ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nineteenth century the United States simultaneously developed a colonialist and an imperialist tradition of territorial expansionism with corresponding constitutional interpretations. In the origins of totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt drew on the British expansionist experience to argue that imperialism emerged in response to the 'incongruity of the nation-state system with the economic and industrial developments in the last third of the nineteenth century'. According to the Chief Justice John Marshall, the power to govern annexed territories was anchored on either the treaty of territorial annexation or the so-called Territories Clause. Territories occupied for commercial purposes were ascribed a temporary status as a Federal possession and situated in the interstice of the states and the Federal government. The chapter discusses in more detail about, the Federal government ruled Native American territories as domestic dependent nations subject to a 'ward'-like or tutelary status within the Anglo-American polity.
