American Expansion

And, considering some of the suggestion, what about adding some Russian krais in the Russia Civil War? Maybe the USA continues occupying parts of the Russian Far East as territories before giving them statehood? Seems as likely to me as Taiwan or North Borneo becoming states. ;)

I can easily see an East Alaska made out of a generous portion of the Russian Far East if we'd offered a counteroffer to their sale of Alaska.

"Oh, hey, yeah, we'll buy that land from you. Actually, do you have any more you'd like to sell? We'll pay the same rate for it."
 

WeisSaul

Banned
Well it would give control over the Bering strait and leave the US as the strongest player in the north Atlantic, but the Alaska purchase was unpopular enough. How do you convince the American public to go for it?

Meanwhile, I can't remember the name but someone (I think a japanese general/admiral) said that whoever controls the aluetian islands controls he world due to the powerful geopolitical presence the islands have.
 

WeisSaul

Banned
Added west/German Samoa

Wow, we've hit 22 places. Quite a lot.

Anybody think that if the US kept Liberia, it would have taken Spanish Guinea and Spanish Sehara too?
 
The US could have just offered more and there were proposals in the congress to invite Iceland to be the 49th state.

Also ever since Seward purchased Alaska there had been repeated proposals to buy Greenland, so I'll just change the dates there. Seward happened to be a big supporter of the idea that the US should expand as far as humanly possible. He also figured BC would join the US instead of Canada.




Mexico had too many people to be annexed. The Northern states and maybe Durango and Sinaloa are as far as possible. Anything else and you don't have the desert buffer anymore keeping a secure border. Also Mexicans will pretty much never accept being annexed, and they'll never be immigrated into a demographic minority in the region due to the sheer size and concentration of the national population in the southern Mexican core region.

Liberia is a good one though, I'll add it. Anybody have any comment about Haiti? 2010 seems like one point but when else?
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Also in 1898 there was talk in Dominica about seceding from Britain and joining the US as a means of the citizenry gaining greater control over the island's internal affairs.

Guyana also seems to have a big annexation movement now, I just need to find the starting point of it.

There was also the Quebec annexation Manifesto in 1853 declaring that Quebec should join the United States. The American annexation movement in Canada has always been strongest in Quebec, even today.

When would Quebec most likely have seceded into its own republic. There have been sayings that if Quebec ever went off on its own, the maritime would immediately go to the US because the distance from Canada Proper would be too vast. (Pre-NAFTA of course)


This gets right into the crux of the argument. If the United States is about expanding as far as it can go, expansion requires that the United States gives up any claim to having a unified language, culture or other shared set of values just for territorial bigness.



Annexing Mexico will be far too much for the United States to follow its historical dimensions as a primarily white nation. But territorial growth means that is not important. Mexico becoming part of the United States and major accommodations is required, in as much as territorial expansion surpassing any other concern is the game.


How else could the USA feasibly annex Japan or the Phillipines?
 

WeisSaul

Banned
Annexing all of Mexico means having to incorporate a massive population (In the millions) that hates the "occupiers" with a massive vengeance. The topography of southern Mexico is really mountainous and tropic and guerrilla warfare would be a nightmare. It would cost many American lives and would cost a pretty penny to fight a conflict where gains would be slow (and morale would likely be low) and the opposition will never quit until the occupiers are removed. The closest thing to annexation that could ever happen would be to chop up Mexico into a series of satellites: Chiapas, Yucatan, Rio Grande, Veracruz, etc.

Also I'm pretty sure the US has never claimed to have a unified language, and has never proclaimed itself of having a white character. Citizens of the nation may have, but not the state itself.

Also the US does accommodate states according to their needs. Louisiana and Florida used to be French and Spanish language dominated states. Louisiana doesn't have counties, but parishes. New Mexico has a bilingual state constitution, and was founded as a state mainly for the purpose of being a state specifically for the annexed Mexican population. Utah is a state specifically for one religious group, and Indian reservations have been around since 1851.

Wait, can anyone verify Albania actually wanting to join the Union? A link?


There was a move to hold a referendum on the very subject of American Annexation in 1991 when a US Senator visited.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_state#Albania
 
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Annexing all of Mexico means having to incorporate a massive population (In the millions) that hates the "occupiers" with a massive vengeance. The topography of southern Mexico is really mountainous and tropic and guerrilla warfare would be a nightmare. It would cost many American lives and would cost a pretty penny to fight a conflict where gains would be slow (and morale would likely be low) and the opposition will never quit until the occupiers are removed. The closest thing to annexation that could ever happen would be to chop up Mexico into a series of satellites: Chiapas, Yucatan, Rio Grande, Veracruz, etc.

Also I'm pretty sure the US has never claimed to have a unified language, and has never proclaimed itself of having a white character. Citizens of the nation may have, but not the state itself.

Also the US does accommodate states according to their needs. Louisiana and Florida used to be French and Spanish language dominated states. Louisiana doesn't have counties, but parishes. New Mexico has a bilingual state constitution, and was founded as a state mainly for the purpose of being a state specifically for the annexed Mexican population. Utah is a state specifically for one religious group, and Indian reservations have been around since 1851.




There was a move to hold a referendum on the very subject of American Annexation in 1991 when a US Senator visited.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/51st_state#Albania

Actually, it seems that was James Baker, our Secretary of State.
 

WeisSaul

Banned
Whoops, that made me look stupid. Should have read that again instead of just trying to do it from memory.
 
Annexing Mexico will be far too much for the United States to follow its historical dimensions as a primarily white nation. But territorial growth means that is not important. Mexico becoming part of the United States and major accommodations is required, in as much as territorial expansion surpassing any other concern is the game.


How else could the USA feasibly annex Japan or the Phillipines?

I just don't see the USA annexing any country with a significant non-white population. The USA may have never stated it was a white country but a significant amount of the American base was dedicated to that idea. And then there is the whole slavery issue. American government policy seems to support the white nation idea. Look at how the native Americans were treated, forced onto reservations. Abraham Lincoln thought that all the blacks should just go back to Africa once freed. In fact that was the motivation behind Liberia, so I don't see the USA annexing Liberia without a significant POD.

I think any country or territory the US adds for most of its history has to be 1. mainly white, and 2. have a small enough population to be assimulated.
 

WeisSaul

Banned
Well the US did annex alot of land from Mexico, and Mexicans are considered white Hispanic on the census. Even if they were considered a sort of "lesser white" the United States annexed very sparsely populated territories that could easily have been immigrated into being mostly white. North Borneo, the Ryukyu islands, and the Spanish/German east indies all could have been put through the same experience as Hawaii. In OTL Japan did a pretty good job at ethnically colonizing the south pacific mandate, though the Americans likely wouldn't treat the natives like subhuman garbage in the same way.

The US could not annex Japan as a whole. Far too difficult. The Philippines had a population of around 16 million in 1939. If the US had allowed more to leave for the mainland, reeducated the natives in a friendly manner that praised the US conquest and administration (Schools, movies, propaganda posters, slashing unemployment and modernizing infrastructure), and made it cheap for White people (Whether Mexican, European, or Arab. They'd all look pretty similar to people that have had little contact with Europe and the near east.) and a smaller proportion of black Americans to move in, over time a large minority of at the very most 40% could show up in the Philippines. So many Filipinos would leave that the immigrants would take up a lot of space.
 
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Maybe if there was an imperialist president at Versailles, T Roosevelt for example. The US gets German Somoa. A bigger American Somoa, nothing much changes.
 
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