>>212433913 (OP)
you overall underestimate the value of the major rivers.
your economy heavily relies on Mississippi river and its branches. the same can be said to the Rhine.
>>212433913 (OP)
You have Mississippi-Great Lakes-St Lawrence and we have the Rhine and the Danube. Both cut through the continent, essentially making it navigable. Compare this with, say, Russia, where they have a fuckton of giant rivers like Yenisei and Lena, but they don’t matter one bit because they don’t connect nicely and flow into frozen wasteland.
>>212434387
this. >>212434380
rivers are indispensable to connect inland industrial zones with the global markets.
the Ruhrgebiet would have had to transport their products by trucks or other expensive ways if the Rhine were smaller and shallower.
>>212434184 >What do they teach you
The only time I recall Strasbourg mentioned by the American public school curriculum was when my highschool history teacher taught us about how a lot of jews got killed there in the 14th century.
Jews getting antisemitism'd is the only metric we use to determine historical relevance.