Every so often global power shifts to a new country, it’s the rise and fall of Rome all over again. No one country remains top dog forever. The last shift took place during the Second World War when undisputably, the USA was the most powerful country on earth. And at the same time a second shift took place giving the Soviet Union second place in the global pecking order, coming out of nowhere.

The Soviet Union collapsed and people are anxiously watching the USA, the “weary titan” as Aaron Friedberg described Britain in the late Victorian era. All sorts of names are tossed out as contender for the future superpower. In the 1980’s they thought Japan was going to fulfil the role they’d always promised since they defeated the Russians in 1905 (the first time in centuries that a non-European power had defeated a European one) and then invaded Imperial China in World War II. In recent times China has been touted as the next superpower. Some have even mentioned countries such as Brazil or made the case for Russia regaining it’s international standing.

Most of the countries touted as the next big thing tend to fizzle out. So what are the signs people should look for to indicate who is going to make it to the top?

To answer the question, we need to go back to the early part of the 16th century to the reign of Henry VIII. England was just a little backwater at the time. The main developments of the Rennaisance were taking place in Italy, and countries like Portugal had leapt ahead with their daring and innovative maritime expeditions, discovering and settling the New World. So how did Britain end up two centuries later as the world’s undisputed superpower?

The first clue something was happening was an upsurge of artistic and intellectual thought. England was suddenly gripped with religious questioning. William Tyndale, a great scholar, translated the Bible into English in 1526, and debate began to rage about the differences in what the Bible actually said and what was preached by the Catholic bishops who “interpreted” much of the material. Anne Boleyn, who would be Henry’s second wife, was caught up in this movement, and she was instrumental in persuading Henry (who had never been a questioner of the church) to declare Protestantism to be the state religion and English it’s primary language.

It was like a dam being broken. Once people started to express themselves in English (as opposed to Latin) there was a surge in new writing. Three great playrights appeared during the reign of Henry’s daughter Elizabeth: Ben Johnson, Phillip Marlowe and William Shakespeare. The sonnet (an Italian form of poetry developed by Petrarch) was enthusisatically adopted by English poets, amongst them Shakespeare.

But for our purposes what matters is the standard and quality of the output. It suddenly leaps upwards to a new level of mastery and excellence.  Society got used to this quality and other aspects of public life began to raise their standard, from government to science to the military. This culminated in Britain in 1815 being able to fight on two continents, and in the same year defeating Napoleon in Europe and preventing the USA from invading Canada to snatch territory. Britain was at it’s zenith at this point, the undisputed superpower of the world, with a vast maritime fleet and control over much of the planet’s territory, including India.

The same upsurge in artistic and intellectual thought precedes the rise of Russia and the United States.

Up to the late 19th century, Russia had been the most backward country in Europe, with people still trapped in serfdom centuries after western Europe had abandoned this state. Then suddenly in the 1830’s something happens. Russia abandoned the use of the Church Slavonic language and began to use colloquial Russian. Just as in Britain in the 16th century, the adoption of the native tongue liberated Russian writers and thinkers. Writers like Tolstoy and Doestoevsky began to write their masterpieces and Chekov produced the most exquisite plays and short stories. But all this intellectual activity was not matched with political activity, as the Tsar remained an absolute monarch. As in Britain, once a society gets used to certain standards of excellence in one area, they start to demand it in other areas too. Irresistible pressure was building for the old political system to be washed away, and for Russia to push forward to international prominence.

In the USA, commerce had thrived in the 19th century, but on the artistic, scientific and intellectual front, America remained a backwater. Most of the books published in the USA at the time were pirate copies of English novels by authors such as Dickens with no royalties going to the authors (in an amusing parallel with the pirated material you now find in East Asia). The few American authors of the time tended to copy the English style of writing.

But at the start of the 20th century something happened. An American writer called Sherwood Anderson began to write in the American vernacular. Instead of English mannerisms and style, he used American rhythms of speech and American idioms. This adoption of an American colloquial style was a major breakthrough. His collection of short stories known as Winesburg Ohio was published in 1919 and inspired writers as diverse as Ernest Hemmingway, Raymond Chandler and the scriptwriters of Hollywood, who put American colloquial argot into the mouths of actors such as Humphrey Bogart. Again it was as though a dam had broken. For the first time people were confident enough of their own culture to express it as it actually was. Once this point was reached it was merely a matter of time for this confidence to extend to other parts of American life, culminating in World War II at the end of which America was the dominant western superpower.

In all these examples, the critical point was when the countries concerned began to discover themselves, and to feel confident about their own culture, and confident enough to express it and export it, first in art, and then in other areas of life.

So when we look for the next superpower, the first thing we should look for is an upsurge in artistic and intellectual activity. Japan in the 1980’s offered some glimmers of this: Japanese anime movies began to be viewed in the west, and Japanese fashion designers such as Issey Miyake, Kenzo, Yohji Yamamoto stunned the west with their unusual and exotic (to western eyes) aesthetics. But in the 1990’s and in the 21st century, Japan has fallen behind. Their artistic surge fizzled out rather than catching light and inspiring other parts of Japan.

China for all it’s frantic infrastructure building and factories has not really produced any breakthrough in art or intellectual thought at all. Though China may feel like a confident country, they don’t appear to be quite confident enough to express their culture uninhibtedly in art, perhaps due to having a controlling government. Even on the business front, most of their factories are just subsidiaries of western companies rather than innovative indigenous companies (in sharp contrast to Japan, which in the 1980’s had innovative indigenous businesses that were producing breakthrough technologies). Based on artistic, intellectual and commercial vigor, Japan still seems more likely than China to develop a dominant role in the world (and let’s not forget that despite the difficulties they have experienced in recent years, the 125 million Japanese still have the second largest economy in the world).

The only country at the moment that is uninhibitedly expressing itself in it’s own vernacular is India. India is a bit like the EU – geographically the same size, with 25 states which are really 25 countries each with their own languages, sub-dialects and histories going back several thousand years, who unified only recently (in 1947) and each competiting fiercely with each other to be the dominant state in the union.

India is not only the world’s largest democracy but also the most chaotic and free-wheeling democracy on earth. A certain freedom of speech exists in India that doesn’t exist in the west (due to conventions and political correctness inhibiting modern western cultural expression) and is even less likely to be found in the controlled cultures of China, Japan and East Asia. To western sensibilities Indian public discourse feels raw, lively and shocking. People and politicians seem to say all sorts of things (including base insults) that simply wouldn’t be allowed anywhere else. The only inhibition that exists is sexual, but even this area is loosening up, with Indian feminists posting pick knickers (”chaddis”) to traditionalists who criticize them. The commercial sector, like Japan but unlike China, boasts indigenous businesses which are making technological breakthroughs, such as the $2000 car from Tata and management software from Infosys.

The Indian film industry, Bollywood, is one of the largest in the world. India actually started producing indigenous movies in 1899, 11 years before Hollywood produced it’s first movie. But whereas the British and French movie industries withered in competition with American Hollywood, Bollywood went from strength to strength. Bollywood was always unashamedly comfortable in it’s own skin, happily producing movies quite unlike anyone else’s with music mixed into the narratives, borrowing from Indian mythology and revelling in fantasy. Bollywood currently produces a 1000 films per annum compared to Hollywood’s 500 per year, but in revenue still lags as ticket prices are cheap.

Bollywood movies are produced in Hindi, Tamil and Bengali, and unlike movies produced elsewhere, but like Hollywood movies, they are consumed outside the country they originated in. Bollywood movies are eagerly watched in the former Soviet Union countries known as the “stans”, and also watched in Indian’s traditional satellite states (Pakistan, Bangladesh and SriLanka), as well as in the Middle East, where they are dubbed into Arabic.

So is this output enough to qualify it as a country on the verge of a breakthough?

India does seem to be expanding it’s cultural reach. In recent years, Bollywood movies began to get releases in the UK and USA, and even releases in China (for movies such as Lagaan) and influenced American movies such Guru and inspired Baz Luhrman to produce his colourful musical Moulin Rouge. Indian music also began to be sampled for the first time by western acts such as the Black Eyed Peas in Elephunk, and by the FreeMasons in their remixes. And Indian literature churns out works in all the 25 official languages, and has also produced award-winning writers such as Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy who write in English. India’s cultural reach is a lot greater than Japan’s or China’s.

India at the moment resembles Britain in the early 19th century as she was developing the industrial revolution – full of energy, life, chaos, innovation, artistic output, extremes in wealth and poverty and lively political discussion. The United States in the period 1890 to 1910 was in a similar state of energetic flux. If they maintain the momentum, then a breakthrough will take place catapulting them into the premier tier. If their momentum is stopped, like Japan’s, then the promise will fizzle out.