At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the United States already had access to the Pacific Ocean, albeit on dubious rights and through territories that did not belong to them at that time. The Oregon Treaty (1846) and the victory in the war with Mexico (1846-1848) turned the United States of America into the largest power with a thousand-kilometer ice-free outlet to the open ocean. This allowed Washington not only to begin penetrating Asia, but also to take a closer look at the islands of Oceania, which could be turned into transshipment bases and a source of raw materials. The ideological foundations of a new round of imperialism were laid in the Monroe Doctrine and the Concept of a predetermined fate of the first half of the century. And at about the same period, Washington moved from words to deeds, although American historiography itself connects the beginning of overseas expansion only with the Spanish-American war.
The first real step in the beginning of the sea expansion was the Guano Act of 1856, according to which any island on which deposits of such a valuable resource as guano, and not belonging to any other power, were found, was declared American. In total, in this way, the Americans declared their rights to more than a hundred islands, mainly in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Among the Pacific islands annexed under this law are Baker Island (1857), Johnston Atoll (1858), Jarvis Island (1858), Howland Island (1858), Kingman Reef (1860), Palmyra Atoll (1859), Midway Atoll (1867) - this is only a part of the territories that are still under American jurisdiction today. Most of the unceremoniously appropriated pieces of land to the United States had to be returned to the outraged owners. The last such returns took place towards the end of the 20th century.
The first truly large Pacific archipelago became part of the United States thanks to … Russia. This, of course, is the Aleutian Islands, which went to the United States in 1867, along with Alaska. Their area is 37,800 (according to other sources - 17,670) sq. km, and the length is 1900 km, and they are rich in minerals. The islands have only one, but a major drawback - they are too cold for permanent human life.
Since there were practically no large and free possessions in the Pacific Ocean by the second half of the 19th century, the only way was to take them away from someone. The most suitable candidate for robbery seemed Spain, which by that time was experiencing the rapid collapse of its colonial empire and the decline of naval power. In 1864-1866, the fierce First Pacific War took place off the coast of South America, in which Madrid tried to regain its former colonies - Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia - and was defeated. The United States did not intervene in that conflict, there was also a civil war in America then, but of course, Washington drew its own conclusions. By the end of the 19th century, Spain could no longer resist the young power of the New World.
In 1898, the short Spanish-American War broke out. In two naval battles off the coast of Cuba and the Philippine Manila, the United States defeated Spanish squadrons and Madrid asked for peace. As a result of the war, the United States of America received most of the Spanish possessions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans: the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and the right to occupy Cuba. The Spanish concession was the largest acquisition by the United States since the annexation of Alaska. In addition, for the first time, the United States acquired overseas territories with a significant proportion of the indigenous population.
The United States also claimed Samoa, which Great Britain and, especially, Germany had their views on. For many years, the great powers directly or indirectly supported the civil war on the islands, supplying the parties to the conflict with weapons (it was the Germans who acted most aggressively), but in the end the situation almost led to a direct clash. Warships of all rival powers arrived in the disputed territories. From the USA - the sloop USS Vandalia, the steamship USS Trenton and the gunboat USS Nipsic, the corvette HMS Calliope arrived from the UK, and the Kaiser fleet of Germany sent three gunboats: SMS Adler, SMS Olga and SMS Eber. As a result, all six ships that were sent by both the United States and Germany were destroyed. 62 American sailors and 73 German sailors were killed. The British ship managed to escape. True, the parties suffered such horrific losses not as a result of the battle - on the night of March 15-16, 1899, a powerful tropical storm hit Samoa, which "reconciled" the sailors. In the same year, Samoa was divided between the United States and the German Empire.
In the same year, 1899, the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands took place, and the formally independent republic that was there (in fact, had long been under US control) ceased to exist. Ownership of Hawaii and Samoa gave America an exceptional advantage over the European powers, because from now on, only the United States controlled the center of the Pacific Ocean, which gradually began to turn into an American lake.
Now the Americans had several major problems to solve. For example, there was an acute issue of a channel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in order to transfer warships along it if necessary, not to mention the commercial significance of such a structure. The ruling circles of the United States of America rightly believed that with a critical weakening of any European power, they could thus quickly seize its possessions. True, in the First World War, these plans were not destined to come true: the United States entered the conflict too late, and the German island possessions were by that time plundered by three smaller imperialist predators - Japan, New Zealand and Australia.
So the symbolic result of the Pacific expansion of the United States of America in the 19th century can be considered two events: the separation of Panama from Colombia (1903) for the construction of a canal there, and the symbolic raid of the Great White Fleet (1907-1909) of 16 battleships, which demonstratively demonstrated the increased sea capabilities Washington. By the way, the United States did not have a full-fledged fleet in the region for a long time, and the main naval forces were concentrated on the Atlantic direction. In 1821, a small Pacific squadron was formed, which by 1903 consisted of only four ships, and 1868 was the year of the birth of the Asian squadron, which provided American interests in Japan, China and other countries. In early 1907, the Asian Fleet was merged with the Pacific Squadron into the US Pacific Fleet.
It is worth noting that in American society itself and even in the elite, there was no consensus regarding such a rapid advance into world politics. All speeches about "global leadership" and "global domination" will appear in the lexicon of American leaders much later, and even at the end of the 19th century, the voices of those who did not want such a development of events for ethical reasons were clearly heard: to own colonies - we must bring the light of the Enlightenment to the enslaved nations. However, a compromise was found when ideologues began to explain to the layman that American domination is the light of the Enlightenment. But this will happen already in the twentieth century.
Compared with Russia, which reached the Pacific Ocean almost 200 years earlier, the United States had several obvious advantages: a shorter distance between the main "imperial" territory and the new coast, a rapidly developing economy (due to political backwardness, the Russian Empire entered the industrial century only by the end of the 19th century), initiative and personally free population, the absence of strong neighbors. And of course, an unambiguous strategy, which, without extremes and unnecessary throwing, made it possible to bring what was originally conceived to life.
