Essays on Expansionism

Winston Churchill’s Iron of Curtain speech has been seen in retrospect as one of the first signs of the oncoming Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. In this speech Churchill lays out why he believes that in the wake of the Second World War, Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe was causing a deep divide in the continent and ultimately something much more significant a clash of two global powers for preeminence in the second half of the twentieth century. This speech was one of the most important moments of the twentieth century and it ...

INTRODUCTION

World exploration and explorers are always hailed in history books and classes as significant events and people because they have opened doors to new eras of trade, knowledge and information, technology and cultural consolidation. The names Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama and Ferdinand Magellan are some of the greatest names in exploration. Countries that have often been associated with historical explorations are Spain, Portugal, Great Britain – in other words, Western countries. A closer scrutiny, however, of historical explorations showed that ancient China conducted explorations and voyages even before these Western countries did in the 15th century. The voyages occurred ...

Manifest Destiny and American Territorial Expansion was a book written by Amy S. Greenberg of the Pennsylvania state university. Amy is a professor and historian who focused on teaching politics, culture, and gender history. She has authored other books such as the antebellum and manifest manhood. Manifest destiny is an influential ideology covered in the book. It was an American belief by which the American settlers believed that they were destined to expand throughout the continent. The central theme of the book was to discuss whether the Americans were right in using manifest destiny in justifying their territorial expansion ...

Thesis: As of the present time, the absence of democracy and Western ideals of peace in areas such as Ukraine and North Korea emphasizes a possibility of America failing to act as a global police because one move they make may be read differently by the opposing side and declare war, which America is trying to prevent. - Since the end of the Cold War, the United States had been active to stop the onset of war or conflict in highly tensed nations which were either marred by terrorism or the lack of democracy under the Wilsonian foreign policy made ...

Democracy, Rights, and Empire

Thesis Europe has seen it all; revolutions, plague, recession, famine, revolts, and invasions, and this was why, when opportunity came knocking at their doors, the few powerful nations of Europe, adventured to expand and control their business interests far from their shores. In order to understand how and why this transpired, one needs to go back in time and understand Europe as it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Background

The Rise of Europe between 1500 and 1850 was largely accounted for by the growth of European nations which shared their borders with the Atlantic, and in particular, ...

The first American presidents of the newly formed republic of the United States faced some of the first tribulations of the office. These included both political events as well as negative economic incidents. The presidents' roles about policies for American expansionism directly affected their individual policies. In this academic exercise, the background on political, economics, and American expansionism remain the focus for both Adams and Jefferson presented in the following.

John Adams

As a lawyer/politician, John Adams was as an independent thinker with a quick and blunt speaking manner. This often put this political leader, at odds with others while at the same ...

Essay for Lesson 1: The 1848 Revolution, the Second Reich, and the First World War

Introduction Prior to 1871, no notion of a unified Germany has ever existed. Yet, the inevitability of the unification of the thirty-nine German states and cities that used to be independent from the control of one another into a single national entity under the Second Reich did not transpire without attendant internal and external power struggles. Given the variety of circumstances that allowed for the rise of a unified German state, it is noteworthy to pay further analysis to the role of Germany under the Wilhelmine Period – the period when Emperor William II ruled (1890-1918), in the buildup to the First ...

The Columbian Exchange, coined by Alfred Crosby in 1986, refers to the massive movement from the Old World to the New World and back, of crops, animals, and diseases after the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492 (Grennes 2007, p. 91). The meeting of the Old and the New World drastically changed the fortunes not only of the natives inhabiting the newly discovered continents, but also of the European settlers and Europe as a whole. New species of animals were introduced to the Americas that helped in farming and transportation. On the other hand, new species ...

John Gast “American Progress” (1872)

Essay

Every nation is characterized by its own unique culture that is created according to the background of knowledge, religious ideas, beliefs, ethnical peculiarities. Certainly, every culture is unique in its own artifacts that help to understand this culture in the better way. These are literature works, architectural monuments and sculptures, pieces of music, etc. All artifacts of the past centuries have deep roots in the given culture, so deep that sometimes it is not really possible to understand their origin. The example of such artifacts is the painting “American Progress” by John Gast ...

LOST IN TRANSLATION

“On the principle of infallibility there rests the iron discipline of the Communist Party. In fact, the two concepts are mutually self-supporting. Perfect discipline requires recognition of infallibility.” - George Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” George Kennan wrote these prophetic words in 1946 as part of the famous “Long Telegram,” a document that was made public in 1947 by Foreign Affairs magazine. Kennan’s treatise on the Soviet Union, the nature of Communism and the expected physical manifestations of that nature became the most impactful work on what would become the Cold War and the courses of ...

Arguably, during the era of confederation, the United States focused on extending its borders and territory westwards. Perhaps, this era took place in the year 1864 to 1890, whereby United States created its various states of which some was from Canada. As a matter of fact, the end of Civil war in America saw various investments and new issues in land, construction of the railway, as well as exploitation of resources. The American expansionism fear led to the Great Britain to favor Canada’s purchase of the Northwest Territory and Rupert’s Land. In the 19th century, American expansionism focused ...

The history of American foreign policy is closely linked with the history of the Monroe Doctrine. Not by chance the eminent American historian William Williams has repeatedly stressed in his writings that the Monroe Doctrine, and in particular the doctrine based on the policy of "open doors", defined the expansionist ideology of American foreign policy over the last hundred years. Thе асtuаl аuthоr оf thіs pаssаgе іn thе prеsіdеnt's mеssаgе wаs thе Sеcrеtаrу оf Stаtе Jоhn Quіncy Аdаґms, аnd thе іmmе ...

Book Review - The Long Bitter Trail

In The Long Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the American Indians, Anthony F.C. Wallace takes on the unenviable task of discussing the Jacksonian era of Indian removal, recounting the history and politics of the forcible expulsion of Indians from their native homes by the United States Government. Though brief (the book comes in at only 120 pages), Wallace's work tries for conciseness and brevity in this subject; no footnotes can be found to supplement the material. Instead, Wallace seems to have meant this book "for students of history and others," and tells the story of Indian removal from pre-contact ...

The cold war between USA and USSR after the World War II had a deep-rooted impact on both the nations. The mutual distrust and suspicion reached an epic proportion. As a result, the NATO Treaty and the Warsaw Pact came into being. In America’s social life a propaganda was started to project USSR and the communists as the devils.

Cold war is described as the bitter relationship that grew between the capitalist USA and the socialist USSR after the World War II. No party was actually engaged in physical war because in that case nuclear weapons could cause massive destruction on ...

The Crimean war which apparently began over a trivial control of the Orthodox Christians of the holy cities of Jerusalem and Nazareth was actually the culmination of a long power struggle in Europe. The aggressive expansionism of Russia coupled with its pledge to rule over the Ottoman Empire in order to gain control of the route to Asia and the consequent British fear of losing its business trades to Asia and to check Russian expansionism resulted in eruption of the Crimean war. Ultimately, the Russians had to meekly surrender to the Allied forces of Britain, France, Turkey and a neutral attitude of ...

The Conflict

The Northern Region of Africa has for quite a long time been in the spotlight for incidences of political violence and armed conflicts within the states. Such incidences have been witnessed in Libya, Morocco, Egypt and other countries in the region (Anon., 34). These conflicts are associated with some political interests within the countries. This dissertation looks at one of the countries, Morocco, with the aim of discussing how its expansionist activities into the Saharan region could have sparked violence in the region and how the violence has affected the refugees in the region.

The cause of the violence is ...

Analysis - America Is In The Heart by Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Bulosan's 1946 book America is in the Heart is a hard-hitting, revolutionary and eye-opening work that examines what it meant to be a Filipino in early-to-mid 20th century America. This was a time when racial segregation, particularly of Filipinos, was rampant, and becoming a profitable, hard worker was difficult if your skin was the wrong color. During this time, Bulosan worked in the Philippines, working hard and pawning personal items in order to help Macario, his brother, finish school. Moving from there to America in 1930, he hoped to find work and a new life there; what he found was much uglier. In ...