The Year Is 1900

February 26, 2026

This week we did a short 10-minute lesson, then an activity.

Guess the country

I read out some clues and asked everyone to guess the country:

It became free from foreign imperialism around a century ago.
It has a long love-hate relationship with its very large northern neighbor.
It's a huge continental power with a much bigger population than ours.
Its economy is catching up to ours and may pass it in the near future.
It's rapidly building its industry with technology taken from other countries.
It's aggressively expanding its power to islands off its southeast coast.

Most of you guessed China. That makes sense, but here's the twist: the year is 1900, and we're in Britain. The country is the United States.

The parallels

We went through each clue and compared the U.S. in 1900 with China today.

Free from foreign imperialism: the U.S. broke away from Britain in the Revolutionary War. China ended a long period of foreign control in the 1900s, including Japan's occupation in World War II.
Big northern neighbor: the U.S. and Canada, then still part of the British Empire. China and Russia.
Population: in 1900, the U.S. had about 76 million people, compared to about 41 million in the United Kingdom. Today China has about 1.4 billion people.
Economy: the U.S. was in the middle of a huge industrial boom and catching up to Britain, just like China is catching up to the U.S. today.
Technology: Britain tried to keep its industrial secrets at home, but they made it to America anyway. Robert Fulton's first successful steamboat ran on an engine from Boulton & Watt, the famous British steam engine makers. Today the U.S. accuses China of copying American technology. (We also laughed at some Chinese knockoffs, like "Kicker" instead of Kit Kat and "Super Bat" instead of Superman.)
Islands off the southeast coast: the U.S. took control in Cuba after the Spanish-American War and built up its navy there. Today China is expanding in the South China Sea and claims the Senkaku Islands.

Why it matters

The whole lesson was about perspective. It's really important to be aware of your own perspective compared to the bigger picture. Something that seems new or threatening might look very different from somewhere else, or from another time.

To finish, we did a fun activity looking at the same situation from two opposite perspectives.