Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
I wonder about how that would've worked post Spanish-American War, when the U.S. became even more averse to being a direct colonial power. I think that if Texas had not become a U.S. territory by then, it would've most likely ended up as an sovereign territory under U.S. influence.
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I don't even buy into that narrative of "the US being averse to being a direct colonial power." Just going by what actually happened in its history, it seems the US wanted to acquire any territory it could that wasn't already taken at any cost, if it could easily do so, to further American business interests; just like Hawaii's annexation. Since a huge American sugar industry was in Hawaii, those American business people favored annexation so that there wouldn't be any more American tariffs on their sugar. If the US didn't really want to be a colonial power, the Spanish-American War would have ended without the US acquiring any more territory from Spain. The US acquired Cuba (among other territories) as a result of that war, though it only had it for a few years before it became independent in 1902 (the US hung on to the Philippines a lot longer) and by the 1920s, 22 percent of Cuba's land area was owned by American companies. Americans don't seem to know this, but Haiti was invaded and occupied by the US for nearly 20 years in the early 20th Century, and of course it was to protect American businesses that were there; the US has a history of screwing Haiti over, and the rest of Latin America as well, installing/supporting right-wing puppet governments, and being anti-any-left-leaning Latin American country's government that is unsympathetic to American business interests.