there was one crucial incentive
to risk a one-way Atlantic crossing.
After indentured servants had served
their time, they would receive land.
Even the lowest of the low
had the chance to get a first foot
on the property ladder.
Every land transaction
since the arrival of the first settlers
is recorded here in
the North Charleston conveyancing office,
covering everything from
the large plantations of the settler elite
to the small plots granted to the men and
women who'd served out their indenture.
And this was how the system worked
for MiIIicent How and Abraham Smith.
These are the originaI warrants
dated 1672 and 1678
granting them, respectiveIy,
100 acres and 270 acres of virgin Iand.
Here's the key Iine.
''You are forthwith to add measure and
Iayout for Abraham Smith 270 acres of Iand
''in some pIace not yet Iaid out
or marked to be Iaid out
''for any other person.''
They got the Iand to do with
as they wished - to farm it or to seII it.
They had arrived.
And they had arrived not only
economically but also politically.
For John Locke made it clear
in his FundamentaI Constitutions
that in Carolina, it would be landowners
who held political power.
The cruciaI point was this.
If you were a man Iike Abraham Smith -
though not a woman Iike MiIIicent How -
and you owned property,
then you got to vote.
And it was this reIationship between
property ownership and democracy
that wouId fundamentaIIy transform
Western civiIization.
It was a pretty homespun affair
to begin with.
This is where the eIected representatives
of South CaroIina originaIIy met -
upstairs at number 13 Church Street.
50 acres of land
guaranteed a free man a vote,
and since every Englishman who arrived
here had the chance to work his way
to at least 50 acres,
it was a recipe
for near-universal suffrage.
The property-owning democracy,
that revolutionary idea of linking
property ownership with voting rights,
was born in the British colonies
of North America 300 years ago.
lt was the birth of the American Dream.
The pattern was repeated
right across North America
as people moved relentlessly westwards,
and white settlers displaced
American lndians as owners of the land.
That was why the way the British
organised their coIonies was so important.
It was aII about sociaI mobiIity.
The fact that a man Iike Abraham Smith
couId arrive here on a godforsaken beach
in the middIe of nowhere, penniIess,
and then end up, within just a few years,
a property owner and a voter.
How very different it was
in the Spanish colonies to the south.
Here in this breathtaking valley,
the Callejon de Huaylas
in the Peruvian Andes,
the conquistador Jeronimo de Aliaga
found himself surrounded
by boundless natural resources.
The valley was abundantly fertile,
the mountains full of gold and silver.
The question facing de Aliaga
was how to exploit these vast resources.
The answer was a very different one
from that devised by John Locke
for North America.
This remarkabIe document from 1544
of a court case
aIIows us to see just how it was
that Jeronimo de AIiaga
made his vast fortune.
It describes how Francisco Pizarro
granted haIf of this entire vaIIey,
something Iike 30 miIes Iong,
to de AIiaga and his partner
Sebastian de Torres.
But it wasn't the Iand they were given,
it was the Iabour of the 6,000 or so
Indians who Iived here.
UnIike in British America, where Iand
was wideIy distributed to settIers,
here it was Iabour
that was parceIIed out to a tiny eIite.
Previously, the lndians
had worked for the lnca emperor.
Now their lot
was to work for the Spaniards.
The encomiendas
were essentially a tribute system,
and tribute took the form of toil.
The lndians were de Aliaga's
to direct as he pleased -
to work the farms
or to dig gold and silver
out of the hills.
lndian labour made de Aliaga
a rich man, built this fine house
(BELL TOLLS)
and paid for this beautiful church.
The consequence of all this
was that the conquistador class
now became the idle rich of America.
Gradually, as land began to pass from
the Spanish crown to the settler elite,
encomiendas evolved into
vast hereditary estates - haciendas.
The majority of people
were left with no land at all.
This was diametrically different from
the model of broad property ownership
that evolved in North America.
Under Spanish ruIe,
there was none of the sociaI mobiIity
that characterised British America.
That heIps expIain the distinctive pattern
of Iand distribution here in ruraI Peru,
with Iots of tiny IittIe pIots where
the indigenous popuIation, even today,
bareIy scrape a Iiving.
But it aIso expIains
the very different paths
taken by North and South America
to poIiticaI independence.
ln 1 77 5, despite all the profound economic
and social differences that had developed,
both North and South America
were still composed of colonies
ruled by distant kings.
That, however, was all about to change.
On 2nd JuIy, 1 776,
a crowd gathered here
on the steps of the CharIeston Exchange
to hear the independence of South CaroIina
procIaimed from Great Britain.
WeII, about 40 years Iater, something
simiIar happened in South America
where Spanish ruIe was overthrown.
But the revoIution that happened here
cemented the democratic rights
of property hoIders
and paved the way
to two centuries of prosperity.
The other revoIution condemned a continent
to two centuries of underdeveIopment.
Why was that?
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant
general who overthrew an empire
and replaced it with the greatest
democracy the world has ever seen.
His name was George Washington,
and he led 1 3 of Britain's
North American colonies to independence.
- (GUNSHOT)
- But this is not his story.
lt's the story of a South American general
who also overthrew an empire - Spain's -
but failed to create
a United States Of South America.
His failure explains
why it was North America
that rose to claim the leadership
of Western civilization.
The South American general
was Venezuela's favourite son -
Simon Bolivar.
Bolivar was born in Caracas in 1 7 83,
the son of a wealthy cocoa planter.
lnspired by Napoleon's invasion
of Spain in 1 808,
he resolved to lead not just Venezuela
but the whole of South America
to independence from Spain,
to transform a continent
from autocracy to democracy.
And yet, while the American Revolution
had set the United States
on the road to power and prosperity
as well as political liberty,
independence from Spain left South America
with an enduring legacy of conflict,
inequality and dictatorship.
So why did capitaIism and democracy
do so badIy in Latin America?
Why, when I asked a Harvard coIIeague
if he thought Latin America
beIonged to the West, wasn't he sure?
Why, in short, was Simon BoIivar
not the Latin George Washington?
Certainly at the beginning,
Bolivar received passionate support
from the very people
Washington had fought against.
McGregor, Robertson, Brown, Farriar
and even Ferguson.
Rather incongruous names to find
on a monument to
the founding fathers of VenezueIa
right here in the heart of Caracas.
But these were just a few
of the British and Irish soIdiers
who fought and in some cases died
for the cause of Latin American
freedom and democracy.
Between 1 81 7 and 1 824,
around 7,000 British and lrish volunteers
signed up for
an extraordinary military adventure.
Their aim was to help liberate
South America from Spanish rule.
Some of these British soldiers
were veterans of the Napoleonic Wars
who, like the British migrants
to North America,
were attracted by promises of land.
But many were military novices
inspired with the loftier cause
that Bolivar seemed to stand for -
liberating South Americans from
a repressive system of government.
Among them was a young captain from
Manchester called Thomas Farriar
who soon found himself in command
of a brigade called the British Legion.
This was his first view
of the new Bolivarian America -
the inhospitable banks
of the Orinoco River.
And this is where Farriar
and his colleagues ended up -
a town called Angostura,
where the bitters came from,
without a few drops of which
a Pisco Sour just doesn't taste right.
lt was from here that Farriar and his men
set out to liberate South America.
For four years, they fought and died
in a succession of battles
from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Finally, on 24th June 1 821,
the British Legion reached Carabobo.
This was to be the decisive battle
of Bolivar's Venezuelan campaign.
6,500 of his men
faced 5,000 royalists loyal to Spain.
lf Bolivar's men could defeat
the Spanish army here,
the capital Caracas would be theirs.
BoIivar ordered Farriar and his men
to outfIank the Spaniards
who were dug in on that hiII over there.
It was fine as Iong as they remained
hidden from view in those guIIies,
but as soon as they were spotted,
the Spaniards Iet them have it
with at Ieast two cannon
and 3,000 muskets.
In vain and the sweItering heat,
Farriar waited for BoIivar
to send reinforcements.
ln spite of the carnage,
the British Legion held firm until
at last the word was given to advance.
The charge that followed
was one of the greatest feats ever seen
on the battlefields of South America.
With bayonets fixed, the British Legion
finaIIy took the Spanish position,
but their commander, Thomas Farriar,
Iay fataIIy wounded.
After the battle,
Bolivar called the British soldiers
''salvadores de mi patria'',
''saviours of my country''.
At last, the road was open to Caracas
and to independence for
the new nation-states of Latin America.
Today Simon BoIivar is revered,
even idoIised,
as the man who Iiberated
not onIy VenezueIa but aIso BoIivia,
Peru, Ecuador
and CoIombia from Spanish ruIe.
That was what earned him the nickname
eI Libertador - the Liberator.
And yet, on cIoser inspection,
Iiberation from Spain
wasn't quite the same as freedom
in the North American sense.
Simon BoIivar's idea of Iiberation
was something very different
from George Washington's
notion of Iiberty.
Bolivar's experiences
of factional infighting
and regional rivalry during the revolution
had set him against the parliamentary
democracy he'd once avowed.
Two years before the British Legion's
heroics at Carabobo,
Bolivar had addressed
the newly formed Congress
here in Angostura to set out his ideas
for the new republic's constitution.
In fact, BoIivar was reaIIy rather
contemptuous of the North American system.
Here's what he had to say
on the subject in this very room.
''AIthough their nation was cradIed
in Iiberty, raised on freedom
''and maintained by Iiberty aIone,
it is a marveI
''that so weak and compIicated a government
as the federaI system
''managed to ruIe them through
aII the difficuIties of their past.''
As far as BoIivar couId see,
the United States constitution
needed ''a repubIic of saints'' to work.
Part of the problem
was the unequal legacy of Spanish rule.
After all, Bolivar's own family
had five large estates,
covering more than 1 20,000 acres.
Part of the problem was that
democracy seemed much too risky
in a society with a much larger
native population than in the north.
BoIivar's dream turned out to be
not democracy - British
or American styIe - but dictatorship,
not federaIism
but the centraIisation of authority.
Why? Because, as he put it himseIf,
''Our feIIow citizens are not yet ready
''to exercise their rights
in the fuIIest measure,
''because they Iack the poIiticaI virtues
that characterise true repubIicans.''
For the British soldiers
who'd come to fight for liberty,
this was tantamount to a betrayal.
They never got their land,
nor did they get a vote.
There would be no property-owning
democracy in Bolivar's South America.
Just before his death from tuberculosis
in December 1 830,
the Liberator
wrote a last, despairing letter.
ln it, he concluded
that South America
was simply ungovernable, lamenting that,
''lf it were possible for any part
of the world to revert to primitive chaos,
''it would be America in her final hour. ''
lt was a painfully accurate description
of the future of Latin America.
Societies that began
with extreme inequality
evolved highly unstable
political institutions that reinforced
that inequality
and provoked constant conflict.
The resuIt has been nearIy 500 years
of sociaI strife,
civiI war and red revoIution
as the propertyIess have struggIed
for just a few acres more.
Peru today is in the grip
of a wave of peasant protests,
and the issue's aIways the same - Iand.
But wait a second.
Before we can cheerfuIIy acknowIedge
that the British modeI of coIonisation
came up with arguabIy the greatest
of aII of Western civiIization's
poIiticaI achievements -
the United States Constitution -
we have to acknowIedge that
that constitution itseIf
was tainted by a kind of originaI sin.
lt was the colour of your skin,
in North America
as much as in South America,
that determined your property rights
and your political rights.
African-Americans, Iike American Indians,
were excIuded
from the post-revoIutionary repubIic.
Over there, on the steps
of the CharIeston Exchange,
where they read aIoud the DecIaration
Of Independence, they aIso soId sIaves.
So how do we resoIve this paradox
at the very heart of Western civiIization?
A revoIution that procIaimed itseIf
in the name of Iiberty
was made by the owners of sIaves.
This story is also about two ships
bringing a very different
kind of immigrant to the Americas.
Both left from the island of Goree
off the coast of Senegal.
One was bound for northern Brazil,
the other for Charleston, Carolina.
Both carried African slaves,
just a small fraction of the 8,000,000
who crossed the Atlantic
between 1 450 and 1 820.
These sIaves were saiIing towards
very different new worIds.
One, Latin America,
wouId turn out to be a raciaI meIting pot
where whites wouId mix freeIy
with the indigenous popuIation.
In the North, by contrast, the coIour
Iine, the division between the races,
wouId be much more
strictIy maintained.
The question is, how wouId these
different attitudes towards race
affect the future deveIopment
of the two Americas?
Why did the New World need the ancient
institution of slavery so badly?
The answer had everything
to do with manpower.
This is the house that John Boone built.
Boone had arrived in Carolina
on the same ship as Millicent How
and Abraham Smith in 1 67 0.
As a member of the colony's
governing Grand Council,
he had a head start when it came
to accumulating property.
Within 20 years he had amassed estates
covering 1 7,000 acres.
And the Boones soon found things
to grow on their land
that turned out to be almost as profitable
as the conquistadors' gold -
first tobacco and then cotton to supply
the textile mills of industrial England.
But indentured EngIish servants
were neither numerous enough
nor tough enough to stand the toiI
of the CaroIina cotton fieIds.
Another source of Iabour had to be found,
and that, of course, was African sIaves.
This is where some of John Boone's Iived.
But this was aIways part of the pIan.
Remember John Locke,
who made private property
the basis for Iife in the CaroIina coIony?
WeII, in articIe 1 10 of his
Fundamental Constitutions,
he stated cIearIy
that every CaroIina freeman
had ''absoIute power and authority
over his negro sIaves''.
For Locke, the ownership of peopIe
was just as important
as the ownership of Iand.
And these human beings would be
neither landowners nor voters.
Here, it seemed, there was nothing
superior about British colonisation.
The legacy of segregation
would endure for centuries.
WOMAN: # Go with me to that land
# Come and go with me to that land
# Come and go with me to that land
# Where l'm bound, where l'm bound
# Whoa, come and go with me #
FERGUSON: This is the land of the Gullah,
the region stretching from Sandy lsland,
South Carolina, to Amelia lsland, Florida,
known as the Gullah Coast.
Here you can see clearly
one of the biggest differences
between North and South America.
# Nothing but toiI in that Iand
# Nothing but toiI in that Iand #
Anthropologists believe that
''Gullah'' is a corruption of ''Angola'',
where the inhabitants'
ancestors came from.
The fact that there are traces of AngoIa
stiII to be found
here in South CaroIina today
teIIs us something reaIIy significant.
The peopIe who Iive on these isIands
are the direct descendants
of sIaves from AngoIa
who came here to work on some of the most
profitabIe pIantations of the South.
# To that Iand #
ln contrast to South America,
where white and black
blended into many shades of brown,
the survival of Gullah culture
is testament to the much stricter
enforcement of the colour line
in the slave states of North America.
lronically, the land of the free
looked like being,
for around a fifth of its population,
the land of the permanently unfree.
Slavery had become hereditary.
# Where I'm bound. #
In 1846, after 47 years of servitude,
a sIave by the name of Dred Scott
sued for his freedom
in this courthouse in Saint Louis.
WeII, the suit was thrown out,
and that judgment was upheId
by the US Supreme Court.
Here was the great paradox
of the New WorId -
the Iiberty-Ioving EngIish settIers
who produced the US Constitution
were aIso determined
to maintain the difference
between white freedom and bIack sIavery.
The property-owning democracy was based
on a foundation of raciaI inequaIity.
ln the end, the paradox of slavery
in a supposedly free society
could be resolved only by war.
The American Civil War,
between the pro-slavery states
of the South, like the Carolinas,
and the anti-slavery states of the North.
Appropriately, it was a war
that began in Charleston.
Yet although the Civil War ended slavery,
many white Americans continued
to believe that they owed their prosperity
to the dividing line
between white and black.
Segregation now!
Segregation tomorrow!
And segregation for ever!
As recently as 1 963,
Alabama governor George Wallace
could put segregation right at the heart
of the American success story.
This was compIete nonsense.
It was pure rubbish to beIieve, as
George WaIIace did, that the United States
owed its prosperity and its greater
stabiIity than a country Iike this one,
VenezueIa,
to the fact of raciaI segregation.
On the contrary, North America did better
than South America pureIy and simpIy
because the British modeI
of wideIy distributed property ownership
and democracy worked better
than the Spanish modeI
of concentrated weaIth
and authoritarian ruIe.
Far from being indispensable
to its success,
slavery and segregation were quite simply
the original sin of the United States,
giving the lie for more than two centuries
to the American claim
to be the zenith of Western civilization.
Today, however,
a man with an African father
is President of the United States,
and the cities of the North increasingly
resemble those of South America.
Large-scale migration from Latin America
means that in 40 years' time,
non-Hispanic whites will be a minority
of the US population.
But if the United States is suffering
harder economic times these days,
it's certainIy not because of
the end of white supremacy.
After aII, one of star performers
of the worId economy now
is none other than muIti-coIoured BraziI.
And that's because
economic reform has finaIIy given
a rising share of the popuIation
a chance to own property and to vote.
500 years since the process
of conquest and coIonisation began,
the great divide between
British America and Latin America
is finaIIy cIosing.
Throughout the Western hemisphere,
a single civilization is finally
and belatedly emerging.
But as we'll see in the next programme,
200 years ago, Western civilization looked
very different - and very white -
to the people on the receiving end of the
next great wave of European expansion
into Africa.