Politics & Power Quote by Ron Chernow

New York’s origin story gets told as inevitability: the city was always the city. Chernow’s line leans into that myth, but with a historian’s tell for the machinery underneath it. “Early on” is doing heavy work here, compressing decades of commerce, immigration, and media into a single premise: New York didn’t slowly become important; it was born branded.

The intent is less boosterism than explanation. Chernow is interested in how power consolidates before it looks like power. A “national and even international identity” isn’t just fame; it’s a shared mental picture that circulates beyond the place itself. That picture becomes infrastructure. Merchants choose your port because everyone already assumes it’s the port. Writers and politicians relocate because it’s where the story seems to be happening. Capital follows attention, and attention follows the sense that attention should be there.

The subtext: identity is a kind of early technology. In the American context, where “nation” was still under construction, New York’s outsized identity helped set a template for what America could look like when it’s outward-facing, plural, impatient, commercial. The city’s internationality isn’t portrayed as an add-on; it’s constitutive, a feature baked into Dutch trading roots, harbor geography, and the constant churn of arrivals.

Contextually, Chernow’s broader project (Hamilton, Washington, Wall Street’s prehistory) keeps returning to reputation as a force multiplier. This line argues that New York’s dominance wasn’t merely demographic destiny. It was narrative advantage, achieved early, then reinvested until it became reality.