Expansionism

Expansionism is a policy or ideology favoring the enlargement of a state’s territory, power, or influence beyond its existing boundaries. It can pursue land, strategic control, or political and economic dominance.

Connect

Annexation: The formal incorporation of territory into a state, often without the consent of its previous sovereign. It turns territorial expansion into a claim of domestic sovereignty.
Imperialism: A policy or system through which a state extends and maintains power over other peoples or territories. Expansionism is one policy associated with the broader pursuit of imperial power.
Manifest Destiny: The nineteenth-century belief that the United States was destined to expand across North America. It framed westward growth as a national mission.
Isolationism: A foreign-policy orientation that limits a state’s involvement in international affairs and alliances. It rejects the outward engagement that expansionist policy requires.
Colonialism: A system in which a state establishes and maintains control over a territory and its people outside its own borders. Colonial rule extended state power without necessarily incorporating territory as national land.
Lebensraum: Nazi Germany’s doctrine that the German people needed territorial expansion, especially eastward, for living space. This doctrine fused expansion with racial ideology and conquest.
Scramble for Africa: The rapid European partition and colonization of most of Africa during the late nineteenth century. It demonstrates competing empires converting influence into formal territorial rule.
Anti-imperialism: Opposition to empire and to the domination of one people or territory by another state. It challenges the domination often produced by expansionist projects.
Sphere of influence: A region where an external power exercises substantial political or economic influence without formal sovereignty. Influence can expand even when borders remain unchanged.
Mahanian strategy: A naval strategy emphasizing sea power, maritime commerce, and control of strategically important routes and bases. Naval theories helped make overseas bases and influence central to expansionist policy.