Comment by sixo

Mostly converged to the same cultural place, but unevenly. That's the trend ever since the French revolution—France removed its aristocracy (though it kept coming back.) England basically weakened theirs to the point of redundancy, but kept it in a form. Russia kept theirs all the way until 1918 and then upheaved it all at once. The World Wars mostly wiped out whatever was left of the old world order. Sort of seems like Europe built a stronger immune system against the smell of hierarchy than the U.S. did, so the U.S. keeps inventing new caste systems e.g. Jim Crow.