The Mexican-american War: 1846-1848

The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) occupies an important position in the American and Mexican historical development. In this paper, we will investigate why and how this war happened, and what kind of influence it made on both countries.The first chapter focuses on the background of this war. After independence, the Mexican political situation was volatile, and the war-ravaged national economy developed slowly. In addition, its control on the northern border areas was weak. All of which provided certain convenience for American invasion. In contrast, The United States achieved dramatic development in its economy. Both the northern capitalist industry and the southern plantation economy gained rapid development. With the economic development, the United States also accelerated the pace of its territorial expansion, especially the southern plantation owners, who strongly asking external expansion for their own economic and political interests. At the same time, the expansion trend represented by "manifest destiny" was clamor for U.S. foreign expansion in the early nineteenth century.The second chapter mainly introduces the independence and merger of Texas as the trigger of the Mexican-American War, as well as the process of the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. We can find that this war was aggression and plunder of a power towards a weak one.The third chapter describes the different effects of the war on both countries. The United States as the winner in this war, plundered vast lands and resources, which effectively promoted the American capitalist economy. But territorial expansion also intensified the contradiction between two economic systems and caused a dramatic change in U.S. domestic political situation, and eventually led to the Civil War. Mexico, as the defeated one, suffered session of territory and the loss of resources, which seriously affected Mexico's future economic development and thus also resulted in a series of contradictions between the two countries on the immigration issues. But this war also made a turning point in Mexico's political situation, and made the Conservative Party and the Catholic Church further expose their reactionary nature, which led to Mexico's political reforms and promoted the process of political democratization in Mexico. For the Latin American countries, now they understood even more clearly the true meaning of the Monroe Doctrine.