manifest destiny

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manifest destiny

1. A policy of imperialistic expansion defended as necessary or benevolent.

2. often Manifest Destiny The 19th-century doctrine that the United States had the right and duty to expand throughout the North American continent.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Manifest Destiny

(Historical Terms) (esp in the 19th-century US) the belief that the US was a chosen land that had been allotted the entire North American continent by God

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Man′ifest Des′tiny

the 19th-century belief that it was inevitable for the U.S. to expand to the Pacific coast.

[1835–45]

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Noun

manifest destiny - a policy of imperialism rationalized as inevitable (as if granted by God)

imperialism - a policy of extending your rule over foreign countries

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imperialism

References in periodicals archive ?

In 1810, with the door to manifest destiny opening, Congress enacted the Civilization Act making "provision for the civilization of the Indian Tribes adjoining the frontier settlements." (31) Distorting the twenty-five-year-old principles of humanity and honorable intentions, the basis for this change in federal Indian policy was also called an "act of humanity." (32)

September 11 and America's War on Terrorism: a new manifest destiny?

By 1845, Manifest Destiny propaganda claimed that only Anglo Christianity embodied God's will, calling for all other cultures to be extirpated.

Real Speak - First Nations History

Each chapter is designed around key issues -- for example, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, the Mexican-American War, and the independence of Texas in chapter one, titled "The Colony and the New Nation to 1848." This broad approach is sound for a university-level primer because not only will it introduce key concepts to students, but it explains how those concepts speak to one another.

Tangled Destinies: Latin America and the United States

Lust's Manifest Destiny working itself out through dolls.

Mood Sonnet #4

Not least among significant American leaders who inherited but also helped transform the the American ideal of mission and Manifest Destiny was Woodrow Wilson.

Savior Nation: Woodrow Wilson and the Gospel of Service

Like many of his contemporaries Piper explores the gaps in western history books, taking into account the conveniently erased passages on Manifest Destiny, slavery colonialism, while intertwining the personal with the political.

Keith Piper: Relocating the Remains

A latter day case of what political scientists call "manifest destiny."

Nets Pan SAN Gold In OSNI

The so-called Pig War had its roots in pre-Civil War tensions between England and the upstart United States that originated in competing claims of ownership of the Oregon Country, as well as in America's imperialistic belief in the conquest of the West, first referred to as "manifest destiny" by writer John L.

The Pig War

But could this manifest destiny of home ownership be spreading to the business world?

A COMMERCIAL BATTLE GROUND

"You don't have to be at the mercy of technology, economic decisions made five time zones away, or someone else's Manifest Destiny," says Smye.

Presto Change-O!

Yet if literature is at times the handmaid of politics--Kipling comes immediately to mind, and Fenimore Cooper (see Peter Schrag for a look at where Manifest Destiny may lead next)--it is also true that politics can be the handmaid of literature.

Literary Politics

In doing so, however, it does provide an unassuming, adaptable, effectual introduction to the themes of manifest destiny and westward expansion in American history.