ABSTRACT
In 1900 Britain was the richest country in the world. It had the planet’s largest military and was the center of global business, information, finance, and commerce. Its education system was second to none, and its currency was the world’s reserve currency. In fact, the dictionary definition of sterling as having fine quality is an outgrowth of the intrinsic trust the world placed in the British pound as recently as 80 years ago.1 In the early part of the twentieth century, the British Empire was comprised of one-fifth of the land area and a quarter of the people on Earth. It was called “the Empire on which the sun never sets.”2 Yet, in only a few decades, this empire crumbled,3 and the era in which Britain ruled the seas gave way to what historians term “the American Century.”4
