What Makes America Strong?

On the surface, this question seems to be about national power, technology, or military strength. In reality, however, it is a question of civilizational paths and institutional roots.

The British did not successfully establish their first permanent colony in North America until 1607, fully 115 years after Columbus discovered the New World. Even then, it was a near-miracle of survival. In the two decades before that, several English attempts at colonization had failed—settlers could not endure the harsh conditions, and survival itself was nearly impossible.

By contrast, the Spanish arrived in the Americas more than a century earlier than the British. They occupied the most fertile and resource-rich regions of the New World—Central and South America—where there already existed organized states, cities, large populations, and vast reserves of gold and silver. They conquered advanced indigenous empires such as the Aztec and the Inca.

By any conventional logic, Spain should have remained the dominant power in the Americas.

Yet history produced the opposite result: The United States rose from a desolate land to become the world’s leading power, while the Spanish-controlled regions of Central and South America fell far behind. In 2018, caravans of several thousand people from Central America marched northward, attempting to cross illegally into the United States in search of a livelihood. This striking contrast forces people to ask: what is the root cause of this divergence?

After 170 years of colonial development, by the time of the American War of Independence, 13 colonies had been established along the eastern coast of North America, with a population of about 2.5 million. This marked the true beginning of the American nation.

From a historical standpoint, Spain had been the dominant power—the “king of the Americas.” Why, then, was the United States able to catch up from a barren wilderness within just two to three centuries and surpass everyone to become the global leader? The answer cannot be found in geography alone. It must be traced back to cultural and religious foundations, to the fundamental differences between the British and the Spanish.

Historically, both Spaniards and Britons were enterprising peoples with strong ambitions for overseas expansion. But in the 16th and 17th centuries, during the era of the European Reformation, the two nations took very different paths.

Spain was the staunchest supporter of the Roman papacy and the most determined opponent of the Protestant Reformation. England, by contrast, resisted papal absolutism and supported religious reform. Among the reformist groups, the Puritans were the most progressive, disciplined, and forward-looking—and it was precisely the Puritans who came to North America.

The first group of 102 settlers aboard the Mayflower in 1620 brought with them the prototype of what would later be called the American spirit. They had broken free from papal control and believed that “man proposes, God disposes.” They affirmed the legitimacy of worldly wealth, advocated diligence, initiative, and thrift, and sought to build on new land the “City upon a Hill” they envisioned.

They were not a chaotic band of fortune seekers. Under the guidance of their ministers, they signed the Mayflower Compact, forming a community of citizens bound by mutually agreed rules. This compact became the germ of American democratic self-governance. The spirit embodied in that agreement laid the foundation for America’s survival and, later, its nation-building. More than forty U.S. presidents would come from Puritan backgrounds.

The Spanish, however, came for a very different purpose. They came in search of gold and silver.