The birth of empire: The secret history of United States/Mexican relations, 1841--1932

Between 1841 and 1932, contacts between Americans and Mexicans were marked not only by intervention and revolution, but by accommodation and cooperation as well. The history that unfolded during these years offers critical insights into how the United States became a global empire, the impulses behind neo-liberalism, the growth of American culture in Mexico and the process of globalization.;Chapter one examines the administration of John Tyler and argues that President Tyler, by: utilizing a uniquely broad interpretation of the constitutionally defined powers of the president, planting selective leaks in the press and manipulating national security data constructed a coalition of the willing that helped him push his agenda for the annexation of Texas through a congress divided over the issue of slavery.;Chapter two examines the lengths to which the newly elected President, James K. Polk would go to convince Congress and the American people of the dangers posed by a free black population and British presence in the Western Hemisphere. Polk quickly learned to manipulate partisan politics to promote his agenda for war; the President effectively silenced debate Capitol Hill and united Democrats and Whigs behind his agenda by threatening to brand those against him as unpatriotic. He then brought the press into the fold to present a unified vision of American expansionism as distinctly linked to national security interests. The press not only came to support the President's neo-liberal project in Mexico, but also increasingly became part of the project itself.;The third chapter examines opposition to Mr. Polk's war. The opposition posited that Polk had virtually divested Congress of its war-making power, and transferred that authority to himself. In so doing, they exposed a critical weakness in the American system of checks and balances. Chapter four argues that the war with Mexico (rather than the Spanish American War of 1898) was America's first war for empire. As such it set the terms for all future engagements in Latin America, Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.;Chapter five unravels the Gordian knot of private interests, Porfirian development policies, and Washington's hemispheric ambitious in Mexico through at) examination of American business practices, the illegal Mexican slave trade and the use of diplomats and government officials from both countries to market worthless securities to unsuspecting American investors who linked their own entrepreneurial success to the promotion of national security this region.;The final chapter examines the activities of American intellectuals in Mexico the post revolutionary period. In both nations native peoples were, at once, the object of conscientious study and political worry. Assimilate, integrate, or preserve were the options discussed in progressive circles. The work of John Dewey, Moises Saenz and Jose Vasconcelos are the subject of chapter six.