The Extraterritorial United States to 1860.

The article explores the extraterritorial U.S. as a separate territorial sphere of American activity but interconnected in myriad ways. It discusses five maritime geographies used as examples of American foreign activities as their larget demographic and geographic reach and visibility, but just few of the motivations driving Americans to work or live outside the country's borders. It looks into how individuals maintained a sense of themselves as Americans and how their initiatives and movements had larger impact on the national economy and on the design and growth of the federal government. It also examines the U.S. historiography's emphasis on territorial consolidation as the major theme of the nineteenth-century obscures early Americans' global awareness.