16 4.2 United States: Early Development and Globalization (16/50) -- World Regional Geography

16 4.2 United States: Early Development and Globalization Learning Objectives - Explain how the United States acquired its geographic boundaries. - Examine patterns of immigration to and migration within the United States through the period of westward settlement. - Examine urban growth and its connection to development of new forms of transportation. - Explain which economic patterns helped the United States become the world’s largest economy. - Consider how the concept of the American Dream has been exported globally. Early Development Patterns With abundant resources and opportunity, the original thirteen colonies prospered and expanded into what became the fifty US states. The political geography of this nation was a product of various treaties and acquisitions that eventually resulted in the country extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Fueling the expansion was the concept of Manifest Destiny: the belief of some Americans that the new nation was divinely predestined to expand across the continent. The United States negotiated with France for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, acquiring millions of acres in the central United States (see Figure 4.5 “Geopolitical Map of the Creation of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific”). Florida was acquired from Spain in 1819, and Texas was annexed in 1845. The British sold portions of the Pacific Northwest to the United States, and the exact northern boundary between the United States and Canada was settled in 1846. Through conflicts with Mexico, large portions of the West were ceded to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Alaska was purchased from the Russians in 1867 for only $7.2 million. Alaska and Hawaii were the last two possessions to enter into statehood, which they did in 1959. Manifest Destiny The concept of Manifest Destiny came from the works of John O’Sullivan in 1839. O’Sullivan wrote, As the United States developed, it acquired external colonial possessions. With victory over Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the US government gained control of the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and various Pacific islands. Cuba and the Philippines later became independent countries, but Puerto Rico and Guam continue to be part of the United States. The US Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1918 after World War I as a location to provide strategic military support to protect the shipping lanes through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal. Westward Settlement Patterns and European Immigration The thirteen original colonies are often grouped into three regions, each with its own economic and cultural patterns. These three areas—New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South—are considered culture hearths, or places where culture formed and from which it spread. The three regions were source areas for westward migration, and migrants from these regions carried with them the cultural traditions of their culture hearths. New England was characterized by