ABSTRACT
Expansionism, efforts to acquire new territories, is an ever-recurring theme in American history. The American Revolution, in short, was simultaneously a national liberation movement and a struggle for expansion. The first episode of American expansion, the plan to take "the fourteenth colony", Montreal and Quebec, proved a loss. Americans who fought in the Revolution were paid with "ontinentals", depreciated paper currency. Another of Seward's achievements, also in 1867, was the addition of the Midway Islands to the growing American empire. A coalition of Americans joined the effort, their purpose being the annexation of western Canada. The commander of the American Pacific squadron was induced to send a warship to reconnoiter the possibility and, in 1872, the ship's captain signed an agreement with a local chieftain. A small minority of wealthy landowners there, most of them Americans or of American extraction, controlled the island's sugar production and refining facilities.
