David M. Pletcher Libros

Historian David M. Pletcher, who has already produced two award-winning books on the subject of U.S. foreign relations, sets forth in this new book a comprehensive account of a significant chapter in America's westward expansion. Focusing on the policies and events that led to the annexation of Texas, the Oregon compromise, the Mexican War, and the occupation of California and the Southwest, The Diplomacy of Annexation analyzes and interrelates the three principal territorial questions of the 1840s. Through its annexation policies, the United States acquired approximately the western third of its continental domain, and it did so to a large degree at the expense of Mexico and Great Britain.Much of the historical debate over the territorial acquisitions of the 1840s has centered on the legal and moral validity of America's actions. Pletcher emphasizes instead America's gains and losses from the policies it chose to follow and then examines why more peaceful alternatives were not adopted. Specifically, could the United States have obtained Texas without ignoring Mexican claims, Oregon without veiled threats of war with Britain, and California and the Southwest without a war with Mexico? Could she have relied on the combination of gradual emigration and opportune timing which won the Mississippi Valley and Florida?A basic assumption of The Diplomacy of Annexation is that the Mexican War and the Texas and Oregon questions were not simply family quarrels in the Western Hemisphere. Instead, they posed a truly international question of first importance in which the United States, Mexico, Britain, France, and occasionally even pain played lively roles, both political and economic. The effect of Professor Pletcher's presentation, moving over the whole international canvas, is to put into meaningful context times and events too often considered only in isolation.