Consequences of Manifest Destiny
Consequences of Manifest Destiny are slavery and uprootment of native communities:
- Violent measures were taken to forcefully remove the native Americans from their lands, which resulted in them being uprooted from their communities, and being exploited by the white colonizers, ultimately resulting in majority of the natives becoming slaves to their white masters.
- Manifest Destiny enforced the idea of white supremacy, and portrayed the colonizers as “saviors” to the native people, and thereby cemented the status of natives as “inferior people” who must feel honored to serve the white colonizers.
- Acquiring of new territories also increased the tensions between the abolitionists and slaveholders as they fiercely debated if the new states were to be free or slave states.
- Manifest Destiny and its ideology laid the foundation for the future American Civil War.
Access to more natural resources and spread of capitalist ideas:
- New communities came to be established as hundreds and thousands of settlers moved to the west. The sparsely populated western regions became a nation with enormous potential for power.
- New territories gave the colonizers access to greater natural resources and helped boost the Pacific trade.
- Missionaries spread Christianity among the native communities, with an aim to “save” them from backwardness and illiteracy; Pioneers helped popularized capitalist and democratic ideas in the new territories.
Manifest Destiny – Means, Causes, & Impact
Manifest Destiny was the 19th-century belief Americans had that they had the divine right/blessing to expand and settle in the west (In the North American region), towards the Pacific Ocean. It is also believed that the American expansion was inevitable and preordained. The idea of Manifest Destiny resulted in extensive territorial expansion in North America.
Many Americans believed that it was an expansion that was predestined to happen. They strongly believed that God wanted Americans to spread the Capitalist and Democratic ideas throughout North America. This belief is very similar to what the Britishers had called the “White Man’s Burden” when they justified their conquest of the Indian subcontinent.
In this article, we will look into the origin, summary, causes, and impact of Manifest Destiny.
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Table of Content
- Origin of the term ‘Manifest Destiny’
- Brief Summary of American Expansion in North America (From Sea to Shining Sea)
- Manifest Destiny and President James K. Polk
- Impact of Manifest Destiny on U.S. Foreign Policy
- Causes of Manifest Destiny
- Consequences of Manifest Destiny