Building of American States

Theme: How and why the US, Canada, and Latin America developed differently

Lesson 10

Three Different Experiences

• America– Manifest Destiny, Growth, and Dominance

• Canada– Evolution, Prosperity, and Independence

• Latin America– Fragmentation, Conflict, and Dependence

Louisiana Purchase

• In 1803, Napoleon needed funds immediately to protect revolutionary France from its enemies so he sold the US France’s Louisiana Territory which extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains for $15 million

• With the Louisiana Purchase, the US doubled in size

Lewis and Clark

• Between 1804 and 1806, a geographical expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark mapped the territory and surveyed its resources

• Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose Lewis and Clark's outbound route

shown in red, inbound in blue

Manifest Destiny

• Settlers began flocking west in search of cheap land• “(It is) ...our manifest destiny to over spread and to

possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty.”– John O’Sullivan, editor of the “The Morning Post,” 1845

Indian Removal• Westward expansion

caused conflicts with Native Americans

• The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was designed to move all Indians west of the Mississippi River into “Indian Territory” (Oklahoma)

• The Cherokees called their 800-mile migration the “Trail of Tears”

Indian Removal in Mississippi• The Choctaw were

Mississippi’s largest tribe and the first southeastern Indians to accept removal– Began migrating in the

1830s• There were an estimated

19,554 Choctaw before removal

• 12,500 moved to Indian Territory

• 2,500 died along the way• 5,000 to 6,000 remained in

Mississippi – (Stahl, The Ones That

Got Away, A Choctaw Trail Of Tears, 7.)

Plains Indians

• After the 1840s, the conflict between settlers and Indians shifted to the plains region west of the Mississippi

• After the Civil War, William Sherman assumed command of the Missouri district, which stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi.

• He declared all Indians not on reservations “are hostile and will remain so until killed off”

• The last significant battle took place at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890

Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry crossing the Gila River, Arizona Territory,

ca. 1878

Mexican War

• Causes– US foreign policy of

expansion (Manifest Destiny) soon put it in conflict with Mexico

– In 1836, Texas declared independence from Mexico and in 1845 the US annexed Texas in spite of Mexico’s never relinquishing its claim

Depiction of Davy Crockett at the Alamo by Mark

Churms

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

• Not an overly popular war, especially in the northeast

• US won and paid Mexico $15 million for Texas north of the Rio Grande, California, and New Mexico

Civil War: Commonly Cited Causes

• Slavery• States rights

versus centralized government

• Agrarian versus industrialized way of life

• Cultural differences

Road to the Civil War

• Missouri Compromise (1820) -Maine admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave, but no other slave states from the Louisiana Purchase territory would be allowed north of Missouri’s southern boundary

• Nullification Crisis (1832) -- Responding to a high tariff on imported manufactured goods, South Carolina declared a state can void any act of Congress it feels is unconstitutional John Calhoun, champion of

the nullification doctrine

Road to the Civil War (cont)

• Mexican War (1846-1848) -- viewed by some as a Southern attempt to expand slavery– Wilmot Proviso (1846) fails– (Would have formally renounced any intention to

introduce slavery into lands seized from Mexico)• Compromise of 1850 -- California admitted as a

free state; slavery in New Mexico and Utah territories to be determined by popular sovereignty; slave trade prohibited in the District of Columbia; a more stringent fugitive slave law

Road to the Civil War (cont)

• Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) -- popular sovereignty; specifically repeals the Missouri Compromise

• Harper’s Ferry and John Brown (1859)• Lincoln elected (Nov 6, 1860)• South Carolina votes to secede (Dec 20, 1860)

– Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, and Texas follow

• Lincoln takes office (March 4, 1861)• Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861)• Lincoln requests 75,000 three-month volunteers (April 15,

1862)– Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee secede

Objectives

• North– Restore Union

• Therefore couldn’t completely alienate or destroy the South or the Southern people

• South– Hold on to de facto

independence– Continue the struggle

long enough for the North to tire of it

• Similar to American colonists

Emancipation Proclamation (Remember from Lesson 5)

• Issued by President Lincoln after the Federal victory at Antietam

• “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…”

• The fact that France and Britain had already ended slavery makes foreign intervention on behalf of the Confederacy nearly impossible

End of the Civil War

• On Apr 9, 1865, Lee surrendered

• Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery

• Reconstruction lasts until 1877

• The US would continue as a politically united nation with strengthened federal authority

Railroads

• A major component of America’s westward expansion was railroads

• In 1862, Congress authorized a transcontinental railroad and on May 10, 1869 the Union Pacific tracks joined those of the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah

Railroads

• Before the Civil War, the US had about 31,000 miles of railroad lines and most were short routes east of the Mississippi River

• By 1900, there were more than 200,000 miles of track and a rail network from coast to coast

• Railroads linked all US regions and created an integrated national economy

Immigrants

• Many immigrants came to America after the mid-19th Century

• Most did heavy labor at low wages, such as working on the railroad

• Many came to look for gold in California

During construction of the transcontinental railroad, the Central Pacific employed 12,000

Chinese, 90% of the entire work force

Canada

• Canada was originally settled by both French and British trappers and settlers and was known as New France

• When Britain won the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), Canada became part of the British Empire

• Still, until the late 18th Century, French Canadians outnumbered British ones

• Consequently imperial officials made large concessions to their subjects of French descent to forestall trouble

Canada• British Canadians tended to

live in Ontario, follow British law, and be Protestant

• French Canadians tended to live in Quebec, follow French civil law, and be Catholic

• The War of 1812 helped foster a spirit of unity against an external threat

• The Americans made several attempts to invade Canada in order to pressure the British, but were always unsuccessful

Canada

• Westward expansion of the US and the American Civil War further helped to stifle internal conflicts in Canada

• Along the way, Canada was becoming increasingly independent from Britain by evolution, rather than revolution

• In 1867, Britain granted the Dominion of Canada independence and control over all internal affairs

• Britain retained control over Canada’s external affairs until 1931

Canadian Prosperity and Independence

• The National Policy was Canada’s program of economic development designed to attract migrants, protect nascent industries through tariffs, and build national transportation networks

• Using large amounts of British capital, Canada completed the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885

Indian Head station on the Canadian Pacific Railroad

Canadian Prosperity and Independence

• Throughout the 19th Century, British investment outstripped US investment in Canada

• In the early 20th Century, the US became increasingly active in the Canadian economy– By 1918, the US owned 30% of all Canadian industry– Ontario benefited greatly from spillover from the American

economy• Today, the US and Canada have interdependent

economies• Canada has been able to benefit from foreign

investment, not become dependent on it, because of Canada’s ability to control and direct its own economic affairs

Latin America: Simon Bolivar(Where we left off in Lesson 5)

• Inspired by George Washington and Enlightenment ideas, Bolivar took up arms against Spanish rule in 1811

• Freed slaves who joined his forces

• Provided constitutional guarantees of free status for all residents of Gran Columbia (Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador)

Simon Bolivar

• But Bolivar had once admitted that “I fear peace more than war.”

• In fact, after defeating Spain, Latin America was unable to sustain solidarity

• Bolivar’s Gran Columbia dissolved into its three constituent parts (Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador) and the rest of Latin America fragmented into numerous independent states Gran Colombia

Political Instability

• One of the reasons Latin America fragmented is that Latin American leaders had little experience with self-government– Portuguese and Spanish colonial regimes

were far more autocratic than their British counterparts in North America

– The new leaders in Latin America were enthusiastic about Enlightenment principles; they just didn’t know how to put them into practice

Indigenous Peoples

• As in North America, governments in Latin America who sought agricultural land came into conflict with indigenous peoples

• Argentina and Chile were especially confrontational

• By the 1870s, colonists had secured the most productive lands and forced the indigenous people to assimilate to Euro-American society or retreat to undesirable lands

Julio Argentino Roca led

the conquest of indigenous

people in Argentina

Caudillos

• The general division and discord in Latin America facilitated the rise of caudillos, regional military leaders

• The long wars of independence had left Latin America with military rather than civilian heroes

• After independence, military leaders took center stage

• Caudillos restored order, but did so through violence and terror

Argentinean caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas

Selected 20th Century Coups in Latin America

• As a result of this history, Latin America has a history of coup d’etats– 1943: Argentina– 1954: Paraguay and

Guatemala– 1963: Ecuador– 1964: Brazil – 1970: Bolivia– 1973: Chile and Uruguay – 1976: Ecuador Hugo Chavez survived

an unsuccessful coup in Venezuela in 2002

Mexican Reform

• After defeat in the Mexican War, a liberal reform movement tried to reshape Mexico

• President Benito Juarez began to limit the power of the military and the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico and sought to endow Mexicans with the means of making a living and enable them to participate in political affairs

Benito Juarez, leader of La Reforma and

President of Mexico from 1858-1872

The Constitution of 1857

• Curtailed the prerogatives of priests and military elites

• Guaranteed universal male suffrage and other civil liberties like freedom of speech

• Allowed the confiscation of church properties, which accounted for almost half of all the productive land in Mexico– Intent was to redistribute land broadly, especially to

indigenous people– Instead, speculators and large landowners bought up

most of the land

Mexican Revolution (1911-1920)

• La Reforma challenged the fundamentalism of Mexican elites and a civil war broke out in 1911

• Peasants, workers, and middle class Mexicans fought to overthrow the dictator Porfirio Diaz

• The revolt became increasingly radical and devolved into guerrilla war

Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915) was Juarez’s

political rival

Mexican Revolution

• Charismatic rebels such as Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa organized massive armies to fight against the government

• Villa attacked and killed US citizens as a result of America’s support for the Mexican government

General John Pershing led an unsuccessful American expedition to capture Villa. Pershing telegraphed

Washington, “Villa is everywhere, but Villa is nowhere.”

Mexican Revolution

• In the end, government forces regained control, ambushing and killing Zapata in 1919– Villa was

assassinated in 1923

• Even though defeated, many of the revolution’s goals such as land redistribution were included in the Mexican Constitution of 1917

Revolutionary troops

Latin American Dependence

• Latin America in the 19th Century was plagued by division, rebellion, caudillo rule, civil war, instability, and conflict

• Add that to colonial legacies that lacked economic development and local industry in Latin America and the pattern was set for foreign dependence

• Because its economy required foreign investment to survive, Latin America became subject to decisions made in the interests of foreign investors

• Latin American governments were controlled by the elites who profited from foreign involvement at the expense of the citizenry, so the governments actually encouraged Latin America’s economic dependence

Case Study: United Fruit Company

• From 1899 to 1970, UFCO was prominent in the trade of bananas and other fruit from Latin America to Europe and the US

• An archetypal example of multinational influence extending deeply into the internal politics – “Banana republics” and

neocolonialism

The Peten, one of many ships in UFCO’s “Great

White Fleet”

Case Study: United Fruit Company

• In addition to owning vast tracts of land, the UFCO dominated regional transportation networks and owned a major railroad corporation

• In 1913, UFCO extended its reach by creating the Tropical Radio and Telegraph Company

• By the end of the decade there would be virtually no aspect of the economic infrastructure of Latin American banana production untouched by the UFCO

Case Study: United Fruit Company

• One of the company's primary tactics for maintaining market dominance was to control the distribution of banana lands. – UFCO claimed that hurricanes, blight and other

natural threats required them to hold extra land or reserve land.

– In practice that meant UFCO was able to prevent the government from distributing banana lands to peasants who wanted a share of the banana trade.

• For UFCO to maintain its unequal land holdings, it had to have government concessions.

• This in turn meant that UFCO had to be politically involved in the region even though it was an American company.

Case Study: United Fruit Company

• When Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman tried to seize thousands of acres of uncultivated land owned by the UFCO in 1953, President Eisenhower empowered the CIA to engineer the overthrow of Arbenz’s government

• A US-supported coup toppled Arbenz’s government in 1954 and returned the land to the UFCO

Castillo Armas established a military government after the ouster of the democratically elected Arbenz, who the US

feared had communist leanings

Review

• So, compare and contrast the development of the American states of Canada, the US, and Latin America.

• How does their past account for where they are now?

Review

• America– Manifest Destiny, Growth, and Dominance

• Canada– Evolution, Prosperity, and Independence

• Latin America– Fragmentation, Conflict, and Dependence

Next

• Map Quiz• China and Japan

The Forbidden City’s Gate of Supreme

Harmony