Why Great Powers Expand in Their Own Neighborhood: Explaining the Territorial Expansion of the United States 1819–1848

Abstract

This article attempts to identify the causes of intraregional great power expansion. Using the state-to-nation balance theory we argue that, in many cases, such great power expansion can be explained as being the result of the incongruence within a given region between the nationalist aspirations and identities of the various peoples inhabiting it and the region's division into territorial states. The existence of the external type of such incongruence within a great power (that is, a pan-nationalist ideology) turns it into a revisionist state eager to expand, using all means available, in order to “resolve” this incongruence. In addition, this incongruence also creates various nationalistic trans-border groups (like terrorists, private military expeditions/filibusters, settlers, etc.). Often these groups try, through various independent efforts (usually in nearby weak states), to achieve these revisionist goals as well, thus complementing and aiding the revisionist great power's own efforts. After demonstrating the weaknesses in other existing explanations, this argument is illustrated in the case of the territorial expansion by the United States in the Southwest at the expense of Mexico in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

Keywords:

• Great Power expansion
• Mexican-American war
• nationalism
• state-to-nation balance
• Texas

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Studies Association meeting February 17–20, 2010, New Orleans. We would like to thank the participants on our panel as well as the three anonymous reviewers for International Interactions for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹For the possibility that such a rise of new great powers will lead to a change of many existing norms and institutions, see Zakaria (2008:44–45, 114–115). For cases where such GP territorial expansion is mentioned as a not inconceivable possibility, see Pirchner (2003) and Tucker (2005).

²This argument draws on Miller (2007), but here we extend it to a new puzzle applied on a new test case and empirical data which are moreover in a region left uncovered by the earlier work.

³While this case includes three separate events, these events are seen by many diplomatic historians as being different parts of one interconnected process. As a result, there is a tendency by many historians to study all of the three (and this thirty-year era) together. See, for example, Pletcher (1973), Rives (1969[1913]), Winders (2002).

⁴For the methodology of hard cases see Eckstein (1975).

⁵ Singer and Small (1982), for example, don't define the United States as a great power until 1898. For the expectations as to small state behavior see, for example, Handel (1990:3–4), Snyder (1991:62, 317–318).

⁶For other scholars who have dealt recently with the United States or its policies in this era from other aspects (like the reactions of other great powers) see, for example, C. Elman (2004) and P. Thompson (2007).

⁷C. Elman (2004:565), Layne (2002). For more offensive realist writings see Gilpin (1981), Labs (1997), Schweller (1998), and Wohlforth (1999).

⁸ Miller (2007:16–18, 214–215). While, for example, a situation where the would be expansionist state has no reason to worry of the reaction of a stronger GP/GP coalition/hegemon opposed to its regional expansion would permit such an expansion, such a permissive international environment would not be its underlying cause. In other words, in an international/regional environment permissive of such attempts but without the S/N factors presented here, an attempt at intraregional territorial expansion is much less likely to occur if at all.

⁹On the definition of state and nation, see Gellner (1983:3–7), Connor (1994:90–117), A. Smith (2000:3), and especially Barrington (1997:712–716), who emphasizes “the belief in the right to territorial self-determination for the group” as a central part of the definition of a “nation” which is crucial for distinguishing nations from other collectivities. While many groups hold common myths, values, and symbols (including ethnic groups), nations are unified by a sense of purpose: controlling the territory that the members of the group believe to be theirs. As Gellner (1983:1) suggests, “nationalism” is “a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent.” Thus, nationalism is the active pursuit of control by a national group over the territory which it defines as its homeland. As a result, every nationalist movement involves the setting of territorial boundaries (Barrington 1997:714), and national conflicts must involve disputes over territory to be truly “national.”

¹⁰Accordingly, the case of Japanese territorial expansion in the 1930s (and beforehand) is an example of great power regional expansion which this theory does not claim to explain.

¹¹For the importance of well defined and clear boundaries in the creation of civic nationalism see A. Smith (1986:134–135). For the frequent use of various geographic features in the nationalistic construction of the nations' “homeland” and its boundaries where either is vague, see White (2004:157–160). For other examples of the way the above situations can create irredentist tendencies, etc. even among nationalisms of this kind (such as in pre-1967 Indonesia and nineteenth century Argentina), see Escude (1988), Lijphart (1961).

¹²For an example of the complex ways in which settlers can serve at times as principles and at other times as agents see Zertal and Eldar (2004).

¹³For a more in-depth description of the four different kinds of states created as a result of the combination of congruence and state strength, see Miller (2007:57–59).

¹⁴This concept (as to areas within such states which are near borders with other states) is partly related to some of the definitions of the concept of “Borderlands” (for one definition, see Adelman and Aron [1999:815–816]) although it excludes “frontier” conditions when only colonial empires are involved and includes other issues, such as revisionist nationalism and its side effects, which aren't central to most understandings of this concept.

¹⁵See, for example, Kohn's (1971[1965]:63, 140–143) description of pre-Civil War Manifest Destiny as a nationalist ideology and the entrance (alongside Mazzini and the pan-Slavs) of one of its main ideologues, John O'Sullivan, in the anthology of nationalist writings attached to the book. For its similarities to some nationalist doctrines in other countries see White (2004:158).

¹⁶In my opinion, Weinberg is mistaken in combining Pan-Americanism and the imperialistic tendencies of the late nineteenth century, given that he himself (Weinberg 1963[1935]:179, 184, 254–255, 413) as well as other scholars (Merk 1963:86–88, 232, 234) point out several major differences between the two doctrines. Accordingly, one should view chapters 1–5, 8–9, and 12 in his book as features of various Pan-Americanist doctrines and the rest as imperialistic doctrines or other matters not relevant here.

¹⁷For the great lack of significant American interest, in contrast, as to expansion possibilities beyond the Americas during this era, see the contemporary American reactions (especially by the Pan-Americanists) to the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry or the general disinterest in giving substantial help (unlike some sympathy) to Kossuth in Perkins (1993:49–51, 203). For some of the other “benefits” from territorial expansion also promised by some of the promoters of this doctrine in various times (from the reduction in domestic discord and subnational frictions to the promotion of Protestantism), see Howe (2007:703–705).

¹⁸This is an example of the second form of S/N incongruence, the internal one. Due to space constraints, these “lower” or subnational ideologies, which when strengthening in the 1850s eventually brought about the American Civil War, cannot be described here in depth. For descriptions of the development of southern and northern subnationalism, see Grant (2000) and Craven (1953). Another example of internal incongruence present throughout North America was the above-mentioned Indian nations bringing about numerous intrastate wars and “anticolonial” rebellions. For a description of some of these conflicts and their motives see, Vandervont (2006).

¹⁹While this situation may seem paradoxical (wide support for both pan-nationalist and subnationalist doctrines within the same state), they are indeed possible. Another example of this situation includes Iraq, a great proponent of Pan-Arabism for much of the cold war era which, once occupied by the United States, nearly descended into a full-scale sectarian civil war between the Sunni and Shia and may yet collapse into two or three separate mini-states (Hinnebusch 2003:207–209). The United States itself, once weakening in the 1850s (to a large extent due to the increased conflict between the two subnationalities resultant from its territorial expansion in the Mexican-American War), famously collapsed into a civil war in the early 1860s between the southern and the northern subnationalists (Craven 1953:391–393; Grant 2000).

²⁰If to give one example of this arbitrariness and ambiguity, the 13 rebellious colonies were merely a subset of all British colonies in North America, many of whom were closer to the colonies that failed to rebel in various ways than the rebellious colonies were to each other. Likewise, many of those British colonies which failed to join the American Revolution were not seen as separate from that struggle but rather actively solicited by the Continental Congress in various ways. Furthermore, the 1783 boundaries of the United States had, in many areas, little to do with these colonies' pre-1776 boundaries, especially in the west and north where the creation of the 1783 United States border involved, among other things, the bisection of the Quebec colony (White 2004:88–91). For maps which show the extent of American territorial ambiguity long into the nineteenth century, see Weber (1992:277, 293), and Howe (2007:22, 110).

²¹This specific US claim to Texas (all the way up to the Rio Grande) went back at least to 1803 (Deconde 1976:214, 219).

FIGURE 1 The territorial expansion of the United States into the Southwest 1819–1848.

²²John Quincy Adams Diary, entry November 16, 1819.

²³For other opinions about the settlers' motives see Cayton (2004), Resendez (2006).

²⁴Likewise, part of the local Mexican population in Texas (Tejanos) joined in the revolt on the side of the American settlers and some of them even participated in a few of the battles. For a description of their motives see Ramos (2008: chapter 5).

²⁵Although the Texan government did not content itself with patriotic appeals and it also promised land to American volunteers willing to fight for it, “the lure of [free] land and the prospects of a quick profit merely strengthened the ideological and kinship ties,” but weren't the main cause of their arrival (Moseley 1991:147; Winders 2002:25).

²⁶“Address of the Honorable S.F. Austin delivered at Louisville, Kentucky, March 7, 1836” in the Avalon project, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/texind01.htm.

²⁷Indeed, Polk was initially considered such a weak presidential candidate by Clay and Whig strategists that they responded to his selection with private outbursts of joy. Accordingly one of the Whigs major campaign slogans was “Who is James K. Polk?” (Merry 2009:96).

²⁸This was the territory under dispute with Britain which is nowadays the states of Oregon, Idaho, and Washington in the United States and the province of British Columbia in Canada. Due to space constraints it cannot be further dealt with here although it also fits our argument. For the importance, for example, of the American settlers in Oregon territory for the resolution of the territorial dispute in an overall favorable way to the United States, see Pletcher (1973:340–341,590). For the Pan-American expectations, even after the settlement of the territorial dispute over Oregon, that much or all of Canada will eventually become part of the United States. See Weinberg (1963[1935]: 230, 233, 236–241).

²⁹For the way that the Indian attacks on Mexican settlements, by worsening and further exposing Mexican state weakness, also increased Pan-Americanist desires for many of these areas, see (Delay 2008: 241, 245–247).

³⁰For what this Mexican negotiation proposal included see also (J. Smith 1963[1919]:90–93).

³¹One should likewise note that Mearsheimer (1995, 2001) sees all nonstate actors as being completely epiphenomenal to various state actors with no significant independent effects, which is contrary to what we find here.

³²For descriptions of the bad relations between Mexico and France and Britain for much of the late 1830s (which even included, at one point, a war between Mexico and France in 1837), see Pletcher (1973:58–63, 173, 268).

³³As Thompson mentions in his study (Thompson 2007:110), even as late as 1860 Britain or France alone were still significantly stronger in both economic and military terms than the United States. For an 1846 US government assessment of American abilities vs. these two great powers in the case of a war with either (especially as to their naval options) see Sprout and Sprout (1967:154–157).

³⁴According to Mearsheimer (2001:184–188) himself in a different chapter, this kind of logic was exactly what kept Germany from attempting to expand in the thirty years following its victory over France in 1870.

³⁵For example, it is clear that in Zakaria's first post-Civil War era, the Pan-Americanist ideology that drove American expansion before the Civil War (and during the period described here) was severely weakened and discredited as a result of the Civil War and its various unintended consequences such as the rise of an American nationalism whose nationalist aspirations were congruent with the borders of the United States. For an in-depth description of this process see Levin (2007:141–147).

³⁶These estimates are based upon data from the CIA world factbook and Statistical History (p. 236).