Expansionism

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

The making of the Gibraltar-Spain border: cholera, contraband, and spatial reordering, 1850–1873

Abstract: The Anglo-Spanish controversy over Gibraltar has generated a good deal of research in international law and diplomatic history, but little insight into the historical dynamic that forged the British territory's permanent de facto sovereign border with Spain during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The transformation of a loosely defined neutral zone into a clearly marked line had little to do with statecraft or expansionism, as typically assumed, but rather was a local response to a series of external challenges that increasingly militated for some agreement among local authorities on a precise demarcation. These included broad administrative and fiscal reforms on the part of the British Empire and Spain's liberal governing coalition, the rise of revolutionary Republicanism in Spain, a dramatic uptick in human mobility and migration in the Mediterranean, and the third cholera pandemic.

Are We Chimerical in this Opinion? Visions of a Pacific Railroad and Westward Expansion before 1845

Abstract: Although he deserves credit for promoting a transcontinental railroad as early as 1845, Asa Whitney may better represent the culmination of a discourse that had begun over twenty years earlier. Visions of a Pacific railroad originated in the 1820s and evolved into a widely debated issue by the 1830s. From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, early promoters not only envisioned railroads to Oregon but also into the Mexican provinces of California and Sonora——suggesting that such visions represented an important element of U.S. expansionism. Relying on romantically charged language, advocates ignored geographical and political realities and wedded their vision with a faith in railroad technology that was yet in its infancy. Wishing to lay claim to the perceived riches of the Asian trade, advocates described the Pacific railroad as a commercial venture, preceding actual settlement. Northerners generally promoted routes to Oregon, while the South sought California and Sonora as destinations, but these contending visions should not be confused with the sectionalism that characterized the debates over the railroad during the 1850s. Instead, the differences present in the discourse of the 1830s largely reflect civic boosterism. While scholars have noted these earlier visionaries, this article analyzes their ideas and places them in the context of U.S. expansion to the Pacific.

Border Crossings in the Mexican American War

Abstract: Rosemary King [*] One seldom opens up a newspaper today without noticing the prevalence of violence erupting in or around international borders, as in the case of the Balkans, central Africa, and the former republics of the Soviet Union. Even in the Americas, the United States-Mexico border has become increasingly militarized. An investigation into the origins of the border is useful in understanding the current conflicts between multiple communities in the United States-Mexico borderlands as we approach the twenty-first century. This paper explores the origin of the border and its manifestations through an application of Benedict Anderson's theory of a nation, set forth in Imagined Communities, to various first-hand accounts of the Mexican American War (1846-48) written by U.S. and Mexican citizens. The following three snapshots in time offer a useful case study for such an analysis: General Scott's landing at Vera Cruz, the capture of the San Patricios, and the American occupation of Mexico City. Recognizing the patterns of how communities created the border approximately 150 years ago from the crucible of the Mexican American War may improve our understanding of the contentious United States-Mexico border today: if we recognize how borders are constructed, perhaps we may facilitate better our own crossings. The War in Context: Manifest Destiny In the nineteenth century, newly independent nations throughout the Americas had problems populating isolated regions located in outlying border zones. Mexico was no exception. Following the war of independence with Spain in the 1820s, Mexico had difficulty settling its northern provinces of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Texas (Skidmore, 228). In an effort to populate the region, the Mexican government continued a policy initiated by Spain that allowed Americans to settle in the region (Martfnez, 11; Eisenhower, 196). The fledgling nation's liberal policy backfired when Texas declared its independence from Mexico, and the United States annexed the state in 1845 (Skidmore, 228). The Mexican government viewed the annexation as a hostile act and severed relations with the United States for two reasons (McAfee, 1). [1] First, Mexican politicians felt U.S. settlers in Texas had taken advantage of Mexican good will efforts allowing them to homestead in the area. Second, Mexicans feared the United S tates would make further land claims on Mexican territory. These fears were exacerbated by the fact that the western frontier of Texas was not clearly delineated. According to Mexican historian Enrique Krauze, "at the start of its independence, [Mexico] was not even close to having a reliable map of its territories and borders" (131). The disputed land between the United States and Mexico ultimately became the site of conflict that sparked the war (Skidmore, 229; Martinez, 12). During this period, American expansionists interested in laying claim to Mexican territory became increasingly vocal and aggressive. Secretary of State James Buchanan, for instance, recommended U.S. territorial goals be pursued through a policy of "firmness and action accompanied by moderation of language" toward Mexico such that the "[p]ower and true greatness [that] belong to our country ought never waste themselves in words towards a feeble and distracted sister republic" (McAfee, 2-3). Expansionists used the ideology of Manifest Destiny to back claims on Mexican territory, arguing that the United States had a moral duty to spread westward to the Pacific Ocean (Eisenhower, 196). This moral duty took many forms, depending on the particular biases and motives of the source. For example, some argued Americans should share their "superior [political] institutions with those less favored;" some claimed the Mexican people were inferior and needed paternal guidance; others argued "Providence" called on the Unite d States to expand as a nation; finally, still others believed the United States had a duty to "civilize" the wild Mexican frontier (Eisenhower, 198). …

The Dojinkai and the Promotion of Japanese Modernity in China, 1902-1937

Abstract: (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Japan's relations with the world were in transition at the turn of the twentieth century. Having in quick succession experienced the high of victory in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the shame of the Triple Intervention, in which Tokyo bowed to foreign pressure to restore Chinese territory, Japan then watched as Western powers divided China into spheres of influence in the Far Eastern Crisis of 1897-98. The Boxer Rebellion in 1900, however, allowed the Japanese an opportunity to enhance their position in the eyes of West when Japanese soldiers joined their Western counterparts in breaking the anti-foreign Boxers' siege in north China. After acquitting themselves well against the Boxers, Japan's status climbed even further with an alliance with Britain in 1902 and a victory over Russia in 1905. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century Japan had successfully joined the ranks of the Western powers.In conjunction with this rise in Japan's international status was the evolving framework of Japanese Pan-Asianism. Moving away from calls for a union or alliance based on equality with their Asian neighbors, Japanese Pan-Asianists, in general, came to regard other Asian nations in the same light as the Western imperialists: as uncivilized countries that needed to be helped along the path to modernity. Unlike the Western imperialists, however, many Japanese believed that Japan, having recently modernized themselves and sharing historical cultural heritage with China, could mediate China's development as a modern nation. Rather than viewing China as an equal partner in their effort to stop Western encroachment, Japanese Pan-Asianists began advocating that Japan take the lead in saving China from its backwardness.Despite professing this goal, Japanese Pan-Asianists often struggled to implement programs that offered tangible benefits to China's modernization. However, there was at least one Pan-Asianist organization that took an active and, in some instances, a beneficial role in aiding China: the Dojinkai ... (Association for Universal Benevolence). Founded in 1902, this association supported the advancement of medicine and medical science in China by establishing medical schools, clinics, and hospitals, as well as by exporting Japanese medical expertise and technology to the continent. Its members went beyond simple platitudes of a shared cultural heritage to convey to the Chinese a non-Western alternative path to reaching modernity, one which, while founded on Western scientific principles, was translated in a more accessible Asian cultural paradigm by the Japanese. The Dojinkai, in effect, attempted to harness ideological power of two competing notions, the societal benefits of a future looking modernity based on advanced medicine and science and a shared cultural heritage between China and Japan rooted in the past, to achieve its Pan-Asianist goal of a collectively stronger East Asia.Until the establishment of the Dojinkai, the development of Western medicine in China had been frequently linked to Christian missionaries from the West. The Japanese, through the Dojinkai, provided the Chinese with a secular approach to medicine that advanced modernization without, they believed, threatening Chinese cultural heritage. In this way, the Dojinkai represents a concrete effort by Japanese Pan-Asianists at the turn of the century to effect change in China. Scholars have often maligned the Dojinkai, and Pan-Asianism in general, as an agent of Japanese imperialism owing to its activities on behalf of the Japanese army in China after the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. This article argues, however, that the Pan-Asianism that inspired the Dojinkai at the turn of the century was more complicated and nuanced than that which would later justify Japanese expansion and lead to the coopting of the Dojinkai itself as an imperial agent. In examining the organization's earlier activities prior to the 1930s, it becomes clear that the Dojinkai was not so much an agent of Japan's expansionism but a conduit for the promotion of the Japanese model of modernization in the making. …

Shopping Ideologies for Independent India? Taraknath Das’s engagement with Italian Fascism and German National Socialism

Abstract: While looking at the world’s politics and ideologies for a vision of the future nation state, India’s anti-British freedom activists and intellectuals remained deeply ambivalent about drawing lessons from Europe’s experience of Fascism and National Socialism. Indian nationalists cautiously admired elements of National Socialist and Fascist ideology and expressed their distress with imperialist expansionism, racism, and anti-Semitism that accompanied the two regimes. This article draws on the exemplary “global biography” of one such Indian internationalist thinker, Taraknath Das, to investigate interwar Indian preoccupation with Fascism and National Socialism in articulating the discursive ground of Indian nationalism.