Politics & Power Quote by James H. Breasted

There is a quietly imperial swagger baked into Breasted's praise of American imagination: it flatters the nation not for what it is, but for what it has done to space. "Especially fitted" is doing the heavy lifting, implying a natural aptitude - almost a destiny - for comprehending transformation on a civilizational scale. An archaeologist, of all people, is licensing modern development with the authority of deep time. If you spend your life reading the rise of cities from shards and ruins, the leap from "wilderness" to "splendid cities" can feel less like a contested political project and more like history's default setting.

The subtext is that wilderness is an absence waiting to be corrected. The phrase carries the old American rhetorical trick of erasing prior inhabitants and alternative land uses: "wilderness" becomes a blank canvas rather than a lived, managed landscape. Breasted's "marvellous transformation" also smuggles in a moral judgment. Cities are not just different; they are "splendid", an aesthetic and ethical upgrade. That word turns urbanization into a spectacle, inviting admiration instead of scrutiny.

Context matters: Breasted helped build American Egyptology and popularized the idea of a grand "cradle of civilization". In the early 20th century, as the U.S. expanded its museums, its global reach, and its self-mythology, this line reads like cultural diplomacy for the home front. It reassures Americans that their rapid growth is not chaotic capitalism or dispossession, but a legible chapter in humanity's onward march - the archaeologist's blessing on the bulldozer.