The Annexation of Texas, California, and New Mexico by the USA
Before the end of the American Revolution in 1783 that line was still largely east of the Appalachian Mt. but by 1819 the “frontier” crossed the Mississippi River and by 1848 reached the Pacific coast. In such a way, the “natural borders” of the USA (from the ocean to the ocean) have been finally established [...]
The American Revolution or the American War of Independence against British colonial lordship started in 1775 when the Thirteen Colonies began to fight for their political independence from London. In fact, fighting began at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, in April 1775. In June the colonies’ Continental Congress created a Continental Army under General George Washington. However, despite several defeats, and the loss of New York (former New Amsterdam) in September 1776, Washington hung on, and at Christmas 1776, with the successful crossing of the Delaware, won several battles. The campaign culminated in Saratoga in 1777. The final triumph was only assured, nevertheless, with the signing of a Franco-American alliance in 1778 that was joined by Spain in 1779. Reinforced by French troops followed by direct naval support, George Washington succeeded in forcing the British troops to surrender at Yorktown on October 19th, 1781. The resulting Treaty of Versailles in 1783 recognized the Great Lakes in the north and the Mississippi in the west as the state borders of the newly-born USA. In other words, by 1783 the original Thirteen Colonies had decisively established themselves as the new United States with enlarged territory up to the Mississippi River including Indian Reserve.
The westward imperial expansion
In 1783, the new Republic of the United American States was pretty small and weak with a population of a little more than three million inhabitants. However, half of its territory was held by hostile neighbors. The westward expansion of the USA was sustained by its vast abundance of physical (natural) resources. Like the great Western European powers turned their imperial politics toward Africa and Asia, the USA did the same westward toward the Pacific. Therefore, the westward annexation policy of Washington after 1783 has to be understood as American imperialism for many of the same reasons as the imperialist policy in Western Europe but with significantly different results. The culture of native inhabitants of North America was not only conquered but in essence, it was destroyed.
In 1783 the USA was composed of an area of some 800.000 square miles, much of it rich arable land between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi River. That huge territory was soon enlarged by other lands, even larger and more fertile – the first phase from 1803 to 1819. The Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 (during the Napoleonic Wars) of some 827.000 square miles was a mighty windfall that dropped into the hands of an astonished US President Thomas Jefferson. The western part of Spanish Florida was occupied by force and annexed in 1812 during James Madison’s presidency followed by the annexation of East Florida in 1819 (some 60.000 square miles) by purchase but with the threat of force by the administration of President James Monroe.
The next (second) phase of making a greater USA by territorial acquisitions covered the years 1845−1853 in completing the contiguous area of the continental USA. The Texas Republic (390.000 square miles) was annexed in 1845. The negotiations for the territory of Oregon Country (285.000 square miles) were ended with a compromise in 1846. The vast Mexican Cession (529.000 square miles) was annexed in 1848 after the war with Mexico and finally, there was the Gadsen Purchase in 1853, bought from Mexico to control a promising railroad route (30.000 square miles).
The annexation of Texas in 1845
The historical importance of the annexation of Texas, the conquest of California (in fact, its northern portion as Baja California left to Mexico), and the inclusion of the Southwest into the USA from Mexico is in the fact that all of these three events finally rounded out the US domain in the (Wild) West. As a matter of fact, during only several years in the 1840s the USA succeeded in expanding its state borders over some of North America’s richest and most scenic territories. However, many scholars understood this wresting of lands from Mexico as immoral aggression. Some of them thought that the southern states of the USA, for example, wanted the territory of Texas for the only reason to have bigger pens to cram Afro-American (the Blacks) slaves in. Nonetheless, others believe that a natural and inevitable process (of Lebensraum) brought about the inclusion of Texas into the federal system of the USA. This process is well hit off by the phrase “manifest destiny”.
Texas was a part of the Mexican Republic before the mid-1830s, a southern neighbor of the USA. It was as large as Germany, with but a few ranchers and hunters. The land early attracted many Americans (inhabitants of the USA) followed by some British citizens. Stephen F. Austin established the first Anglo-American settlement in 1821. Free lands westward from Louisiana were easily accessible to the people from the American South and, therefore, became principal bait for settlers. At the same time, the Mexican government was corrupted, inefficient, and authoritarian. The settlers in Texas rose in revolt in 1835 against the Mexican authorities and after many battles succeeded in winning the independence. From this time, probably the most striking episode was the capture by the Mexican army of the Alamo, a fort in San Antonio, where every American defender was killed.
A newly established Texan Republic attracted many fresh American settlers which caused a prosperous economic development. However, their final political goal was not independence but rather the inclusion of Texas into the USA as a new state. The government of the USA for a time refused to consider any proposal for annexing Texas for the reason not to spoil relations with Mexico. But for many reasons, the government gradually changed its mind. First, it was thought that it was a duty to expand firstly settlers and then state borders over the unpeopled and undeveloped West. Second, many felt that the Texans were kindred people whose natural place was the USA. Third, many feared that Great Britain might launch a military intervention in Texas in order to establish a protectorate over the land for the reason not to be annexed by Washington. Fourth, pocket motives were at work as well as the Northerners wished to sell farm products and manufactured goods in Texas; shipowners saw that their vessels could make profitable voyages to Galveston (coastal town and port of Southeast Texas); Yankee mill owners wanted to have cheap Texas cotton to spin. Finally, many Southerners wanted to migrate and settle in Texas but were not willing to leave the US flag. As a consequence, in the national election of 1844, a majority of the voters expressed their readiness to see Texas as a part of the USA, and early the next year the republic became annexed.
The 1846−1848 Mexican-American War
After the annexation of Texas, many US citizens were kin upon gaining control of California by the same peaceful means applied to the case of Texas, considering its peculiar position as they thought. California at that time had a population of only up to 12.000 people, clinging tightly to the coast. The Californians had no their own currency, no army, or political experience. They had more Spanish blood than the Mexican masses and regarded themselves as both physically and intellectually superior. California was, in fact, only formally dependent upon the Mexican Republic but nominally it was and politically had nothing to do with the USA. It was believed by the Americans that the Californians would have thrown off the Mexican authority altogether had it not been for their family jealousies and an old feud between the northern and southern portions of California. Mexico did not provide courts, police, regular postal service, or schools. The links and communications between California and the Mexican capital Mexico City have been irregular, rare, and even uncertain. It was an option that Mexico could sell California to Great Britain because the Mexican real control and authority over the province did not exist or was very weak. However, in the course of time, the number of American settlers in California was growing in numbers followed by their aggressiveness.
It has to be noted that the ships under the US flag had long traded on the coast of California. The US emigrants had started to cross the mountains for California in the early 1830s to settle their families in the province of good climate to make money from cattle, wine, and wheat. California up to 1846 had 12.000 foreign inhabitants who have been mostly US citizens. Many of them thought that California could join the USA by using no force. Surely, it would have happened if the Mexican War had not occurred between Mexico and the USA. The remote cause of the war was the increasing distrust between the two neighboring states but its direct cause was a dispute over the borderland of Texas. The US administration found it a short and brilliant military conflict. One US army under Zachary Taylor was sent into North Mexico and occupied the fortified city of Monterey. The same army defeated a large Mexican military detachment in the heavy battle of Buena Vista, while another US army under Winfield Scott (hero of the 1812 War) landed at Vera Cruz in the Gulf of Mexico and pushed westward over the mountains. Scott’s army after hard fighting occupied Mexico City and put the US flag over “the halls of the Montezumas” which was, in fact, the end of the war in American favor.
The territorial acquisitions in 1848
According to the Mexican-American Peace Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the US was given California followed by the vast area between it and Texas known at that time as New Mexico, which included the present states of Utah and Nevada (including Texas, the US gained in 1848 from Mexico some 918.000 square miles). However, the Americans also gained a “treasure house” as soon as the treaty of peace was ratified gold was discovered in the hills of California which became known as the Golden State. The mountains of California became filled with new settlers and camps. San Francisco overnight became a little metropolis, full of vice, luxury, and energy. California was converted very quickly from a sleepy even romantic community of Spanish-American ranchers into a hustling and numerous community of Anglo-Saxons. Californian inhabitants were growing in numbers so fast that already in 1850 it became a new state within the USA (the minimum number of people was 20.000 so that the territory would become a new state of the USA).
The acquisition of the vast territory from Louisiana to the Pacific Ocean (Texas, New Mexico, and California), nonetheless, forced Washington to deal with newly emerged challenges and problems as the Caribbean area, the Pacific area, an isthmian canal, and above all problems the issue of slavery, which now threatened to expand into the whole area of the Wild West. Before 1776, the Americans were not so kin to settle the interior (westward from the Appalachian Mt.) which they called the “back-country”. However, after 1803, the “back-country” was renamed “frontier” and the line of settlement advanced westward with great speed. Before the end of the American Revolution in 1783 that line was still largely east of the Appalachian Mt. but by 1819 the “frontier” crossed the Mississippi River and by 1848 reached the Pacific coast. In such a way, the “natural borders” of the USA (from the ocean to the ocean) have been finally established.
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
Ex-University Professor
Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies
Personal disclaimer: The author writes for this publication in a private capacity which is unrepresentative of anyone or any organization except for his own personal views. Nothing written by the author should ever be conflated with the editorial views or official positions of any other media outlet or institution.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter (X), Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
Early in 1989, China was stirring. A decade of groundbreaking reforms inspired by Deng Xiaoping had brought the moribund economy to life and freed the nation from the ideological shackles imposed by radical Maoists during the cataclysmic Cultural Revolution. Almost everything seemed possible, as Deng proteges Hu Yaobang and then Zhao Ziyang led policymaking on a day-to-day basis.But the changes sweeping China had its dark undersides. Large-scale economic reforms also meant expanded corruption opportunities, which many officials exploited. And Chinese who “got rich first,” under the Dengist dispensation, opened a rapidly expanding wealth gap with fellow citizens. Discontent simmered dangerously.The ...
The present-day Republic of Turkey is a legal successor state of the former Ottoman Empire (Sultanate). The Republic was founded and proclaimed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on October 29th, 1923 as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the lost WWI. A republican Turkey originally was based on the following six principles:Republicanism – Republic instead of a monarchical sultanate.Nationalism - An aggressive anti-minority policy within the state especially against the Kurds.Populism – It was attended in the atmosphere of the absence of a multiparty democracy to gather as much as popular support for the one-party political system.Statism ...
As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people.As conversations tape-recorded in the White House reveal, and as other writers have documented, the reasons for wading into the Big Muddy, as Pete Seeger satirized it, and then pushing on regardless, all came down to “credibility”: the domestic political credibility of the politicians involved ...
Throughout the past decade, the UN General Assembly Third Committee has adopted the resolution: “Combating Glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”Every year the resolution is adopted by an overwhelming majority of UN member states, while the European Union, which, as the battleground of Nazism should have supported the resolution, merely abstains, and their fence-straddling raises disturbing questions about their actual tendencies. Japan’s abstention raises equally disturbing questions. The United States has consistently, and shockingly, opposed this resolution.The resolution is sponsored by the Russian Federation, which ...
The edifice of the post-1991 world order is collapsing right before our eyes. President Putin’s decision to give a miss to the Auschwitz pilgrimage, right after his absence in Paris at Charlie festival, gave it the last shove. It was good clean fun to troll Russia, as long as she stayed the course. Not anymore. Russia broke the rules.Until now, Russia, like a country bumpkin in Eton, tried to belong. It attended the gathering of the grandees where it was shunned, paid its dues to European bodies that condemned it, patiently suffered ceaseless hectoring of the great powers and irritating baiting of the East European small-timers alike. But something broke there. The lad does ...
“I can still see it very clearly, I have not forgotten,” says Títos Patríkios. “The Athens police firing on the crowd from the roof of the parliament in Syntagma Square. The young men and women lying in pools of blood, everyone rushing down the stairs in total shock, total panic.”And then came the defining moment: the recklessness of youth, the passion of belief in a justice burning bright: “I jumped up on the fountain in the middle of the square, the one that is still there, and I began to shout: “Comrades, don’t disperse! Victory will be ours! Don’t leave. ...
Serbia organized an exhibition of cultural and historical heritage of Kosovo and Metohija in Paris, the headquarters of UNESCO, to serve as a reminder to the West of how they let it be destroyed since the 2000s.There is a lot of Serbian cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija. Now, Kosovo is an independent state, partially recognized by Western countries. But the world was shocked by anti-Serbian riots organized by Albanians during the Kosovo unrest in 2004. Many Serbian monuments were damaged in the chaos.Albanian extremists living in Kosovo, since the 2000s, have continued to raid and damage Serbian cultural heritage ...
Adolf Heusinger was far from being the only Nazi war criminal who would later serve at a top position in NATOOnce again this March, the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, the Club of Generals and Admirals of Serbia and other independent non-party associations in Serbia pay tribute to the victims of NATO’s 1999 aggression on Serbia (FRY).This aggression took lives of more than thousand defenders, military and the police and their officers, and also of thousands of civilians, including 87 children.Regrettably, the final list of the civilian casualties has not been determined as yet, although the number is ...
It was NATO’s first out-of-area operation, against its own Treaty and without a UN mandate. On March 24, 1999.Independent Kosovo was established – against UN SC resolution 1244. Thanks to the Clinton administration and Madeleine Albright. CNN’s Amanpour endorsed it generously on TV with her State Department husband, James Rubin, a chief operator in the non-negotiations at Rambouillet. And TIME of course knew the truth too.Serbia suffered tremendously from the 78 days of indiscriminate, hard bombing. I know because I was there.Finally, Serbia and its president Milosevic was threatened with total destruction of Belgrade. And gave in.Western hubris after the ...
The missile attack on a US ship off the coast of Yemen was a major news event, but the subsequent follow up story, that it may never have happened, was either ignored by mainstream media or intentionally covered up. The whole thing has the same odor as the Gulf of Tonkin incident that never occurred.Does history repeat itself? Sure does seem like it. That is if you compare America’s entry into the Vietnam civil war, with America’s latest entry into the war in Yemen.Don’t be mistaken, we have been at war with Yemen for a year now. America sided with ...
Historically and intuitively, Russia has fought for the survival of humanity. Of course, things are not always pronounced or defined in such terms. However, already on several occasions, this enormous country has stood up against the most mighty and evil forces that have threatened the very survival of our Planet.During the Second World War, the Soviet people, mainly Russians, sacrificed at least 25 million men, women and children, in the end defeating Nazism. No other country in modern history has undergone more.Right after that victory, Russia, alongside China and later Cuba, embarked on the most awesome and noble project of ...
We all know how the story goes. The Golan Heights is Syrian territory that has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War. It was then controversially annexed in 1981, despite the UN calling the efforts “null”, “void” and “without international legal effect”. Today it is still internationally and legally recognised as Syrian land, but Israel persists with its possession.Of course, such persistence can prove to be quite lucrative when the land is abundant in resources – especially land as fertile as the Syrian Golan – a generous source of gushing waters and game changing oil reserves.In fact, the ...
With the recent failed bid by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab League at the UN security council, to try and end Israelis’ occupation of Palestinian land and to create a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders, it seems an appropriate moment to review the situation for Palestinians since 1915.What is the background to the demonization and brutalization of Palestinians? Most of all, why is the international community was assisting properly and why has it not assisted the Palestinians in protecting or restoring their inalienable rights over decades? Why is their situation so brutally upside-down almost a century after ...
When most people think of Sweden, they think of IKEA furniture, depressing murder mysteries and a foreign policy of strict neutrality.Yet 400 years ago, Sweden was a major military power. Indeed, it was even an empire, a fact that must make today's Swedish leftists cringe.Under young King Gustavus Adolphus, a brilliant and innovative military commander, Sweden in the early 1600s became a sort of Nordic Israel (which must also make Swedish leftists cringe). Sweden was a poor, thinly populated nation that couldn't match the resources of larger rivals such as France and Russia.So, Gustavus Adolphus had to devise a more flexible, mobile ...
The ongoing crisis in Ukraine and unseemly role of Poland in its instigation and development makes us take another look at the historical context of the Polish-Ukrainian relations. We will focus on dramatic repressions of the Ukrainian minorities in Eastern Poland in 1921-1939 at the territories annexed by Jozef Piłsudski’s government from the Soviet Russia according to Peace of Riga 1921, which eventually triggered ultra-Nationalist Ukrainian terror against the Poles during the WWII (culminating in massacres in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943-1944).Poland, which used to be a part of the Russian Empire, emerged at the European political map in November ...
“I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face.”– U.S. General Stanley A. McCrystal in his inaugural speech as ISAF Commander in June 2009.The dust had hardly settled on Russian airstrikes on ISIS positions in Syria before Western media reports claimed that ‘civilians’ had been killed “including women and children”.Leaving aside the dubious nature of these allegations – the first of which was made before Russian airstrikes had even begun, according to Putin – Western propaganda outlets and the politicians they serve are in no position to point the finger at Russia ...
Politicians will be heartily applauded for saluting American’s soldiers today. But if citizens had better memories, elected officials would instead be fleeing tar and feathers. Politicians have a long record of betraying the veterans they valorize.Veterans Day 2018 has been dominated by the confab of political leaders in Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. American media coverage fixated on President Trump’s cancellation of one of his two visits to U.S. military cemeteries. In his speech yesterday at a U.S. military cemetery in France, Trump declared that it is “our duty … ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
Claiming that Macedonians voluntarily chose to rename our country into “North Macedonia” and ethnicity into “North Macedonians” is like saying that Indigenous groups choose to be called “Redskins”. And when Western media attack Macedonians for denouncing the forced name change, it would be akin to them attacking Indigenous groups for denouncing anti-Indigenous terms.Welcome to The Surreal World: Macedonia.Yes, Macedonians get attacked for denouncing the derogatory terms used against us. Why? Because the United States says so. And they fund media and so-called “think tanks” to do the same. These same groups accuse Macedonians of the exact tactics that are being ...
The Supreme Court’s acceptance of a case about the allocation of voting districts will have consequences far beyond the millions of U.S. taxpayers its ruling may deprive of representation. A decision that only counts voters, rather than all persons, will undermine the very foundation of the Republic.The American Revolution was fought over “taxation without representation,” and those who wrote the Constitution carefully apportioned taxation and representation among the states “according to their respective Numbers . . . of free Persons . . . and . . . three-fifths of all other Persons.” The authors clearly equated We, the People with ...
The magazine is covering the research gaps uncovered by global Western hoax mainstream media platforms and academic teaching & research institutions.
This is an alternative information & academic research digest platform with the purpose to offer an alternative “another side of the truth”.
The magazine is independent, private, and free of any influence by any institution, organization, government, or pressure group. URL: www.global-politics.eu
