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United States takes all of the Marianas in 1898

As this article, https://www.guampedia.com/partition-of-the-marianas/, explains, the United States could have taken all of the Marianas in the Spanish-American War in 1898 instead of just Guam. What if they had? Obviously, they wouldn't fall into German and later Japanese control. Does this butterfly away Japanese involvement in World War I?
If the US has just claimed all the Marianas, the Germans has just as much interest as in OTL in purchasing, and the Spanish in selling, the Palau and Caroline island chains in 1899. They still fill a purpose of providing continuity between German-claimed possessions in the Marshall Islands and New Guinea.

In WWI, Japan might be deterred from seizing them because they are all on the other side of a string of purely American held Marianas islands including Saipan and Guam. On the other hand, the Japanese may not mind, using water and all.

If the Japanese are deterred or sufficiently delayed, maybe Australian or British forces would get around to occupying the Palaus and Carolines step by step from their occupation of New Guinea and the Bismarcks.

Or maybe, when you said the Marianas, you really meant to include all of Spanish Micronesia as well, so the Carolines & Palaus as well.

Either way, Japan still has Qingdao in China to motivate its involvement in WWI.

That was actually the target the PM and Cabinet authorized. Micronesian islands were an 'extra' target the Navy seized, exceeding their authority.
 
The Germans already had the Marshall Islands prior to purchasing the remainder of the Spanish East Indies, so the German interest in the area was preexisting. Without Saipan, they perhaps get a better deal though.

I think Japan would still be interested in grabbing up Palau, the Caroline Islands, and the Marshall Islands. If Japan isn't spending time taking Saipan, they may beat the Australians to Nauru. That's a lot of phosphate money in Japan's hands.

Germany OTL put no efforts into developing the place, so Saipan would perhaps see economic development a couple of decades sooner than historically. Japan took an interest in developing the place when it captured the Marianas, and the US seems to have been of a 'make this place lucrative' attitude.

Many of the Japanese immigrants to Saipan of OTL probably still end up going. There was significant Japanese migration to American Hawaii and Philippines after all. The difference is that those people might not get evicted like OTL. The population of the Northern Mariana Islands is only a quarter Chamorro today, and over half east and southeast asian (Chinese, Filipino, Korean, etc.) so it would just be amplification of an OTL trend of sizable asian immigration.
 
If Northern Mariana Islands had the same population density as Guam, the Marianas would have ~307,500 people.

Also, if Japan grabs Nauru, the US might get Nauru after WWII.
 
The population of the Northern Mariana Islands is only a quarter Chamorro today
FYI, there is a historical reason for this. When the Chamorros were defeated by the Spaniards in the Spanish-Chamorro War at the end of the 17th century, the ones from the Northern Mariana Islands were deported to Guam and only some of their descendants returned later.
 
Would they all be strategic military colonies, like Guam is?

The US still has bases in Marshall Islands, Palau, and Federated States of Micronesia today. They're American protectorates and the US is allowed to use random islands for military purposes.

Northern Mariana Islands is just the only territory the US took from Japan which voted to join the United States. I'm not sure why, but suppose it's because the super majority of people in NMI aren't indigenous Micronesians so there wasn't really a status of independence to return to. Nauru could be a strategic military protectorate like the others.
 
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