From the Monroe Doctrine to the MexicanAmerican War

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From the Monroe Doctrine to the Mexican-American
War

• The United States and Latin America through 1850

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Contents

• 1) Spanish American Independence
• 2) Early US-Latin American Diplomatic and
  Economic Relations
  
• 3) Manifest Destiny and US Expansionism
• 4) The Annexation of Texas
• 5) The Mexican-American War
• 6) The Annexation of Cuba A Failed or a
  Postponed Project?

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1) Spanish American Independence

• Overview of the colonial period
• Creoles vs. peninsulares
• Bourbon reforms
• 1808 French invasion of Spain crisis of
  legitimacy
  
• 1810 Formation of Spanish American Juntas
• Wars of Independence (1810-1824)
• Winners and losers What changed after
  Independence?
  

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Challenges of Post-Independence Republics

• The formation of independent nation-states
  Republics without citizens?
  
• Post-colonial cleavages
• Caudillismo and political instability
• Economic integration with the world market

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Political Instability in Mexico

• Constant changes in government, civil wars, and
  political instability
  
• Antonio López de Santa Anna

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2) Early US-Latin American Diplomatic and
Economic Relations

• US was the first country outside Spanish America
  to recognize the independence of the former
  Spanish colonies
  
• Thomas Jefferson (1808) We consider their
  interests and ours as the same, and that the
  object of both must be to exclude all European
  influence from this hemisphere.

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• December 2, 1823 Monroe Doctrine
• Monroeism a combination of US paternalism,
  interventionism, and hegemony in the Western
  Hemisphere
  
• United States used diplomats as economic agents
  aggressively promoted free trade against local
  protectionist tendencies
  
• Gradual increase of US-Latin American trade but
  Great Britain became the main partner for Latin
  America

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3) Manifest Destiny and US expansionism

• The idea of Manifest Destiny expressed the belief
  in the superiority of the United States and the
  white race over other peoples and countries,
  and in the God-given right of the US to
  territorial expansion.
• It also summarized views about US exceptionalism,
  its permanent quest for national greatness, and
  the mission it had for spreading democracy.
  These were seen not as choices, but as sacred
  obligations

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• The term was coined in 1845 by newspaperman John
  O'Sullivan, in an article in the New York Morning
  News (others cite it as an editorial of the
  Democratic Review.)
• Some scholars, however, suggest that it was Jane
  Storm who first used the term.

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American Progress (John Gast, 1872)
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4) The Independence and Annexation of Texas

• 1821 2,240 Spanish-Speaking residents in Texas
• Mexico granted Moses Austin (and later his son
  Stephen) an area in the territory of Texas to be
  settled
  
• 1828 Mexican state tried to regain control
• restricted US immigration
• outlawed slavery
• imposed new or increased existing taxes

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The Independence of Texas (cont.)

• 1830-1835 Belligerence grew war erupted in 1835
• 1835 30,000 US citizens, less than 8,000
  Mexicans in Texas
  
• Fall 1835 War erupted
• Battle at El Alamo (March 6, 1836)
• May 14th Santa Anna, made prisoner by Sam
  Houston, signed a treaty recognizing the
  newly-independent Republic of Texas border with
  Mexico was fixed at the Rio Grande.
• Mexican Congress rejected the treaty.

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The Independence of Texas (cont.)

• 1836-1845 Republic of Texas existed without
  Mexican recognition US recognized it in 1837
  
• 1844 Polk won the US presidency. He offered 30
  million for New Mexico and California. Mexico
  refused.
  
• December 1845 Texas entered the Union. Mexico
  broke diplomatic relations.
  
• Polk sent troops into territory that Mexico
  considered its own

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5) Mexican American War

• May 13, 1846 US Congress declares War on Mexico
• Army of the West occupied New Mexico and
  California
  
• Army of the Center was sent into Northern Mexico
• Army of Occupation carried the battle to Mexico
  City (Chapultepec).
  
• February 2, 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was
  signed

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Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

• Mexico ceded its northern provinces of California
  and New Mexico--which included present-day
  Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and parts of Colorado.
  
• It also accepted the Rio Grande as the border
  between the two countries. The US agreed to pay
  Mexico 15 million.
  
• The cost of war 13,000 US Citizens, and 50,000
  Mexicans died
  
• Mexico lost about half of its territory
• Between 1845 and 1848, the US territory grew 70
  percent Mexico lost half of its territory

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Race and Culture in the US-Mexico Conflict

• Stephen Austin (1836) The Texas conflict
  represented the confrontation between a mongrel
  Spanish-Indian and Negro race, against
  civilization and the Anglo-American race."
• George Lippard, in his novel Legends of Mexico
  1847, wrote that Mexicans were "a mongrel race,
  molded of Indian and Spanish blood" that was
  destined to "melt into, and be ruled by, the Iron
  Race of the North."

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The Iron Race of the North

• Lippard defined it as follows
• "We are no Anglo-Saxon people. No! (..) All
  Europe sent its exiles to our shore. From all the
  nations of Northern Europe, we were formed.
  Germany and Sweden and Ireland and Scotland and
  Wales and England and the glorious France, all
  sent their oppressed to us, and we grew into a
  new race."

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Walt Whitman

• What has miserable, inefficient Mexico with her
  superstition, her burlesque upon freedom, her
  actual tyranny by the few over the many- what has
  she to do with the great mission of peopling the
  new world with a noble race? Be it ours, to
  achieve that mission. (Brooklyn Daily Eagle,
  1846)

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Senator Thomas Hart Benton on Manifest Destiny
(1846)

• It would seem that the White race alone received
  the divine command, to subdue and replenish the
  earth for it is the only race that has obeyed
  it- the only race that hunts out new and distant
  lands, and even a New World, to subdue and
  replenish . . . .
• The Red race has disappeared from the Atlantic
  coast the tribes that resisted civilization met
  extinction. This is a cause of lamentation with
  many. For my part, I cannot murmur at what seems
  to be the effect of divine law.

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Senator Benton on race (cont.)

• Civilization, or extinction, has been the fate
  of all people who have found themselves in the
  trace of the advancing Whites, and civilization,
  always the preference of the Whites, has been
  pressed as an object, while extinction has
  followed as a consequence of its resistance.

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Senator Benton on race (cont.)

• The van of the Caucasian race now tops the Rocky
  Mountains, and spreads down on the shores of the
  Pacific. In a few years a great population will
  grow up there, luminous with the accumulated
  lights of the European and American civilization.

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Mexicans as Indians

• The Mexicans are IndiansAboriginal Indians.
  Such Indians as Cortez conquered three thousand
  sic years ago, only rendered a little more
  mischievous by a bastard civilization (.) They
  do not possess the elements of an independent
  national existence. Providence has so ordained
  it, and it is folly not to recognize the fact.
  The Mexicans are Aboriginal Indians, and they
  must share the destiny of their race. (New York
  Evening Post).

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Did territorial conquest by the US actually
benefit Mexicans?

• Moses Beach, editor of the New York Sun, believed
  so The Mexican race is perfectly accustomed
  to being conquered, and the only lesson we shall
  teach is that our victories will give liberty,
  safety, and prosperity to the vanquished, if they
  know enough to profit by the appearance of our
  stars. To liberate and ennoble not to enslave
  and debase- is our mission.

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Critics of the War

• Many people in the US criticized the war and the
  appropriation of Mexican territory (intellectuals
  such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David
  Thoreau abolitionists and others).
• Sources of criticism included the dubious
  justifications for the war the death and
  destruction it caused and its long-lasting
  effects on US-Mexico relations
• Ulysses Grant is quoted as saying that I do not
  think there was ever a more wicked war than that
  waged by the United States on Mexico. ... I
  thought so at the time, when I was a youngster,
  but I had not moral courage enough to resign.

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US and the war seen from Mexico

• "Yankeephobia negative stereotypes of US
  people. They were portrayed as treacherous,
  devious, malicious, perfidious, godless,
  predatory, greedy, materialistic, and usurpers.
• Almost unanimous view of the war as unjust a
  view that is held until today
  
• see NY Times article

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6) The Annexation of Cuba Failed or postponed
project?

• Cuba circa 1840 the richest colony in the world
• Sugar and slavery dominated Cuban society and
  economy
  
• Cuban ruling elites did not follow calls for
  independence in Spanish America
  
• 1822 Cuban planters suggested that Cuba should
  join the United States. The idea did not
  prosper.
  
• Spain was determined to defend the islands of
  Cuba and Puerto Rico
  

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• John Quincy Adams (1823) Cuba and Puerto Rico
  comprised natural appendages to the North
  American continent it is scarcely possible to
  resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba
  to our federal republic will be indispensable to
  the continuance and integrity of the Union
  itself.

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• In the 1830s, a campaign was launched by Cuban
  planters urging the US to purchase Cuba the US
  offered 100 million to Spain, but it was
  rejected
• OSullivan wrote to Buchanan in 1848 Surely the
  hour to strike Cuba has come

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• 1854 US ambassadors to Spain, Britain, and
  France agreed to the Ostend Manifesto,
  recommending that the US purchase Cuba from
  Spain.
• 1857 President Buchanan bribed Spanish
  politicians to sell Cuba did not succeed
  
• Both abolitionists and white supremacists
  resisted the annexation of Cuba
  
• US Civil War brought to an end attempts to get
  Cuba. The US would not acquire a slave state.