In the year of 1803, the North Americans made the best deal in history, purchasing the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon. They paid 15 million dollars (about 220 million today) for a territory larger than Mexico, which has one of the largest rivers in the world, the Mississippi, fed by a basin of more than 3 million km2 and practically flat terrain. If someone wanted a gigantic place with huge potential for agriculture and animal husbandry, this is the best place in the world, comparable in quality to the black lands of Ukraine, but about 5 times larger. When they became afraid of this gigantic lottery that had been won, the Americans began to appreciate their lot and to consider themselves a chosen people, particularly favored by God and pursuing an objective different from that of other nations; This purchase is one of the roots of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe continental United States is approximately a rectangle, wider than it is tall, with a tail in the lower right corner, Florida . Two mountain ranges cross it from north to south: the Rockies on the left, the Appalachians on the right. In the middle of them is an immense expanse, almost flat and with a lot of water, which is the basin of the Mississippi River, which is born almost on the border with Canada and flows into the Gulf of Mexico, near New -Orléans. The Louisiana Territory was there, its right boundary was the Mississippi and its left boundary was the Rocallosas. Perhaps you have traveled parts of Mexico where you see miles and miles of cultivated land on the sides: for example the northern Aguascalientes Valley, or the state of Sinaloa, and know the satisfaction that provide vast areas of cultivated and productive land. To achieve this, in our state we use the water that can be collected in the Calles Dam (which will never be among the largest in the world), but most of the crops are grown with well water. In Sinaloa, the rain that falls in the Sierra Madre Occidental was used and a series of dams were built that turned the region green. You can go to Google Earth and see any area along the Mississippi from the air, and you'll also find it green. The taste in Aguascalientes is about 40 km, the taste in Sinaloa is about 400 km, and the taste along the Mississippi is 3,700 km. This is nothing more than the length of the river, but the water it carries on a low flow day, this river throws 4502m3/second into the sea, and on a good day it throws 86719m3/second. To understand what this means, consider our Calles Dam, which has a capacity of 340 million m3 and has never been filled to its limit. If we used the water that the Mississippi throws into the sea to fill the dam, it would be filled in 21 hours (on a bad day) and in 1 hour 10 on a good day. With these parameters, it is not surprising that the United States was considered a chosen country after purchasing Louisiana. Another factor, unknown to our experience in Mexico, is the almost zero slope of the Mississippi, since at 3700 km it only goes down 450 meters: this means that the water moves on practically flat terrain, and therefore its course is slow and suitable for navigation.The 13 colonies that joined in 1776 to declare their independence as countries lie along the Atlantic and cover the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, except Florida . The English, Dutch and German settlers who arrived there from the 17th century settled in a limited regionbetween the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, but since the earliest days of the colony, explorers have traveled west, crossing the Appalachian Mountains and reaching the Mississippi River; After gaining independence from England, they were responsible for colonizing both the South (towards Florida) and the strip of land between the Mississippi and the Appalachians. This river became a natural border between the United States and "other countries", to designate in this ambiguous way the western part of the Mississippi River, because neither the land was well known, nor could it be categorically identified to whom she belonged. For example, the Spanish, who could have embarked on an intense colonization of this region, found it more profitable to exploit the silver mines of New Spain and it thus happened that the northern territories, where could only exploit and cultivate the land, they were unexplored or in any case, they were not exploited by them. They maintain a presence in Florida and New Orleans, but the upstream territories do not explore them. Instead, the French took over North America, what is now Canada, and founded several cities near the Great Lakes (Montreal, Quebec, Ottawa), and reached the west of the lake Superior, where the Mississippi is born. exploring the river downstream of the entire region, declaring it part of New France and reaching New Orleans, which still has a great French cultural heritage. The Americans were indeed very lucky. It turns out that at the end of one of the many European wars, in 1763, there was a redistribution of spoils and compensation, and France had to give England all the lands on the east bank of the Mississippi and cedes the West Bank of the Mississippi. From Mississippi to Spain. As for the eastern margin, once independence was achieved in 1783, everything English became part of the United States; as for the west bank, France ceded it to Spain even though it was already a country in decline and was not going to be able to control this area. In this way, the region became a future gift to the United States, as it gained a few years of grace during which no European power could appropriate this territory, while the United States grew, advancing in its colonization and reached the Mississippi. About 40 years passed when French Louisiana was Spanish, although in name and law (if Europeans had the right to divide the world) but not in fact. This is how we arrive in 1800, when Napoleon, then First Consul, forced the Spanish to return Louisiana to France, in an attempt to fit the pieces into their project of creating a global French Empire. the president of the United States was Thomas Jefferson, creator of the Declaration of Independence and one of the best presidents they had; He had been ambassador to France, had sympathies for that country and had become friends with them, so he was well informed of what was happening in Europe. He learned of the treaty by which Spain ceded French Louisiana to France and saw the thing with apprehension: as long as this immense territory was in the hands of an owner who could not take care of it, it was good and we would wait for the opportunity. the moment to colonize or conquer it; However, in the hands of a power like France, which had interests in Canada, the situation was entirely different and he and his collaborators began to think about what they could do. Geography once again intervenes in favor of the Americans. Napoleon could not set out directly to move people and troops to the Mississippi because he was far away and thatwould provoke direct reaction from the United States, but he could use as a military base an island in the West Indies that had been French and had recently gained its independence through a slave revolt. This was Haiti, and it was easy for Napoleon to send a force of 20,000 men to reconquer the island and make it his base of operations in America. Militarily, the black natives were unable to confront the French soldiers, and everything began to go as Napoleon had planned until yellow fever appeared and ended the French army. Once the affair was over, France was already engaged in a new war against England and there was no way to get distracted by America, so Napoleon forgot his global dreams and began to think about what to do with Louisiana, which was still a very valuable property but which I was far away and could not attend. In 1800, the Mississippi was already a very important river in the world. commercial life of the United States, as cities north of its canal used it to transport goods to New Orleans and from there distribute them. This city was in the hands of the Spanish and there was a treaty according to which the merchants settled upstream had the right to use the port as a warehouse, but in 1801 the Spanish governor in turn prohibited the depot of American goods, and this It was this incident that triggered Louisiana. crisis. The solution that came to Jefferson was simple and brilliant, because he was able to do a geopolitical analysis and accurately assess its possibilities: he offered to buy or lease the port (or a place near the mouth of the river) to resolve this crisis. problem, of the transit of goods. The purchase was to be made in France, and he sent his agents to negotiate with Napoleon, who had already thought about the matter and reached the following conclusions: France could not colonize and defend Louisiana. So it was a useless property. We had to get rid of it in the most practical way possible. It would be better to sell it to the United States, which was a friendly country, and not to England, with which they were at war. So when Jefferson's envoys showed up to purchase New Orleans, they were met with the French counterproposal of acquiring all of Louisiana for $18 million. The representatives were in a bind since they did not have the authority to do so, but they felt that this opportunity would not come again and that if they did not take advantage of it, someone else would; they negotiated and signed the purchase of 15 million. When they returned to the United States with this news, the president was confronted with a fait accompli that totally exceeded his mission, but he also preferred to take advantage of the opportunity and prepared to face his opposition, the Party federalist. By any measure, this was an extraordinary affair for the United States, but Jefferson's opponents pounced on him, accusing him of violating the Constitution, since there was no law authorizing the president to buy territory from another nation, already calling him a hypocrite. were in favor of strict adherence to the Constitution, and the whole operation was about to get stuck in the last place imaginable, the Congress, where after all it was approved with a difference of 2 votes. With this purchase, the United States doubled its size, did so by peaceful means, and acquired an enormous amount of land with unimaginable potential for agriculture, ranching, industry, and commerce. Psychologically, this meant removing an obstacle that prevented them from moving west and convincing the.