In 1999, the Whitney Museum of American Art had a very successful exhibition called The American Century. Indeed, there were two exhibitions, The American Century, Part I about the first half of the 20th century and Part II dealing with the following 50 years. The presentation was divided up into decades, each of them having its own motto. The one for the 1950s was: ‘America takes command’. This may sound rather martial but the motto is indeed very appropriate, as one could argue that as from then on American leadership also included cultural leadership.

The name of the exhibition, ‘The American Century’, was of course derived from the title of the famous article that Henry Luce, the editor/publisher of journals such as Life and Time, published in Life on 17 February 1941. Luce wanted the Americans to play a major role in the war for freedom and democracy that was in progress at that time and the building of the better world that would have to come after that. In his article Luce insisted that ‘our vision of America as a world power includes a passionate devotion to great American ideals’. The idea of America as a world power and, indeed, as the world power of the future, is, of course, much older than the concept of the 20th century as the American century. Already in 1902, the British liberal journalist and advocate of world peace through arbitration, W.T. Stead published a book with the title The Americanization of the World, or the Trend of the Twentieth Century. According to Stead, the heyday of the British Empire was over and the US was the Empire of the future. The enormous success of America was due to three things: education, production and democracy. Britain's choice was between subjugation or cooperation. Stead even proposed the merger of the two countries. In the following decade, this idea that America was Britain's successor and that the two countries should – and could – form a union because of their intimate familiarity, became popular among British writers.