UC San Diego

From the early republic to the Civil War, East Asia merchants, South American traders, Northwest Coast fur trappers, seal and whale ship owners and crews, missionaries, and sailors all engaged in divergent activities across the Pacific Ocean that often led to a common response: when they faced obstacles to their commercial, religious, or social activities, these citizens lobbied and petitioned the federal government for help. In turn, the federal government dispatched the United States Navy to protect or advance these citizens’ interests. The Navy rescued hostages and shipwrecked mariners, safeguarded citizens against revolutionary unrest, acted as constabularies regulating behavior ashore, negotiated and made treaties with foreign nations, forcibly opened new markets through intimidation, violently retaliated for attacks against civilians, and surveyed and charted the Pacific’s vast oceanic space. By using the Navy in an ad hoc fashion these everyday agents of empire pushed the government to establish the Navy permanently in the ocean by 1821, doubled its size by 1835, and prompted the American state to take a growing, activist role throughout the Pacific world. This increased interaction on the part of the Navy helped the state bolster its sovereignty, enabling a vast consolidation of influence in the Pacific Ocean from China, Japan, Hawaii, California, Oregon, and the central Pacific through the creation of accurate charts, expeditious sailing directions, and the continued funding and operational support of two naval squadrons to help American citizens pursue their diverse private goals. Consequentially, the conjoined activities of these citizens and the state accelerated the flows of people, commodities, and ideas throughout the Pacific world resulting in integration-at times coerced- of various nations and people into a pan-Pacific and global economy that affirmed the Pacific world as a growing sphere of American influence.This dissertation stresses a “Pacific Turn” in the history of the early republic connecting terrestrial and maritime processes to more comprehensively link the Pacific Ocean to the growth of the United States. Further, this dissertation helps dispel myths about the nature of American empire and military usage being temporary or limited and instead demonstrates the U.S. government aggressively and at times violently assisted its citizens abroad fashioning itself as a nascent geopolitical power. Fundamentally, Americans’ requests for government help indicate a democratic enlargement of state responsibility to citizens. The expansion and deployment of American naval power to aid citizens largely developed through a public-private feedback loop from the Pacific Ocean to American east coast ports and the metropole of Washington, D.C through petitions, memorials, and other correspondence. This bottom-up catalyst exemplified everyday citizens using state power to fashion a world amenable to their pursuits while the state developed its own power, a scaffolding of empire that would later be legible to late-century imperialists who envisioned the Pacific integrated into an American sphere of influence.