Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
This article was originally written by Sasha and is not allowed to be reproduced by any media
April 30, 1803: The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, doubling the size of the United States.
Why is the United States not interested in territory at all, so why is it not interested in territory at all?
To say that the United States is not interested in the territory is, of course, incorrect.
When the United States was founded, its territory was limited to the eastern region, and its territory today was also expanded from the outside world.
Everyone knows that when the United States became independent in 1783, there were only thirteen dominions on the Atlantic coast, about 800,000 square kilometers.
Today, the United States has a territory of 9.3 million square kilometers, making it the third largest country in the world.
So the question is, what is the matter with the 10-fold expansion of the US territory? It can be said that it is caused by five points of military and five points of political means.
From the end of the 18th century, the United States began to move westward, gradually acquiring today's land through military and acquisition means: the United States acquired land on the east bank of the Mississippi River from Britain and France in 1783, Louisiana from Napoleon in 1803, Florida from Spain in 1819, Texas and New Mexico through the Mexican-American War from 1845 to 1853. Oregon and California, which purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 and annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898.
In this world, there are three main ways to annex the land of other countries, the first is the situation of ethnic coexistence in Europe. The full name of the United Kingdom is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and this is how the land came from. Historically, the English people, through complex military and political means, including royal marriages, slowly merged Wales, Scotland, and Ireland into one country, and each ethnic group coexisted and developed separately, only formally as a country.
The disadvantage of this method is that if the education level and population of the various ethnic groups are relatively close, there will be internal antagonism for a long time. For example, Ireland, after a century-long war of independence, finally gained the independence of most of its territory and broke away from British control;
The second is Tsarist Russia, this method of keeping land but not people. After all kinds of bloody massacres against the ethnic minorities who conquered the land, many weak and small ethnic groups were exterminated!
For example, the massacre of Jiangdong 64tun and Hailan Pao in China was aimed at killing all the Chinese on the territory of the so-called Tsarist Russia, otherwise they would have the possibility of retaking their own territory. In our opinion, the Jiangdong 64 Tun massacre has no meaning.
Tsarist Russia's aim was to directly drive out the 20,000 or 30,000 Chinese in Jiangdong, 70 kilometers north and south and 40 kilometers east and west, from its own territory. According to the previous treaty between the two countries, the Chinese lived in these areas reasonably and legally, and the Tsarist government could not drive them away. So, all it takes is the army to escort these civilians back to China, why massacre thousands of them en masse?
This is the usual method of Tsarist Russia, firstly, to kill all of them to save follow-up trouble, and secondly, to slaughter innocent civilians can also deter others from coming back to live.
In addition to direct massacres, Tsarist Russia also often used exterminating methods to deal with weak and small ethnic groups.
Everyone knows the story of the return of the Turks to the east, so why did the Turkut Mongols return to the east?
The main thing is that it was almost wiped out by Tsarist Russia.
With a population of only a few hundred thousand, the Turks are a brave and warlike people. Tsarist Russia did not directly slaughter this people, but used it.
Tsarist Russia used the extermination method to let most of the men of the tiny Turghut enter the Tsarist army as cannon fodder for war.
During the 21-year Russo-Turkish war, the Turks were forced to provide as many as 125,000 soldiers. For this small and weak nation, that is, men over the age of 16 and under the age of 50 are basically forced to join the army.
When the Turks returned to the east, the population of the Turks in the entire territory of Tsarist Russia was only about 200,000.
In this war, the Turks were used in the most dangerous battlefields, and sixty or seventy thousand people were killed, and most of the soldiers who came back alive were wounded, and many were disabled. Seeing that the Turks were about to perish, Tsarist Russia also took the opportunity to seize their traditional nomadic lands and interfere in the internal affairs of the Turks, apparently preparing to completely destroy this nation. At this point, the Turks could not return to the east.
The third is that the United States does not want the kind of territories that come to the door.
Historically, the United States did have periods of territorial expansion, but it was all in the 19th century, that is, the Qing Dynasty in China.
The Americans acquired the lands of France and Russia, mainly by way of purchase, and the lands of Britain and Spain by military means. By means of war, the land of Mexico was seized.
In the end, the dove was used to occupy the magpie's nest, and a large number of white farmers were immigrated to Hawaii, and the bloodless coup d'état seized control of Hawaii.
In 1853, almost the years before the Second Opium War of the Manchu Dynasty, the United States ceased its military expansion, followed by economic means and coup d'état to expand its territory.
In particular, after 1898, that is, before and after the Gengzi Incident in the last years of the Qing Dynasty in China, the United States basically refused to annex the territory of other countries.
In the Philippines, for example, the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, and decaying Spain was defeated by the United States. As a Spanish colony, the Philippines was naturally ruled by the United States. The United States has controlled the Philippines for many years, but it has not annexed it, but has done the opposite.
In 1935, the United States helped the Philippines establish a self-governing state, transferring local administrative powers and allowing the country to govern itself.
In 1946, after World War II, the United States formally agreed to the Philippine independence proposal, and the Philippines became an independent country completely.
Interestingly, everyone knows that the United States is relatively wealthy.
During the 50 years that the United States controlled the Philippines, although some Filipinos wanted independence, especially the Philippine upper class repeatedly advocated independence in order to control the country, there were still many Filipinos who wanted to be incorporated into the United States, but the United States categorically refused.
The main reason for this is that the United States at the beginning of the 20 th century was unable to kill all the aborigines and drive them away, leaving no land but no people, just as Tsarist Russia did with the aborigines.
The Philippines has limited resources and a population of more than 16 million people, most of whom are poor indigenous people. At that time, the United States had a population of just over 100 million and could not afford such a heavy burden. This means that your family originally only had seven or eight people, but now suddenly a poor relative from the countryside has taken refuge, and it can't help you to eat and drink with you, and you have to eat like this for a few lifetimes, who can stand it?
In this case, the United States would rather abandon the Philippines than swallow up territory.
There are many more similar things.
When the Spanish-American War was won, the United States seized the Spanish colony of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Guam.
The United States was reluctant to directly annex these three places, even Guam, which had a population of only 10,000 and had an important military status at the time.
For more than 100 years, Puerto Rico and Guam have repeatedly asked to be incorporated into the United States as a state of the United States, but they have always been denied.
In just seven years, from 1993 to 2020, Puerto Rico held six referendums, all of which supported the region as the 51st state of the United States. The U.S. government and Congress have consistently ignored the results of Puerto Rico's referendums and refused to give it the status of a "state."
At present, Puerto Rico and Guam are still non-incorporated territories of the United States, that is, they are administratively self-governing, but important departments such as foreign affairs, defense, and customs are still controlled by the United States.
Speaking of which, Puerto Rico and Guam are different from the Philippines. Today, Puerto Rico has a population of just over 3 million, Guam has just over 100,000, and there were just over 10,000 back then. With a population of 300 million in the United States, annexing these two regions may seem like no problem, but Congress just doesn't want to.
In order to be elected, many members of the U.S. Congress must win the support of the voters, express the will of the voters, and flatly refuse to admit new states.
Taking Puerto Rico as an example, although this island country is small, its economy is very good in Central America, but it is still burdened with a government debt of as high as $70 billion or $50 billion, and another $50 billion in pensions cannot be paid. That was the equivalent of $30,000 in debt for every Puerto Rico.
And the point is not that Puerto Rico has hundreds of billions of dollars in debt, which is nothing for the powerful United States, and it is a bottomless pit here.
Puerto Rico's economic model was irrational, resulting in the Government being unable to make ends meet and perennially indebted. In 2015, Puerto Rico's government debt ratio exceeded 70% of GDP. The U.S. credit rating agency has downgraded Puerto Rico to the same junk level as Greece. Puerto Rico has experienced an economic recession in recent years (until 2017), with an unemployment rate of 11% and an exodus of people, with the population declining by about 10% in the past decade.
Puerto Rico's debt was reduced from more than $70 billion to $7.4 billion in 2022 with U.S. help, but many economists don't think the economy will improve significantly in 25 years.
From the perspective of American voters, Puerto Rico's attempt to join the United States is to make ordinary Americans pay for their debts. To put it more colloquially, Puerto Ricans go to a restaurant for dinner and call Americans to settle the bill.
Americans are not stupid, how could they do such a thing casually.
Moreover, Puerto Rico's economy was highly dependent on blood transfusions from the United States. The Americans have been bleeding for many years, are they still responsible for taking care of you for another 25 years, who wants to be such a big wrongdoer!
In addition to Puerto Rico, regions such as Guam, the Northern Marianas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa have all tried to become new states, but the United States has rejected them for similar reasons.
In the case of the United States, at the beginning of the 20th century, the territory of the country was already large enough. Modern times are different from ancient times, in which they were farmers and needed a lot of land.
In the United States, for example, farmers were the new force that pioneered westward, and farmers needed a lot of fertile land to cultivate and graze.
Today's United States is quite different, with less than 1% of the population actually engaged in agricultural production. In a country with a population of 300 million, there are only about 3 million farmers, and there is a trend of fewer and fewer farmers.
The United States has adopted large farms and modern agricultural technology, which is enough for 3 million farmers, not only to feed more than 300 million Americans, but also to make the United States the world's largest exporter of agricultural products.
In the United States, farmers with thousands of acres of land are common, and there is nothing unusual about it.
In 2021, there were 2.01 million farms in the United States, with a farm land area of 6.4 billion acres, and the average farm area was more than 2,500 acres.
In contrast, China is limited by the land system, and now there are 230 million peasant households in the country, with an average operating scale of 7.8 mu, and 210 million peasant households operating less than 10 mu of cultivated land. There are less than 3.5 million farmers operating more than 50 acres of land. If there is only this amount of land per capita, it will be difficult to make money no matter how intensively cultivated, and this is the fundamental reason for the low income of peasants.
The situation in the United States is different, the country has little demand for agricultural land, and there is even too much land now.
The vast majority of the people of the United States are engaged in industry, services, high-tech industries, and so on, and these industries do not require much territory at all, only a few large cities.
In terms of resources, before the 20th century, countries did compete for local resources by grabbing territory around the world. Times are different, and the United States does not need to occupy the land of other countries at all. First, the United States is very rich in resources, and even a major exporter of resources, such as oil exports. The United States has generally controlled the global resource market by using the economic tools of world hegemony, and can obtain resources through commerce and trade, so why bother to go to war.
Have you ever watched "Wild Goose Death Squads"? The mercenaries are on a mission to seize the copper resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) for the British financial magnate Sir Edward. In the movie, Sir Edward asked the mercenaries to save the African head of state, Limbani, and finally abandoned the mercenaries and Limbanyi, all in order to seize the copper mining rights from the current head of state, Ndofa.
Interestingly, Uganda detained Limbani in order to blackmail Ndofa, also in order to obtain copper mining rights.
Sir Edward represents the British ruling circles, and there is also the shadow of the United States behind him, the mysterious colonel who observes the situation.
And the army of this guy Ndofa, there are both Cuban officers and East German instructors, who use a large number of Soviet-made weapons, and it is obvious that the boss behind it is the Soviet Union.
Speaking of which, Ndofa and Limbani are still manipulated pawns, and the resources of both countries are still under the control of these powers. It's just that the leaders of African countries also have a certain amount of power, and they can occupy a lot of profits from resources, so as to be arrogant and lascivious.
Since the beginning of the 21 st century, the United States has mainly maintained its global hegemony and controlled the global economic market, instead of blindly killing people and grabbing land like the Tsarist Russian Empire and Japanese militarism.
Everyone has to admit the fact that for China, the United States has historically established some concessions and bases in China, but all of them were returned after World War II. The United States has never occupied any piece of Chinese land and has not returned it to this day.
In addition, the Chinese media have been saying that "the United States slaughtered Indians" and "the United States sold black slaves" and other things, and everyone should look at it from a historical perspective.
When Sasha traveled to North Korea, he also saw that North Korea sold a large number of these books in bookstores, and the propaganda routines of the two countries were the same.
These histories do not mean that they do not exist, but they are also major stains on the history of the United States, and they should also be viewed in the context of historical eras.
The massacre of Indians in the United States was before the middle of the 19th century, and the world was still very barbaric.
During the same period, there was the Taiping Rebellion and the Tongzhi Rebellion in China. And just one Taiping Rebellion led to a quarter of the Chinese population. Three scholars, Ge Jianxiong, Hou Yangfang, and Zhang Genfu, calculated that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom caused a decrease of about 100 million people. What is this concept? When whites arrived in the United States, there were only a few million Indians in the entire United States.
If there were many deaths in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the Tongzhi Rebellion was a beastly massacre, which was particularly tragic. Shaanxi Province, which had a population of 13.94 million in 1861, suffered a sharp decline of more than 7 million, or 48 percent, and the population of Gansu fell by more than 14 million, or 75 percent, from 19.45 million.
The point is that almost all of these population declines are massacres of entire cities and villages, ethnic vendettas, and all of them are killed without leaving anyone behind.
A little comparison will show what the whole world was like at that time.
Besides, the slave trade is indeed cruel and inhumane, and the United States still has deep racial discrimination today.
However, in 1865, the United States formally abolished slavery, and in 1910, the Qing court issued an edict promulgating the "King James Penal Law", which completely banned slavery in China. In fact, the abolition of slavery in China was much later.
In 1959, the government of the People's Republic of China abolished slavery in Tibet. It was only in the 1950s that slavery was eliminated in the Yi region of Sichuan, where slavery continued for thousands of years.
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