Can we just have a sticky thread listing all of the previous threads about the US expanding? These get posted even more often than Confederacy/Nazi/Napoleon threads.
One of the problems with the management of this website is that threads older than ~10 months, regardless of validity or uniqueness, will be locked if brought back up and the people who post in them temporarily banned.
This is psychotic. If a discussion is good and wants to continue, it should continue. There are fair number of good threads regarding potential US expansion, but I dare not even link to them for fear that someone posts in them and they get locked entirely. It’s ludicrous.
Let’s recap some of what the OTL US could have taken. We’ve covered Mexico recently, both OTL and ATL. OTL, the US was supposed to have taken what are now the border states, but Trist defied the government and signed for less.
Columbia, in the Pacific northwest, could have been American to 54º40’, and quite probably all the way up on the western side of the continental divide after the Alaska Purchase.
Would the British have fought over it? Or could the US have offered to
buy out the British claim to the land?
OTL, the US bought north Borneo from the British in the early 1840s, but sold it back a few months later as we had little to no Pacific presence at this time. Had it been sold after the Mexican-American War (or had we simply kept it), land in northern Borneo could very well have become a state.
Cuba, of course, could have remained American after the Spanish-American War, had it not been for the perfidious Platt Amendment.
Some people will say the Philippines could have become a state or states following said war, only to be countered by people claiming the mistreatment of Filipinos, racism, and other arguments of varying validity. I think with a light domestic campaign of acceptance said arguments could be undone, but I’m on the fence.
What else... Ah, at various times during their histories, El Salvador, Santo Domingo, and Haiti asked for US annexation. These could have passed with only a few Senate votes changing.
Finally, at the time of the Alaska Purchase, a lease was debated to Kamchatka and Chukotka from roughly 160º eastward. If we assume said lease is accepted, the US gains control over that land. With the changing political climate over there, long before the lease was due to expire, I can’t imagine us giving it up. Particularly once we find the resources that lie under it.
US Kamchatka is one of my favorite ideas.