'At no distant day': Shanghai, U.S. Imperial Aspirations, and the Construction of a Future Pacific Empire, 1842-1863

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2015
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Haverford College. Department of History
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Thesis
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Award
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eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
This thesis attempts to complicate the conventional narrative of U.S. empire-that it was restricted to the North American continent before its international expansion with the 1898 Spanish-American War-by exploring the ways mid-nineteenth century Americans like Daniel Webster first imagined and then sought to construct a Pacific route of empire. It focuses on the end point of this route, the Chinese city of Shanghai, as the reason for the linking of the North American Pacific Coast, Hawaii, and Japan into such a route and as a site of U.S. territorial empire and imperial competition with Britain. These early Americans were driven by imperial anxiety and the two worries of the possible but preventable British domination of the Pacific Ocean and, more regionally, the China trade. This thesis, in telling such story of imperial imagination, aspiration, and construction, adds contemporary newspaper articles, travelogues, and maps to twentieth and twenty-first century scholarly publications to bring to light an often downplayed presence of the United States in nineteenth century China and the ignored or forgotten place of China in nineteenth century U.S. empire.
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