Referring to your remarks about the Nostalgia for Empire, the Imperial Spaniards were meticulous and obsessive archivists, everything was dutifully recorded and filed away. A 19th century American historian, William H Prescott, learned antique Spanish and started a systematic documentation and rediscovery of the cruel deeds Cortez and Pizarro inflicted on the Aztec and Inca civilizations of the Valley of Mexico and the Andes. The Spanish, while grudgingly admiring Prescott's scholarship, were incensed that this foreigner had successfully reconstructed their own spectacular history, warts and all, from their own records, which they had neglected for three centuries.

Your musings about how we will remember our own Golden Age in some Chinese or Russian or Muslim dominated future is something I have often pondered myself. Every nation that has lost its global ascendancy (and they all have, we will not be an exception!) has gone through this experience, but Americans, with their poor grasp of history, will no doubt take it harder than anyone else.