Board games are an interesting thing because it's one of those global trends that did not originate in the US. Instead it game from Germany but with quite a bit of delay.

The German version of settlers came out around 1995 IIRC and sparked a big revival of board games (and strategic board games in particular in Germany. Then some time around 2008 or so I had friends in NZ and OZ who used to not play board games tell me about this cool game the wanted to play. I was quite surprised that it was settlers which I had not played since moving overseas in 2004.

So yeah the whole revival originated in Germany, but took about 10 years to suddenly go global.