Trump invokes manifest destiny (1) infographic
Graphic shows how U.S. has expanded since it was founded in 1776 and Donald Trump’s supposed territorial ambitions.
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POLITICS

President-elect Trump invokes manifest destiny

By Phil Bainbridge

January 20, 2025 - Citing security and economic need, President-elect Trump has proposed a new expansion of U.S. territory, with the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada in his sights.

From the first clashes with Native Americansat the British settlement in Jamestown - and 250 further years of Indian Wars - the growth of the United States has had an inevitability, expressed in “The Democratic Review” in 1845 as “manifest destiny” - sometimes taken to mean a divine right to the entire continent.

Just 27 years after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the United States almost doubled in size with the Louisiana Purchase from France, in which Napoleon Bonaparte, keen to raise funds for his European wars, sold 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. A deal with the British, and war with Mexico saw U.S, territory reach to the Pacific coast. Alaska was purchased from the Russian Empire in 1867. The last major expansion of U.S. territories, from the Caribbean to the Philippines, was overseen by President William McKinley - a favourite of Donald Trump - following the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Trump has now raised the prospect of acquiring Greenland - essential for U.S. security in the Arctic - from Denmark, who have dismissed the idea but face a growing independence movement on the autonomous territory. He has threatened to retake the Panama Canal Zone - a critical route for U.S. businesses - which was a part of Colombia until a U.S.-backed movement won independence in 1904. He has also suggested resource-rich Canada should become the 51st State of the U.S., referring to the Prime Minister as Governor.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 17/01/2025; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Getty Images, Newscom
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