As Greg Grandin notes in his new book, The End of the Myth, “expansion became the answer to every question, the solution to all problems, especially those caused by expansion.”īut this ever outward, expansive push of the imperium has also been accompanied, in the last century, by a selective locking down of the border. And when traditional colonialism was no longer feasible or tolerated, they pushed into market expansion, war, and outer space. Settlers certainly pushed west, to the Alleghenies, to the Mississippi, then to the Missouri, and when they finally hit the Pacific coast they kept pushing out and onward - on to the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, as well as the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and Panama. In 1787, James Madison wrote that “an ever-enlarging republic would dilute the threat of political conflict and factionalism.” He was wrong on two counts: that expansion could continue indefinitely and that expansion could ease conflict.
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