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.
When great powers fade, as they inevitably must, it’s normally for one of two reasons. Some powers exhaust themselves through overreach abroad, underinvestment at home, or a mixture of the two. This was the case for the Soviet Union. Other powers lose their privileged position with the emergence of new, stronger powers. This describes what happened with France and Great Britain in the case of Germany’s emergence after World War I and, more benignly, with the European powers and the rise of the United States during and after World War II.To some extent America is facing a version of this—amid ...
The book of evidence about ethnic cleansing and policy of genocide committed by the neo-Nazi Ustashi government in Croatia against its own citizens of the Serb nationality in August 1995. That was a third genocide against the Serbs committed by the Croats in the 20th century: 1. during the WWI; 2. during the WWII; 3. in the 1990s. Today, Croatia is almost totally ethnically cleanced from all non-Croats like Kosovo and Albania from all non-Albanians. During the WWII, around 700.000 Serbs were brutally killed by the Croats and Bosnian Muslims on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia.Read our ...
Former US President Jimmy Carter, in an interview with radio station “Voice of America”, said that the reunification of Russia and the Crimea was an inevitable event.Carter also says he is pleased with Russia’s commitment to implement the Minsk agreement. He added that the Elders were also pleased with Russia’s allegiance to the Minsk agreement. “There’s not any doubt in our mind that the Russians genuinely want to see all the aspects of that concluded. I think that’s the only ballgame in town,” said Carter, “really as far as resolving the problems with Ukraine, is to get the Minsk agreement ...
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban upped the ante in his political fight against George Soros, the mega-rich financier and philanthropist who reportedly just ploughed $18 billion into his “Open Society” foundation, the controversial NGO that is seldom shy about manipulating domestic policy in Western capitals.Last week, Orban commented in an interview with Kossuth Radio that he has instructed his intelligence agencies to expose Soros-backed initiatives, which include opening up EU borders to mass migration, and the Hungarian nationals who support them both in Budapest and in Brussels.“By employing the national security services, the Soros network that strives to influence European ...
On January 20, the Turkish military began an invasion of the Kurdish-controlled Afrin region in northern Syria. Turkey’s government has declared that its operation aims “to preserve Syria’s territorial integrity,” remove “terrorist elements,” and protect civilians.The Independent, however, published the first Western media report from Afrin, and Robert Fisk reports that the list of dead includes infants. “One-year old Wael al-Hussein, a refugee…was killed on 21 January, six-year old Moussab al-Hussein from Idlib (clearly from another refugee family) on the same day,” he writes.Many journalists in Turkey, in the meanwhile, are rubbing their hands. Necati Doğru, a columnist with one ...
If the danger of the anti-Putin, anti-Russian disinformation propaganda campaign out of the Pentagon and promoted by the US corporate media weren’t so serious, the effort itself might be laughable. I did laugh.In fact, listening last night to a discussion by an NPR host with a government spokesperson about the latest propaganda effort to blame the downing of a Malaysian jumbo jet over Ukraine on July 17, 2014 on Russia. After hearing the government official, whose name I didn’t catch, say that Dutch prosecutors had found “solid evidence” that it was a “Russian-made” BUK antiaircraft missile launched from “pro-Russian” rebel ...
My work documenting how the law was lost began about a quarter of a century ago. A close friend and distinguished attorney, Dean Booth, first brought to my attention the erosion of the legal principles on which rests the rule of law in the United States. My columns on the subject got the attention of an educational institution that invited me to give a lecture on the subject. Subsequently, I was invited to give a lecture on “How The Law Was Lost” at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City.The work coalesced into a book, The Tyranny Of ...
“What Russia is sponsoring and doing [in Syria] is not counter-terrorism it is barbarism”Samantha Power, US Representative to the United NationsThe US representative to the United Nations, Ambassador ‘Ranting Sam’ Samantha Power, accused the Russian and Syrian governments of ‘barbarism’, claiming Moscow or Damascus had attacked an unarmed United Nations humanitarian convoy delivering aid to civilians in Aleppo. No evidence was presented. Rants and threats do not require facts or proof; they only require vehement emotional ejaculations and compliant mass propaganda organs.‘Barbarians’, to be clear, evoke images of leaders and groups, which abjure all civilized norms and laws. They only ...
The U.S. Government certainly leads the world in invasions and coups.In recent years, it has invaded and occupied — either by military assault or by coup, but in either case followed by installing (or trying to install) a new regime there — a number of countries, especially Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen. U.S. propaganda says that its invasions and military occupations (and it denies its coups) are to benefit the people in the invaded and militarily occupied countries, or to bring them ‘democracy’, and are not done merely to benefit the people who control the U.S. Government (which itself is not a ...
South-East Europe, and especially the Balkan Peninsula as the main part of it, have traditionally been the object of numerous geopolitical, geostrategic, and publicist analyses, as well as the subject of debates among the Balkan, European, and global experts in international relations. The new Iron Curtain or the Cold War 2.0 between western and eastern Europe was not the end of the Balkan’s importance for the US administration and NATO as well. At present, along with the Serbian and Macedonian national questions, the most controversial issue is the Albanian national question or, more precisely, the question of the Kosovo knot.[1] ...
“Fool me once, shame on you; but fool me twice, shame on me.”Ancient proverb, (sometimes attributed to an Italian, Russian or Chinese proverb) “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Ernst F. Schumacher (1911-1977) (in ‘Small is Beautiful’, an essay, in The Radical Humanist, Aug. 1973, p. 22). “The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it’s necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong ...
In Kukavica village near Rogatica (nowadays Bosnia and Herzegovina), today was marked 27 years since crimes against Serbian civilians committed by Bosnian Muslims, members of the so-called Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina on August 27, 1992.In an attack on a column of Serbian civilians, involving about 1,000 elderly people, women and children on tractors and passenger vehicles, Bosnian Muslim extremists killed 26 and injured 80 Serbs.Rogatica Mayor Milorad Jagodic called this a monstrous crime as among the victims are a child of 11 and 82 years old man.“This was a column of innocent people who were looking for refuge and ...
March 24 [2020] will mark the 21st anniversary of NATO’s occupation of Serbia’s Kosovo province, and so we reaffirm: Kosovo is Serbia. Serbia does not and will not ever recognize Kosovo’s claims of sovereignty. We call on NATO to end its occupation of Kosovo.NATO’s occupation of Kosovo and its increasing militarization of the province is a threat to the world’s common security. Albanian occupation authorities continue their assault on human rights and fundamental freedoms, brutally silencing critics in civil society and the media, and curtailing religious freedom. Hundreds of individuals from Kosovo, including members of the Serb community, have been ...
The reason Hillary Clinton was crushed in the electoral college during this election is because she lost Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania . The reason behind the unprecedented loss can be summed up in two sentences. We will not forget. We will not forgive.These three states are home to the Serbian-American community. For most of them, their traditionally Democratic ticket vote turning Republican was a clear repudiation of Hillary Clinton's role in the Balkan genocide."An American Serb generally doesn't vote FOR anyone, but AGAINST a Biden, a Clinton, a McCain, against whoever Madeleine Albright supports, against whoever bombed Serbia, recognized Kosovo... Wait, was Dubya a ...
For decades former Nazis and German war criminals served at the highest echelons of NATO.Most of them were highly decorated Nazis, who later served in top positions in the Western German army, and were later promoted to serve as Commander and Chief of all NATO forces in Europe.This was not a unique event, but a very common phenomenon in post-WW2 Western Europe and especially in Western Germany.Nazi war criminals and people who supported and helped Hitler to carry out the holocaust and other war crimes, genocides, and crimes against Humanity were almost never put on trial for their crimes against ...
On Mar. 24, US president Barack Obama announced that all 9,800 US troops currently stationed in Afghanistan will remain until the end of 2015. This generated a fair amount of criticism: it was, after all, Obama’s promise that the last American troop would leave the country in 2014.How have Obama’s plans for pulling out of Afghanistan fared so far?Those expecting the US to leave Afghanistan, however, should take a minute to consider this: the US still hasn’t left Germany. In fact, there are quite a few places the US hasn’t left, and while certainly most of them don’t pose a threat to American soldiers, ...
Could global warming pose the greatest threat to the future of life on the planet? Quite possibly, if we believe the international (and scientific) consensus, despite a widening stratum of debunkers, deniers, and skeptics. What about the prospects of thermonuclear war between the United States and Russia, two countries armed to the max and seemingly moving toward the brink of military conflict? Where does that rate? If the question is asked of most any Beltway denizen, the response might be something along lines of “sounds frightening, but right now we have other priorities, and we can’t lose sight of the ...
The EU and NATO are evil institutions. These two institutions are mechanisms created by Washington in order to destroy the sovereignty of European peoples. These two institutions give Washington control over the Western world and serve both as cover and enabler of Washington’s aggression. Without the EU and NATO, Washington could not force Europe and the UK into conflict with Russia, and Washington could not have destroyed seven Muslim countries in 15 years without being isolated as a hated war criminal government, no member of whom could have travelled abroad without being arrested and put on trial.Clearly, the presstitute media ...
While the typical narrative of American history positions the United States as a supporter of democracy and opponent of fascism which helped to defeat the Nazis, key figures in Washington also supported dangerous dictators in Italy and Germany in their early days of power.Noam Chomsky, the renowned political philosopher, historian and scholar, examined the flip side of U.S. opposition to dictatorship in a conversation with Zain Raza, a senior editor at the independent media outlet acTVism Munich. An excerpt from the conversation was published Sept. 30 as part of acTVism Munich’s “Reexamining History” series.Speaking to Raza about Italian dictator Benito ...
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"]Save
