¡§ Almost all people have, at one stage or another in their history felt and expressed the need to extend their territory and also to explain and justify their need both to the world and to themselves.¡¨

When North America was first being colonised in the early 17th century, the settlers made their home along the coasts of the ocean and the shores of the nearby rivers. Nevertheless, as the population kept growing, adventurers, trappers and many mores, started to move west, farther from waterways and from the Atlantic coast. Early westward expansion began¡K

However, it is in the first half of the 19th century that the United Sates gained most of its lands, sometimes buying them to their original owners, sometimes simply stealing them (There were actually 13 cases of land annexation during this century). We can thus wonder why the USA needed to enlarge its country so dramatically and will therefore analyse the reasons of this territorial expansion.

Though it is clear that a large number of political reasons actually led to the annexation of a few western territories, we will rather concentrate on other main points. Fir

To begin with, America¡¦s territorial expansion is a consequence of its dramatic growth. Indeed, at the beginning of the 19th century, the American population reached no more than 5.3 million people, among which approximately 7.3 % only, lived in the west. But throughout the East, the growing conviction that it was a land of potential riches and of opportunities start to emerge. Then, every following decade, and this for a period of 60 years or so, the population of the USA has increased by roughly 35 %. Consequently, by the 1860¡¦s, there were about 31.5 million inhabitants in the country, 49.2 % of which had settled in the American West.

Most important of all, perhaps, was the growing sense of anxiety that the Americans felt towards Great Britain. Inevitably, this fear had grown as the USA began to define its strategic and economic interests, which of course now extended the limits of its own borders. Indeed, the United States view Great Britain as their only rival for control of the Pacific coast. For instance, by the mid 1840¡¦s, rumours about Great Britain plotting with Mexico to prevent Washington from annexing the Texas Republic gradually arose. So, US expansionism took a greater sense of urgency, and Democrat James K. Polk, elected on a pro-expansionist platform, moved quickly to annex Texas as the twenty-eighth state of the Union.

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