Mexican American War an Exercise in American Imperialism

The Mexican-American War was the start of a legacy of hate between the Americans and Mexicans. Throughout this age, America was growing commercially and industrially, resulting in the requirement for more land to optimize the American profit. This Anglo-American necessity caused the Mexican-American War. Imperialism was undoubtedly the corner stone for the whole Mexican-American war; Americans intended to control the Mexican lands through direct control.

Manifest Fate, the belief that the Americans were to expand to the Pacific Coast, was started in the 1840s.

It is no trick that Polk won the election mainly because of his radical expansionist views. Quickly after Polk's win, he sent a couple of representatives to safeguard the border of Texas and plan on the land, not long after Congress passed Texas to become a state. Due to the men "protecting" the border of Texas, Mexico blew up and contradicted Polk's compromise, providing just a partial acknowledgment. Polk declined, and American troops continued to the Rio Grande.

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Polk later declared that the Mexico-American War was a last resort to Mexico's absence of cooperation and attack on the Americans, which "American blood had actually been shed on American soil." This is unreliable. At that time, the land was neither said to belong solely to the Americans, or solely to the Mexicans. Each side thought the land belonged to them.

Polk had likewise currently prepared the steps to result in the control of Texas, even prior to the war. If not for imperialist goals, why would Polk have currently prepared the steps leading up to the war, if war itself was a "last option?" This shows the Americans illustration of imperialism by the reality that President Polk would decline Mexico's terms for partial acknowledgment most likely because Polk had an imagine owning all the land to the coast.

In truth, throughout this time the Anglo-Saxons believe that the God they worshiped had actually given them a right to all the arrive at this continent, and that they were to spread their religious beliefs within those who did not think. Abiel Abbot Livermore gave a precise description of the Americans in his book The War With Mexico Reviewed: "more, more, offer us more." This is in concerns to the Americans' want for new land.

Numerous people had negative views on the Mexican-American War. Benjamin Lundy, William Ellery Channing, and John Quincy Adams were just a few. Eugene Barker stated that "the general cause of the revolt was to extend imperial authority..." as well as "...substitute centralized oligarchy." Common imperialist views are that the people should exert their culture on the lands that they gain control of. Eugene Barker's statement leads one to believe that this was exactly what President Polk was doing. In this case, it was religion that he and the Americans were enforcing. He forced the Mexicans to become Protestant if they chose to stay in their homeland.

The Mexican American War shows all the signs of imperialism. President Polk made claims that there was no other solution but war, when, in reality, there were many other solutions. Polk's unnecessary want for the control of land, and for the United States to become the greatest power, all familiar views of imperialism, led him to war. The annexation of Texas did indeed play a large role in the Mexican-American War, and was based off of imperialist beliefs and goals.