An American empire in the 19th century

The British Empire rival thread got me thinking of what if the US tried to become that rival?

Perhaps for some circumstances the US became imperial minded much earlier than IOTL.

Could the US have developed into a 19th century empire in the vein of the British Empire?
 
Well the US pretty much declared all of North and South America to be under their dominion (Monroe doctrine), threatening war with any European power that tried to take any new land in the Americas and they had surpassed the UK in GDP by the late 19th century, as well as seizing overseas territories in the Caribbean and Philippines from Spain so you could argue that it was a really powerful empire already in OTL. As to a direct US/UK rivalry that is a bit more difficult (at least post Oregon boundary dispute) as the UK supported the US's claims to control over the Americas in order to keep the other European powers from seizing colonies in the New World. That really strikes to the heart of the issue: the UK considered countries in Europe such as France and Russia as much greater a threat to their interests then the US and further more was quite keen to trade with and invest in the United States in the 19th century so direct rivalry became much less likely. For its part, the US was quite ken to keep on good terms with the UK as the UK was a big export market for American goods, and because the Royal Navy provided defacto security for US merchant ships as well as acted as a bulwark for European aggression.

Tomas Jefferson: "Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most harm of any one, or all on earth; and with her on our side we need not fear the whole world. With her then, we should most sedulously cherish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the same cause."

Source
: http://history-world.org/thomas_jefferson_on_the_monroe_d.htm
 
You make a good point about the US having empire elements in the 19th century but was the US considered among the "great powers" by the Europeans of that time?

If in 1880 a European colonial power wanted to take an island let's say in the Caribbean or South America would they have been wary of US power and backed off?
 
You make a good point about the US having empire elements in the 19th century but was the US considered among the "great powers" by the Europeans of that time?

If in 1880 a European colonial power wanted to take an island let's say in the Caribbean or South America would they have been wary of US power and backed off?


Well, the Spanish-American war showed that the US had burgeoning military as well as industrial and commercial strength when they inflicted a string of heavy defeats on Spain and took most of its empire in the Caribbean. The Royal Navy also defacto enforced the Monroe doctrine so yes, most European powers were cautious about meddling in the Americas.

America's role in multinational events outside of Europe such as the Boxer rebellion (as a major member of the Eight-Nation Alliance) showed that by the latter part of the 19th century the US was indeed a Great Power whose influence was substantial on world affairs. Obviously since they were the only Great Power at the time outside of Europe (possibly excepting Japan at the very end of the century) their actual influence on European events was substantially less then countries like Britain, France or Prussia, but on the world stage its power and influence were definitely enough to make a European Power wary of crossing it.

As to Britain specifically, America was a pretty natural ally because, unlike the other European powers, the goals of the US generally didn't conflict with their imperial goals. This combined with the rapid expansion and industrialization of the US in the 19th century made them ideal trade partners which further diminished a potential rivalry (at least in terms of one that would lead to military conflict, commercial rivalries between companies certainly existed). To a lesser extent this held true between the US and the other European Powers (as they didn't really have the kind of merchant fleets the UK did to really take advantage of transatlantic trade), in that the US was never really an existential threat to any of them, the way the other European Powers were (eg. France/Austria vs. Prussia), thus they would be far less likely to want to be dragged into a major conflict with the US the 19th century. Remember that unlike the US, every European power has to take into account what their neighboring powers will do when they act, particularly the UK in this situation since to seize land in the Americas and provoke the US you would have to project a fleet across the Atlantic. Even the UK was keen to avoid a conflict with the US (see 1895 Venezuela crisis, Oregon boundary dispute, Maine boundary dispute) because any conflict with the US would hurt them economically, require distant projection of force and in the end gain them very little even if they were victorious (and arguably hurt them long term because of lost trade and investment opportunities, particularly for industrialization projects such as the building of American railways).
 
The US was definitely considered a rising power, even before the Civil War. For example, Creasy's 1851 book The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World included Saratoga as one of those battles, specifically because it led to the formation of the US, which he grouped with France, the UK and Russia as the four nations that would dominate the world in the future. Now Creasy was British and had a very Anglo-centric view of the world (Teutenberg Forest was also one of his chosen battles, because it prevented the decadent Latins from contaminating the pure Teutonic blood that would become England; 19th century historiography was weird), but it shows a very clear awareness of American potential, even if part of that is his British bias causing him to expect great things of fellow Anglo-Saxons. He drew explicit parallels with Russia (which was clearly a Great Power at the time).

So the issue of America being considered a "Great Power" by the end of the 19th century is complicated, but it was clearly considered a "rising power" far before that. And it was certainly powerful enough post-Civil War to successfully exert pressure on Napoleon III vis-a-vis Mexico.
 
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