What were the political, economic, and religious reasons for the intensification of U.S. government interest in Hawaii, China, and Japan towards the United States during the 1840s and early 1850s?

Question

Evaluate the success or failure of American foreign and economic policies to influence political, economic, and military relations with Hawaii, China, and Japan during this period.

Answer 1

Answer: An ideal answer will:
1. Assert how the push for Pacific Ocean ports and command of the Pacific Ocean had been part of the driving force behind President Polk's push for war with Mexico and view of the scope of Manifest Destiny.
2. Discuss how securing trading rights and the use of Honolulu as a coaling station for U.S. merchant vessels and warships on their way to trade with China and Japan became a foreign policy priority of the United States, resulting in a treaty with Hawaii, which secured those trading and refueling rights in 1851.
3. Discuss the influence of American Protestant missionaries, merchants, farmers, and whalers in boosting the Hawaiian economy and the desire of these Americans to protect their economic interests and religious institutions against competing British, French, and native Hawaiian economic interests and cultural traditions.
4. Assert how Secretary of State Daniel Webster added Hawaii to the protections of the Monroe Doctrine in 1842 and made clear to the British and the French that the United States would not permit a takeover by either European power in order to protect American geo-political and economic interests in Hawaii. Discuss how Webster also negotiated a secret treaty with King Kamehameha III of Hawaii that, in the event of war, Hawaii would become a protectorate.
5. Discuss the intense desire of American merchants for increased access to more trade with China and how American Protestant missionaries desired greater access to the Chinese people to convert them to Christianity. Discuss how the results of the Opium War (1839-1842) between China and Britain facilitated the United States securing the same trading rights with China as the British had acquired after the war.
6. Discuss how the gunboat diplomacy of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry and his four large warships, containing 1,000 sailors, led Japan to reluctantly agree in 1854 to open two Japanese ports to American commerce, ending the isolation of the empire of Japan to the West
7. Discuss how after Commodore Perry's gunboat diplomacy, the Japanese opened up additional ports to the United States and other countries in 1858, particularly Great Britain, creating an intense competition for economic and military influence in Japan between the United States and Great Britain.
8. Write a concise and effective conclusion which acknowledges that, by the late 1850s, the United States had established a solid economic, political, and military presence in Japan and China and a quasi-colonial, imperialist dominance over Hawaii.