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  #81  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2020, 3:30 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Originally Posted by sopas ej View Post
The US being the US, Texas wouldn't have been independent long. The US would have eventually annexed it, especially once oil was discovered. American settlers were already in Texas, and American businessmen would have pushed for annexation. Look what the US did with Hawaii; the US basically overthrew an internationally recognized sovereign nation purely in the name of capitalism. It's sad what happened to Hawaii.
I wonder about how that would've worked post Spanish-American War, when the U.S. became even more averse to being a direct colonial power. I think that if Texas had not become a U.S. territory by then, it would've most likely ended up as an sovereign territory under U.S. influence.
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  #82  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2020, 4:04 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by sopas ej View Post
Look what the US did with Hawaii; the US basically overthrew an internationally recognized sovereign nation purely in the name of capitalism.
LOL compared to who? All the other great powers before (and since) Are far worse than the US ever was. Our experiments with colonialism were tiny and short lived.

If the USA really wanted to be a colonial empire we would have had the Pacific Rim and basically all of Latin America as official US territory's and colonies by 1900. There was literally nobody with the willingness much less power to even attempt to stop it.
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  #83  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2020, 6:09 PM
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sopas ej sopas ej is offline
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
I wonder about how that would've worked post Spanish-American War, when the U.S. became even more averse to being a direct colonial power. I think that if Texas had not become a U.S. territory by then, it would've most likely ended up as an sovereign territory under U.S. influence.
I don't even buy into that narrative of "the US being averse to being a direct colonial power." Just going by what actually happened in its history, it seems the US wanted to acquire any territory it could that wasn't already taken at any cost, if it could easily do so, to further American business interests; just like Hawaii's annexation. Since a huge American sugar industry was in Hawaii, those American business people favored annexation so that there wouldn't be any more American tariffs on their sugar. If the US didn't really want to be a colonial power, the Spanish-American War would have ended without the US acquiring any more territory from Spain. The US acquired Cuba (among other territories) as a result of that war, though it only had it for a few years before it became independent in 1902 (the US hung on to the Philippines a lot longer) and by the 1920s, 22 percent of Cuba's land area was owned by American companies. Americans don't seem to know this, but Haiti was invaded and occupied by the US for nearly 20 years in the early 20th Century, and of course it was to protect American businesses that were there; the US has a history of screwing Haiti over, and the rest of Latin America as well, installing/supporting right-wing puppet governments, and being anti-any-left-leaning Latin American country's government that is unsympathetic to American business interests.
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  #84  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2020, 7:25 PM
jd3189 jd3189 is offline
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
LOL compared to who? All the other great powers before (and since) Are far worse than the US ever was. Our experiments with colonialism were tiny and short lived.

If the USA really wanted to be a colonial empire we would have had the Pacific Rim and basically all of Latin America as official US territory's and colonies by 1900. There was literally nobody with the willingness much less power to even attempt to stop it.

Not sure why comparing ourselves to others makes a difference. The US gained independence from a colonial/ imperial power just to become another colonial/ imperial power.

But it would be interesting if the US did do what you explained, especially after WW II with Japan's empire being conquered. The Cold War would have turned out differently.
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  #85  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2020, 8:09 PM
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JManc JManc is offline
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
LOL compared to who? All the other great powers before (and since) Are far worse than the US ever was. Our experiments with colonialism were tiny and short lived.

If the USA really wanted to be a colonial empire we would have had the Pacific Rim and basically all of Latin America as official US territory's and colonies by 1900. There was literally nobody with the willingness much less power to even attempt to stop it.
I doubt we had the resources to colonize all of Latin America..most of which was independent by late 19th century. We fought Spain when they were an empire on decline. Our 'empire' was holding countries hostage economically which eliminated the need for maintaining expensive colonies with restless natives. Which is probably why the US was eager to dump the Philippines.
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  #86  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2020, 9:09 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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If the UK, Spain, Portugal, France etc could maintain empires with their sparse resources, Indeed they had empires BECAUSE of sparse resources, the US certainly could have. We had no need to, with the continental united states being so vast and full of natural resources and for the most part empty of large numbers of natives we had no reason to engage in colonial activity other than a few oddities like Liberia, Philippines, Guam etc mostly gained from he war with Spain.

And yes everything other nations got from colonization we managed with letting (semi) private mercantile business acquire on the nations behalf but still far more limited and less brutal than your standard colonization practice of the previous 1700's and 1800's.

My point in comparing the USA to other colonizing nations is that people like to act as if the US was in any way comparable to the western European countries or other past empires in terms of exploitation, violence and conquest and that is simply not true.
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  #87  
Old Posted Jul 8, 2020, 10:50 PM
austlar1 austlar1 is offline
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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
I doubt we had the resources to colonize all of Latin America..most of which was independent by late 19th century. We fought Spain when they were an empire on decline. Our 'empire' was holding countries hostage economically which eliminated the need for maintaining expensive colonies with restless natives. Which is probably why the US was eager to dump the Philippines.
With regards to Latin America, the Monroe Doctrine pretty much kept European colonial powers at bay. The US was firmly entrenched as the only real military and economic powerhouse in the Western Hemisphere by around 1875 or so. American financial interests were able to invest freely and interfere mightily in governmental processes in most of Latin America from that time forward. The Spanish were gone from Cuba and Puerto Rico by the early 20th Century. Latin America was controlled by oligarchs in almost every country. These regimes were usually willing or felt compelled to climb in bed with US Neo-colonial economic and political interests, which allowed the US to have most of the benefits of a colonial empire without so many of the headaches. From time to time, various governments became a bit restless under this arrangement (Mexico in the 1930s, Argentina under Juan Peron, etc), but for the most part the US dominated the region until the 1960s showdown with Castro and the Soviets. After that, the US became very reluctant to use the threat of military intervention to impose its will on the region. Interesting that this occurred at the same time European colonial powers were unwinding their own colonial efforts in Africa, the Middle East, India, etc.
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  #88  
Old Posted Jul 9, 2020, 12:58 AM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Interesting that this occurred at the same time European colonial powers were unwinding their own colonial efforts in Africa, the Middle East, India, etc.
Hard military power made no sense in a world of soft power.

Why impose your will with the army when you could roll them into the global trade system as long as you were roughly with the West and not the USSR you had all the benefits of a US vassal state with none of the requirements.
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