Western expansion was a form of allowing Americans to indulge in delusions about what was entitled to them for simply being Americans, and when encountering a country that did not fit into their superiority and entitlement, like Mexico. The decision to go to war and prove that they were entitled to land that did not belong to Americans, and how Americans were better than Mexico in every way, especially when Mexico was not composed of Anglo Americans, was hard to resist, which subsequently served as the ideological precursor to the Mexican American War. Dating back to Spanish rule, the subsequent escalation of Native conflict in Northern Mexico, Southern American colonization and annexation of Northern Mexican territory, and the spread of American superiority enforcing ideologies like Manifest Destiny which encouraged Western expansion and American hegemony culminated in the Mexican-American War from 1846 to