Who participated in the debates about U. S. overseas expansion? What were their general arguments?

Answer

Explanation:ne interesting thing about America’s 19th-century Pacific expansion is that it happened during, and even before, its more famous western settlement. American missionaries and sugar planters were in Hawaii in the 1820s, a generation before the California Gold Rush or Mormon Trek to Utah. The reason is that, while oceans can be deadly in strong winds, water is normally easier to traverse than land — even the long and torturous pre-Panama Canal sea route around Cape Horn from the East Coast to the Pacific. By 1890, when the Census Bureau declared the western frontier closed, the U.S. had already laid claim to territory in the Pacific. By 1902, America controlled Hawaii, Alaska, the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island, part of Samoa and several smaller islands in the Pacific (e.g. Palmyra Atoll and Wake, Jarvis, Howland & Baker Islands). Since its revolution and initiation of the Old China Trade routes starting in 1783, the U.S. coveted trading with Asians the way it had traditionally with Europeans. In the 1850s, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed the U.S. Navy to China and Japan to increase trade. By the turn of the 20th century, America was digging a canal shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific and was in combat defending its interests in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. In this chapter, we’ll cover why and how America stepped out onto this world stage.

the earth’s crust is broken into separate pieces called tectonic plates (fig. 7.14). recall that the crust is the solid, rocky, outer shell of the planet. it is composed of two distinctly different types of material: the less-dense continental crust and the more-dense oceanic crust. both types of crust rest atop solid, upper mantle material. the upper mantle, in turn, floats on a denser layer of lower mantle that is much like thick molten tar.

each tectonic plate is free-floating and can move independently. earthquakes and volcanoes are the direct result of the movement of tectonic plates at fault lines. the term fault is used to describe the boundary between tectonic plates. most of the earthquakes and volcanoes around the pacific ocean basin—a pattern known as the “ring of fire”—are due to the movement of tectonic plates in this region. other observable results of short-term plate movement include the gradual widening of the great rift lakes in eastern africa and the rising of the himalayan mountain range. the motion of plates can be described in four general patterns:

collision: when two continental plates are shoved together

subduction: when one plate plunges beneath another (fig. 7.15)

spreading: when two plates are pushed apart (fig. 7.15)

transform faulting: when two plates slide past each other (fig. 7.15)