In the classical age of conquest moral justification for territorial expansion at the direct expense of another established polity (who often faced displacement, subjugation, slavery, rape and execution) was often as unapologetic as "because we can" treading on the philosophical grounds of might makes right.
As political conceptions of the nation state evolved, especially in reference to the inherent rights of the governed, more complex justifications arose. State-collapse anarchy, reunification or pan-nationalism are sometimes used to justify and legitimize expansionism when the explicit goal is to reconquer territories that have been lost or to take over ancestral lands.
Lacking a viable historical claim of this nature, would-be expansionists may instead promote ideologies of promised lands (such as manifest destiny or a religious destiny in the form of a Promised Land), perhaps tinged with a self-interested pragmatism that targeted lands will eventually belong to the potential invader anyway.[3]
The Soviet economist Nikolai Kondratiev theorized that capitalism advances in 50-year expansion/stagnation cycles, driven by technological innovation. The UK, Germany, the US, Japan and now China have been at the forefront of successive waves.
Crane Brinton in The Anatomy of Revolution saw the revolution as a driver of expansionism in, for example, Stalinist Russia, the United States and the Napoleonic Empire.
According to a 2023 study, important historical instances of territorial expansion have frequently happened because actors on the periphery of a state have acted without authorization from their superiors at the center of the state. Leaders subsequently find it difficult to withdraw from the newly captured areas due to "sunk costs, domestic political pressure, and national honor."[5]
In Italy, Benito Mussolini sought to create a New Roman Empire, based around the Mediterranean. Italy invaded Ethiopia as early as 1935, Albania in early 1938, and later Greece. Spazio vitale ("living space") was the territorial expansionist concept of Italian Fascism. It was analogous to Nazi Germany's concept of Lebensraum and the United States' concept of "Manifest Destiny". Fascist ideologist Giuseppe Bottai likened this historic mission to the deeds of the ancient Romans.[10]
After 1937, Nazi Germany under Hitler laid claim to Sudetenland, unification (Anschluss) with Austria in 1938 and the occupation of the whole of the Czech lands the following year. After war broke out, Hitler and Stalin divided Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. In a Drang nach Osten aimed at achieving Lebensraum for the German people, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.[11]
In American politics after the War of 1812, Manifest Destiny was the ideological movement during America's expansion West. The movement incorporated expansionist nationalism with continentalism, with the Mexican War in 1846–1848 being attributed to it. Despite championing American settlers and traders as the people whom the government's military would be aiding, the Bent, St. Vrain and Company stated to be the most influential Indian trading company prior to the Mexican War, underwent a decline because of the and of traffic from American settlers by Beyreis. The company also lost the partner Charles Bent on January 19, 1847, to a riot caused by the Mexican War. Many in the Cheyennes, Comanches, Kiowas, and Pawnees tribes died from smallpox in 1839–1840, measles and whooping cough in 1845, and cholera in 1849, which had been brought by American settlers. The buffalo herds, sparse grasses, and rare waters were also depleted following the war as increased traffic by settlers moving to California during the Gold Rush.[12]
Iran, the largest Shi'ite state, has extended its influence across the entire Middle East, including Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan by arming local militias.[18]
Russia
Regions of Ukraine annexed by Russia in 2014 and 2022, with a red line marking the area of actual control by Russia on 30 September 2022
The US retains military bases in some of the sovereign countries that it once occupied on a notionally-voluntary basis, including in Germany, Italy, Japan, Greenland, Iceland, Iraq, and formerly in Afghanistan. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is retained despite the protests of the Cuban government, and the US has military bases in various other countries with which it has allied.
In terms of explaining the results of American expansion, this goes back to the 19th century when Frederick Jackson Turner produced his Frontier Thesis which made the case for the decisive role of American expansionism.[28][29] The free land enabled economic independence (as opposed to political dominance by landlords in Europe) and popular democracy in America.[30] The success of expansionism led to a deep belief in the superiority of the "American way of life," as shown by how it attracted tens of millions of immigrants. Economic success was supplemented by the confidence that Anglo Saxons were simply better at governing a nation.[31]
Further expansion far beyond the American continent, in the Philippines, at the turn of the century which was driven by a paternalistic United States as McKinley’s objectives, he declared in mid-1899, were fourfold: “Peace first, then a government of law and order honestly administered, full security to life, property, and occupation under the Stars and Stripes.”[32] However, the Philippines government was shared with the local political elite, which called for independence. In Washington Democrats rejected McKinley-style expansionism and in 1934 set the Philippines on the path to independence, which was achieved in 1946.[33]
It has also been posited that American leaders were pressured under traditional gender roles, which in turn made expansionism more likely. By the end of the 19th century President McKinley had been accustomed to being evaluated in terms of his manliness.[34] This also played in to the fact that in the late nineteenth century, men saw supporting the military as the ultimate test of being a man.[34] As a result, expansionism was a way of projecting manliness onto the electorate and in to society.
In popular culture
George Orwell's satirical novel Animal Farm is a fictional depiction, based on Stalin's Soviet Union, of a new elite seizing power, establishing new rules and hierarchies, and expanding economically while they compromise their ideals.
^
An alternative definition sees "expansionism" as "a desire to annex additional territory" for reasons such as perceived needs for Lebensraum or resources, the intimidation of rivals, or the projection of an ideology.May, Ronald James, ed. (1979). The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Border: Irianese Nationalism and Small State Diplomacy. Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. p. 43. ISBN9780908160334. Retrieved 6 November 2020. At this point, however, we must define 'expansionism' a little more precisely. I am interpreting it to mean a desire to annex additional territory either
for the sake of more lebensraum (living space) or resources (oil, copper, timber, etc.);
for the sake of demonstrating the national power so as to intimidate neighbours;
because of an ideology of national greatness, power
^Rodogno, Davide (2006). Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 46–47. ISBN978-0-521-84515-1.
^Beyreis, David (Summer 2018). "The Chaos of Conquest: The Bents and the Problem of American Expansion". Kansas History. 41 (2): 72–89 – via History Reference Center.
^Simon Tisdall, 'Vietnam's fury at China's expansionism can be traced to a troubled history', The Guardian, 15/5/2004
^Masalha, Nur (2000). Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: politics of expansion. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.
^"Golan Heights Law". Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 14 December 1981. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
^Norton, Augustus.R (2000). "Hizballah and the Israeli Withdrawal from Southern Lebanon". Journal of Palestine Studies. 30 (1): 22–35. doi:10.2307/2676479. JSTOR2676479.
^Richard Hofstadter, “Turner and the Frontier Myth.” American Scholar 18#4 (1949), pp. 433–43. online
^LaFeber, Walter (1963). The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860 - 1898. United States of America: Cornell University Press. pp. 95–112. ISBN0-8014-9048-0.
^ Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, "A Meaning for Turner’s Frontier: Part I: Democracy in the Old Northwest." Political Science Quarterly 69#3 (1954), pp. 321–53. online
^Burnett, Christina; Marshall, Burke (2001). Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 26. ISBN1-283-06210-0.
^Dean Kotlowski, "Independence or Not? Paul V. McNutt, Manuel L. Quezon, and the Re-examination of Philippine Independence, 1937–9" International History Review 32#3 (2010), pp. 501–531 online
^ abHoganson, Kristin (1998). Fighting for American Manhood. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. p. 95. ISBN978-0-300-08554-9.
Further reading
Abernethy, David B. The dynamics of global dominance: European overseas empires, 1415-1980 (Yale University Press, 2000).
Darwin, John. After Tamerlane: the global history of empire since 1405 ( Bloomsbury, 2008).
Edwards, Zophia, and Julian Go. "The Forces of Imperialism: Internalist and Global Explanations of the Anglo-European Empires, 1750–1960." Sociological Quarterly 60.4 (2019): 628–653.
MacKenzie, John M. "Empires in world history: characteristics, concepts, and consequences." in The Encyclopedia of Empire (2016): 1-25.
Wade, Geoff, ed. Asian Expansions: The Historical Experiences of Polity Expansion in Asia (Routledge, 2014).
Wesseling, Hendrik. The European Colonial Empires: 1815-1919 (Routledge, 2015).
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