Colonies and Protectorates of the United States

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Outskirts of the United States
School begins . Caricature from the American satirical magazine Puck , 1899. Depicts Uncle Sam , who as a teacher takes four new students, namely the territories of the Philippines , Puerto Rico , Cuba and Hawaii , acquired in the Spanish-American War , into his lessons and instills in them the American claim to rule not to be questioned.

The United States established itself as a world power towards the end of the 19th century and thus became serious competition for European imperialist powers such as Great Britain and France . They were initially involved in the Caribbean and then expanded their area of ​​interest in the course of the annexation of Hawaii to Asia and the Pacific , as trade with China also gained in importance for the USA and the USA did not want to leave this huge market to Japan and Europe alone . The first colonial acquisitions were made inSpanish-American War , the last expansion of the US after the end of World War II , when numerous Pacific islands were brought under their rule. Unless they were granted independence, these areas are not considered colonies today, but as outer areas of the United States .

Anti-colonial tradition

Originally, the United States, which itself emerged from the 13 colonies , rejected colonialism . After most of the states of Latin America had achieved their independence, the United States denied Europeans any right to re-expand in the western hemisphere in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. In 1853 they let a flotilla run into the port of Edo under the command of Matthew Calbraith Perry , but they did not conquer any territory, but forced the opening of trade in Japan. The policy of the open door , with which they sought to prevent the great European powers from acquiring trade monopolies and territorial property in China, followed a similar pattern . From this anti-colonial tradition and the informal imperialism that had characterized American foreign policy until then, they moved away in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and entered world politics . The American historian Walter LaFeber points out that this new imperialism of the USA was nevertheless clearly different from that of the European powers: The newly acquired territories were limited to 125,000 square miles, whereas the British colonial empire comprised 4.7 million square miles, the French 3.5 million and the German one million square miles. The Americans wanted markets , not colonies .

Liberia

The first "colony" in the USA was Liberia in West Africa , founded in 1817 by the American Colonization Society (a private organization) . Freed African-American slaves were resettled there, just as the British did in neighboring Sierra Leone . In 1847 the area gained its independence from society. Liberia was not a colony in the strict sense of the word, as the USA never had formal territorial claims or sovereignty over this area.

Caribbean

As early as 1849 and 1854, Presidents James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce had tried in vain to buy Cuba from Spain for $ 100 million and $ 130 million, respectively. After the end of the Spanish-American War, Spain was forced to cede its colonies in the Caribbean, Cuba and Puerto Rico , to the United States in the Treaty of Paris . In 1901 Cuba became formally independent. So it wasn't a colony; However, with the Platt Amendment, the USA reserved a right to intervene , which they also made use of during the uprisings of 1906 and 1917. Economically, the island became completely dependent on American capital; political independence was retained. In 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted the right to intervene, only the Guantanamo Bay naval base remained under US sovereignty .

Puerto Rico was granted internal self-government in 1917 and converted into a freely associated territory with the United States in 1952. Independence was rejected in three referendums in 1967, 1993 and 1998. On November 6, 2012, in a non-binding referendum, a majority of the Puerto Rican population voted for the conversion to an American state.

Navassa was originally part of Haiti , but was annexed with the Guano Islands Act in 1857 . Since then, Haiti has demanded the return of the island.

The Swan Islands were also annexed by the Guano Islands Act; they were handed over to Honduras in 1972 .

In 1917 the Danish West Indies were bought by Denmark because the USA needed a naval base in the Caribbean.

Pacific Islands and Asia

In August 1865, the consul Charles Lee Moses had signed a 10-year lease with the Sultan of Brunei Abdul Mumin and with his heir to the throne Pengiran Temenggung, which guaranteed him land rights in various areas in northern Borneo . He sold these concessions on September 9, 1865 to the merchants Joseph William Torrey and Thomas Bradley Harris , who then founded the American Trading Company of Borneo . In December 1865 Torrey founded the settlement Ellena , a colony in the area of ​​today's Kimanis, with twelve Americans and 60 Chinese . However, the plan to make the colony attractive to other settlers by growing sugar cane, tobacco and rice failed after a short time. As early as 1866 Ellena was given up again due to a lack of capital, lack of labor, revolts among the workers and serious illnesses. Before the lease expired in January 1875, Torrey managed to sell his rights to North Borneo to the consul of Austria-Hungary in Hong Kong , the German-born Baron Gustav Overbeck . As a result, the area became a protectorate of the British Crown under the North Borneo Chartered Company and was thus withdrawn from further American access.

In Asia, the USA conquered the Spanish colonies of Guam and especially the Philippines in the Spanish-American War in 1898 . The annexation of this archipelago represented a break with the traditions of American foreign policy insofar as the USA had so far only occupied individual ports in order to penetrate the surrounding territories economically from there in the sense of an informal empire , without including them under its immediate domain. President William McKinley therefore only considered the annexation of Manila , which he wanted to develop into an "American Hong Kong". The fact that his government decided to occupy the entire archipelago was due to reasons of balance of power: On the one hand, it would have called on the rival imperialist powers Great Britain, Germany and Japan, which would have been only too happy to make use of the legacy of the Spanish colonial empire if the US had limited itself to just one base. On the other hand, it would have encouraged the Filipino independence movement under Emilio Aguinaldo , which was painstakingly defeated in the Philippine-American War of 1899–1902. Thirdly, the unstable situation in China seemed to make it appear appropriate for the USA to show a stronger presence in East Asia. For the first time with the annexation of the Philippines, they now had a colonial empire . The archipelago was occupied by Japan from 1941 to 1944 during World War II . In 1946, the Philippines formally received their independence due to massive striving for autonomy.

Between 1863 and 1945 the USA also had a concession in Shanghai and from 1860 to 1902 one in Tientsin .

Guam became an overseas province and in 1949 President Harry S. Truman converted it into a non-incorporated territory with internal autonomy within American Oceania .

The Mariana Islands were divided between the German Empire and the United States in 1899 . The United States received the southern part. After the Second World War, the Mariana Islands, which were previously under Japanese administration, were awarded to the United States by the UN , which in 1978 granted the group of islands the status of a state associated with the United States ( Northern Mariana Islands ).

In 1899 the dispute between Great Britain, the USA and the German Empire over Samoa was settled in the so-called Samoa Treaty . The USA received the southern islands, which from then on became an outer territory of the USA under the name American Samoa .

From 1939 to 1979 there was a condominium with Great Britain across the Canton and Enderbury Islands. They were integrated into the independent state of Kiribati .

Other islands of American Oceania

On the basis of the Guano Islands Act , the USA succeeded in annexing Baker Island , Jarvis Island , Howland Island , the Kingman attack and the Johnston Atoll in the central Pacific in 1857 . The Midway Islands were discovered by the United States in 1859 and incorporated into American Oceania in 1867 . Since 1996 they are no longer under the US military , but the Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department of the Interior .

The Palmyra Atoll was taken over by Gerrit P. Judd for the United States in 1859. In 1922, the Hawaiian Fullard-Leo family acquired the entire archipelago; In 1940 the family had to cede the island to the US Navy , which established a naval and air force base there. In 1947, the Fullard Leos fought for ownership of the islands in court. Palmyra has since become the only fully privately owned territory in the United States. In 2000 the archipelago was sold to the environmental organization The Nature Conservancy and some research stations were set up.

The island of Wake was taken over by the United States in 1899 and initially used as a landing pad that served as a stopover for civil flight routes to Asia. A military base was established in 1941 and Japan conquered the island during World War II. However, the Marshall Islands , which became independent from the USA in 1990, claim Wake. The US has not yet made any concessions.

UN Trust Areas

In 1947, Micronesia and Palau were transferred to the United States as UN trust territories. They became independent in 1991 and 1994, respectively; the US remains responsible for the defense and foreign policy of the two republics. This also included the Marshall Islands , which were conquered during the Second World War and which were given full sovereignty in 1990 .

Protectorates

Panama Canal

In 1903, Panama signed a treaty with the United States that guaranteed the United States the use of a 10-mile canal zone , its occupation and unrestricted rule as a protectorate for an indefinite period . In return, the US had to guarantee Panama's territorial sovereignty. The construction of the canal was henceforth pushed by the USA and the official opening took place in 1920. In the 57 years that followed, the 1903 User Agreement was revised again and again. Finally, in 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced that the canal would be returned to Panama by the year 2000. Since December 31, 1999, 12 noon, the canal has been managed by the Autoridad del Canal de Panamá (ACP). The authority is autonomous, but its board of directors is appointed by the Panamanian President (→  History of the Panama Canal ).

Hispaniola

The Caribbean island of Hispaniola was also under the influence of the USA. Haiti was occupied by the USA in 1915 and was a formal protectorate of the United States until 1934 (→  US intervention in Haiti ). From 1905 to 1907 and 1915 to 1924, the Dominican Republic was also under American administration.

Iceland and Greenland

The USA occupied the Kingdom of Iceland in the course of the Second World War in 1941 . After the founding of the republic in 1944, the USA continued to station military units in Iceland. There are now military treaties with Norway and Denmark. The Keflavik naval aviation station has since been unilaterally evacuated by the USA and the aircraft stationed there withdrawn; unlimited landing and usage rights are unaffected.

Even Greenland came during the Second World War under US influence, a contract was signed in 1941, which acknowledged the US far-reaching rights, such as the establishment of military bases and fortifications, in return, the United States, Greenland pledged to defend. After the end of the war, President Roosevelt and his Foreign Minister James Byrnes even made an offer to Denmark for 100 million dollars in 1946, which was rejected and kept secret until 1977. Initially, the defense of Greenland was completely returned to Denmark, but was then shared again in a new treaty in the course of the Cold War with the USA or within the framework of the newly formed NATO due to the situation with the Soviet Union . The Americans continued to expand their military presence and secured the right to unrestricted freedom of movement between the bases, both on land, in the air and on water, throughout the state. After the end of the Soviet Union, US interest in Greenland also declined, but the US continues to maintain a military base with Thule Air Base . In mid-2019, President Donald Trump again suggested that the US buy Greenland, provoking opposition from both the Danish government and the Greenland autonomous administration.

literature

Web links

Commons : Colonialism of the United States  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Willi Paul Adams : The USA before 1900 (=  Oldenbourg ground plan of history , vol. 28). Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, ISBN 978-3-486-70096-1 , p. 63 f. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  2. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Principles of American Foreign Policy 1750-1900 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 141 f.
  3. ↑ Jürgen Heideking and Christof Mauch : History of the USA . UTB, Tübingen 2008, pp. 191-200.
  4. ↑ Walter LaFeber: The American Age. United States Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present . WW Norton & Company, New York 1994, pp. 195 f. And 226, quoted from Willi Paul Adams: The USA in the 20th Century (= Oldenbourg Grundriss der Geschichte, Vol. 29). Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-71953-6 , p. 159 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Reinhard: A Little History of Colonialism , Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, p. 231.
  6. ^ Antonio McDaniel: Swing low, sweet chariot. The mortality cost of colonizing Liberia in the nineteenth century . Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995, ISBN 0-226-55724-3 , pp. 191 .
  7. ^ Wilson Jeremiah Moses: Liberian dreams. Back-to-Africa narratives from the 1850s . Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pa. 1998, ISBN 0-271-01710-4 , pp. 234 .
  8. ↑ Jürgen Heideking and Christof Mauch: History of the USA . UTB, Tübingen 2008, p. 132.
  9. ↑ dtv lexicon on history and politics in the 20th century , ed. v. Carola Stern , Thilo Vogelsang , Erhard Klöss and Albert Graff, dtv, Munich 1974, vol. 2, p. 455.
  10. ↑ Le Monde diplomatique : Latin America: A Brief History of US Interventions ( Memento of May 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) of May 16, 2003. Sovereignty over the area remains with Cuba, plus the Scientific Services of the German Bundestag : The Lease Agreement between Cuba and the USA via Guantanamo , elaboration (WD 2 - 135/06), August 17, 2006, p. 5, note 7.
  11. ↑ Modern History Sourcebook: The Platt Amendment, 1901 (full text)
  12. ^ Jones Act , Library of Congress
  13. ^ Elections in Puerto Rico: Results 1967 Plebiscite
  14. ↑ The complete statistics are available from Elections in Puerto Rico: Results
  15. ↑ Puerto Rico, The 51st State? ( February 20, 2013 memento in the Internet Archive ) from: huffingtonpost.com , February 16, 2013 (Puerto Rican government requests US authorities to grant state status), accessed February 27, 2013.
  16. ↑ Jones v. United States - 137 US 202 (1890) , ruled November 24, 1890
  17. ↑ Art. 8 Constitution of the Republic of Haiti
  18. ↑ 48 US Code CHAPTER 8 - Guano Islands
  19. ↑ Benito Scocozza, Grethe Jensen: Politics étbinds Danmarkshistorie . 3rd edition, Politikens Forlag, Copenhagen 2005, p. 175.
  20. ↑ Kennedy G. Tregonning: North Borneo. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1960, pp. 23-27.
  21. ^ DS Ranjit Singh: The Making Of Sabah 1865-1941. The Dynamics of Indigenous Society. 3rd Edition, The Author, Kota Kinabalu 2011, pp. 113-115.
  22. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: Principles of American Foreign Policy 1750-1900 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984, pp. 210-215.
  23. ↑ Guam Organic Act of 1950
  24. ^ Spencer C. Tucker: The encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars: a political, social, and military history , Vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara 2009, p. 379.
  25. ^ Willi Paul Adams: The USA before 1900 (= Oldenbourg ground plan of history, vol. 28). Oldenbourg, Munich 2000, p. 128 f. (Accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  26. ^ Willi Paul Adams: The USA in the 20th century (= Oldenbourg floor plan of history, vol. 29). Oldenbourg, Munich 2012, p. 38 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  27. ↑ For more information: Roland G. Ruppenthal: Logistical support for the armies: May 1941 - September 1944 , pp. 17-19 ( table of contents of the complete work with links ).
  28. ↑ Norske kampfly til Iceland (norw.), Aftenposten, October 20th 2011, accessed on November 3, 2014.
  29. ↑ a b Christoph Gunkel: Bargain Alaska. Forerunner of Trump's Greenland Plan , Spiegel Online of August 22, 2019.
  30. ↑ Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy 1931-1941 (English)
  31. ^ Danish Institute for Foreign Policy (DUPI) (ed.): Greenland during the Cold War. Danish and American Security Policy 1945–1968. Summary of the original edition in two volumes. Copenhagen 1997, p. 11.
  32. ↑ Fredsakademiet: Thulesag 2 - amerikanske baser i Grønland ( Memento from June 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (Danish)
  33. ↑ Defense of Greenland: Agreement Between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark (English)
  34. ↑ US military presence worldwide ( Memento from October 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive )