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by lostlogin
4048 days ago
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I know the Monroe doctrine primarily focused on keeping the Europeans out of the Americas, but according to the wiki entry: The doctrine noted that the United States would neither interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries. |
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Remember that "The United States of America" looked like this in the 1830s:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1823_Melish_Map_of_th...
A good chunk of land west of the Mississippi River was unsettled. Calling out to the Europeans and saying "Stay out of America" was really Americans preemptively claiming all land West of the Mississippi River as US Territory.
Keeping Europeans out of "The Americas" was a major land grab opportunity. Which was then followed by decades of American conquest (and Native American genocide). The Monroe Doctrine, together with "Manifest Destiny" demonstrates American ambition to form the largest country the world had ever seen at that point.
Our war with Mexico (which allowed us to grab and annex Texas, New Mexico, and California), and British Politics (54/40 or Fight + Various other disputes) led to the establishment of the US North and South borders. The East and West boarders expanded with basically infinite ambition, in part because of the Monroe Doctrine.
In any case, when we ran out of land to conquer, that's when we started looking overseas. I think it is clear that America has always been a rather ambitious nation. Ret-conning the concept of isolationism is a mistake IMO.
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In fact, why don't you take a look at what Mexico looked like in 1840.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralist_Republic_of_Mexico
And tell me, do you think the US was "isolationist" and "didn't mettle in other nation's affairs"? The US invaded and conquered a _huge_ swath of Mexico! Our policies were anything _BUT_ isolationist. We were imperialists as early as 1840, and the Monroe Doctrine is just a sign of our early ambition.