I don't want to hear about "The US was already a colonial empire" I'm talking about real colonizing. What the US did iOTL was more like the Russian expansion east
What if America became a colonial empire?
- Thread starter ToasterOven456
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Most of the Romans' expansion was overland, too, but we still talk about the 'Roman Empire'. Ditto the Achaemenids, ditto the Mauraya, ditto various Chinese dynasties, etc...
In fact, most pre-modern empires (outside of the East Indies, anyway) probably expanded more overland than by sea, it's only the development of improved navigational & shipbuilding techniques during the Renaissance in Europe that led to many westerners considering "overseas" empires to be more standard.
Instead of completely ignoring the premises you set up, I will actually think about this with you! I think obviously most US colonial/imperial intentions OTL were to the South and the West (well, the Orient but listen it's still west from America), and I think these are still the most likely directions the US would go. Nothing in Europe but countries which could kick around the US for a long time, nothing in Africa but slaving kingdoms and near-impassible disease barriers.
The US had a really strong presence in the Pacific for a while and it's honestly a little strange we didn't take more than we did. Not hard to imagine the navy rocking up to a few more islands and declaring them US posessions, and Fiji came pretty close to being Hawaii 2 (a hawaii prequel?) in the 1860's. And the whole point of acquiring the Philippines was for closer and more secure access to chinese markets, a US more focuses West might be more inclined to actually take some treaty ports for itself.
Southward, though, we do kinda know what that looks like, we just chose OTL to mostly go about the same kind of colonial resource-extraction activites that European empires did though puppet governments instead of directly controlled colonies. I'm not sure what kind of change in attitude would be required to make Americans feel inclined to directly rule rather that pretend that they're not.
To be fair, I think when a lot of people nowadays talk about "colonialism", they really just mean "imperialism over large bodies of water".
What does English/British settler colonialism in North America, Spanish rule in Central America and Peru, and the early Dutch/Portuguese system of trading posts, have in common? Very little, but they all get described as colonialism, because they all took place on the other side of the ocean.
Conversely, countries which treat their next-door neighbours like a colonial power treating its colonies don't normally get tarred with the C-word. China, for example, has a millennia-long history of flooding nearby lands with Han Chinese settlers, but because these were (with the exception of Taiwan) coterminous with China itself, we don't generally refer to the "Chinese Colonial Empire" or refer to the PRC as a "colonialist state".
The US was already a colonial empire
The examples can be seen below (some other Carribean Islands or Central American countries could possibly be added too, especially Cuba)
Texas was specifically to expand slavery, so not a good example for later.
Why were Hawaii and the Mormon territories directly taken?
Maybe it would help if the U.S. is founded more as a merchant nation instead of yeoman farmers.
Ellis MacVey
Donor
I'd personally argue that it also includes Alaska, Hawaii, and large portions of the mainland US as well, though obviously YMMV on that
Mainland US is debatable on Russia comparison vs "Colonial" but the posts I quoted did include Alaska and Hawaii if you notice.
Hawaii? Puerto Rico? US Virgin Islands, Guam? Philippines? For awhile the Philippines was the "Hong Kong" or the "Singapore" of the US colonial empire. Americans are too pretentious to call them "colonies," so they called them "territories" or "Commonwealths"
Cuba for a few years, Wake Island, What about the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau, they are associated with the US.
Texas and Hawaii are examples of the same thing, which is different from the crypto-colonialism of the banana republics. Texas and Hawaii were republics founded by american settlers, and were specifically rejected by the United States when they asked for annexation. Eventually opinion shifted, in Texas' case because of internal American political issues, and in Hawaii's case because of economic concerns, but the fact remains that they were kept out of the Union at first. Second, the valley around salt lake were not captured because they were mormon, the United States was extremely hostile to Mormons, that's the whole reason they fled to an otherwise (at the time) useless and undesirable area outside of American control, they were forced out of the US, it's not comparable.
Almost everyone replying is entirely missing the point OP is trying to make, of course the US practiced colonialism, and had an empire of it's own, that is not in dispute. The point is that the American colonial empire was vastly smaller in scale and scope than it's contemporary european empires, which captured entire continents and directly governed their people for centuries. OP is wonder what it would look like if America has colonized on that scale, what kind of implications that would have, and in what ways it could differ from contemporary european colonial empires.