A relentless ethnic cleansing that began on the East Coast and moved westward as big brother’s hunger for land and resources grew ever more demanding. The US invasion of Mexico in 1846 resulted in the acquisition of almost half of the current US territory. The gold rush in California brought the forty-niners, miners who, despite the romanticized history that has grown up around them, were brutally violent. Later expansions would continue into Alaska and Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines.
