The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Paul Kennedy, a historian fascinated by the conditions that lead to wars as well as those that put an end to them, has devoted almost his entire career to this subject. He also seeks to understand why some nations manage to develop while others find it difficult. But what fascinates him most is the notion of repetition. In "The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery" (which I have not read), he seems to point out that the British naval arm has been rebuilt three times, each time after similar catastrophes.

What does this have to do with the world of technology? According to Kennedy, nations repeat the same mistakes over centuries, and concerning technology, he brilliantly demonstrates that it was the ability to finance the advent of a new technological era that allowed, for example, the United Kingdom to enter the first and then the second industrial revolutions so successfully. At the time, the British had allowed a wide variety of financial products to develop, in particular bonds, while creating a legal framework to provide security for investors. At the same time, the French had seriously limited the capacity of private individuals and companies to issue debt, making it very difficult to carry out the massive investments required by this revolution of blast furnaces, railroads, etc. We know what happened next.

However, it is clear that 200 years later, the same causes produce the same effects, except that the world of technology is no longer dominated by London, but rather by New York and San Francisco.

For anyone interested in geopolitics, and particularly in geopolitics in the great periods of industrial transition, the "Rise and Fall of the Great Power" is probably the best book to read, in my opinion much better than those of Harari, for example, so much it is documented and especially elegant in its demonstrations; it is more than 500 pages long (and in English), but it can be read with a lot of greed, if however, you do not have, like me, problems of sight with the small print.