American Revolution: How did a popular call for freedom create a superpower?
The United States is among the freest nations on earth. Its citizens enjoy tremendous liberty thanks to the way the American government was set up by its founders. The liberties Americans enjoy, such as having the freedom to choose one’s religion (or no religion), the right to own firearms, the right to a fair trial, the right to freely express one’s views, these are all laid out in the American Constitution. The Constitution was written by America’s founders being the oldest constitution in the world. But before all of that be possible they had to start an insurrection by which 13 of Great Britain’s North American colonies won political independence and formed the United States of America. The war followed more than a decade of growing estrangement between the British crown and a large and influential segment of its North American colonies that was caused by British attempts to assert greater control over colonial affairs after having long adhered to a policy of salutary neglect. Until early in 1778 the conflict was a civil war within the British Empire, but afterward, it became an international war as France (in 1778) and Spain (in 1779) joined the colonies against Britain. Meanwhile, the Netherlands, which provided both official recognition of the United States and financial support for it, was engaged in its war against Britain. From the beginning, sea power was vital in determining the course of the war, lending to British strategy flexibility that helped compensate for the comparatively small numbers of troops sent to America and ultimately enabling the French to help bring the final British surrender at Yorktown.
Beginning: The Early Seeds
As early as 1651, the English government had sought to regulate trade in the American colonies. On October 9, the Navigation Acts were approved by a mercantilist policy designed to ensure that commerce would only enrich Great Britain and prevent trade with foreign nations. Some argue that the economic impact was minimal on the colonists, but the political friction which the acts triggered was more serious, as the merchants most directly affected were most politically active. King Philip’s War (an armed conflict in 1675–78 between Indian inhabitants of New England and New England colonists and their Indian allies) in which much was fought without significant help from England. This contributed to the development of a unique identity, separate from that of the British people.
In the 1680s, King Charles II determined to bring the New England colonies under a more centralized administration to regulate trade more effectively. His efforts were fiercely opposed by the colonists, resulting in the abrogation of their colonial charter by the Crown. Charles’ successor James II completed these efforts in 1686, establishing the Dominion of New England. Dominion rule triggered bitter resentment throughout New England; the enforcement of the unpopular Navigation Acts and the curtailing of local democracy angered the colonists. New Englanders were encouraged, however, by a change of government in England that saw James II abdicate, and a populist uprising overthrew Dominion rule on April 18, 1689. Colonial governments reasserted their control in the revolt’s wake, and successive governments made no more attempts to restore the Dominion.
Subsequent English governments continued in their efforts to tax certain goods, passing acts regulating the trade of wool, hats, and molasses. The Molasses Act of 1733, in particular, was egregious to the colonists, as a significant part of colonial trade relied on the product. The taxes severely damaged the New England economy, and the taxes were rarely paid, resulting in a surge of smuggling, bribery, and intimidation of customs officials. Colonial wars fought in America were often the source of considerable tension. The British captured the fortress of Louisbourg during the War of the Austrian Succession, but then ceded it back to France in 1748. New England colonists resented their losses of lives and the effort and expenditure involved in subduing the fortress, only to have returned to their former enemy.
Historians typically begin their histories of the American Revolution with the British coalition victory in the Seven Years’ War in 1763. The North American theater of the Seven Years’ War is commonly known as the French and Indian War in the United States; it removed France as a major player in North American affairs and led to the territory of New France being ceded to Great Britain. Lawrence Henry Gipson writes:
It may be said as truly that the American Revolution was an aftermath of the Anglo-French conflict in the New World carried on between 1754 and 1763.The Royal Proclamation of 1763 may also have played a role in the separation of the Thirteen Colonies from England, as colonists wanted to continue migrating west to lands awarded by the Crown for their wartime service. The Proclamation, however, cut them off. The lands west of Quebec and west of a line running along the crest of the Allegheny Mountains became Indian territory, barred to settlement for two years.
The colonists protested, and the boundary line was adjusted in a series of treaties with the Indians. In 1768, Indians agreed to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix and the Treaty of Hard Labour followed in 1770 by the Treaty of Lochaber. The treaties opened most of Kentucky and West Virginia to colonial settlement.
Taxes imposed and withdrawn
In 1764, Parliament passed the Currency Act to restrain the use of paper money, fearing that otherwise, the colonists might evade debt payments. Parliament also passed the Sugar Act, imposing customs duties on several articles. That same year, Prime Minister George Grenville proposed direct taxes on the colonies to raise revenue, but he delayed action to see whether the colonies would propose some way to raise the revenue themselves. Parliament finally passed the Stamp Act in March 1765 which imposed direct taxes on the colonies for the first time. All official documents, newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets were required to have the stamps — even decks of playing cards.
The colonists did not object that the taxes were high; they were low. They objected to the fact that they had no representation in the Parliament, and thus no voice concerning legislation that affected them. Benjamin Franklin testified in Parliament in 1766 that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire. He said that local governments had raised, outfitted, and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France — as many as Britain itself sent — and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone. London had to deal with 1,500 politically well-connected British Army soldiers. The decision was to keep them on active duty with full pay, but they had to be stationed somewhere. Stationing a standing army in Great Britain during peacetime was politically unacceptable, so the decision was made to station them in America and have the Americans pay them. The soldiers had no military mission; they were not there to defend the colonies because there was no threat to the colonies.
The Sons of Liberty were formed in 1765. They used public demonstrations, boycott, violence, and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of the vice-admiralty court and looted the home of chief justice Thomas Hutchinson. Several legislatures called for united action, and nine colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City on October 1765. Moderates led by John Dickinson drew up a “Declaration of Rights and Grievances” stating that taxes passed without representation violated their rights as Englishmen. Colonists emphasized their determination by boycotting imports of British merchandise.
The Parliament at Westminster saw itself as the supreme lawmaking authority throughout all British possessions and thus entitled to levy any tax without colonial approval. They argued that the colonies were legally British corporations subordinate to the British parliament and pointed to many instances where Parliament had made laws binding on the colonies in the past. They saw nothing in the unwritten British constitution that made taxes special and noted that they had taxed American trade for decades. Parliament insisted that the colonies enjoyed a “virtual representation” as most British people did, as only a small minority of the British population elected representatives to Parliament. Americans such as James Otis maintained that the Americans were not virtually represented.
In London, the Rockingham government came to power (July 1765) and Parliament debated whether to repeal the stamp tax or to send an army to enforce it. Benjamin Franklin made the case for repeal, explaining that the colonies had spent heavily in manpower, money, and blood in defense of the empire in a series of wars against the French and Indians and that further taxes to pay for those wars were unjust and might bring about a rebellion. Parliament agreed and repealed the tax (February 21, 1766), but insisted in the Declaratory Act of March 1766 that they kept full power to make laws for the colonies “in all cases”. The repeal caused widespread celebrations in the colonies.
Townshend Acts and the Tea Act
In 1767, the Parliament passed the Townshend Acts which placed duties on many essential goods, including paper, glass, and tea, and established a Board of Customs in Boston to more rigorously execute trade regulations. The new taxes were enacted on the belief that Americans only objected to internal taxes and not to external taxes such as customs duties. The Americans, however, argued against the constitutionality of the act because its purpose was to raise revenue and not regulate trade. Colonists responded by organizing new boycotts of British goods. These boycotts were less effective, however, as the Townshend goods were widely used.
In February 1768, the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay issued a circular letter to the other colonies urging them to coordinate resistance. The governor dissolved the assembly when it refused to rescind the letter. Meanwhile, a riot broke out in Boston in June 1768 over the seizure of the sloop Liberty, owned by John Hancock, for alleged smuggling. Customs officials were forced to flee, prompting the British to deploy troops to Boston. A Boston town meeting declared that no obedience was because of parliamentary laws and called for the convening of a convention. A convention assembled but only issued a mild protest before dissolving itself. In January 1769, Parliament responded to the unrest by reactivating the Treason Act 1543 which called for subjects outside the realm to face trials for treason in England. The governor of Massachusetts was instructed to collect evidence of said treason, and the threat caused widespread outrage, though it was not carried out.
On March 5, 1770, a large crowd gathered around a group of British soldiers. The crowd grew threatening, throwing snowballs, rocks, and debris at them. One soldier was clubbed and fell. There was no order to fire, but the soldiers fired into the crowd, anyway. They hit 11 people; three civilians died at the scene of the shooting, and two died after the incident. The event quickly came to be called the Boston Massacre. The soldiers were tried and acquitted (defended by John Adams), but the widespread descriptions soon began to turn colonial sentiment against the British. This began a downward spiral in the relationship between Britain and the Province of Massachusetts.
A new ministry under Lord North came to power in 1770, and Parliament withdrew all taxes except the tax on tea, giving up its efforts to raise revenue while maintaining the right to tax. This temporarily resolved the crisis, and the boycott of British goods largely ceased, with only the more radical patriots such as Samuel Adams continuing to agitate.
In June 1772, American patriots, including John Brown, burned a British warship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations in what became known as the Gaspee Affair. The affair was investigated for treason, but no action was taken.
In 1772, it became known that the Crown intended to pay fixed salaries to the governors and judges in Massachusetts, which had been paid by local authorities. This would reduce the influence of colonial representatives over their government. Samuel Adams in Boston set about creating new Committees of Correspondence, which linked Patriots in all 13 colonies and eventually provided the framework for a rebel government. Virginia, the largest colony, set up its Committee of Correspondence in early 1773, on which Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson served.
About 7000 to 8000 Patriots served on “Committees of Correspondence” at the colonial and local levels, comprising most of the leadership in their communities. Loyalists were excluded. The committees became the leaders of the American resistance to British actions and determined the war effort at the state and local level. When the First Continental Congress boycotted British products, the colonial and local Committees took charge, examining merchant records and publishing the names of merchants who attempted to defy the boycott by importing British goods.
In 1773, private letters were published in which Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson claimed that the colonists could not enjoy all English liberties, and Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver called for the direct payment of colonial officials. The letters’ contents were used as evidence of a systematic plot against American rights and discredited Hutchinson in the eyes of the people; the Assembly petitioned for his recall. Benjamin Franklin, postmaster general for the colonies, acknowledged that he leaked the letters, which led to him being berated by British officials and fired from his job.
Meanwhile, Parliament passed the Tea Act to lower the price of taxed tea exported to the colonies to help the East India Company undersell smuggled Dutch tea. Special consignees were appointed to sell the tea to bypass colonial merchants. The act was opposed by those who resisted the taxes and also by smugglers who stood to lose business. In most instances, the consignees were forced to resign, and the tea was turned back, but Massachusetts governor Hutchinson refused to allow Boston merchants to give in to pressure. A town meeting in Boston determined that the tea would not be landed and ignored a demand from the governor to disperse. On December 16, 1773, a group of men, led by Samuel Adams and dressed to evoke the appearance of American Indians, boarded the ships of the British East India Company and dumped £10,000 worth of tea from their holds (approximately £1,515,435.18 in 2019) into Boston Harbor. Decades later, this event became known as the Boston Tea Party and remains a significant part of American patriotic lore.
Intolerable Acts and the Quebec Act
The British government responded by passing several Acts which came to be known as the Intolerable Acts, which further darkened colonial opinion towards the British. They comprised four laws enacted by the British parliament. The first was the Massachusetts Government Act which altered the Massachusetts charter and restricted town meetings. The second act was the Administration of Justice Act which ordered that all British soldiers to be tried were to be arraigned in Britain, not in the colonies. The third Act was the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until the British had been compensated for the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party. The fourth Act was the Quartering Act of 1774, which allowed royal governors to house British troops in the homes of citizens without requiring the permission of the owner.
In response, Massachusetts patriots issued the Suffolk Resolves and formed an alternative shadow government known as the “Provincial Congress” which began training militia outside British-occupied Boston. In September 1774, the First Continental Congress convened, comprising representatives from each of the colonies, to serve as a vehicle for deliberation and collective action. During secret debates, conservative Joseph Galloway proposed the creation of a colonial Parliament that could approve or disapprove of acts of the British Parliament, but his idea was not accepted. The Congress instead endorsed the proposal of John Adams that Americans would obey Parliament voluntarily but would resist all taxes in disguise. Congress called for a boycott beginning on December 1, 1774, of all British goods; it was enforced by new committees allowed by the Congress.
Military hostilities begin
Massachusetts was declared in a state of rebellion in February 1775 and the British garrison received orders to disarm the rebels and arrest their leaders, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The Patriots laid siege to Boston, expelled royal officials from all the colonies, and took control through the establishment of Provincial Congresses. The Battle of Bunker Hill followed on June 17, 1775. It was a British victory — but at a great cost: about 1,000 British casualties from a garrison of about 6,000, as compared to 500 American casualties from a much larger force. The Second Continental Congress was divided on the best course of action, but eventually produced the Olive Branch Petition, in which they attempted to come to an accord with King George. The king, however, issued a Proclamation of Rebellion which stated that the states were “in rebellion” and the members of Congress were traitors.
The war that arose was in some ways a classic insurgency. As Benjamin Franklin wrote to Joseph Priestley in October 1775: “Britain, at the expense of three million, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20,000 a head… During the same time, 60,000 children have been born in America. From these data, his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and expense necessary to kill us all.”.
In the winter of 1775, the Americans invaded Canada under generals Benedict Arnold and Richard Montgomery. The attack was a failure; many Americans who weren’t killed were captured or died of smallpox.
In March 1776, the Continental Army forced the British to evacuate Boston, with George Washington as the commander of the new army. The revolutionaries were now in full control of all 13 colonies and were ready to declare independence. There still were many Loyalists, but they were no longer in control anywhere by July 1776, and all the Royal officials had fled.
Independence and Union
In April 1776, the North Carolina Provincial Congress issued the Halifax Resolves explicitly allowing its delegates to vote for independence. By June, nine Provincial Congresses were ready for independence; one by one, the last four fell into line: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and New York. Richard Henry Lee was instructed by the Virginia legislature to propose independence, and he did so on June 7th, 1776. On June 11th, a committee drafted a document explaining the justifications for separation from Britain. After securing enough votes for passage, independence was voted for on July 2nd.
The Declaration of Independence was drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson and presented by the committee; it was unanimously adopted by the entire Congress on July 4th, and each of the colonies became independent and autonomous. The next step was to form a union to facilitate international relations and alliances.
The Second Continental Congress approved the “Articles of Confederation” for ratification by the states on November 15, 1777; the Congress immediately began operating under the Articles’ terms, providing a structure of shared sovereignty during prosecution of the war and facilitating international relations and alliances with France and Spain. The articles were ratified on March 1, 1781. At that point, the Continental Congress was dissolved and a new government of the United States in Congress Assembled took its place on the following day, with Samuel Huntington as presiding officer.
Defending the Revolution
According to British historian Jeremy Black, the British had significant advantages, including a highly-trained army, the world’s largest navy, and an efficient system of public finance that could easily fund the war. However, they misunderstood the depth of support for the American Patriot position and ignored the advice of General Gage, misinterpreting the situation as merely a large-scale riot. The British government believed that they could overawe the Americans by sending a large military and naval force, forcing them to be loyal again:
Convinced that the Revolution was the work of a full few miscreants who had rallied an armed rabble to their cause, they expected that the revolutionaries would be intimidated…. Then the vast majority of Americans, who were loyal but cowed by the terroristic tactics… would rise up, kick out the rebels, and restore loyal government in each colony.Washington forced the British out of Boston in the spring of 1776, and neither the British nor the Loyalists controlled any significant areas. The British, however, were massing forces at their naval base at Halifax, Nova Scotia. They returned in force in July 1776, landing in New York and defeating Washington’s Continental Army in August at the Battle of Brooklyn. Following that victory, they requested a meeting with representatives from Congress to negotiate an end to hostilities.
A delegation including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin met British Admiral Richard Howe on Staten Island in New York Harbor on September 11, in the Staten Island Peace Conference. Howe demanded that the Americans retract the Declaration of Independence, which they refused to do, and negotiations ended. The British then seized New York City and nearly captured Washington’s army. They made New York their main political and military base of operations, holding it until November 1783. The city became the destination for Loyalist refugees and a focal point of Washington’s intelligence network.
The British also took New Jersey, pushing the Continental Army into Pennsylvania. Washington crossed the Delaware River back into New Jersey in a surprise attack in late December 1776 and defeated the Hessian and British armies at Trenton and Princeton, regaining control of most of New Jersey. The victories gave an important boost to Patriots when morale was flagging, and they have become iconic events of the war.
In 1777, the British sent Burgoyne’s invasion force from Canada south to New York to seal off New England. They aimed to isolate New England, which the British perceived as the primary source of agitation. Rather than move north to support Burgoyne, the British army in New York City went to Philadelphia in a major case of miscoordination, capturing it from Washington. The invasion army under Burgoyne was much too slow and became trapped in northern New York state. It surrendered after the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777. From early October 1777 until November 15, a siege distracted British troops at Fort Mifflin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and allowed Washington time to preserve the Continental Army by safely leading his troops to harsh winter quarters at Valley Forge.
The end of the war
Historians continue to debate whether the odds were long or short for American victory. John E. Ferling says that the odds were so long that the American victory was “almost a miracle”. On the other hand, Joseph Ellis says that the odds favored the Americans, and asks whether there ever was any realistic chance for the British to win. He argues that this opportunity came only once, in the summer of 1776, and the British failed that test. Admiral Howe and his brother General Howe “missed several opportunities to destroy the Continental Army…. Chance, luck, and even the vagaries of the weather played crucial roles.” Ellis’s point is that the strategic and tactical decisions of the Howes were fatally flawed because they underestimated the challenges posed by the Patriots. Ellis concludes that, once the Howe brothers failed, the opportunity “would never come again” for a British victory.
Support for the conflict had never been strong in Britain, where many sympathized with the Americans, but now it reached a new low. King George wanted to fight on, but his supporters lost control of Parliament and they launched no further offensives in America. War erupted between America and Britain three decades later with the War of 1812, which firmly established the permanence of the United States and its complete autonomy.
Washington did not know whether the British might reopen hostilities after Yorktown. They still had 26,000 troops occupying New York City, Charleston, and Savannah, together with a powerful fleet. The French army and navy departed, so the Americans were on their own in 1782–83. The treasury was empty, and the unpaid soldiers were growing restive, almost to the point of mutiny or coup d’état. Washington dispelled the unrest among officers of the Newburgh Conspiracy in 1783, and Congress subsequently created the promise of a five years bonus for all officers.
Paris peace treaty
During negotiations in Paris, the American delegation discovered that France supported American independence but no territorial gains, hoping to confine the new nation to the area east of the Appalachian Mountains. The Americans opened direct secret negotiations with London, cutting out the French. British Prime Minister Lord Shelburne was in full charge of the British negotiations, and he saw a chance to make the United States a valuable economic partner. The US got all the land east of the Mississippi River, south of Canada, and north of Florida. It gained fishing rights off Canadian coasts and agreed to allow British merchants and Loyalists to recover their property. Prime Minister Shelburne foresaw highly profitable two-way trade between Britain and the rapidly growing United States, which came to pass. The blockade was lifted and all British interference had been driven out, and American merchants were free to trade with any nation anywhere in the world.
The British abandoned their American Indian allies, who were not a party to this treaty and did not recognize it until they were defeated militarily by the United States. However, the British sold them munitions and maintain forts in American territory until the Jay Treaty of 1795.
Losing the war and the Thirteen Colonies was a shock to Britain. The war revealed the limitations of Britain’s fiscal-military state when they discovered that they suddenly faced powerful enemies with no allies, and they depended on extended and vulnerable transatlantic lines of communication. The defeat heightened dissension and escalated political antagonism to the King’s ministers. Inside Parliament, the primary concern changed from fears of an over-mighty monarch to the issues of representation, parliamentary reform, and government retrenchment. Reformers sought to destroy what they saw as widespread institutional corruption, and the result was a crisis from 1776 to 1783. The peace in 1783 left France financially prostrate, while the British economy boomed thanks to the return of American business. The crisis ended after 1784 thanks to the King’s shrewdness in outwitting Charles James Fox (the leader of the Fox-North Coalition), and renewed confidence in the system engendered by the leadership of Prime Minister William Pitt. Some historians suggest that loss of the American colonies enabled Britain to deal with the French Revolution with more unity and better organization than would otherwise have been the case. Britain turned towards Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa with subsequent exploration leading to the rise of the Second British Empire.
Concluding the Revolution
The war ended in 1783 and was followed by a period of prosperity. The national government was still operating under the Articles of Confederation and could settle the western territories, which the states ceded to Congress. American settlers moved rapidly into those areas, with Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee becoming states in the 1790s.
However, the national government had no money either to pay the war debts owed to European nations and the private banks or to pay Americans who had been given millions of dollars of promissory notes for supplies during the war. Nationalists led by Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and other veterans feared that the new nation was too fragile to withstand an international war or even internal revolts such as the Shays’ Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts. They convinced Congress to call the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 and named their party the Federalist party. The Convention adopted a new Constitution which provided for a much stronger federal government, including an effective executive in a check-and-balance system with the judiciary and legislature. The Constitution was ratified in 1788, after a fierce debate in the states over the proposed new government. The new government under President George Washington took office in New York in March 1789. James Madison spearheaded Congressional amendments to the Constitution as assurances to those who were cautious about federal power, guaranteeing many of the inalienable rights that formed a foundation for the revolution, and Rhode Island was the final state to ratify the Constitution in 1791.
The Rise Of The “American Empire”
Despite periods of peaceful co-existence, wars with Native Americans resulted in substantial territorial gains for colonists from the United Kingdom. Wars continued intermittently after independence, and an ethnic cleansing campaign known as Indian removal gained for ethnically European settlers more valuable territory on the eastern side of the continent.
George Washington began a policy of United States non-interventionism which lasted into the 1800s. The United States promulgated the Monroe Doctrine in 1821, to stop further European colonialism and to allow the American colonies to grow further, but the desire for territorial expansion to the Pacific Ocean was explicit in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The giant Louisiana Purchase was peaceful, but the Mexican–American War of 1846 resulted in the annexation of 525,000 square miles of Mexican territory. Elements attempted to expand pro-U.S. republics or U.S. states in Mexico and Central America, the most notable being the filibuster William Walker’s Republic of Baja California in 1853 and his intervention in Nicaragua in 1855. Senator Sam Houston of Texas even proposed a resolution in the Senate for the “United States to declare and maintain an efficient protectorate over the States of Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and San Salvador.” U.S. expansion into Mexico and the Caribbean was popular among politicians of the slave states, and also among some business tycoons in the Nicaraguan Transit (the semi-overland and main trade route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans before the Panama Canal). President Ulysses S. Grant attempted to Annex the Dominican Republic in 1870 but did not get the support of the Senate.
Non-interventionism was wholly abandoned with the Spanish–American War, the United States acquired the remaining island colonies of Spain, with President Theodore Roosevelt defending the permanent acquisition of the Philippines. The U.S. policed Latin America under Roosevelt Corollary and sometimes using the military to favor American commercial interests (such as the intervention in the banana republics and the annexation of Hawaii). Imperialist foreign policy was controversial with the American public, and domestic opposition allowed Cuban independence, though in the early 20th century the U.S. obtained the Panama Canal Zone and occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The United States returned to the strong non-interventionist policy after World War I, including the Good Neighbor policy for Latin America. After fighting World War II, it administered many Pacific islands captured during the fight against Japan. Partly to prevent the militaries of those countries from growing threateningly large, and partly to contain the Soviet Union, the United States promised to defend Germany (which is also part of NATO) and Japan (through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan) which it had formerly defeated in war and which are now independent democracies. It maintains substantial military bases in both.
The Cold War reoriented American foreign policy towards opposing communism and prevailing U.S. foreign policy embraced its role as a nuclear-armed global superpower. Though the Truman Doctrine and Reagan Doctrine framed the mission as protecting free peoples against an undemocratic system, anti-Soviet foreign policy became coercive and occasionally covert. United States involvement in regime change included overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran, the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, occupation of Grenada, and interference in various foreign elections. The long and bloody Vietnam War led to widespread criticism of an “arrogance of power” and violations of international law emerging from an “imperial presidency,” with Martin Luther King, among others, accusing the US of a new form of colonialism.
Many saw the post-Cold War 1990–91 Gulf War as motivated by U.S. oil interests, though it reversed the hostile invasion of Kuwait. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, questions of imperialism were raised again as the United States invaded Afghanistan (which harbored the attackers) and Iraq (which the U.S. incorrectly claimed had weapons of mass destruction). The invasion led to the collapse of the Ba’athist government and its replacement with the Coalition Provisional Authority. The Iraq War opened the country’s oil industry to US firms for the first time in decades and arguably violated international law. Both wars caused immense civilian casualties.
In terms of territorial acquisition, the United States has integrated with voting rights, all of its acquisitions on the North American continent, including the non-contiguous Alaska. Hawaii has also become a state with equal representation to the mainland, but other island jurisdictions gained during wartime remain territories, namely Guam, Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The rest of the acquired territories has become independent with varying degrees of cooperation, ranging from three freely associated states which take part in federal government programs for military basing rights, to Cuba which severed diplomatic relations during the Cold War. The United States was a public advocate for European decolonization after World War II (having started a ten-year independence transition for the Philippines in 1934 with the Tydings–McDuffie Act). The US desire for an informal system of global primacy in an “American Century” often brought them into conflict with national liberation movements.
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