[Gimpei]

To be pedantic, the Roman Empire did not fall in 472. It lived on in the eastern Mediterranean for another one thousand years. The Eastern Romans even took back a fair amount of western Roman holdings for a bit. The people who actually killed the Roman Empire were the Franks, permanently weakening it during the Latin occupation.

[thomassmith65]

The Catholic church is an institution of the Roman Empire, and it's still around. That puts things in perspective, I find, and makes me wonder if 100 thousand years from now, historians will just lump the Romans and us into the same bucket.

[hyperman1]

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

[red-iron-pine]

that's a stretch. it's hard to argue it's a continuity when there were two (2) direct wars where the US aggressively rejected British domination -- and then set about creating a entirely separate form of government.

in concert there was the Great Revival and a whole new emergence of new world evangelicalism, a far cry from the Church of England.

[nsavage]

This is a really interesting idea. I'd never put this together myself, but its really compelling. It really shows the value of the phrase "history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme".

[mathgeek]

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

Which religion brings those thoughts to mind? As an American I often find myself combining a handful of the American denominations into one, but I’m interested to hear what an outsider sees projected.

[hyperman1]

Basically, the whole protestant faction. A sibling comment mentions Lutheran (German) and Mennonites (Dutch). There is of course catholicism from the Irish, but the Anglicans are suspiciously small.

[crote]

Isn't that just because a large portion of the early English colonialists moved to the USA precisely because they weren't Anglicans?

See for example the Mayflower: they left England due to prosecution, moved to The Netherlands, then left for the USA because there was too much freedom for them and they wanted to impose stricter rules.

There's of course the obvious heritage in the sense that the Reformation started in Germany, but movements like the Mennonites have never really caught on there or in The Netherlands.

They only took off once they landed in the USA, so I wouldn't call that a change of seat.

[Joker_vD]

Well, considering that Puritans actually managed to push through the prohibition on Christmas (and Easter) celebrations, it's no wonder they got so wildly unpopular that they had to emigrate.

[mike_hearn]

The Puritans fundamentally shaped American society and culture. They were English.

[alephnerd]

> The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

This underestimates how Germanic, Irish, Italian, and Hispanic America is.

For example - Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Budweiser, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Disney, the New York Times, Christmas Trees, Lutheran congregations, Mennonite congregations, etc are all German.

And having stayed in the UK for extended periods for work, it is significantly different culturally speaking than much of the US.

[mike_hearn]

Disney?

> Walt Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue in the Hermosa neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, United States. He was the fourth son of Elias Disney, who was born in the Province of Canada to Anglo-Irish parents, and Flora (née Call), an American of German and English descent

[alephnerd]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ub_Iwerks