Anomaly UK, Clio and Vladimir discuss why democracy won out over monarchy.
Underestimated, in my opinion, is a peculiar historical accident. Imagine a thought experiment: What if North America was only 100 miles wide?
The European monarchs won a number of battles against the democratic radicals of the 1600-1800′s. The kings were not savage tyrants of the sort that afflicted the 20th century. So rather than slaughtering dissidents wholesale, the monarchs usually expelled the radicals to the Americas. Thus the Puritans departed for America in the 1630′s as Charles I cracked down on dissenters. Numerous German revolutionaries departed after the failed 1848 revolution.
Unfortunately for the kings, they had just granted their enemies three million square miles of fertile, resource rich land. The dissidents conquered the continent, plowed the plains, drilled her oil, and multiplied like rabbits. The fertility rates in Puritan New England were close to 10.0, the highest in recorded history. Out of 20,000 Puritan settlers 16 million are now descendents.
The radical American settlers used their power first to break free of the English monarchy. Then they exported their ideas around the world, to France and South America. They intervened in World War I to crush the counter-revolutionary regimes once and for all and wiped out monarchy across Europe.
A lesson for future kings: do not export your dissidents to the most fruitful land on Earth. Try Siberia next time.
If North America was a mere 100 miles wide, chances are that Britain wins the revolutionary war. The radicals in France would never had an example to follow. Louis the XVIII would have saved a lot of money. The royal loyalists in Britain would have gained great prestige.
If North America was a 100 miles wide, it would not have had the resources and man power to project power into Europe during World War I. Germany would have won the war. After the war, Germany would have aided the White army in Russia. The houses of Hohenzollern, Romanov, and Habsburg may have stood until this day.
Not so.
The left singularity in Russia started with the Tsar, similarly the left singularity in France.
King Louis the sixteenth told us that the King “must always consult public opinion; it is never wrong”. Well if the King himself says that, who is going to deny it? When the King himself will not defend the Royal prerogative, who would? And thus under Louis the sixteenth, an ever leftwards process was set in motion, culminating with the red terror in 1795.
The King moves left, leftists, in particular Rousseau and Voltaire, do very well, so everyone moves left. Voltaire and Rousseau were repressed by the supposedly right wing authorities only enough to generate favorable publicity for their works. The old order was condemned by highly successful intellectuals who somehow wound up with lots of money and young women. Where were the defenders of the old order? Not even the King defended it.