Why has the USA had no actual dictator and only one civil war?

[Boojatta]

Why have other former British colonies had dictators and recurring civil conflict?

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand haven't had dictators OR civil war.

Like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were largely settled by British emigrants (in numbers eventually greater than the native populations) who created a common, mostly Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture (which remained largely dominant even in the US, most especially in New England and the South, with later immigrants encouraged to assimilate). Other former British colonies, on the other hand, were never settled by the British in large numbers, and remain populated largely by their native inhabitants, among whom tribal conflict and sectarian religious violence were common before the British arrived, and again after the British left. The recurring cycles of violence. governmental collapse, and dictatorship in former British colonies in Africa, or in Pakistan, etc., are more or less a continuation of conflicts that have existed for centuries.

[TheBaldyMan]

2. don't forget India - the world's largest democracy

[Boojatta]

4. According to the following website, India has had MANY civil wars just from 1940 to 2005.

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=00220

India II Hyderabad 1948 1948

India III Naga Revolt 1956 1997

India IV Sikh Insurrection 1982 1993

India Ia Part/Kash/In-Pak War 1946 1949

India Ib Kashmir 1965 1965

India Ic Kashmir 1988

[NoPasaran]

5. There was also the 1975-77 Emergency

Maybe Indira Gandhi wasn't exactly a dictator, but she close during those years.

[Odin2005]

3. English-based civil traditions have a lot to do with it.

All English-speaking countries have a fairly Libertarian-based culture and societal structure that is a poor environment for dictators to pop-up in.

[otherlander]

6. I think America maintained more of the British way of ruling

because many of its revolutionaries were politicians who worked with Britain prior to the war. It was kind of unusual in being a revolution against colonial powers that was lead by colonialists. Other uprisings- not necessarily against Britain, but colonial powers in general- were lead by the people who were being colonized, and who didn't always have as much of a background in politics. The British system was brutal, but it worked. But when you say that America has only had one civil war, it's arguable that the wars between British-descended Americans and indigenous people who were trying to keep their land should also be counted as civil wars.

[Boojatta]

7. Thank you for participating in this thread.

I think America maintained more of the British way of ruling because many of its revolutionaries were politicians who worked with Britain prior to the war.

You might elaborate on what you mean by "the British way of ruling." Presumably American revolutionaries didn't say, "Join us and fight for the British way of ruling." Nor did the British think that the revolutionaries were secretly working for Britain and only pretending to be revolutionaries.

it's arguable that the wars between British-descended Americans and indigenous people who were trying to keep their land should also be counted as civil wars.

It's not clear why you specify "British-descended" rather than Dutch-descended, German-descended, etc. In any case, I doubt that the people you are referring to as "indigenous" were struggling to replace the British colonial authority. Not every war is a civil war.

[otherlander]

8. Sorry, should have been more clear.

Of course the revolutionaries were trying to create a system that would avoid the flaws of the British one: taxation without representation, monarchy, etc. But the rights that they wanted to guarantee were also influenced by the rights that Britain had under the Magna Carta, and by English philosophers like Locke. The people who had power in America after the revolution were generally descended from colonists, and still seemed to believe it was their right to drive out the native people as the colonial powers had done.

[Odin2005]

9. Doh, just realized I already posted. nevermind...

[HamdenRice]

10. I disagree with your premise

There used to be an old cliche that the Revolutionary War should have been called the Civil War and the Civil War should have been called the Revolutionary War.

At any rate, the War of Independence was much more of a civil war than a revolution. Assuming the Civil War was really a civil war, then we had at least two civil wars.

I think we have had other civil wars, but we maintain a myth of American exceptionalism, which includes "stability" which makes us unable to accept certain things about our own history.

By most definitions of civil war, there was a civil war in Kansas in the 1850s, the era of so-called "Bleeding Kansas." There was a civil war throughout the south (a little over a decade after the big Civil War) which terrorized African Americans, put an end to reconstruction governments and overthrew the existing political and economic structure of society. The late 19th century witnessed a civil war between big capital and big labor. And there was a civil war in 1967-68 which included mutinies and fragging in the Army overseas, the creation of armed violent underground groups in urban areas, widespread street violence, and a relentless, illegal campaign of death squads by the government against groups they considered dangerous to the existing order.

We've also had dictators, if you include within the definition that it is possible for a political leader to get elected and then become a dictator by closing off the political process, like Hitler or Indira Ghandi did. By that measure, Lincoln was arguably a dictator and was called one at the time. Considering we are a federalist system with many mini states, I think it's fair to point out that many of the southern states were little more than dictatorships between Reconstruction and the civil rights movement for a significant minority of southern populations and in some cases majorities (eg South Carolina).

And of course there is George W. Bush. Two stolen elections, the suspension of habeas corpus, torture, kidnapping, extra-judicial executions, and secret prisons. We are living under a dictatorship today.

[Robeson]

11. Excellent post....

...not much to add to it. Only thing to add, is we have had dictatorships of plutocracies throughout our history. Still do.

[Boojatta]

12. How about famines?

Does anyone think that there have been famines in the USA?

How does availability of food in America compare with availability of food in other countries that achieved independence after 1776? For example, how does America in 1804 compare with Zimbabwe 28 years after Zimbabwe achieved independence from the UK?

[HamdenRice]

13. Yes there have been famines in the USA

First of all, it's necessary to understand what famine is. Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize for economics for his work on famines, and his basic insight can be summed up as follows: famine is not the condition of there not being enough food; it is the condition of people being too poor to buy the food that is available.

There have been almost no famines in which there was an absolute shortage of food -- even in places like Somalia and Ethiopia. Lower harvests or even disasterous harvests may cause famines, but the mechanism of famine is that the bad harvest causes the price of food to go up too high for poor people to be able to purchase it.

So famine can occur amidst plenty: During the Irish potato famine, Ireland continued to export food, and during the Somali famine of 1992, the warehouses of Mogidishu were full of food.

In the South for much of the early 20th century, there was widespread hunger and malnutrition. Most sharecroppers, black and white, at monotonous diets of cornbread, bacon and molasses, leading to diseases normally seen during famines.

There was also widespread hunger during the Great Depression.

[izzie]

14. I think it is because of how we got started

It was sort of a group thing at the start and no one got to be king of the pile so we have always had this rule by all. This odd thought that men can rule them self has just stuck in our way of life. When we find one of those who think he was 'born to rule' we sort of end up roasting him over a fire. Plus we had the history of the English rule of law that we took with us all over this country and once you get to a place and set up the rules it is hard to get rid of them if they work pretty well. It is a thing right out of the Mag na car-ta.