On March 1, 2012
when Serbia formally became a candidate for statehood in the European Union, it
had been over 50 years since a state was added to the U.S. So from an American
standpoint, watching the E.U. expand “in real time” from “across the pond”
might be like a person in our solar system watching the unfolding of a new
solar system light-years away and thinking, “So that is how it must have looked when it happened here.” Of
course, the accession of additional states in the E.U. reflects the distinct
time and culture of twentieth and twenty-first century Europe rather than of
the world in the late eighteenth century. Even so, certain commonalities can be
discerned.
The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires.
