Book contents
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Building and Resisting US Empire
- Part II Imperial Structures
- Part III Americans and the World
- Part IV Americans in the World
- 23 The Changing Geography of Mobility, 1820–1940
- 24 The United States and the Greater Caribbean, 1763–1898
- 25 Borderlands and Border Crossings
- 26 The Liberal North Atlantic
- 27 “To Enter America from Africa and Africa from America” during the Nineteenth Century
- 28 Islamic World Encounters
- 29 The American Island Empire: US Expansionism in the Pacific and the Caribbean
- 30 Inter-Imperial Entanglements in the Age of Imperial Globalization
- Index
24 - The United States and the Greater Caribbean, 1763–1898
from Part IV - Americans in the World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2021
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Building and Resisting US Empire
- Part II Imperial Structures
- Part III Americans and the World
- Part IV Americans in the World
- 23 The Changing Geography of Mobility, 1820–1940
- 24 The United States and the Greater Caribbean, 1763–1898
- 25 Borderlands and Border Crossings
- 26 The Liberal North Atlantic
- 27 “To Enter America from Africa and Africa from America” during the Nineteenth Century
- 28 Islamic World Encounters
- 29 The American Island Empire: US Expansionism in the Pacific and the Caribbean
- 30 Inter-Imperial Entanglements in the Age of Imperial Globalization
- Index
Summary
US relations with the Greater Caribbean – a region that includes the Gulf of Mexico, the arc of islands from Cuba to Trinidad, and the circum-Caribbean – continuously evolved during the late 1700s and through the 1800s. The expansion of US power in the region ran along two different tracks, territorial and commercial. These parallel manifestations were often intertwined but sometimes ran in opposition to one another. They responded to ever-changing Atlantic-wide geopolitical circumstances as well as regional and national US economic interests and politics.
The US role in the region progressed from defensive to offensive as it edged ever closer to hegemony in the late nineteenth century. This general trajectory can be broken down into a series of specific phases. Prior to independence, the British North American colonies were woven tightly with the British West Indies (BWI) under Great Britain’s mercantilist system.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of America and the World , pp. 569 - 593Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022