Quote by Vincent Bevins

“The United States, a Western European settler colony in North America, emerged from World War II as by far the most powerful state on Earth. This was a surprise to most Americans and to most of the world. It was a young country. It was only about a hundred years previously that the government set up in former British colonies finished incorporating former French and Spanish territories into the new country, giving its leaders dominion over the middle strip of the continent. In comparison, their cousins back in Europe had been conquering the globe for almost five centuries. They had sailed around the planet, carving it up for themselves. To say that the United States is a settler colony means that the land was overtaken by white Europeans over the course of several centuries in a way that differed from the way that most countries in Africa and Asia were conquered. The white settlers came to stay and the native population was excluded by definition from the nation they built. In order for the new white and Christian country to take form, the indigenous population had to get out of the way. As every American boy and girl learns, there was a strong element of religious fanaticism involved in the founding of the United States. The Puritans, a group of committed English Christians, did not travel across the Atlantic to make money for England. They sought a place for a purer, more disciplined version of the Calvinist society they wanted to build. One way to put this is that they wanted religious freedom. Another is that they wanted a society that was even more homogenous, fundamentalist, and theocratic than the one that existed in 17th century Europe.”

Quote by Vincent Bevins