God and Gold

Walter Russell Mead’s recent God and Gold explores the uncanny success of Anglo-American power since the seventeenth century, what Mead calls “the biggest geopolitical story of modern times: the birth, rise, triumph, defence, and continuing grown of Anglo-American power despite continuing and always renewed opposition and conflict.” Since the late 17th century, Anglos have been on the winning side of every major global conflict, and the reasons, Mead says, reduce to the alliterative factors given in his title. It came of age economically at just the right time, and grew rich. Equally important has been Christianity. The Economist’s reviewer summarizes: “Both Britain and America kept a balance between reason, faith and tradition that their rivals did not. Religion helped to keep the state in check and supplied some of the verve to keep on trying to change the world.”