American expansion in the Pacific: Attracted to the Pacific by the explorations of Capitan James Cook, American seafarers began operations in 1784 via Cape Horn. American interests controlled Hawii by 1842 and the Us shared in the concessions extorted from China by Britain. The Navy ‘opened’ Japan in 1854 and Korea in 1882 and obtained Pago Pago Bay, Samoa (1878) and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (1887). Then, in 1898, followed the great annexation which enabled the US to complete its ‘life-line’ to China.