Before Manifest Destiny
The Contested Expansion of the Early United States
Nicholas G. DiPucchio
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How the contours of the United States took shape—and what they might have been
There was nothing predestined about the now-familiar shape of the United States of America. Early visions of what the new country’s borders could encompass included Canadian provinces, Caribbean islands, and even Kamchatka in eastern Russia. In Before Manifest Destiny, Nicholas DiPucchio tells the surprising, dramatically contingent story of the United States’ expansion, focusing in particular on the ultimately unrealized territorial ambitions cherished by many Americans in the early republic.
Between the 1770s and 1820s, American expansionists made efforts to annex Bermuda, Upper Canada, Cuba, and vast swathes of the Pacific Northwest. As DiPucchio shows, however, local populations—from small groups of Caribbean merchants to Indigenous populations to rival imperial powers—contested their efforts, helping define the boundaries of the United States and forcing its leaders to recalibrate their expectations of the nation’s growth. Rather than the inevitable procession it may appear to be in retrospect, the story of early US expansion was in many ways defined by thwarted ambitions and unfulfilled possibilities. Halted in the Atlantic East, the Canadian North, and the Caribbean South, antebellum expansionists eventually declared it their manifest destiny to overspread the West.
- William and Mary Quarterly[DiPucchio] argues convincingly against the common misconception that the imperialist notion of manifest destiny, first articulated in the 1840s deeming white American settlements as destined by God to spread throughout the continent, was somehow part of the American experiment from the beginning. . . Clearing away the teleological view of manifest destiny is important and necessary work, and DiPucchio certainly succeeds at his task. He should also be commended for his bravery in wading into multiple topics informed by distinct historiographies and forging connections that more typical monographs neglect to draw.
In five engaging and illuminating chapters, DiPucchio explores early examples of American expansionist plans that were anything but 'manifest.' We see visions of new US territory that would not come to be, and we see others that came about only through challenging negotiations. Above all, we see how fear—and not confidence—shaped American expansion during the decades from the 1780s through the 1830s. An important book for historians of American diplomacy and of the early American republic.- Emily Conroy-Krutz, Michigan State University, author of Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations
In this fresh and engaging book, DiPucchio charts the uneven and highly contingent history of expansionist efforts in the early American Republic. Challenging overdetermined narratives of the United States' "manifest destiny," it will change the way you think about US expansion.- Rachel St. John, University of California, Davis, author of Line in the Sand: A History of the Western US-Mexico Border
- Pacific Historical ReviewManifest Destiny has long been a subject of historical inquiry, as both a singular moment of U.S. western conquest in the 1840s and an overarching American ideology that covers decades, even centuries, of U.S. history. In recent years, historians have begun to challenge the term’s explanatory power, particularly as they have focused on events on the ground that reveal that little of U.S. conquest was in fact destined. Nicholas DiPucchio’s Before Manifest Destiny is an important addition to this emerging historiographic field—indeed, from a chronological standpoint, it provides the opening salvo. ... DiPucchio should be commended for his excellent and important scholarship.
Nicholas G. DiPucchio is Assistant Professor of History at Oakland University.
