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.
This weekend 75 years ago, the German city of Dresden was razed to the ground by British and American aerial bombardment. At least 25,000 mainly civilians were destroyed in raid after raid by over 1,200 heavy bombers, indiscriminately dropping high explosives and incendiaries. It took seven years just to clear the rubble.The destruction of Dresden, a world-famous cultural center of Baroque majesty, has been long dogged by controversy. Official British and American military accounts claim it was necessary to hasten the collapse of the Third Reich; with a reasoning that resonates with US claims for dropping the atomic bombs on ...
I graduated from the exact same PHD Program at Harvard that produced Kissinger and Brzezinski before me. They gave me Kissinger’s old office at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. I also went through the exact same Soviet/Russian Studies Program at Harvard that produced Brzezinski before me, and passed my PHD Oral/General Examinations in Soviet Politics and Russian History under Adam Ulam and Ned Keenan, respectively. R.I.P. Obama was behind me at Harvard Law School.Brzezinski has been Obama’s mentor and foreign policy guru since Obama’s student days at Columbia. Zbig ran Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign on foreign affairs and defense, and ...
The world has just honored yet another Armistice Day – Remembrance Day – Veterans Day for all those who lost their lives in armed defense of their nation’s right to exist and remain a free people. Nation’s like the United States, Canada and Israel pay constant tribute to those key battles and wars that once determined their continued existence and survival. But what of nation’s like Palestine reduced to mere fragments of what they once were, their once prosperous, happy villages, towns and cities filled with happy children, families and the commerce of a viable way of life, now turned ...
I am a Lithuanian, but I leave abroad and I am not going back. At least now, at least until the Government does not pay attention to its people. According to some authoritative research institutes, during 2017 Lithuania population is again projected to decrease (by 45 677 people!) and reach 2 758 290 in the beginning of 2018. (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/lithuania-population/). As of 1 January 2017, the population of Lithuania was estimated to be 2 803 967 people. This is a decrease of 1.63 % (46 433 people) compared to population of 2 850 400 the year before. In other words, our ...
A massive destruction of the Ottoman (Orthodox Christian) Armenian population in 1915−1916 is probably the greatest atrocity committed during the WWI and for sure a first 20th century case of the genocide as up to 1.500.000 ethnic Armenians were executed by the Ottoman authorities and their collaborators (the Kurds). As a consequence, the survivors are scattered across the globe. Today it is already a century old event, but the issue of the 1915−1916 Armenian Genocide is undoubtedly still alive and divisive political issue firstly between the Armenians and the Turks[1] but also and among the western “liberal democracies” on the ...
The mainstream media (MSM) has declared war on alternative media websites labeling them “Fake News” ever since Hillary Clinton lost the election to Donald Trump. The New York Times editorial board expressed their frustration in an article calling for the censorship of alternative and social media Facebook and the Digital Virus Called Fake News’ which claimed both social media platforms (Facebook and Google) has not been aggressive enough in blocking fake news sites:Most of the fake news stories are produced by scammers looking to make a quick buck. The vast majority of them take far-right positions. But a big part ...
It is hardly a coincidence that the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s On the Natural Variety of Mankind were all published within a year of one another, for each supports a necessary aspect of a larger, integrated project. Not only was the rationale for seizing political power (provided by the Declaration) supported by Smith’s popular text (which justified rule by the wealthy business class). Because this wealth and power was contingent on slavery, and territories seized by conquest, Blumenbach’s theory that the “Caucasian race” (a designation he coined, by the way) was the supreme race was ...
Both before and after Crimea left Ukraine and joined Russia in a public referendum on 16 March 2014, the Gallup Organization polled Crimeans on behalf of the U.S. Government, and found them to be extremely pro-Russian and anti-American, and also anti-Ukrainian. (Neither poll was subsequently publicized, because the results of each were the opposite of what the sponsor had wished.) Both polls were done on behalf of the U.S. Government, in order to find Crimeans’ attitudes toward the United States and toward Russia, and also toward Ukraine, not only before but also after the planned U.S. coup in Ukraine, which occurred ...
Note: This article was original published by GR in May 2003“It is easy. All you have to do is tell the people they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” - Hermann GoeringGenocide used to be a crime without a name. Although the most heinous of all crimes, the concept was not introduced into international language until after World War 2. Until then, military invasion and destruction of other peoples and cultures masqueraded under such slogans as progress and spreading civilisation.I was shocked many years ago when I heard Noam ...
One way to understand the effect of 9/11, in most general terms, is to see that it allowed the agenda developed in the 1990s by neoconservatives—-often called simply “neocons”—to be implemented. There is agreement on this point across the political spectrum. From the right, for example, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke say that 9/11 allowed the “preexisting ideological agenda” of the neoconservatives to be “taken off the shelf . . . and relabeled as the response to terror.”1 Stephen Sniegoski, writing from the left, says that “it was only the traumatic effects of the 9/11 terrorism that enabled the agenda ...
Big Brother in the Aisles of HyVeeRepeat a lie often enough, the conventional Nazi propaganda wisdom ran, and it will become an accepted truth.This last Veterans Day weekend, I couldn’t watch a sporting event, listen to a car radio, or even go shopping at the local grocery store without hearing a Great American Lie repeated over and over.Sports announcers, radio talk-show hosts, commercials, and even a recorded voice blasted into the aisles of the HyVeee supermarket told me again and again that I owed my great American “freedom” to veterans and current enlistees of the U.S. military – in other ...
Historical backgroundAfter the failure of the interwar League of Nations to prevent international crises and military conflicts of the 1930s which finally culminated in the next global war, the major Allied states (the USA, the USA, the UK, and China) agreed in Moscow in October 1943 to create a new, more functional, and improved international peace-keeping organization after the war under a new name of the United Nations Organization (the UNO). In other words, the UNO has evolved from a wining coalition of countries fighting against European Nazism and fascism in WWII. Following further negotiations at Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta, ...
This is definitely an unusual book, as heralded by its title and three subtitles, whose lengthy wording evokes that of several learned tomes of the 18th and early 19thcentury.Its author is a well-known personality in Switzerland. Guy Mettan is a prominent journalist, formerly editor-in-chief of Tribune de Genève; he once presided over the Great Council, the Geneva parliament, of which he is still a representative, elected on the Christian Democrat Party list; he heads the Swiss Press Club and has written several books on Switzerland and international Geneva.As he explains in his foreword, his interest for Russia came by happenstance: ...
The title page of Rūta Vanagaitė’s best-known book contains two pictures of young men. “This one is a Jew,” she said, pointing at the picture on the left. “He was a bicycle-racing champion. Good enough to represent Lithuania in international competitions, but not good enough to live.” He was executed during the Holocaust. The man in the picture on the right was a Lithuanian executioner. “They are both us,” Vanagaitė explained. “But Lithuanians don’t like to think of them as ‘us,’ because one is a Jew and the other is a killer.” Her book is called “Us.” (The title has ...
A scholar shares the true story of two men who stood up and spoke out against the murder of American Indians, and how they are celebrated today. Native American tribal members pay their respects at the headstone of Union Officer, Capt. Silas Soule, at the Riverside Cemetery Dec. 03, 2014 in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre.Every Thanksgiving weekend for the past 17 years, Arapaho and Cheyenne youth lead a 180-mile relay from the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site to Denver.The annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run opens at the site of the Sand ...
The Six Day War of June 1967, a series of battles fought by the armed forces of the state of Israel against a combination of Arab armies, is one of manifold significance. From a military standpoint, it presented a model strategy of how to prosecute and win a war waged on several fronts.The stunning victory also created a sense of euphoria among communities in the Jewish Diaspora: Among American Jews, a segment of Jewry David Ben Gurion viewed with disdain because of their failure to migrate en masse to Israel, a new sense of commitment in both emotional and financial ...
“Neocons” believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since ...
In regard to international relations (IR), power is understood as the ability of state or other political actors to impose its own control or influence over other state(s) or other political actors, or at least to influence the outcome of events on the local, regional or global level. Power politics as a phenomena has two dimensions: internal and external. The internal dimension is applied in the inner policy of the state and the external in the foreign affairs or outside of the home politics. The powerfulness of a state depends on its real independence or sovereignty from outside influence on ...
I travel frequently to the countries which once made up the now defunct Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, satisfying a passion of mine that stems back to my childhood days. For me, the Balkans’ history, its people and its cultures are both enigmatic and magnetic, as they have been, too, for countless others, of many nationalities, over centuries gone by. Accounting for the enchantment of the Balkans, its captivating allure, is a challenge to put into writing. Because no words can truly embellish what is one of the most absorbing parts of the world. To understand and feel what it is ...
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"]
