Not really, they're all pretty much equal. Political culture is also a huge factor like say in the United States, a Communist would never be elected because Americans are too individualistic and disdainful of big government. Meanwhile in France, a pure capitalist would never get elected because the French have always been wary of capitalism. Or in China where the people accept an authoritarian leader as long as he doesn't abuse his power.
Sure, but I would go further and ask
why those countries have the political cultures they do. Historical development of each nation is influenced by political and economic factors that have a dialectical relationship, with each affecting the other.
So for example, the United States has a more individualistic culture than modern Europe because when European settlers first arrived to colonize the United States (and later when they expanded westwards), there was a huge amount of available land, and people could more easily get by on their own. Contrast that to Europe, where there's a lot less space, the population is squeezed more closely together and so you end up with more of a collectivist attitude among the people.
Both America and France had bourgeois-democratic revolutions early on, in 1776 and 1789, that rid the countries of rule by hated monarchs, and in the case of the US freed it from foreign domination. But because America was so vast and had so many resources, and because it was free from invasion by nearby competing powers (which France was not - see Prussia/Germany), it was able to develop at a more rapid pace to become one of the most powerful industrial economies in the world - which in turn gave it greater political influence, as was first illustrated at the end of World War I.
Slavery was a huge issue, but it was more than that. The North and South were culturally different, their economies were different, and whatnot. And it appeared that the North was essentially trying to tell the South what to do.
Racism before the Civil War was more along the lines of that ignorant "white man's burden" ********. But after the Civil War it became more along the lines of the modern day scary KKK lynching racism. Probably had something to do with the North utterly decimating the South. Racism would be dramatically different IMO if it weren't for the Civil War.
I disagree. The same negative stereotypes about blacks were common both before and after the Civil War. Terrorist groups like the KKK certainly came about as a reaction to the South losing the war, but I really think you're splitting hairs here. The bottom line is that blacks in the United States have always faced tremendous racism, starting with slavery, continuing with segregation, and still a big problem decades after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
And why? In essence, racism did not cause slavery; rather,
slavery caused racism. The European settlers needed vast sources of cheap labor to develop their colonies. Initially they started with native Americans, until they died
en masse from European diseases and maltreatment. African slaves were the next best available source of labor, and so were shipped in huge numbers to the American colonies. The fact that slaves had a different skin color from the rest of the population meant they could more easily be identified and prevented from escaping.
In an epoch proclaiming the “Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity” of humankind, some kind of justification had to be found for the revival of slavery, a mode of production and social relationship that had died out in Europe centuries earlier, and was naturally reviled and looked down upon. Therefore, black skin, not slave labor itself, was transformed into the mark of social inferiority. It was thus that the concept of “race” based on skin color first emerged.
The idea of race didn't exist in the ancient and medieval worlds. It's a wholly modern invention, a social construct used to justify slavery in the United States or European imperialism.
