Claiming a Hemisphere
A young state with two aims
- Struggling to create an independent global presence, the United States sought to claim territory throughout the North American continent and promote foreign trade.
- Struggling is the CED's own framing — this is a weak power's foreign policy, not a confident one.
- Two aims again: territory on the continent, and trade beyond it.
Select both aims the CED names.
Territory on the continent, trade beyond it.
Three named means
- The U.S. government sought influence and control over the Western Hemisphere through a variety of means, including military actions, American Indian removal, and diplomatic efforts such as the Monroe Doctrine.
- The CED lists them together and does not rank them: military actions, American Indian removal, and diplomacy.
- American Indian removal appearing in a list of foreign-policy means is exact and deliberate — it treats native nations as parties to hemispheric policy.
Select all three means the CED lists.
Listed together, without ranking.
The Monroe Doctrine as a claim
- A declaration about a hemisphere from a state that could not enforce it is an assertion of standing, not of power.
- That is consistent with struggling to create an independent global presence — the doctrine states an ambition.
- Reading it as an achieved policy rather than a claim misdates American capability by decades.
An aim, a means, or the framing?
Sort each element of early American foreign policy.
The CED's word for the United States' position is...
A weak power's foreign policy, not a confident one.
The Monroe Doctrine is a claim, not an achieved policy. The CED frames the whole subtopic as a state struggling to create an independent global presence — so a declaration about a hemisphere from a power that could not enforce it asserts standing, and reading it as capability misdates the United States by decades.
The Monroe Doctrine is better read as a claim than as an achieved policy.
Reading it as capability misdates the United States by decades.
Foreign policy that is also domestic
- Territorial claims on the continent are simultaneously a foreign policy and a settlement policy.
- So 4.8's frontier settlers and 4.13's relocating slaveholders are participants in the same expansion.
- That overlap is why the CED's third thread names government and private initiatives together.
Continental territorial claims are simultaneously foreign policy and ____ policy.
Which is why the CED names government and private initiatives.
How and why foreign policy expanded
- The objective is how and why American foreign policy developed and expanded over time.
- How: through military action, removal, exploration, purchase and declaration.
- Why: because a state struggling for standing needs both territory and trade, and each acquisition makes the next easier.
A statement that a region is closed to new colonisation is only as good as the navy behind it. Issued by a state without one, it is a position taken now to be enforced later — which is a real act, but a different kind of act.
Struggling to create an independent global presence, the United States sought to claim territory throughout the North American continent and promote foreign trade, and sought influence and control over the Western Hemisphere through a variety of means, including military actions, American Indian removal, and diplomatic efforts such as the Monroe Doctrine. The CED lists removal among foreign-policy means, and struggling frames the whole subtopic as the policy of a weak power.