U.S. Navy fleet stations circled five continents by the 1830s to protect trade.

Evidence

Even more significant than these temporary outposts were fleet stations that the Navy established in key strategic locations across five continents after the end of the War of 1812. … These patrol bases appeared at ports in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; in Valparaiso, Chile, and Luanda, Angola; in Magdalena Bay, Mexico, and Panama City, Panama; on Portugal’s Cape Verde and Spain’s Balearic Islands; and in Hong Kong and Macau. The bases were positioned, as two prominent military analysts explain, “close to the ‘nexus of US security and economic interests,’ namely, important overseas markets.” While these modest “leasehold bases” generally supported relatively small fleets and used rented warehouse and repair facilities, they reflected and foreshadowed U.S. aspirations to global power. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 63

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Milgrom law-merchant material on how trade institutions and market access shaped early political economy — here the security side of the same nexus.