Expansionism

About: Expansionism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 979 publications have been published within this topic receiving 11169 citations.

Borderland Subversions: Anti-imperial Energies in The Awntyrs off Arthure and Golagros and Gawane

Abstract: Before a crowd of eager Arthurian spectators assembled near Carlisle, Galeron, introduced earlier as the "grettest" (greatest) of Galloway, kneels, signaling his submission to the stand-in for the imperial war machine to which he will soon swear allegiance.1 It is thus through dispossession and repossession that The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelayne stages the centrality of land to power plays in the Anglo-Scottish marches. The poem does not present an "English" Gawain who defeats a "Scottish" Galeron, winning yet another soldier for the armies of a British empire, but rather simultaneously invites and forecloses readings of the poem's territorial conflicts as essentially national or ethnic. In portraying the practice of side switching, key to survival on the militarized Anglo-Scottish border, the Awntyrs joins with a text that, though of a more northerly provenance, also defies simple national classification and that is also grounded in the brutal and fluid world of border warfare, where profit regularly trumped patriotism in determining to which power player marcher lords and their retainers gravitated. The Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane, though ostensibly of "Scottish" provenance, joins the Awntyrs in speaking from a marcher perspective of the impact of the raids and invasions that wracked the Anglo-Scottish borderlands.2 By bracketing our sense of the "national" origins of these poems, we can trace the manner in which they each manage critiques of imperialist expansionism. These critiques register regional reactions to processes of nation formation sweeping away the borderlands society that had fed off the almost continuous armed conflict of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Even as these texts reveal a nostalgia for the bravado and localism of war-torn times, they also speak to the devastation and misery produced by an economic world built upon violence. While the Awntyrs, set near the marcher stronghold of Carlisle, ultimately situates the collapse of the Arthurian empire at the very edge of its expanding frontier, Golagros offers

Is United States Foreign Policy "Imperialist" or "Imperial"?

Abstract: For most of the postwar period the dominant scholarly consensus on the United States role in international politics closely paralleled the image that policy makers themselves held: the United States was a defensive, status-quo power seeking to contain the revolutionary or simply imperialist expansionism of Soviet-led communism. The dominant critique of United States foreign policy operated well within this framework of assumptions; one common argument was that the United States had a tendency to overreach itself, to undertake commitments that excessively taxed its military and economic capabilities. The focus was on the limits of American power; critics never tired of quoting Sir Denis Brogan on "the illusions of American omnipotence."

The Bordering of America: Colonialism and Citizenship in the Philippines and Puerto Rico

Abstract: The ascendancy of the United States as a global empire produced a crisis in the meaning of American nationhood, prompting imperial statesmen to recalibrate the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion. The annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898 gave rise to a complex and often volatile system of border-making. Overseas expansion changed the territorial nature of the state, as both the Philippines and Puerto Rico were declared "unincorporated territories" defined as neither fully domestic nor completely foreign. Territorial statecrafttreated the Philippines and Puerto Rico similarly. However, statecrafttowards individuals (as opposed to territories) differentiated the two populations as Puerto Ricans were declared U.S. citizens in 1917 but Filipinos were not. This essay explores how U.S. policies toward these territories and populations became increasingly complex and contradictory as the state tried to manage the national polity in the age of imperial expansion. [Key words: colonialism, citizenship, borders, Puerto Rico, Philippines, empire]the united states' bid for a transoceanic empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had a profound impact on the character of american statecraft. The extension of U.S. sovereignty beyond the nation's continental borders gave rise to contentious debates about the costs and consequences of America's imperial ascent. In the aftermath of the Spanish American War in 1898, the U.S. claimed title to most of Spain's insular colonies, including Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cuba, and Guam.1 Cuba was granted nominal independence in 1902, allowing American policymakers to focus their attention on the other colonial properties. Although the U.S. had a long history of domestic territorial conquest, the seizure of overseas possessions raised a new set of questions about the boundary lines of the American polity. Precedent established with regard to previous episodes of territorial acquisition (Adams-Onis Treaty [obtaining Florida], Louisiana Purchase Treaty, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) had always included provisions granting U.S. citizenship to the inhabitants of annexed lands.2 In addition, federal law as codified in the Revised Statutes of the United States established that all of the rights and protections guaranteed by the U.S. constitution were applicable to territories acquired by the U.S.3The prospect of collectively naturalizing the native residents of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, however, gave many U.S. lawmakers pause, insofar as the people who inhabited these territories were of suspect racial fitness. Expansion towards the new trans-oceanic territories also meant a transition from the hitherto dominant model of settler colonialism, in which territories became states after Anglo settlers became a majority and acquired property and power. This is not to say that "race" did not play a role in continental expansion. The pattern of incorporation could vary considerably depending on the speed of colonization and the size of the resident, non-Anglo population, the evident contrasting examples being California, which became a state in 1849 after the Anglo population that arrived with the Gold Rush overwhelmed the local population, and New Mexico, which had a much larger Mexican population and only became a state in 1912, after a protracted struggles over land titles and political power.4 Settlers would play a very marginal role in insular colonization after 1898.American lawmakers were forced to reconcile two seemingly countervailing political impulses that prevailed in the U.S. in the aftermath of the War of 1898. The first was the urge to enlarge the territorial jurisdiction of U.S. in an effort to bolster America's geopolitical position vis-a-vis rival imperial rivals, especially in the Caribbean Basin and Asia. By doing so, expansionists hoped to secure transoceanic trade routes and access to international markets for American commercial interests. …

Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion: A Brief History with Documents

Abstract: PARTI: INTRODUCTION: THE 'FREE DEVELOPMENT' OF A NORTH AMERICAN EMPIRE The Ideological Origins of Manifest Destiny Territorial Expansion in the Early Republic Factors driving Early Expansionism Where do Indian People fit into the Narrative of Manifest Destiny? Social Transformations and the Birth of Aggressive Expansionism Opposing Voices Andrew Jackson and the March to the Southwest The Overland Trail Annexation and War with Mexico Taking Matters into Their Own Hands: Filibustering Sectionalism checks Expansionism After the Civil War: Manifest Destiny Re-evaluated and Redeemed PARTII: THE DOCUMENTS