Causes Of The Mexican American War

In 1848, the United States of America has been the most powerful presence in Northern America. This power allowed the states a lot of freedom to expand their borders, which naturally caused them to have issues with their neighbors. The Mexican American war the very first, which was actually fought on foreign soil. Something they were not used to. After settling a good portion of the United States, they looked to the Mexican territory for conquering. Mexico and America have been neighbors for a while and tensions ran high between them since they were both looking for new territories. When Texas gained independence from Mexico, the state became an independent zone between the two countries. Both countries had interests in the zone, which resulted
in conflict. The two countries both argued about the boundary of Texas. The United States were saying that border of southern Texas ended at the Rio Grande. Mexico on the other hand thought that the border ended where Nueces River was. On top of that, the United States wanted to expand all the way to the Pacific in conquest of the Manifest Destiny and Texas was a territory that would need to be conquered either way. Although there were many reasons for what might have caused the war, the fight for resources, conflicting ideologies and dispute over territory were the most known reasons.
The first reason that the Mexican American war started was the competition for resources. Americans didn’t have any industries so the only thing they could rely on for survival was the natural resources that were in America. They needed a lot of land to create farms that would produce food to support their families and feed their variety of livestock. Some richer farmers had bigger farms and were able to make some money from the excess of the products produced. The farms usually grew hemp, sugar and cotton, which were the crops that gave the Americans money needed to thrive. The more the farmers made, the more they wanted to expand their farms and land. This gave the farmers some drive to expand out into the West and gain more land for their crops so they could make more money.
The second reason for this war was the conflicting ideologies of the two countries. American and Mexico had different reasons for their involvement in the war. America’s ancestors had won the war against Britain, which gave them freedom to create their own nation. This victory gave them reason to believe that they were superior. They began getting greedy and though that if they really wanted to expand, they were powerful enough to do it. They didn’t follow Britain’s same system of government. They created their own system that allowed the citizens to have the power where they chose the representatives to represent their ideas and the laws they wanted. They also chose their own president. The fact that this system hasn’t been used in a long time and it gave them freedom, they thought that they were superior to any other nation, since they had earned their freedom. This mindset led them to create the idea of Manifest Destiny or in other words to expand all the way until there was no more land, which was the Pacific. They believed that this was their mission and their right as a free country to expand as well as gain more land for their rapidly growing population. This overall progression was in overall the cause of economical, political, and social advances.
Mexico, on the other hand, had their own reasons for fighting the Mexican American war.
Many Americans don’t believe that the war was the Americans fault but the Mexicans view this war as the Invasion of the U.S. Their main reason was the dispute over the territory Texas. When the United States finally decided to annex Texas into their territory, the Mexican government though that doing this sort of thing was illegal. Mexico believed that the United States had broken the boarder treaty of 1828, which stated clearly that Mexico still had sovereignty over that territory. Not only was it a violation of the treaty but it was also a violation of the principles of the international law. When the United States decided to do this, Mexico didn’t know which laws they were going to break next and when they were going to stop which made Mexico feel threatened. Mexico felt like they should defend themselves and finally they decided to try to do this peacefully. They sent a representative to the Capitol of the United States to figure out this dispute in the most peaceful and quiet way possible. Even with the efforts to settle this, America not only refused to cooperate, but they also demanded that they receive control of the New Mexico and California territories. They finally decided to pass a decree that didn’t declare war on America but instead one that would allow them to defend against the expansion and invasion of the United
States.
The third cause for the war was the dispute over territory. Texas was at the very center of this dispute. When Texas became its own sovereign state, Mexico didn’t want to recognize them as their own free territory after they lost the battle of San Jacinto. Even though they didn’t respect Texas’s agreement, America, Great Britain and France did receive recognition as a free territory. Even though Texas was its own free territory, they still favored the annexing from the United States. America did not want to annex them because they were not looking forward to adding another slave state into the nation. Another good portion of the people wanted a break from conflict and disliked the idea of causing a conflict with Mexico if they annexed Texas. After James K. Polk became president he decided to annex Texas into the states on December 29th, 1845. This action caused Mexico to threaten war onto the United States but backed off when British and the French stepped in.
After all the conflict and tension that arose between the two countries, they finally went to war.
After a full scale-war the United States finally defeated the Mexicans. The States decided to ratify a Treaty on March 10, 1848 called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This gave the States New Mexico and California as well as 500,000 square miles. After the treaty, Mexico ended up getting new borders in the Rio Grande. The United States did not just take this territory though; they paid Mexico 15 million dollars for the land, which at the time was a lot of money. All this dispute and fighting was the result of the 2 nations which disputed over natural resources, the different ideologies, the annexing of Texas and the dispute over
territory.