Pittsburgh Business Daily

how sovereignty was lost to an imperialist nation through imposition?

one of the ways that colonies lost the legal and judicial component of their sovereignty to an imperialistic nation was through the imposition of: a)extraterritoriality b)industrialization c)favored-nation status d)spheres of influence

Public Comments

1. It is an interesting way that you have phrased your question and it is very limiting in the options that you have provided. It appears that you are focusing on the colonies of the Americas and are suggesting that they lost their singularly each and every position of sovereignty subsequently to the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. If this is so, I must at least disagree with the options offered and ultimately disagree with the assumption (lost sovereignty) of the question itself. I suspect that we can agree that these colonies (come States) did acquire Sovereignty and that such Sovereignty was recognized on the world stage. We can point to the Declaration of Independence as the moment when these States declared their Sovereignty. The war of the revolution made such Sovereignty in fact. Such Sovereignty was recognized world wide in 1783 when Great Britain and the United States (then under Articles of Confederation) signed the Treaty of Peace in Paris. There in Article One it recognizes and names each State and declares each as Free, Independent and Sovereign. That Sovereignty was further made real when the these same various States seceded from the Articles of Confederation (an agreement signed in perpetuity) by ratifying the Constitution of the United States. This continued as the norm with most Founders (including Jefferson and Madison re: Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions) agreeing that these States could each (singularly) nullify federal Congressional acts as extra-Constitutional and could also secede from the Union. That is until the seceding of the States which joined together in the new nation of the Confederacy. With the federal government of the Union militarily walking rough-shod over the Constitution, as well as militarily walking over the States within the foreign nation of the Confederacy, the Sovereign position of the States began to come apart. At the end of the war the federal government used reconstruction to intrude further into the States. The 14th Amendment (which never met Constitutional requirements for ratification) was used to change the Constitutional relationship between the federal government and the States. In particular the Bill of Rights were now applied to the States. Initially the first 8 articles of the Bill of Rights were exclusions of action applied only to the federal government. This continued expand the role of the federal government in the ascendancy over the Sovereignty of the States. So I cannot accept any of the four options you have offered. However, the States Constitutionally yet retain their full Sovereignty, all they have to do is use it. No Amendment has been enacted which changes the Sovereignty of the States.