How large could the USA have become if it was very expansionist?

[unprincipled peter]

Pesterfield,
one thought at the time was that the purchase would be used to leverage the western half of Canada away from Britain. No one really thought the area was worth much, so no neither Britain or the US was going to have a showdown over it, but if you really want more of your color shading on the map, a fuss could be made.

Strictly speaking, though, I don't think Russia really had much claim to any more territory, so they couldn't really sell anything more. I suppose you could ask for more across the other side of the Bering Straight, but why?

 

[Deleted member 97083]

If the late 18th century/early 19th century US had an absolutist, populist leader who was anti-slavery (an anti-Andrew Jackson), permanently destroying the southern aristocracy and creating a industrialized state fueled by New England manufacturing and the agrarian cultivation of the Midwest, while at the same time being nationalist and exceptionalist enough to believe in the formal annexation of territory over indirect influence, then through the age of imperialism and using the simultaneous justifications of being "anti-colonialism" and "spreading civilization" being colonial in effect, the United States could have conquered as much territory as the British Empire.

 

[West]

Realistically All of north america and much of the caribian, once you get outside of that natural barriers make it pretty hard to hold onto anything.

 

[Magnum]

Something like this?
(light blue would be some sort of OTL Puerto Rico arrangement or something)

Probably requires a couple of wars with European powers to get to this point, as well as a Lenin-esque sale of Kamchatka by Russia

 

[chrnno]

The USA could have been a lot bigger if they really wanted to, the problem is them wanting to. If they had decided to go south the only thing stopping them would be the willingness to waste resources on it and tolerance for all the problems that would come.

If OTL US isn't the definition of expansionist, I don't know what is. Formal land grabs possibly could have achieved Canada, but they tried a couple times and couldn't do it. maybe a few islands. maybe gotten involved in the Scramble for Africa, and gotten some, but not anything major.

Bottom line is that OTL formal annexation took a LOT of territory.

Once you move away from looking at colored territories on maps, the US took over economic hegemony in most of the globe. which is a major reason they didn't need to pick up more territories.

How greedy can one country be?

People tend to see history as the middle point even when it doesn't make sense. If the USA included Canada, Mexico and parts of the Caribbean you would see people in that timeline asking what if the USA was expansionist too.