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Gateway Textbook Ch 8 American Imperialism

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Gateway Textbook Ch 8 American Imperialism

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10k Miles From Tip to Tip

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Lesson 1 The Imperialist Vision

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Printable Version By 1890, the United States had by far the world's most productive economy. American industry produced twice as much as its closest competitor--Britain. But the United States was not a great military or diplomatic power. Its army numbered less than 30,000 troops, and its navy had only about 10,000 seamen. Britain's army was five times the size of its American counterpart, and its navy was ten times bigger. The United States' military was small because the country was situated between two large oceans and was surrounded by weak or friendly nations. It faced no serious military threats and had little interest in asserting military power overseas.

From the Civil War until the 1890s, most Americans had little interest in territorial expansion. William Seward, the secretary of state under presidents Lincoln and Johnson, did envision American expansion into Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Iceland, Greenland, Hawaii, and other Pacific islands. But he realized only two small parts of this vision. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $72 million and occupied the Midway Islands in the Pacific.

Americans resisted expansion for two major reasons. One was that imperial rule seemed inconsistent with America's republican principles. The other was that the United States was uninterested in acquiring people with different cultures, languages, and religions. But where an older generation of moralists thought that ruling a people without their consent violated a core principle of republicanism, a younger generation believed that the United States had a duty to uplift backward societies.

By the mid-1890s, a shift had taken place in American attitudes toward expansion that was sparked partly by a European scramble for empire. Between 1870 and 1900, the European powers seized 10 million square miles of territory in Africa and Asia, a fifth of the world's land mass. About 150 million people were subjected to colonial rule. In the United States, a growing number of policy makers, bankers, manufacturers, and trade unions grew fearful that the country might be closed out in the struggle for global markets and raw materials.

A belief that the world's nations were engaged in a Darwinian struggle for survival and that countries that failed to compete were doomed to decline also contributed to a new assertiveness on the part of the United States. By the 1890s, the American economy was increasingly dependent on foreign trade. A quarter of the nation's farm products and half its petroleum were sold overseas.

Alfred Thayer Mahan, a naval strategist and the author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, argued that national prosperity and power depended on control of the world's sea-lanes. "Whoever rules the waves rules the world," Mahan wrote. To become a major naval power, the United States began to replace its wooden sailing ships with steel vessels powered by coal or oil in 1883. But control of the seas would also require the acquisition of naval bases and coaling stations. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm had copies of Mahan's books placed on every ship in the German High Seas Fleet and the Japanese government put translations in its imperial bureaus.

During the late 19th century, the idea that the United States had a special mission to uplift "backward" people around the world also commanded growing support. The mainstream Protestant religious denominations established religion missions in Africa and Asia, including 500 missions in China by 1890.

During the late 1880s, American foreign policy makers began to display a new assertiveness. The United States came close to declaring war against Germany over Samoa in 1889; against Chile in 1891, over the treatment of U.S. sailors; and against Britain in 1895, over a territorial dispute between Venezuela and Britain.

American involvement in the overthrow of Hawaii's monarchy in 1893 precipitated a momentous debate over the United States' global role. They debated whether the U.S. should behave like a great power and seize colonies or whether it should remain something different.

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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From the Civil War until the 1890s, most Americans had little interest in territorial expansion. William Seward, the secretary of state under presidents Lincoln and Johnson, did envision American expansion into Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Iceland, Greenland, Hawaii, and o…

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During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States pursued an aggressive policy of expansionism, extending its political and economic influence around the globe. That pivotal era in the history of our nation is the subject of this online history.
Expansion in the Pacific A Letter to an Emperor Footholds in the Pacific The Spanish-American War Yellow Journalism A Splendid Little War A Gift from the Gods The Boxer Rebellion Spheres of Influence Fists of Righteous Harmony The Panama Canal President Roosevelt Joining the Waters U.S. Intervention in Latin America Teddy's Legacy The End of an Era Image Credits Bibliography
Teacher's Guide now available

After temporarily resolving the problems of Reconstruction and Industrialization, Americans began to resume the course of expansion. The horrors of the Civil War had interrupted the original Manifest Destiny that began in the 1840s. Now, as pioneers settled the last western frontiers, expansionists looked yet farther to the west-toward Asia and the Pacific.

A leading expansionist, Captain Alfred T. Mahan, cautioned that the Pacific could "be entered and controlled only by a vigorous contest." As head of the Naval War College, Mahan believed that America's survival depended upon a strong navy. He argued that a strong navy would require island possessions to serve as naval bases. The time had come, Mahan wrote, for Americans to turn their "eyes outward, instead of inward only, to seek the welfare of the country."

American ships had long been active in the Pacific. The New England whaling fleets scoured the ocean in search of their prey. The China trade had been enriching Yankee merchants since 1784. Japan, however, had effectively closed its doors to outsiders, and it restricted foreign ships to a small part of Nagasaki.

Commodore Matthew C. Perry, commander of the United States naval forces in the China seas, was a staunch expansionist. Back in 1852 he warned President Fillmore that the British, who had already taken control of Hong Kong and Singapore, would soon control all trade in the area. Perry recommended that the United States take "active measures to secure a number of ports of refuge" in Japan. President Fillmore agreed with Perry. In 1853 he ordered the Commodore to open negotiations with the Emperor of Japan.
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A Letter to an Emperor

Kayama Yezaimon, daimyo of Uraga, raced to the battlement, the clash of the warning gong still ringing in his ears. Stopping beside the brass cannon that guarded the entrance of Edo Bay, he scanned the horizon. The summer sun flashed high above the blue Pacific, and beneath it four ships approached with the tide.

As the ships sailed closer, the daimyo, his samurai, and their retainers watched in silent awe. Two huge steam frigates spouted thick black clouds as they maneuvered against the wind. With their paddle-wheels churning the water, the frigates came about, bringing their gun-decks to bear upon the shore defenses. Two sailing ships waited downwind in support. Bright signal flags fluttered from halyards.

Kayama scowled. Through a telescope he studied the ships, which were well beyond the range of his small shore batteries. The ships bristled with cannon much more formidable than his own. Identical flags flapped at the stern of each vessel-red and white stripes, with white stars on a patch of blue. Kayama barked out an order. A samurai ran forward and dropped to one knee. The daimyo instructed the samurai to ride to the castle of Abe Masahiro, and to inform the shogun that a barbarian fleet blocked the mouth of Edo Bay.

From the fo'c'sle of the sloop of war Saratoga, Lieutenant John Goldsborough watched as dozens of Japanese galleys approached the American fleet.

They were all fantastically decorated with flags and banners. They were propelled by from ten to twenty oars each with generally two or three men at each oar. None of the boats were permitted to come alongside any ship in the Squadron, though they all appeared quite anxious to go alongside the Flagship. Still none were permitted until we were fully convinced that a high officer was in one of the boats. Then he alone, with an interpreter who spoke Dutch, was allowed to come over the Susquehanna's side.

On board the Susquehanna, Commodore Perry's aide, Lieutenant Contee, informed the official that the Commodore carried a letter from the President of the United States to the Emperor of Japan. The Commodore intended to deliver the letter personally to an official representative. Since the Commodore was of the highest rank in the United States Navy, Contee said, he would meet only with a Japanese official of equal status.

Two days later, Kayama Yezaimon visited the Susquehanna. He informed Captain Adams that the Americans must take their message to Nagasaki. Perry refused to meet with Kayama, but he wrote a message.

"The Commodore will not go to Nagasaki," Adams read. "If this friendly letter of the President to the Emperor is not received and duly replied to, he will consider his country insulted, and will not hold himself accountable for the consequences."

After several more days of haggling, a suitable representative, "Prince" Toda, arrived in Uraga. With cannon salutes and a marching band, Perry led a parade of marines to meet the Japanese delegation. He presented Toda with the president's letter, enclosed in a rosewood box trimmed with gold, and announced that he would return for the emperor's answer in the spring.

Perry impressed the Japanese officials with his diplomacy and with the technological superiority of his ships and weapons. The Japanese shogunate decided to grant the minor trade concessions that President Fillmore asked for in his letter. Forming a treaty with the Americans, they reasoned, would prevent another European power from imposing even greater concessions.

In February 1854, Perry returned to Edo with eight ships. He accepted the favorable reply to Fillmore's letter and visited several Japanese ports before beginning the long voyage home. His diplomatic mission had officially established the United States' presence in Asia. Still, the Americans never realized that they had been negotiating with a mere shogun. For the emperor to consult with barbarians was unthinkable.
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Footholds in the Pacific

As ships crossed the vast ocean to trade in Asia, islands in the Pacific became important stops for coal, provisions, and repairs. In the South Pacific, the American navy negotiated for the right to build a base on the Samoan island of Tutuila. The Hawaiian Islands, which lie closest to the American mainland, had long been an important stop for the Pacific fleet. Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, offered one of the most attractive natural bases in the Pacific.

In the early 1800s, missionaries from New England made the arduous voyage to Hawaii and settled there. They sent back news of fantastic economic possibilities in the islands. Soon other Americans followed to become sugar planters and to establish profitable businesses.

To the native Hawaiians, or Kanaka Maoli, their island was a paradise. The sea, the abundant fruit trees, and the rich, fertile soil provided the Kanaka Maoli with all their necessities. Because of the perfect year-round climate, their simple shelters were adequate and comfortable. To the Americans, however, the Kanaka Maoli behaved like foolish children, as one early visitor described:

The ease with which the Hawaiians on their own land can secure their food supply has undoubtably interfered with their social and industrial advancement. . . . [It] relieves the native from any struggle and unfits him for sustained competition with men from other lands. The fact that food is supplied by nature takes from the native all desire for the acquisition of more land. Today's food can be had for the picking, and tomorrow's as well. Instead of grasping all he can get, he divides with his neighbor, and confidently expects his neighbor to divide with him.

While the Kanaka Maoli were content to live in their traditional, idyllic ways, Americans were busy building huge plantations, warehouses, railroads, drydocks, banks, hotels, and stores. They soon dominated the island's economy, and they were able to influence its government as well. Americans created and controlled Hawaii's legislature and cabinet, and they limited the power of the native king.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, disputes arose between the Kanaka Maoli and those of foreign descent. "Hawaii for Hawaiians" became the slogan of people who sought to restore the traditional ways of the kingdom. Others called for the annexation of Hawaii by the United States. Annexation would eliminate the recent trade restrictions on sugar and revive the island's faltering economy. Secret organizations, such as the Annexation Club, plotted revolution.

In the midst of this unrest, Queen Liliuokalani assumed the throne upon the death of her brother, King Kalakaua. At age fifty-two, Liliuokalani had already governed the islands as regent during her brother's long absences. She was well qualified to take control of the government. An American newspaper reporter who interviewed the new queen described her as "strong and resolute. Her manner was dignified, and she had the ease and authoritative air of one accustomed to rule." Educated in American schools, Liliuokalani's voice "was musical and well modulated, and she spoke remarkably pure and graceful English." Islanders who favored annexation hoped that the new queen would support their interests.

Liliuokalani, however, was determined to eliminate American influence in the government. She tried to create a new constitution that would strengthen the traditional monarchy, but her cabinet refused to cooperate. The American residents were outraged. They organized the Committee of Safety and appointed members of the Annexation Club as its leaders. On the morning of January 17, 1893, armed members of the committee attacked. They took over the government office building. From its steps they read a proclamation abolishing the monarchy and establishing a provisional government. The provisional government "would exist until terms of union with the United States of America have been negotiated and agreed upon." Sanford B. Dole, an elderly judge with a flowing, white beard, became its president.

Hawaiians who were loyal to their queen tried to come to her defense and stop the revolution. When they arrived in Honolulu, however, American troops confronted them. The United States minister, John L. Stevens, had sent for a battalion of marines and an artillery company from the cruiser Boston. They were ordered to protect the provisional government. For the Hawaiians, resistance was hopeless.

Queen Liliuokalani sadly surrendered her throne. She wrote a document in which she "yielded to the superior forces of the United States." She pleaded with the U.S. government to "undo the actions of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands." Meanwhile, the Provisional Government sent five representatives to Washington to apply for annexation. They quickly drew up a treaty, and President Harrison signed it and submitted it to Congress.

Before the Senate could approve the treaty, however, a new president took office. This president, Grover Cleveland, had reservations about taking over an independent country. He withdrew the treaty and sent a special commissioner to Hawaii to investigate the revolution. The commissioner reported that Minister Stevens had conspired with a small group of revolutionaries to overthrow the government. Cleveland replaced Stevens with a new minister and tried to restore Liliuokalani to the throne.

President Dole flatly refused to give the government back to the Hawaiians. He told President Cleveland that the United States had no right to meddle in Hawaii's internal affairs. Congress agreed, and it adopted a "hands off" policy toward the island. Dole's new government then created an army and held a constitutional convention. On July 4th, 1894, the government unveiled the completed constitution and declared an independent Republic of Hawaii.

Despite Liliuokalani's pleas for help, other governments quickly recognized the new republic. In desperation, supporters of the queen began to collect weapons and to make secret plans to overthrow the republic and restore the monarchy. They planned to strike on the morning of January 7, 1895, but informers told the government about their plot.

At dawn, as the queen's supporters slipped silently ashore on Waikiki, government soldiers opened fire. A few of the rebels fell dead or wounded; others surrendered. The government declared martial law. During the next few days, government troops defeated the disorganized rebels in a series of brief but deadly skirmishes. Within two weeks, they completely suppressed the uprising and captured its followers, including Queen Liliuokalani. The prisoners were tried for treason. Liliuokalani was forced to sign a document in which she finally renounced all claims to the throne.

Now secure in its power, the republican government turned its attention to international relations and trade. In 1896, however, the election of a Republican, William McKinley, as president of the United States, rekindled Hawaiian hopes for annexation. President McKinley, like many Republicans, favored expansionism, and he welcomed the new annexation treaty. A joint resolution of Congress annexing Hawaii passed both houses, and the islands became American possessions.

While Congress was considering the annexation treaty, an American fleet was steaming across the Pacific to attack the Philippine Islands. The United States had gone to war.
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Remember the Maine

The battleship Maine drifted lazily at its mooring. Although the Havana night was moonless, the Maine's gleaming white hull-longer than a football field-contrasted against the blackness of the sea and sky. Smoke wisped from its two mustard-colored funnels. Random lights sparkled from its portholes and its bridge.

In the captain's cabin, Charles Sigsbee sat at a table writing a letter to his wife. The trouble in Cuba, he wrote, would soon be over. The new Spanish governor of the island seemed to have the situation under control. During the three weeks that the Maine had been in Havana, Captain Sigsbee had seen no sign of Cuban rebels. He'd entertained the Spanish officers in his mess, and he and his staff had been entertained lavishly by the local officials. Although Sigsbee found the bullfights to which he'd been invited somewhat barbaric, the Spanish officers behaved as perfect gentlemen.

Even Fitzhugh Lee, the American consul, seemed optimistic. A month earlier the old general (Lee had commanded a cavalry division under his uncle Robert E. in the Civil War) had summoned a battleship to "protect American interests." Although the Maine was only a second-class battleship, it was the largest ship ever to enter Havana harbor. To the Cubans, it was a floating American fortress right in their capital city.

Aboard the Maine, "taps" sounded at ten minutes past nine. Captain Sigsbee describes what happened next.

I laid down my pen and listened to the notes of the bugle, which were singularly beautiful in the oppressive stillness of the night. . . . I was enclosing my letter in its envelope when the explosion came. It was a bursting, rending, and crashing roar of immense volume, largely metallic in character. It was followed by heavy, ominous metallic sounds. There was a trembling and lurching motion of the vessel, a list to port. The electric lights went out. Then there was intense blackness and smoke.

The situation could not be mistaken. The Maine was blown up and sinking. For a moment the instinct of self-preservation took charge of me, but this was immediately dominated by the habit of command.

Captain Sigsbee managed to reach the deck, now slanted down sharply toward the submerged bow. He climbed aft toward the only part of the ship that was not awash. Fires had broken out all over the vessel, and they lit the harbor in an eerie red glow. In Havana lights began to shine from windows that had just been smashed by the blast. Most of the crew had been asleep in their berths at the forward part of the ship, which was already at the bottom of the harbor. The stern sunk more slowly.

Crews from nearby ships manned lifeboats to rescue the surviving crewmen of the Maine. "Chief among them," Sigsbee wrote, "were the boats from the Alfonso XII. The Spanish officers and crews did all that humanity and gallantry could compass." Reluctantly, Captain Sigsbee abandoned the Maine, which continued to burn and explode throughout the night.

The twisted, burnt wreckage of the Maine's stern and bridge was still above water in the morning. It remained there for years. Two hundred fifty-four seamen were dead, and fifty-nine sailors were wounded. Eight of the wounded later died. The navy conducted an investigation into the cause of the disaster, but it never discovered who was responsible for the explosion.
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Yellow Journalism

The American press, however, had no doubts about who was responsible for sinking the Maine. It was the cowardly Spanish, they cried. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal even published pictures. They showed how Spanish saboteurs had fastened an underwater mine to the Maine and had detonated it from shore.

As one of the few sources of public information, newspapers had reached unprecedented influence and importance. Journalistic giants, such as Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer of the World, viciously competed for the reader's attention. They were determined to reach a daily circulation of a million people, and they didn't mind fabricating stories in order to reach their goal.

They competed in other ways as well. The World was the first newspaper to introduce colored comics, and the Journal immediately copied it. The two papers often printed the same comics under different titles. One of these involved the adventures of "The Yellow Kid," a little boy who always wore a yellow gown. Since color presses were new in the 1890s, the finished product was not always perfect. The colors, especially the Yellow Kid's costume, often smeared. Soon people were calling the World, the Journal, and other papers like them "the yellow press." "They colored the funnies," some said, "but they colored the news as well."

A minor revolt in Cuba against the Spanish colonial government provided a colorful topic. For months now the papers had been painting in lurid detail the horrors of Cuban life under oppressive Spanish rule. The Spanish had confined many Cubans to concentration camps. The press called them "death camps." Wild stories with screaming headlines-Spanish Cannibalism, Inhuman Torture, Amazon Warriors Fight For Rebels-flooded the newsstands. Newspapers sent hundreds of reporters, artists, and photographers south to recount Spanish atrocities. The correspondents, including such notables as author Stephen Crane and artist Frederick Remington, found little to report on when they arrived.

"There is no war," Remington wrote to his boss. "Request to be recalled."

Remington's boss, William Randolph Hearst, sent a cable in reply: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Hearst was true to his word. For weeks after the Maine disaster, the Journal devoted more than eight pages a day to the story. Not to be outdone, other papers followed Hearst's lead. Hundreds of editorials demanded that the Maine and American honor be avenged. Many Americans agreed. Soon a rallying cry could be heard everywhere-in the papers, on the streets, and in the halls of Congress: "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain."
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A Splendid Little War

In the wake of the Maine incident, Congress hurriedly appropriated $50 million to prepare the nation for war. "Big navy" supporters, including the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, appropriated the lion's share of the money. Next, President McKinley insisted that Spain agree to a cease-fire with the Cuban rebels and negotiate a permanent settlement with them. After a slight delay, Spain agreed to the American demands. Two days later, McKinley asked Congress for authority to use military force to end the Cuban conflict. Essentially, this was a declaration of war.

The United States Army was not prepared for war. After the Civil War, the country had drastically reduced its army. Most army units had been scattered throughout the west, where they had fought and confined Native Americans. Volunteer and National Guard units quickly assembled in Tennessee. Regular-army divisions, filled with new recruits, rushed to Florida to await the invasion of Cuba.

Back to the Pacific The navy, however, needed little preparation. The Pacific fleet was visiting Hong Kong when the news of war arrived. Commodore George Dewey quickly provisioned his ships and set off to attack the Spanish colony in the Philippine Islands.

Once at sea, Commodore Dewey had his men paint all the ships. Once a bright white, the ships were soon covered with a dull gray to make them less visible to the enemy. Next, Dewey ordered that everything made of wood, including the piano on his flagship Olympia, be tossed over the side. Splintered wood presented a greater danger to his crews than enemy shells. Then with chests, chairs, and tables bobbing in the water behind them, the ships went after the Spanish fleet.

After searching throughout an oppressive tropical night, Dewey found the Spaniards in the shallows of Manila Bay. At dawn on the first of May, the Olympia led the fleet in single file toward its enemy. The Spanish opened fire long before the Americans were within range. The Olympia moved still closer. When it reached effective range, it turned sharply to the west, bringing all its guns to bear upon the Spanish fleet.

"You may fire when ready, Gridley," Dewey told his executive officer. With a deafening roar, the huge cruiser's guns erupted. The flagship swung around in a wide circle, and each ship followed, guns blasting as it passed. "We made five trips past the fleet," a gunner on the Boston wrote.

Just two hours after the beginning of the battle we hauled out and, withdrawing a few miles, the order was given for breakfast. I was exhausted from the heat, loss of sleep, and lack of proper food. I went up on deck. Below the thermometer was at 116°, and the fresh air was a great relief. From this vantage point, I could see the destruction we had wrought.

When the thick, black smoke that had obscured the battle cleared, he saw the Spanish fleet, battered and afire. The battle had been won. Eight seamen suffered wounds aboard the Boston (the same ship that had helped "liberate" Hawaii). One man died from the heat before the battle began. They represented the total casualties for the fleet.

When the news of the stunning victory reached home, Americans cheered ecstatically. Dewey, "the conqueror of the Philippines," became an instant national hero. Stores soon filled with merchandise bearing his image. Few Americans knew what and where the Philippines were, but the press assured them that the islands were a welcome possession.

Rough Riders Despite Dewey's early victory, the war in the Caribbean was getting off to a slow start. More than 250,000 soldiers rushed enthusiastically into the service. The army's quartermaster corps, however, had only fifty-seven men to supply the army with equipment. Soldiers gathered in Florida and waited impatiently for supplies and transportation. Some individuals organized and outfitted their own regiments. One such individual, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, resigned his post and formed a volunteer regiment of cavalry. Teddy Roosevelt did not intend to miss his chance at glory.

Roosevelt had been born forty years earlier to a wealthy New York family. He described himself as "a sickly, delicate boy" who "suffered much from asthma, and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place where [he] could breathe." Determined to overcome his physical limitations, Roosevelt embarked on a grueling program of body building. He practiced boxing, hunting, and riding, and after college he spent three years as a working cowboy in the wild Badlands of Dakota. "It was still the Wild West in those days," he wrote. "The West of the Indian and the buffalo hunter, the soldier and the cow-puncher." There he "led a free and hardy life with horse and rifle."

Roosevelt's political career began in the New York legislature. Next, after running unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, he served as that city's police commissioner. A loyal Republican, he campaigned tirelessly for McKinley in the 1896 election, and the president rewarded him with an appointment to the Department of the Navy.

Now, seeking again the "hardy life with horse and rifle," Roosevelt waited in Tampa with his men. His regiment, which called itself the Rocky Mountain Riders, consisted mostly of cowboys from the West, although it contained a few Indians and wealthy polo players from the East as well. The papers called the regiment "Teddy's Terrors," but its commander was Leonard Wood, a physician who was also a colonel in the regular army. Roosevelt served as lieutenant colonel.

"Tampa was a scene of the wildest confusion," Teddy remembered. "There was no semblance of order." Thousands of men, horses, mules, and supply wagons were scattered about haphazardly in the tropical heat. Somehow the expedition reached Cuba. Still, "different parts of different outfits were jumbled together. . . . For instance, one transport had guns, and another had the locks for the guns. Soldiers went here, provisions went there, and who got ashore depended upon individual activity."

Roosevelt, always active, got his regiment ashore quickly. "We disembarked with our rifles, our ammunition belts, and not much else," he remembered. "I carried some food in my pocket, and a light coat which was my sole camp equipment for the next three days."

With the July temperature climbing above 100°, the soldiers plodded off through the thick jungle toward the city of Santiago. Wearing uniforms made of wool, the men struggled against the heat. Those who managed to obtain rations often discovered that their food had spoiled. Soon the ranks were riddled with malaria, fever, and dysentery. (Before the war ended, 5,200 Americans would perish from disease.) General Shafter, the army's commander, realized that if he didn't capture Santiago soon, he might not have an army left.

After a few brief skirmishes, the armies confronted each other. The Spanish defended the San Juan hills, a long ridge east of Santiago. The Americans, arrayed in the valley below, sent up an observation balloon to study the city's defenses.

Roosevelt, who had managed to obtain a horse, rode up and down the lines anxiously. "I had come to the conclusion," he said, "that it was silly to stay in the valley firing up at the hills. . . . The thing to do was to try to rush the entrenchments." Never a man to stand on ceremony, Teddy took it upon himself to order the charge.

With a pistol in one hand an a saber in the other, Teddy spurred his mount forward. His face grew flushed; his glasses clouded with steam; a wide grin covered his face. The rough riders followed on foot, and the Ninth Cavalry, an African American regiment, rushed forth beside them. As he reached the crest of Kettle Hill, Teddy saw its defenders fleeing before him. He fired at one of them, and later remarked that the man fell "as neatly as a jackrabbit."

Atop Kettle Hill, the soldiers dined on captured Spanish provisions. Later Teddy left his men and rode to the top of San Juan Hill, but the Tenth Cavalry, another African American regiment, had already stormed and captured it. That night the Americans repelled a Spanish counterattack. In the morning, General Shafter demanded that the Spanish commander surrender.

A Big Turkey Shoot Ramon Blanco y Erenas, governor general of Cuba, received Shafter's demand. He responded by ordering his fleet to attack the American ships blockading Santiago harbor. If the Spanish could destroy the Americans' supply line, he thought, they could force the enemy to withdraw. His fleet commander, Admiral Cervera, disagreed. Attacking a force four times the size of his own seemed like suicide. Nevertheless, Cervera obeyed his orders, and in the hazy dawn the Spanish, led by the magnificent Maria Teresa, bravely steamed into battle.

The Americans were ready. Four first-class battleships (any one of them might have been a match for the whole Spanish fleet), two cruisers, and several smaller ships enclosed the mouth of the harbor in a half-circle. Tugboats filled with reporters scurried in their wake. The Oregon fired the first shot of the battle, and soon black smoke blurred the bay.

"It was a big turkey shoot," Seaman Cross of the Oregon said. "The Fleet came out and went to Davy Jones' locker."

By one o'clock the battle was over. The Spanish fleet was destroyed, and with it sank all hope of victory in Cuba. General Nelson Miles, the old Indian fighter, led a force to Puerto Rico. He conquered the island and its few Spanish defenders easily. In effect, the war was over.

Spain agreed to an armistice. In the four months of fighting, Americans had lost a total of 460 soldiers in battle. Compared to the Civil War, in which tens of thousands were often killed in a single day, these casualties seemed insignificant. "It's been a splendid little war," the ambassador to England wrote to his friend, Teddy Roosevelt.

Roosevelt returned, the hero of the war. Because of his heroism on Kettle Hill, he'd been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. His popularity swept him to the governorship of New York. Like Dewey before him, Roosevelt memorabilia filled shop windows. One of the more popular items was a cuddly stuffed animal wearing a bandana and glasses. People called it the "Teddy Bear."
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A Gift from the Gods

In the months following the Spanish-American War, the winds of expansionism blew strongly across the United States. There was a lot of talk about "Manifest Destiny," and many people suggested that America should assume its role as a world power. In Congress, legislators called for the annexation of all Spanish territories. Some newspapers even suggested the annexation of Spain itself. Expansionists such as Roosevelt, former President Harrison, and Captain Mahan argued for creating an American empire. Others, including Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, and Mark Twain, opposed these ideas.

In October, representatives from Spain and the United States sat down in Paris to work out a treaty. President McKinley appointed a "peace commission" to represent the United States. A majority of the commission's members believed in expansionism. No representatives from the colonies whose fates were being decided attended the Paris conference.

The Spanish delegates assumed that the United States would annex Cuba. They suggested that the United States also take over Cuba's $400 million debt. The Americans declined. After all, the war had been fought in support of Cuban independence. However, they were glad to accept Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

The American army already controlled the city of Manila, but it had not ventured into any other areas of the Philippine Islands. After signing the treaty, President McKinley ordered the War Department to bring all the islands under military control. The people of the Philippines, he decided, were too "uncivilized" to govern themselves. The Filipinos were shocked. For two years they'd been fighting for their independence from Spain. Since the United States had supported rebels in Cuba and Hawaii, they expected support for their independence as well.

Commodore Dewey wrote to his superiors and pointed out that the Filipinos seemed better prepared for self-government than the Cubans did. The War Department responded by sending more men and equipment to Manila. Emilio Aguinaldo, the wiry leader of the Filipino independence movement, felt betrayed. Aguinaldo admired the United States. He liked to be called "the George Washington of the Philippines." He had helped the Americans fight the Spanish. Now the Americans and the Spanish residents of the islands were fighting him.

Aguinaldo led his bitter troops into the jungles, and for three years they fought a brutal war against the military government. In the end the overwhelming power of the American forces defeated them. The Americans confined many Filipinos in concentration camps like the ones the Spanish had used in Cuba. William Howard Taft was appointed head of the Philippine Commission, charged with replacing the military government with a civilian legislature. Despite the plan to prepare the Philippines for independence, however, Americans continued to rule the islands until after World War II.

The war in the Philippines claimed four times as many American lives as the war with Spain did. Few Americans, however, rejoiced at the victory. There were no heroes. No parades greeted the returning troops. For many, this war seemed to contradict some basic American values.

"I have been criticized a good deal about the Philippines," McKinley said, "but I don't deserve it. The truth is . . . they came to us as a gift from the gods."

"Congratulations," Andrew Carnegie wrote to a leading expansionist. "You seem to have about finished your work of civilizing the Filipinos. It is thought that about eight thousand of them have been completely civilized and sent to heaven. I hope you like it."
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Spheres of Influence

Throughout the nineteenth century, China's emperors had watched as foreigners encroached further and further upon their land. Time and again, foreigners forced China to make humiliating concessions. Foreign regiments, armed with modern weapons, consistently defeated entire imperial armies. Now, as a new century was about to begin, Cixi, empress dowager of the Qing Dynasty, searched for a way to rid her empire of foreign parasites.

Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and Russia all claimed exclusive trading rights to certain parts of China. They were dividing China into "spheres of influence." Some even claimed to own the territory within their spheres. By acquiring the Philippines, the United States became an Asian power too. Now, with a strong base of operations just 400 miles from China, American businesses hoped to take advantage of China's vast resources. The foreign spheres of influence, however, threatened their ambitions.

So while the empress was hoping to close China to foreigners, Americans were looking for a way in. John Hay, now Secretary of State, had an idea. Since public opinion, strained by the Philippines war, would never support the use of force, he decided to negotiate. He sent letters to all the foreign powers and suggested an "Open Door" policy in China. This policy would guarantee equal trading rights for all and prevent one nation from discriminating against another within its sphere.

The nations replied that they liked the concept of the Open Door, but that they could not support or enforce it. Hay's plan had been politely rejected. Nevertheless Hay announced that since all of the powers had accepted the Open Door in principle, the United States considered their agreement "final and definitive."
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Fists of Righteous Harmony

While the outside powers bickered over who would control China, Cixi issued an imperial message to all the Chinese provinces.

The present situation is becoming daily more difficult. The various Powers cast upon us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling each other to be first to seize our innermost territories. . . . Should the strong enemies become aggressive and press us to consent to things we can never accept, we have no alternative but to rely upon the justice of our cause. . . . If our . . . hundreds of millions of inhabitants . . . would prove their loyalty to their emperor and love of their country, what is there to fear from any invader? Let us not think about making peace.

In northern Shandong province, a devastating drought was pushing people to the edge of starvation. Few people there were thinking about making peace. A secret society, known as the Fists of Righteous Harmony, attracted thousands of followers. Foreigners called members of this society "Boxers" because they practiced martial arts. The Boxers also believed that they had a magical power, and that foreign bullets could not harm them. Millions of "spirit soldiers," they said, would soon rise from the dead and join their cause.

Their cause, at first, was to overthrow the imperial Qing government and expel all "foreign devils" from China. The crafty empress, however, saw a way to use the Boxers. Through her ministers, she began to encourage the Boxers. Soon a new slogan-"Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners!"-appeared upon the Boxers' banner.

In the early months of 1900, thousands of Boxers roamed the countryside. They attacked Christian missions, slaughtering foreign missionaries and Chinese converts. Then they moved toward the cities, attracting more and more followers as they came. Nervous foreign ministers insisted that the Chinese government stop the Boxers. From inside the Forbidden City, the empress told the diplomats that her troops would soon crush the "rebellion." Meanwhile, she did nothing as the Boxers entered the capital.

Foreign diplomats, their families, and staff lived in a compound just outside the Forbidden City's walls in the heart of Beijing. Working together, they threw up hasty defenses, and with a small force of military personnel, they faced the Boxer onslaught. One American described the scene as 20,000 Boxers

advanced in a solid mass and carried standards of red and white cloth. Their yells were deafening, while the roar of gongs, drums and horns sounded like thunder. . . . They waved their swords and stamped on the ground with their feet. They wore red turbans, sashes, and garters over blue cloth. [When] they were only twenty yards from our gate, . . . three volleys from the rifles of our sailors left more than fifty dead upon the ground.

The Boxers fell back but soon returned. Surrounded, the foreigners could neither escape nor send for help. For almost two months, they withstood fierce attacks and bombardment. Things began to look hopeless. Seventy-six defenders lay dead, and many more were wounded. Ammunition, food, and medical supplies were almost gone. Then, shortly before dawn, loud explosions rocked the city. Weary defenders staggered to the barricades, expecting a final, overpowering Boxer attack. But as a column of armed men approached them, they began to cheer. Help had arrived at last.

After a month of no news from their diplomats, the foreign powers had grown worried. They assembled an international relief force of soldiers and sailors from eight countries. The United States, eager to rescue its ministers and to assert its presence in China, sent a contingent of 2,500 sailors and marines. After rescuing another besieged delegation in Tientsin, the international force marched to Beijing, fighting Boxers and imperial soldiers along the way.

The international troops looted the capital and even ransacked the Forbidden City. Disguised as a peasant, the empress dowager escaped the city in a cart. She returned to the Forbidden City a year later, but the power of the Qing dynasty was destroyed forever.

Because it had participated in the campaign, the United States participated in the settlement that followed. Hay called for an expanded "Open Door," not only within the spheres of influence, but in all parts of China. He also recommended that the powers preserve China's territory and its government. Other powers agreed, and the Open Door policy allowed foreign access to China's market until World War II closed it once again.
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President Roosevelt

The popular acclaim that carried Teddy Roosevelt to the governorship of New York didn't stop there. In 1900, Republicans nominated Teddy as President McKinley's running mate. McKinley won a second term, and Teddy was sworn in as vice-president. Six months later, an assassin's bullet killed McKinley. At age 42, Theodore Roosevelt became the nation's youngest president.

Roosevelt assumed the office with the same vigor with which he charged up Kettle Hill. A long believer in Captain Mahan's theory of sea power, Roosevelt began to revitalize the navy. Now that America's empire stretched from the Caribbean across the Pacific, the old idea of a canal between the two oceans took on new urgency. Mahan had predicted that "the canal will become a strategic center of the most vital importance," and Teddy agreed.

"The canal," Roosevelt said, "was by far the most important action I took in foreign affairs during the time I was President. When nobody could or would exercise efficient authority, I exercised it."
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Joining the Waters

In 1878 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French engineer who built the Suez Canal, began to dig a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, which was then part of Colombia. Tropical disease and engineering problems halted construction on the canal, but a French business (the New Panama Canal Company) still held the rights to the project. Roosevelt agreed to pay $40 million for the rights, and he began to negotiate with Colombia for control of the land. He offered $10 million for a fifty-mile strip across the isthmus. Colombia refused.

"We were dealing with a government of irresponsible bandits," Roosevelt stormed. "I was prepared to . . . at once occupy the Isthmus anyhow, and proceed to dig the canal. But I deemed it likely that there would be a revolution in Panama soon."

Teddy was right. The chief engineer of the New Panama Canal Company organized a local revolt. Roosevelt immediately sent the battleship Nashville and a detachment of marines to Panama to support the new government. The rebels gladly accepted Roosevelt's $10 million offer, and they gave the United States complete control of a ten-mile wide canal zone.

Roosevelt ordered army engineers to start digging. Thousands of workers sweated in the malarial heat. They tore up jungles and cut down mountains. Insects thrived in muddy, stagnant pools. "Mosquitoes get so thick you get a mouthful with every breath," a worker complained. The mosquitoes also carried yellow fever, and many fell victim to the deadly disease before Dr. William Gorgas found a way to stop it.

Some Americans did not approve of Roosevelt's behavior. "There was much accusation about my having acted in an 'unconstitutional' manner," Teddy shrugged. "I took the isthmus, started the canal, and then left Congress-not to debate the canal, but to debate me. . . . While the debate goes on, the canal does too; and they are welcome to debate me as long as they wish, provided that we can go on with the canal."

Work did go on. Despite lethal landslides, workers with dynamite and clumsy steam shovels cut their way across a continent. They built a railroad, three sets of concrete locks, and a huge artificial lake. Nine years later the freighter Ancon entered the new channel. Hundreds of construction workers hopped aboard for the historic ride. A shiny towing locomotive pulled the Ancon into the first lock. Bands played and crowds cheered as the ship slipped into the Pacific.

Roosevelt liked to repeat an old African saying: "Speak softly, and carry a big stick. You will go far." In Panama, Teddy proved to the world that he was willing to use his big navy as a stick to further American interests.
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Teddy's Legacy

Between the end of the Spanish-American War and the dawn of the Great Depression, the United States sent troops to Latin American countries thirty-two times. It used the Roosevelt Corollary, or addition, to the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention. In the corollary, Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed that the United States, because it was a "civilized nation," had the right to stop "chronic wrongdoing" throughout the Western Hemisphere.

"Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship," he said. "Chronic wrongdoing, however, . . . may force the United States to exercise an international police power." Teddy didn't hesitate to use this "police power" to strengthen his country, but he was always careful not to upset the balance of world power.

William Howard Taft, former governor of the Philippines, followed Roosevelt into the White House. Taft believed in economic expansion, and he introduced a policy called "dollar diplomacy." This policy used diplomacy to advance and protect American businesses in other countries. Taft employed Roosevelt's corollary in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries to protect American investments.

American businesses had been active in Nicaragua since the 1850s. The lush country attracted American fruit growers and mining companies. Others believed that Nicaragua offered the best site for a canal, and they invested in land. Cornelius Vanderbilt started a company that transported passengers between New York and San Francisco via the Nicaraguan jungle. Shortly after Commodore Perry opened Japan, Vanderbilt plotted to take control of Nicaragua.

With Vanderbilt's help, a young adventurer named William Walker set out with fifty-seven followers to conquer Nicaragua. A short, freckled man with sharp green eyes, Walker formed an alliance with a group of local rebels and defeated the Nicaraguan forces. He proclaimed himself "commander in chief," and soon thousands of Americans rushed into the country. Many Americans wanted the United States to assume direct control of Nicaragua. The government, however, was afraid to upset the fragile balance between "free" and "slave" territories.

Walker eventually quarreled with Vanderbilt about the transit company, and soon another revolution drove him from power. In 1860 Walker died before a firing squad. American economic involvement in Nicaragua lived on.

Nicaraguans confidently expected the canal, and they gladly accepted loans and payments based on its eventual construction. By 1909 the United States-Nicaraguan Concession was largest American company in Nicaragua. That year the Concession's chief legal counsel, Philander C. Knox, resigned to become Taft's Secretary of State. When Nicaragua's ruler cancelled an agreement with one American business and threatened the Concession, the company organized another revolution. Adolfo Diaz, a Concession employee, became the new president. Taft quickly recognized the Diaz government.

When still another revolt threatened Diaz, Taft invoked the corollary and ordered American marines to suppress the rebellion. Then he and Knox worked out a plan to collect the money that Nicaragua owed to foreign investors. Under the plan, American banks took control of Nicaragua's customs collection. They applied the money they collected directly to the country's debt. The marines remained in Nicaragua's capital to serve as "international police" and prevent any further revolts. Except for a short period in 1925, they stayed for 21 years.
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The End of an Era

The two decades that sandwiched the turning of the century enclosed a turning point in American history. Despite George Washington's advice to the contrary, the years saw American interests scatter across the globe. America had flexed its muscles, and the world had cowered. But the ease with which America gained its new possessions obscured the responsibilities that came with them. Dollar diplomacy would soon drag a reluctant America into the muddy trenches of the Western Front. The "Open Door" welcomed a series of squabbles that later erupted in a mushroom cloud. But few in that innocent era could foresee such extraordinary events. Most believed that America was simply following its natural order, its destiny.

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During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States pursued an aggressive policy of expansionism, extending its political and economic influence around the globe. That pivotal era in the history of our nation is the subject of this online history.

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Who Fought in the Spanish American War  from Don't Know Much About History

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You Will Love History

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Quizlet link Spanish

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American Imperialism Flow Chart and Review Cards

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American Imperialism Flow Chart and Review Cards

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Bill of Fare

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Lesson 2 The Spanish-American War

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Printable Version After a century of American rule, many native Hawaiians remain bitter about how the United States acquired the islands, located 2,500 miles from the West Coast.

In 1893, a small group of sugar and pineapple-growing businessmen, aided by the American minister to Hawaii and backed by heavily armed U.S. soldiers and marines, deposed Hawaii's queen. Subsequently, they imprisoned the queen and seized 1.75 million acres of crown land and conspired to annex the islands to the United States.

On January 17, 1893, the conspirators announced the overthrow of the queen's government. To avoid bloodshed, Queen Lydia Kamakaeha Liliuokalani yielded her sovereignty and called upon the U.S. government "to undo the actions of its representatives." The U.S. government refused to help her regain her throne. When she died in 1917, Hawaii was an American territory. In 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state after a plebiscite in which 90 percent of the islanders supported statehood.

The businessmen who conspired to overthrow the queen claimed that they were overthrowing a corrupt, dissolute regime in order of advance democratic principles. They also argued that a Western power was likely to acquire the islands. Hawaii had the finest harbor in the mid-Pacific and was viewed as a strategically valuable coaling station and naval base. In 1851, King Kamehameha III had secretly asked the United States to annex Hawaii, but Secretary of State Daniel Webster declined, saying "No power ought to take possession of the islands as a conquest...or colonization." But later monarchs wanted to maintain Hawaii's independence. The native population proved to be vulnerable to western diseases, including cholera, smallpox, and leprosy. By 1891, native Hawaii's were an ethnic minority on the islands.

After the bloodless 1893 revolution, the American businessmen lobbied President Benjamin Harrison and Congress to annex the Hawaiian Islands. In his last month in office, Harrison sent an annexation treaty to the Senate for confirmation, but the new president, Grover Cleveland, withdrew the treaty "for the purpose of re-examination." He also received Queen Liliuokalani and replaced the American stars and stripes in Honolulu with the Hawaiian flag.

Cleveland also ordered a study of the Hawaiian revolution. The inquiry concluded that the American minister to Hawaii had conspired with the businessmen to overthrow the queen, and that the coup would have failed "but for the landing of the United States forces upon false pretexts respecting the dangers to life and property." Looking back on the Hawaii takeover, President Cleveland later wrote that "the provisional government owes its existence to an armed invasion by the United States. By an act of war...a substantial wrong has been done."

President Cleveland's recommendation that the monarchy be restored was rejected by Congress. The House of Representatives voted to censure the U.S. minister to Hawaii and adopted a resolution opposing annexation. But Congress did not act to restore the monarchy. In 1894, Sanford Dole, who was beginning his pineapple business, declared himself president of the Republic of Hawaii without a popular vote. The new government found the queen guilty of treason and sentenced her to five years of hard labor and a $5,000 fine. While the sentence of hard labor was not carried out, the queen was placed under house arrest.

The Republican Party platform in the presidential election of 1896 called for the annexation of Hawaii. Petitions for a popular vote in Hawaii were ignored. Fearing that he lacked two-thirds support for annexation in the Senate, the new Republican president, William McKinley, called for a joint resolution of Congress (the same way that the United States had acquired Texas). With the country aroused by the Spanish American War and political leaders fearful that the islands might be annexed by Japan, the joint resolution easily passed Congress. Hawaii officially became a U.S. territory in 1900.

When Capt. James Cooke, the British explorer, arrived in Hawaii in 1778, there were about 300,000 Hawaiians on the islands; however, infectious diseases reduced the native population. Today, about 20 percent of Hawaii's people are of native Hawaiian ancestry, and only about 10,000 are of pure Hawaiian descent. Native Hawaiians were poorer, less healthy, and less educated than members of other major ethnic groups on the islands.

Sugar growers, who dominated the islands' economy, imported thousands of immigrant laborers first from China, then Japan, then Portuguese from Madeira and the Azores, followed by Puerto Ricans, Koreans, and most recently Filipinos. As a result, Hawaii has one of the world's most multicultural populations.

In 1993, a joined Congressional resolution, signed by President Bill Clinton, apologized for the U.S. role in the overthrow. The House approved the resolution by voice vote. The Senate passed it 65 to 34 votes.

Copyright 2021 Digital History

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Printable Version After a century of American rule, many native Hawaiians remain bitter about how the United States acquired the islands, located 2,500 miles from the West Coast. In 1893, a small group of sugar and pineapple-growing businessmen, aided by the American minister to Hawaii and backed by heavily armed U.S.

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Whatever its origins, American imperialism experienced its pinnacle from the late 1800s through the years following World War II. During this "Age of Imperialism," the United States exerted political, social, and economic control over countries such as the Philippines, Cuba, Germany, Austria, Korea, and Japan.

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From Don't Know Much About History

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What was the Big Stick  from Don't Know Much About History

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Copy the notes on page 1.5 of the packet. Remember to only copy what is written in yellow.

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YouTube Link

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Objective 3.1- Goals of American Imperialism

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https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Goals-of-American-Imperialism-Bundle-2851585 Do you need a comprehensive and engaging lesson on the goals of American Imperialism? This is the bundle you've been looking for! This "Goals of American Imperialism" Bundle includes: 1) A customizable lecture that you can adjust to meet your needs and the needs of your students.

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Ch 19 American Empire

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The word empire might conjure images of ancient Rome, the Persian Empire, or the British Empire-powers that depended variously on military conquest, colonization, occupation, or direct resource exploitation-but empires can take many forms and imperial processes can occur in many contexts. One hundred years after the United States won its independence from the British Empire, had it become an empire of its own?

In the decades after the American Civil War, the United States exerted itself in the service of American interests around the world. In the Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East, and most explicitly in the Spanish-American War and under the foreign policy of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, the United States expanded on a long history of exploration, trade, and cultural exchange to practice something that looked remarkably like empire. The question of American imperialism, then, seeks to understand not only direct American interventions in such places as Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico, but also the deeper history of American engagement with the wider world and the subsequent ways in which American economic, political, and cultural power has shaped the actions, choices, and possibilities of other groups and nations.

Meanwhile, as the United States asserted itself abroad, it acquired increasingly higher numbers of foreign peoples at home. European and Asian immigrants poured into the United States. In a sense, imperialism and immigration raised similar questions about American identity: Who was an "American," and who wasn't? What were the nation's obligations to foreign powers and foreign peoples? And how accessible-and how fluid-should American identity be for newcomers? All such questions confronted late-nineteenth-century Americans with unprecedented urgency.

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American interventions in Mexico, China, and the Middle East reflected the United States' new eagerness to intervene in foreign governments to protect American economic interests abroad.

The United States had long been involved in Pacific commerce. American ships had been traveling to China, for instance, since 1784. As a percentage of total American foreign trade, Asian trade remained comparatively small, and yet the idea that Asian markets were vital to American commerce affected American policy and, when those markets were threatened, prompted interventions. In 1899, secretary of state John Hay articulated the Open Door Policy, which called for all Western powers to have equal access to Chinese markets. Hay feared that other imperial powers-Japan, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia-planned to carve China into spheres of influence. It was in the economic interest of American business to maintain China for free trade. The following year, in 1900, American troops joined a multinational force that intervened to prevent the closing of trade by putting down the Boxer Rebellion, a movement opposed to foreign businesses and missionaries operating in China. President McKinley sent the U.S. Army without consulting Congress, setting a precedent for U.S. presidents to order American troops to action around the world under their executive powers.

The United States was not only ready to intervene in foreign affairs to preserve foreign markets, it was willing to take territory. The United States acquired its first Pacific territories with the Guano Islands Act of 1856. Guano-collected bird excrement-was a popular fertilizer integral to industrial farming. The act authorized and encouraged Americans to venture into the seas and claim islands with guano deposits for the United States. These acquisitions were the first insular, unincorporated territories of the United States: they were neither part of a state nor a federal district, and they were not on the path to ever attain such a status. The act, though little known, offered a precedent for future American acquisitions.

Merchants, of course, weren't the only American travelers in the Pacific. Christian missionaries soon followed explorers and traders. The first American missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820 and China in 1830, for instance. Missionaries, though, often worked alongside business interests, and American missionaries in Hawaii, for instance, obtained large tracts of land and started lucrative sugar plantations. During the nineteenth century, Hawaii was ruled by an oligarchy based on the sugar companies, together known as the "Big Five." This white American ( haole) elite was extremely powerful, but they still operated outside the formal expression of American state power.

As many Americans looked for empire across the Pacific, others looked to Latin America. The United States, long a participant in an increasingly complex network of economic, social, and cultural interactions in Latin America, entered the late nineteenth century with a new aggressive and interventionist attitude toward its southern neighbors.

American capitalists invested enormous sums of money in Mexico during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the long reign of the corrupt yet stable regime of the modernization-hungry president Porfirio Diaz. But in 1910 the Mexican people revolted against Díaz, ending his authoritarian regime but also his friendliness toward the business interests of the United States. In the midst of the terrible destruction wrought by the fighting, Americans with investment interests pleaded for governmental help. But the U.S. government tried to control events and politics that could not be controlled. More and more American businessmen called for military intervention. When the brutal strongman Victoriano Huerta executed the revolutionary, democratically elected president Francisco Madero in 1913, newly inaugurated American president Woodrow Wilson put pressure on Mexico's new regime. Wilson refused to recognize the new government and demanded that Huerta step aside and allow free elections to take place. Huerta refused.

When Mexican forces mistakenly arrested American sailors in the port city of Tampico in April 1914, Wilson saw the opportunity to apply additional pressure on Huerta. Huerta refused to make amends, and Wilson therefore asked Congress for authority to use force against Mexico. But even before Congress could respond, Wilson invaded and took the port city of Veracruz to prevent, he said, a German shipment of arms from reaching Huerta's forces. The Huerta government fell in July 1914, and the American occupation lasted until November, when Venustiano Carranza, a rival of Huerta, took power. When Wilson threw American support behind Carranza, and not his more radical and now-rival Pancho Villa, Villa and several hundred supporters attacked American interests and raided the town of Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916, and killed over a dozen soldiers and civilians. Wilson ordered a punitive expedition of several thousand soldiers led by General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing to enter northern Mexico and capture Villa. But Villa eluded Pershing for nearly a year and, in 1917, with war in Europe looming and great injury done to U.S.-Mexican relations, Pershing left Mexico.

The United States' actions during the Mexican Revolution reflected long-standing American policy that justified interventionist actions in Latin American politics because of their potential bearing on the United States: on citizens, on shared territorial borders, and, perhaps most significantly, on economic investments. This example highlights the role of geography, or perhaps proximity, in the pursuit of imperial outcomes. But American interactions in more distant locations, in the Middle East, for instance, look quite different.

In 1867, Mark Twain traveled to the Middle East as part of a large tour group of Americans. In his satirical travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, he wrote, "The people [of the Middle East] stared at us everywhere, and we [Americans] stared at them. We generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them." When Americans later intervened in the Middle East, they would do so convinced of their own superiority.

The U.S. government had traditionally had little contact with the Middle East. Trade was limited, too limited for an economic relationship to be deemed vital to the national interest, but treaties were nevertheless signed between the U.S. and powers in the Middle East. Still, the majority of American involvement in the Middle East prior to World War I came not in the form of trade but in education, science, and humanitarian aid. American missionaries led the way. The first Protestant missionaries had arrived in 1819. Soon the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the boards of missions of the Reformed Church of America became dominant in missionary enterprises. Missions were established in almost every country of the Middle East, and even though their efforts resulted in relatively few converts, missionaries helped establish hospitals and schools, and their work laid the foundation for the establishment of Western-style universities, such as Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey (1863), the American University of Beirut (1866), and the American University of Cairo (1919).

Although the United States had a long history of international economic, military, and cultural engagement that stretched back deep into the eighteenth century, the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (1898-1902) marked a crucial turning point in American interventions abroad. In pursuing war with Spain, and then engaging in counterrevolutionary conflict in the Philippines, the United States expanded the scope and strength of its global reach. Over the next two decades, the United States would become increasingly involved in international politics, particularly in Latin America. These new conflicts and ensuing territorial problems forced Americans to confront the ideological elements of imperialism. Should the United States act as an empire? Or were foreign interventions and the taking of territory antithetical to its founding democratic ideals? What exactly would be the relationship between the United States and its territories? And could colonial subjects be successfully and safely incorporated into the body politic as American citizens? The Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars brought these questions, which had always lurked behind discussions of American expansion, out into the open.

In 1898, Americans began in earnest to turn their attention southward to problems plaguing their neighbor Cuba. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Cubans had tried unsuccessfully again and again to gain independence from Spain. The latest uprising, and the one that would prove fatal to Spain's colonial designs, began in 1895 and was still raging in the winter of 1898. By that time, in an attempt to crush the uprising, Spanish general Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau had been conducting a policy of reconcentration-forcing Cubans living in certain cities to relocate en masse to military camps-for about two years. Prominent newspaper publishers sensationalized Spanish atrocities. Cubans in the United States and their allies raised cries of Cuba Libre! And while the U.S. government proclaimed a wish to avoid armed conflict with Spain, President McKinley became increasingly concerned about the safety of American lives and property in Cuba. He ordered the battleship Maine to Havana harbor in January 1898.

The Maine sat undisturbed in the harbor for about two weeks. Then, on the evening of February 15, a titanic explosion tore open the ship and sent it to the bottom of the ocean. Three quarters of the ship's 354 occupants died. A naval board of inquiry immediately began an investigation to ascertain the cause of the explosion, but the loudest Americans had already decided that Spanish treachery was to blame. Capitalizing on the outrage, "yellow journals"-newspapers that promoted sensational stories, notoriously at the cost of accuracy-such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal called for war with Spain. When urgent negotiations failed to produce a mutually agreeable settlement, Congress officially declared war on April 25.

Although America's war effort began haphazardly, Spain's decaying military crumbled. Military victories for the United States came quickly. In the Pacific, on May 1, Commodore George Dewey engaged the Spanish fleet outside Manila, the capital of the Philippines (another Spanish colonial possession), destroyed it, and proceeded to blockade Manila harbor. Two months later, American troops took Cuba's San Juan Heights in what would become the most well-known battle of the war, winning fame not for regular soldiers but for the irregular, especially Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. Roosevelt had been the assistant secretary of the navy but had resigned his position in order to see action in the war. His actions in Cuba made him a national celebrity. As disease began to eat away at American troops, the Spanish suffered the loss of Santiago de Cuba on July 17, effectively ending the war. The two nations agreed to a cease-fire on August 12 and formally signed the Treaty of Paris in December. The terms of the treaty stipulated, among other things, that the United States would acquire Spain's former holdings of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

Secretary of state John Hay memorably referred to the conflict as a "splendid little war," and at the time it certainly appeared that way. Fewer than four hundred Americans died in battle in a war that lasted about fifteen weeks. Contemporaries celebrated American victories as the providential act of God. The influential Brooklyn minister Lyman Abbott, for instance, declared that Americans were "an elect people of God" and saw divine providence in Dewey's victory at Manila. Some, such as Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, took matters one step further, seeing in American victory an opportunity for imperialism. In Beveridge's view, America had a "mission to perform" and a "duty to discharge" around the world. What Beveridge envisioned was nothing less than an American empire.

But the question of whether the United States should become an empire was sharply debated across the nation in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and the acquisition of Hawaii in July 1898. At the behest of American businessmen who had overthrown the Hawaiian monarchy, the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands and their rich plantations. Between Hawaii and a number of former Spanish possessions, many Americans coveted the economic and political advantages that increased territory would bring. Those opposed to expansion, however, worried that imperial ambitions did not accord with the nation's founding ideals. American actions in the Philippines brought all of these discussions to a head.

The Philippines were an afterthought of the Spanish-American War, but when the smoke cleared, the United States found itself in possession of a key foothold in the Pacific. After Dewey's victory over the Spanish fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay, conversations about how to proceed occupied the attentions of President McKinley, political leaders from both parties, and the popular press. American and Philippine forces (under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo) were in communication: Would the Americans offer their support to the Filipinos and their ongoing efforts against the Spanish? Or would the Americans replace the Spanish as a colonial occupying force? American forces were instructed to secure Manila without allowing Philippine forces to enter the Walled City (the seat of the Spanish colonial government), hinting, perhaps, at things to come. Americans wondered what would happen next. Perhaps a good many ordinary Americans shared the bewildered sentiments of Mr. Dooley, the fictional Irish-American barkeeper whom humorist Finley Peter Dunne used to satirize American life: "I don't know what to do with th' Ph'lippeens anny more thin I did las' summer, befure I heerd tell iv thim. . . . We can't sell thim, we can't ate thim, an' we can't throw thim into the th' alley whin no wan is lookin''."

As debates about American imperialism continued against the backdrop of an upcoming presidential election, tensions in the Philippines escalated. Emilio Aguinaldo was inaugurated as president of the First Philippine Republic (or Malolos Republic) in late January 1899; fighting between American and Philippine forces began in early February; and in April 1899, Congress ratified the 1898 Treaty of Paris, which concluded the Spanish-American War and gave Spain $20 million in exchange for the Philippine Islands.

Like the Cubans, Filipinos had waged a long war against their Spanish colonizers. The United States could have given them the independence they had long fought for, but, instead, at the behest of President William McKinley, the United States occupied the islands and from 1899 to 1902 waged a bloody series of conflicts against Filipino insurrectionists that cost far more lives than the war with Spain. Under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, Filipinos who had fought for freedom against the Spanish now fought for freedom against the very nation that had claimed to have liberated them from Spanish tyranny.

The Philippine Insurrection, or the Philippine-American War, was a brutal conflict of occupation and insurgency. Contemporaries compared the guerrilla-style warfare in challenging and unfamiliar terrain to the American experiences in the Indian Wars of the late nineteenth century. Many commented on its brutality and the uncertain mission of American troops. An April 1899 dispatch from a Harper's Weekly correspondent began, "A week has passed-a week of fighting and marching, of jungles and rivers, of incident and adventure so varied and of so rapid transition that to sit down to write about it makes one feel as if he were trying to describe a dream where time, space, and all the logical sequences of ordinary life are upset in the unrelenting brutality of war." John Bass described his experiences in detail, and his reportage, combined with accounts that came directly from soldiers, helped shape public knowledge about the war. Reports of cruelty on both sides and a few high-profile military investigations ensured continued public attention to events across the Pacific.

Amid fighting to secure the Philippine Islands, the federal government sent two Philippine Commissions to assess the situation in the islands and make recommendations for a civilian colonial government. A civilian administration, with William H. Taft as the first governor-general (1901-1903), was established with military support. Although President Theodore Roosevelt declared the war to be over in 1902, resistance and occasional fighting continued into the second decade of the twentieth century.

Debates about American imperialism dominated headlines and tapped into core ideas about American identity and the proper role of the United States in the larger world. Should a former colony, established on the principles of freedom, liberty, and sovereignty, become a colonizer itself? What was imperialism, anyway? Many framed the Filipino conflict as a Protestant, civilizing mission. Others framed American imperialism in the Philippines as nothing new, as simply the extension of a never-ending westward American expansion. It was simply destiny. Some saw imperialism as a way to reenergize the nation by asserting national authority and power around the globe. Others baldly recognized the opportunities the Philippine Islands presented for access to Asian markets. But critics grew loud. The American Anti-Imperialist League, founded in 1899 and populated by such prominent Americans as Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and Jane Addams, protested American imperial actions and articulated a platform that decried foreign subjugation and upheld the rights of all to self-governance. Still others embraced anti-imperialist stances because of concerns about immigration and American racial identity, afraid that American purity stood imperiled by contact with strange and foreign peoples. For whatever reason, however, the onset or acceleration of imperialism was a controversial and landmark moment in American history. America had become a preeminent force in the world.

Under the leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States emerged from the nineteenth century with ambitious designs on global power through military might, territorial expansion, and economic influence. Though the Spanish-American War had begun under the administration of William McKinley, Roosevelt-the hero of San Juan Hill, assistant secretary of the navy, vice president, and president-was arguably the most visible and influential proponent of American imperialism at the turn of the century. Roosevelt's emphasis on developing the American navy, and on Latin America as a key strategic area of U.S. foreign policy, would have long-term consequences.

In return for Roosevelt's support of the Republican nominee, William McKinley, in the 1896 presidential election, McKinley appointed Roosevelt as assistant secretary of the navy. The head of the department, John Long, had a competent but lackadaisical managerial style that allowed Roosevelt a great deal of freedom that Roosevelt used to network with such luminaries as military theorists Alfred Thayer Mahan and naval officer George Dewey and politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge and William Howard Taft. During his tenure he oversaw the construction of new battleships and the implementation of new technology and laid the groundwork for new shipyards, all with the goal of projecting America's power across the oceans. Roosevelt wanted to expand American influence. For instance, he advocated for the annexation of Hawaii for several reasons: it was within the American sphere of influence, it would deny Japanese expansion and limit potential threats to the West Coast, it had an excellent port for battleships at Pearl Harbor, and it would act as a fueling station on the way to pivotal markets in Asia.

Roosevelt, after winning headlines in the war, ran as vice president under McKinley and rose to the presidency after McKinley's assassination by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901. Among his many interventions in American life, Roosevelt acted with vigor to expand the military, bolstering naval power especially, to protect and promote American interests abroad. This included the construction of eleven battleships between 1904 and 1907. Alfred Thayer Mahan's naval theories, described in his The Influence of Sea Power upon History, influenced Roosevelt a great deal. In contrast to theories that advocated for commerce raiding, coastal defense, and small "brown water" ships, the imperative to control the sea required battleships and a "blue water" navy that could engage and win decisive battles with rival fleets. As president, Roosevelt continued the policies he established as assistant secretary of the navy and expanded the U.S. fleet. The mission of the Great White Fleet, sixteen all-white battleships that sailed around the world between 1907 and 1909, exemplified America's new power.

Roosevelt insisted that the "big stick" and the persuasive power of the U.S. military could ensure U.S. hegemony over strategically important regions in the Western Hemisphere. The United States used military intervention in various circumstances to further its objectives, but it did not have the ability or the inclination to militarily impose its will on the entirety of South and Central America. The United States therefore more often used informal methods of empire, such as so-called dollar diplomacy, to assert dominance over the hemisphere.

The United States actively intervened again and again in Latin America. Throughout his time in office, Roosevelt exerted U.S. control over Cuba (even after it gained formal independence in 1902) and Puerto Rico, and he deployed naval forces to ensure Panama's independence from Colombia in 1901 in order to acquire a U.S. Canal Zone. Furthermore, Roosevelt pronounced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, proclaiming U.S. police power in the Caribbean. As articulated by President James Monroe in his annual address to Congress in 1823, the United States would treat any military intervention in Latin America by a European power as a threat to American security. Roosevelt reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine and expanded it by declaring that the United States had the right to preemptive action through intervention in any Latin American nation in order to correct administrative and fiscal deficiencies.

Roosevelt's policy justified numerous and repeated police actions in "dysfunctional" Caribbean and Latin American countries by U.S. Marines and naval forces and enabled the founding of the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This approach is sometimes referred to as gunboat diplomacy, wherein naval forces and Marines land in a national capital to protect American and Western personnel, temporarily seize control of the government, and dictate policies friendly to American business, such as the repayment of foreign loans. For example, in 1905 Roosevelt sent the Marines to occupy the Dominican Republic and established financial supervision over the Dominican government. Imperialists often framed such actions as almost humanitarian. They celebrated white Anglo-Saxon societies such as those found in the United States and the British Empire as advanced practitioners of nation-building and civilization, helping to uplift debtor nations in Latin America that lacked the manly qualities of discipline and self-control. Roosevelt, for instance, preached that it was the "manly duty" of the United States to exercise an international police power in the Caribbean and to spread the benefits of Anglo-Saxon civilization to inferior states populated by inferior peoples. The president's language, for instance, contrasted debtor nations' "impotence" with the United States' civilizing influence, belying new ideas that associated self-restraint and social stability with Anglo-Saxon manliness.

Dollar diplomacy offered a less costly method of empire and avoided the troubles of military occupation. Washington worked with bankers to provide loans to Latin American nations in exchange for some level of control over their national fiscal affairs. Roosevelt first implemented dollar diplomacy on a vast scale, while Presidents Taft and Wilson continued the practice in various forms during their own administrations. All confronted instability in Latin America. Rising debts to European and American bankers allowed for the inroads of modern life but destabilized much of the region. Bankers, beginning with financial houses in London and New York, saw Latin America as an opportunity for investment. Lenders took advantage of the region's newly formed governments' need for cash and exacted punishing interest rates on massive loans, which were then sold off in pieces on the secondary bond market. American economic interests were now closely aligned with the region but also further undermined by the chronic instability of the region's newly formed governments, which were often plagued by mismanagement, civil wars, and military coups in the decades following their independence. Turnover in regimes interfered with the repayment of loans, as new governments often repudiated the national debt or forced a renegotiation with suddenly powerless lenders.

Creditors could not force settlements of loans until they successfully lobbied their own governments to get involved and forcibly collect debts. The Roosevelt administration did not want to deny the Europeans' rightful demands of repayment of debt, but it also did not want to encourage European policies of conquest in the hemisphere as part of that debt collection. U.S. policy makers and military strategists within the Roosevelt administration determined that this European practice of military intervention posed a serious threat to American interests in the region. Roosevelt reasoned that the United States must create and maintain fiscal and political stability within strategically important nations in Latin America, particularly those affecting routes to and from the proposed Panama Canal. As a result, U.S. policy makers considered intervention in places like Cuba and the Dominican Republic a necessity to ensure security around the region.

The Monroe Doctrine provided the Roosevelt administration with a diplomatic and international legal tradition through which it could assert a U.S. right and obligation to intervene in the hemisphere. The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserted that the United States wished to promote stable, prosperous states in Latin America that could live up to their political and financial obligations. Roosevelt declared that "wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may finally require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty." President Monroe declared what Europeans could not do in the Western Hemisphere; Roosevelt inverted his doctrine to legitimize direct U.S. intervention in the region.

Though aggressive and bellicose, Roosevelt did not necessarily advocate expansion by military force. In fact, the president insisted that in dealings with the Latin American nations, he did not seek national glory or expansion of territory and believed that war or intervention should be a last resort when resolving conflicts with problematic governments. According to Roosevelt, such actions were necessary to maintain "order and civilization." Then again, Roosevelt certainly believed in using military power to protect national interests and spheres of influence when absolutely necessary. He also believed that the American sphere included not only Hawaii and the Caribbean but also much of the Pacific. When Japanese victories over Russia threatened the regional balance of power, he sponsored peace talks between Russian and Japanese leaders, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.

Debates over American imperialism revolved around more than just politics and economics and national self-interest. They also included notions of humanitarianism, morality, religion, and ideas of "civilization." And they included significant participation by American women.

In the fall of 1903, Margaret McLeod, age twenty-one, originally of Boston, found herself in Australia on family business and in need of income. Fortuitously, she made the acquaintance of Alexander MacWillie, the top salesman for the H. J. Heinz Company, who happened to be looking for a young lady to serve as a "demonstrator" of Heinz products to potential consumers. McLeod proved to be such an attractive purveyor of India relish and baked beans that she accompanied MacWillie on the rest of his tour of Australia and continued on to South Africa, India, and Japan. Wherever she went, this "dainty young girl with golden hair in white cap and tucker" drew attention to Heinz's products, but, in a much larger sense, she was also projecting an image of middle-class American domesticity, of pure womanhood. Heinz saw itself not only as purveying economical and healthful foodstuffs-it was bringing the blessings of civilization to the world.

When commentators, such as Theodore Roosevelt in his speech on "the strenuous life," spoke about America's overseas ventures, they generally gave the impression that this was a strictly masculine enterprise-the work of soldiers, sailors, government officials, explorers, businessmen, and scientists. But in fact, U.S. imperialism, which focused as much on economic and cultural influence as on military or political power, offered a range of opportunities for white, middle-class, Christian women. In addition to working as representatives of American business, women could serve as missionaries, teachers, and medical professionals, and as artists and writers they were inspired by and helped transmit ideas about imperialism.

Moreover, the rhetoric of civilization that underlay imperialism was itself a highly gendered concept. According to the racial theory of the day, humans progressed through hierarchical stages of civilization in an orderly, linear fashion. Only Europeans and Americans had attained the highest level of civilization, which was superficially marked by whiteness but also included an industrial economy and a gender division in which men and women had diverging but complementary roles. Social and technological progress had freed women of the burdens of physical labor and elevated them to a position of moral and spiritual authority. White women thus potentially had important roles to play in U.S. imperialism, both as symbols of the benefits of American civilization and as vehicles for the transmission of American values.

Civilization, while often cloaked in the language of morality and Christianity, was very much an economic concept. The stages of civilization were primarily marked by their economic character (hunter-gatherer, agricultural, industrial), and the consumption of industrially produced commodities was seen as a key moment in the progress of "savages" toward civilized life. Over the course of the nineteenth century, women in the West, for instance, had become closely associated with consumption, particularly of those commodities used in the domestic sphere. Thus it must have seemed natural for Alexander MacWillie to hire Margaret McLeod to "demonstrate" ketchup and chili sauce at the same time as she "demonstrated" white, middle-class domesticity. By adopting the use of such progressive products in their homes, consumers could potentially absorb even the virtues of American civilization.

In some ways, women's work in support of imperialism can be seen as an extension of the kind of activities many of them were already engaged in among working-class, immigrant, and Native American communities in the United States. Many white women felt that they had a duty to spread the benefits of Christian civilization to those less fortunate than themselves. American overseas ventures, then, merely expanded the scope of these activities-literally, in that the geographical range of possibilities encompassed practically the entire globe, and figuratively, in that imperialism significantly raised the stakes of women's work. No longer only responsible for shaping the next generation of American citizens, white women now had a crucial role to play in the maintenance of civilization itself. They too would help determine whether civilization would continue to progress.

Of course, not all women were active supporters of U.S. imperialism. Many actively opposed it. Although the most prominent public voices against imperialism were male, women made up a large proportion of the membership of organizations like the Anti-Imperialist League. For white women like Jane Addams and Josephine Shaw Lowell, anti-imperialist activism was an outgrowth of their work in opposition to violence and in support of democracy. Black female activists, meanwhile, generally viewed imperialism as a form of racial antagonism and drew parallels between the treatments of African Americans at home and, for example, Filipinos abroad. Indeed, Ida B. Wells viewed her anti-lynching campaign as a kind of anti-imperialist activism.

For Americans at the turn of the century, imperialism and immigration were two sides of the same coin. The involvement of American women with imperialist and anti-imperialist activity demonstrates how foreign policy concerns were brought home and became, in a sense, domesticated. It is also no coincidence that many of the women involved in both imperialist and anti-imperialist organizations were also concerned with the plight of new arrivals to the United States. Industrialization, imperialism, and immigration were all linked. Imperialism had at its core a desire for markets for American goods, and those goods were increasingly manufactured by immigrant labor. This sense of growing dependence on "others" as producers and consumers, along with doubts about their capability of assimilation into the mainstream of white, Protestant American society, caused a great deal of anxiety among native-born Americans.

Between 1870 and 1920, over twenty-five million immigrants arrived in the United States. This migration was largely a continuation of a process begun before the Civil War, though by the turn of the twentieth century, new groups such as Italians, Poles, and Eastern European Jews made up a larger percentage of the arrivals while Irish and German numbers began to dwindle.

Although the growing U.S. economy needed large numbers of immigrant workers for its factories and mills, many Americans reacted negatively to the arrival of so many immigrants. Nativists opposed mass immigration for various reasons. Some felt that the new arrivals were unfit for American democracy, and that Irish or Italian immigrants used violence or bribery to corrupt municipal governments. Others (often earlier immigrants themselves) worried that the arrival of even more immigrants would result in fewer jobs and lower wages. Such fears combined and resulted in anti-Chinese protests on the West Coast in the 1870s. Still others worried that immigrants brought with them radical ideas such as socialism and communism. These fears multiplied after the Chicago Haymarket affair in 1886, in which immigrants were accused of killing police officers in a bomb blast.

In September 1876, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, a member of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities, gave an address in support of the introduction of regulatory federal immigration legislation at an interstate conference of charity officials in Saratoga, New York. Immigration might bring some benefits, but "it also introduces disease, ignorance, crime, pauperism and idleness." Sanborn thus advocated federal action to stop "indiscriminate and unregulated immigration."

Sanborn's address was aimed at restricting only the immigration of paupers from Europe to the East Coast, but the idea of immigration restrictions was common across the United States in the late nineteenth century, when many variously feared that the influx of foreigners would undermine the racial, economic, and moral integrity of American society. From the 1870s to the 1920s, the federal government passed a series of laws limiting or discontinuing the immigration of particular groups, and the United States remained committed to regulating the kind of immigrants who would join American society. To critics, regulations legitimized racism, class bias, and ethnic prejudice as formal national policy.

The first move for federal immigration control came from California, where racial hostility toward Chinese immigrants had mounted since the midnineteenth century. In addition to accusing Chinese immigrants of racial inferiority and unfitness for American citizenship, opponents claimed that they were also economically and morally corrupting American society with cheap labor and immoral practices, such as prostitution. Immigration restriction was necessary for the "Caucasian race of California," as one anti-Chinese politician declared, and for European Americans to "preserve and maintain their homes, their business, and their high social and moral position." In 1875, the anti-Chinese crusade in California moved Congress to pass the Page Act, which banned the entry of convicted criminals, Asian laborers brought involuntarily, and women imported "for the purposes of prostitution," a stricture designed chiefly to exclude Chinese women. Then, in May 1882, Congress suspended the immigration of all Chinese laborers with the Chinese Exclusion Act, making the Chinese the first immigrant group subject to admission restrictions on the basis of race. They became the first illegal immigrants.

On the other side of the country, Atlantic Seaboard states also facilitated the formation of federal immigration policy. Since the colonial period, East Coast states had regulated immigration through their own passenger laws, which prohibited the landing of destitute foreigners unless shipmasters prepaid certain amounts of money in the support of those passengers. State-level control of pauper immigration developed into federal policy in the early 1880s. In August 1882, Congress passed the Immigration Act, denying admission to people who were not able to support themselves and those, such as paupers, people with mental illnesses, or convicted criminals, who might otherwise threaten the security of the nation.

The category of excludable people expanded continuously after 1882. In 1885, in response to American workers' complaints about cheap immigrant labor, Congress added foreign workers migrating under labor contracts with American employers to the list of excludable people. Six years later, the federal government included people who seemed likely to become wards of the state, people with contagious diseases, and polygamists, and made all groups of excludable people deportable. In 1903, those who would pose ideological threats to American republican democracy, such as anarchists and socialists, also became the subject of new immigration restrictions.

Many immigration critics were responding to the shifting demographics of American immigration. The center of immigrant-sending regions shifted from northern and western Europe to southern and eastern Europe and Asia. These "new immigrants" were poorer, spoke languages other than English, and were likely Catholic or Jewish. White Protestant Americans typically regarded them as inferior, and American immigration policy began to reflect more explicit prejudice than ever before. One restrictionist declared that these immigrants were "races with which the English-speaking people have never hitherto assimilated, and who are most alien to the great body of the people of the United States." The increased immigration of people from southern and eastern Europe, such as Italians, Jews, Slavs, and Greeks, led directly to calls for tighter restrictive measures. In 1907, the immigration of Japanese laborers was practically suspended when the American and Japanese governments reached the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement, according to which Japan would stop issuing passports to working-class emigrants. In its forty-two-volume report of 1911, the U.S. Immigration Commission highlighted the impossibility of incorporating these new immigrants into American society. The report highlighted their supposed innate inferiority, asserting that they were the causes of rising social problems in America, such as poverty, crime, prostitution, and political radicalism.

The assault against immigrants' Catholicism provides an excellent example of the challenges immigrant groups faced in the United States. By 1900, Catholicism in the United States had grown dramatically in size and diversity, from 1 percent of the population a century earlier to the largest religious denomination in America (though still outnumbered by Protestants as a whole). As a result, Catholics in America faced two intertwined challenges: one external, related to Protestant anti-Catholicism, and the other internal, having to do with the challenges of assimilation.

Externally, the Church and its members remained an "outsider" religion in a nation that continued to see itself as culturally and religiously Protestant. Torrents of anti-Catholic literature and scandalous rumors maligned Catholics. Many Protestants doubted whether Catholics could ever make loyal Americans because they supposedly owed primary allegiance to the pope.

Internally, Catholics in America faced the question every immigrant group has had to answer: to what extent should they become more like native-born Americans? This question was particularly acute, as Catholics encompassed a variety of languages and customs. Beginning in the 1830s, Catholic immigration to the United States had exploded with the increasing arrival of Irish and German immigrants. Subsequent Catholic arrivals from Italy, Poland, and other Eastern European countries chafed at Irish dominance over the Church hierarchy. Mexican and Mexican American Catholics, whether recent immigrants or incorporated into the nation after the Mexican-American War, expressed similar frustrations. Could all these different Catholics remain part of the same Church?

Catholic clergy approached this situation from a variety of perspectives. Some bishops advocated rapid assimilation into the English-speaking mainstream. These "Americanists" advocated an end to "ethnic parishes"-the unofficial practice of permitting separate congregations for Poles, Italians, Germans, and so on-in the belief that such isolation only delayed immigrants' entry into the American mainstream. They anticipated that the Catholic Church could thrive in a nation that espoused religious freedom, if only they assimilated. Meanwhile, however, more conservative clergy cautioned against assimilation. While they conceded that the United States had no official religion, they felt that Protestant notions of the separation of church and state and of licentious individual liberty posed a threat to the Catholic faith. They further saw ethnic parishes as an effective strategy protecting immigrant communities and worried that Protestants would use public schools to attack the Catholic faith. Eventually, the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIII, weighed in on the controversy. In 1899, he sent a special letter (an encyclical) to an archbishop in the United States. Leo reminded the Americanists that the Catholic Church was a unified global body and that American liberties did not give Catholics the freedom to alter church teachings. The Americanists denied any such intention, but the conservative clergy claimed that the pope had sided with them. Tension between Catholicism and American life, however, would continue well into the twentieth century.

The American encounter with Catholicism-and Catholicism's encounter with America-testified to the tense relationship between native-born and foreign-born Americans, and to the larger ideas Americans used to situate themselves in a larger world, a world of empire and immigrants.

While American imperialism flared most brightly for a relatively brief time at the turn of the century, new imperial patterns repeated old practices and lived on into the twentieth century. But suddenly the United States had embraced its cultural, economic, and religious influence in the world, along with a newfound military power, to exercise varying degrees of control over nations and peoples. Whether as formal subjects or unwilling partners on the receiving end of Roosevelt's "big stick," those who experienced U.S. expansionist policies confronted new American ambitions. At home, debates over immigration and imperialism drew attention to the interplay of international and domestic policy and the ways in which imperial actions, practices, and ideas affected and were affected by domestic questions. How Americans thought about the conflict in the Philippines, for example, was affected by how they approached immigration in their own cities. And at the turn of the century, those thoughts were very much on the minds of Americans.
William McKinley on American Expanionism (1903) After the surrender of the Spanish in the Spanish-American War, the United States assumed control of the Philippines and struggled to contain an anti-American insurgency. Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden" (1899) As the United States waged war against Filipino insurgents, the British writer and poet Rudyard Kipling urged the Americans to take up "the white man's burden." James D. Phelan, "Why the Chinese Should Be Excluded" (1901) James D. Phelan, the mayor of San Francisco, penned the following article to drum up support for the extension of laws prohibiting Chinese immigration. William James on "The Philippine Question" (1903) Many Americans opposed imperialist actions. Here, the philosopher William James explains his opposition in the light of history. Mark Twain, "The War Prayer" (ca.1904-5) The American writer Mark Twain wrote the following satire in the glow of America's imperial interventions. School Begins (1899) In this 1899 cartoon published, Uncle Sam lectures his new students: The Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and, Cuba. Past and potentially future U.S. acquisitions fill the rest of the classroom. "Declined With Thanks" (1900) In this political cartoon, tailor President McKinley measures an obese Uncle Sam for larger clothing, while Anti-Expansionists like Joseph Pulitzer unsuccessfully offer Sam a weight-loss elixir. As the nation increased its imperialistic presence and mission, many like Pulitzer worried that America would grow too big for its own good.
This chapter was edited by Ellen Adams and Amy Kohout, with content contributions by Ellen Adams, Alvita Akiboh, Simon Balto, Jacob Betz, Tizoc Chavez, Morgan Deane, Dan Du, Hidetaka Hirota, Amy Kohout, Jose Juan Perez Melendez, Erik Moore, and Gregory Moore.

Recommended citation: Ellen Adams et al., "American Empire," Ellen Adams and Amy Kohout, eds., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Recommended Reading

Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Brooks, Charlotte. Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Gabaccia, Donna. Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Greene, Julie. The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. New York: Penguin, 2009.

Guglielmo, Thomas A. White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Harris, Susan K. God's Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Hirota, Hidetaka. Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Hoganson, Kristin. Consumers' Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Hoganson, Kristin L. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign People at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Kaplan, Amy. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Kramer, Paul A. The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Lafeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963.

Lears, T. J. Jackson. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Linn, Brian McAllister. The Philippine War, 1899-1902. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

Love, Eric T. L. Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Pascoe, Peggy. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Perez, Louis A., Jr. The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.

Renda, Mary. Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of US Imperialism, 1915-40. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Rosenberg, Emily S. Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982.

Silbey, David. A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.

Wexler, Laura. Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of US Imperialism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Norton, 2009 [1959].

Notes

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The word empire might conjure images of ancient Rome, the Persian Empire, or the British Empire-powers that depended variously on military conquest, colonization, occupation, or direct resource exploitation-but empires can take many forms and imperial processes can occur in many contexts.

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School Begins

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Lesson 3 New American Diplomacy

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Printable Version The debate over America's global role intensified when Cubans began to fight for their independence from Spain in 1895. Americans were sympathetic to Cuba's struggle for independence, but were divided about how to help. The Republican speaker of the House did not want "to spill American blood," unless American interests were directly threatened, whereas Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican assistant secretary of the Navy, pushed for war against Spain.

President William McKinley was deeply ambivalent about war against Spain. The last president to have served in the Civil War, McKinley said he had seen too much carnage at battles like Antietam to be enthusiastic about war with Spain. "I've been through one war. I have seen the dead piled up, and I do not want to see another."

Ultimately, however, the pressure of public opinion forced McKinley into the war that made the United States an international power. Newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer worked up war fever among the public with reports of Spanish atrocities against Cuban rebels. Then, Hearst's New York Journal published a leaked letter in which the chief Spanish diplomat in Washington, Enrique Duby de Lome, described President McKinley as "weak" and a "petty politician." Hearst publicized the DeLome letter under the screaming headline: "WORST INSULT TO THE UNITED STATES IN ITS HISTORY."

Days later an explosion sank the U.S.S. Maine in Cuban's Havana harbor. A naval court of inquiry blamed the explosion on a mine, further inflaming public sentiment against Spain.

Then a respected U.S. Senator, Redfield Proctor, after returning from a visit to Cuba, announced that he had reversed his position from isolationism to intervention "because of the spectacle of a million and a half people, the entire native population of Cuba, struggling for freedom and deliverance."

After ten days of debate, Congress declared war, but only after adopting the Teller Amendment. The amendment made it clear that the United States did not harbor imperialist ambitions, and it announced that the United States would not acquire Cuba. European leaders were shocked by this declaration. Britain's Queen Victoria called on the European power to "unite...against such unheard [of] conduct," since the United States might in the future declare Ireland and other colonies independent.

But after the United States defeated Spain, it set up a military government on Cuba and made the soldiers' withdrawal contingent on the Cubans accepting the Platt Amendment. The amendment gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba to protect "life, property, and individual liberties." The 144-day war also resulted in the United States taking control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

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Printable Version The debate over America's global role intensified when Cubans began to fight for their independence from Spain in 1895. Americans were sympathetic to Cuba's struggle for independence, but were divided about how to help.

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Encyclopedia Britannica

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Spanish-American War | Summary, History, Dates, Causes, Facts, Battles, & Results

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Spanish-American War (1898), conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America. The U.S. emerged from the war a world power, and Spain, ironically, experienced a cultu…

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From Don't Know Much About History

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Who Built the Panama Canal  from Don't Know Much About History

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Big Stick in the Caribbean Sea

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Using Primary Soures

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Printable Version The 20th century began with the United States engaged in a bloody, but largely forgotten, war in the Philippines that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The Philippine American War, fought from February 1899 to July 1902, claimed 250,000 lives and helped establish the United States as a power in the Pacific.

Today, few Americans are aware of the Philippine American War. The conflict was a sequel to the Spanish American War of 1898, which had been waged, in part, in support of Cubans fighting for independence from Spain. But it was also fueled by American desire to become a world power.

The Philippine American War prompted Mark Twain and other writers and artists to speak out against those who advocated American expansion. It fueled a bitter national debate over U.S. involvement overseas, a precursor to the outcry over the Vietnam War a half-century later. Some who opposed the occupation were motivated by racism, fearful that annexation of the Philippines would lead to an influx of non-white immigrants. One U.S. senator warned of the coming of "tens of millions of Malays and other unspeakable Asiatics." Many, who considered the occupation immoral and inconsistent with American traditions and values, joined the Anti-Imperialist League.

The conflict helped popularize the concept of the "white man's burden," the notion that the United States and Western European societies had a duty to civilize and uplift the "benighted" races of the world. A U.S. senator from Indiana declared: "We must never forget that in dealing with the Filipinos, we deal with children."

The Philippine American War also paved the way for migration from the Philippines. Shortly after the war, Filipino immigrants began arriving in the United States as students, U.S. military personnel, or farm and cannery workers. Today, there are more than two million Filipinos and Filipino Americans in the United States, making them one of the nation's largest Asian communities.

On May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey had entered Manila Bay and destroyed the decrepit Spanish fleet. In December, Spain ceded the Philippines to the Untied States for $20 million. Mark Twain called the $20 million payment an "entrance fee into society--the Society of Scepter Thieves." "We do not intend to free but to subjugate the people of the Philippines," he wrote. "We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them, destroyed their fields, burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out of doors."

On June 12, 1898, a young Filipino, General Emilio Aguinaldo, had proclaimed Philippine independence and established Asia's first republic. He had hoped that the Philippines would become a U.S. protectorate. But pressure on President William McKinley to annex the Philippines was intense. After originally declaring that it would "be criminal aggression" for the United States to annex the archipelago, he reversed his stance, partly out of fear that another power would seize the Philippines. Six weeks after Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay, a German fleet sought to set up a naval base there. The British, French, and Japanese also sought bases in the Philippines. Unaware that the Philippines were the only predominantly Catholic nation in Asia, President McKinley said that American occupation was necessary to "uplift and Christianize" the Filipinos.

On February 4, 1899, fighting erupted between American and Filipino soldiers, leaving 59 Americans and approximately 3,000 Filipinos dead. With the vice president casting a tie-breaking vote, a congressional resolution declaring the Philippines independent was defeated. American commanders hoped for a short conflict, but in the end, more than 70,000 would fight in the archipelago. Unable to defeat the United States in conventional warfare, the Filipinos adopted guerrilla tactics. To suppress the insurgency, villages were forcibly relocated or burned. Non-combatant civilians were imprisoned or killed. Vicious torture techniques were used on suspected insurrects, such as the water cure, in which a suspect was made to lie face up while water was poured onto his face. One general declared:

It may be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords.

The most notorious incident of the war took place on Samar Island. In retaliation for a Filipino raid on an American garrison, in which American troops had been massacred, General Jacob W. Smith told his men to turn the island into a "howling wilderness" so that "even birds could not live there." He directed a marine major to kill "all persons...capable of bearing arms." He meant everyone over the age of 10. Smith was court-martialed and "admonished" for violating military discipline.

Aguinaldo was captured by a raid on the Filipino leader's hideout in March 1901. The war was officially declared over in July 1902, but fighting continued for several years. The Philippine war convinced the United States not to seize further overseas territory.

More than 4,000 American soldiers and about 20,000 Filipino fighters died. An estimated 200,000 Filipino civilians died during the war, mainly of disease or hunger. Reports of American atrocities led the United States to turn internal control over to the Philippines to Filipinos in 1907 and pledged to grant the archipelago independence in 1916.

U.S. leaders tried to transform the country into a showcase of American-style democracy in Asia. But there was a strong undercurrent of condescension. U.S. President William Howard Taft, who had served as governor-general of the Philippines, called the Filipinos "our little brown brothers." The Philippines were granted independence in 1946.

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Printable Version The 20th century began with the United States engaged in a bloody, but largely forgotten, war in the Philippines that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. The Philippine American War, fought from February 1899 to July 1902, claimed 250,000 lives and helped establish the United States as a power in the Pacific.

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Remember the Maine

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On February 15, 1898, a mysterious explosion destroyed the American battleship in Havana Harbor and helped propel the United States into a war with Spain. The USS Maine was in Cuba, officially, on a mission of friendly courtesy and, incidentally, to protect American lives and property in the event that Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain might escalate into full-blown warfare. "Yet," writes author Tom Miller, "the visit was neither spontaneous nor altruistic; the United States had been eyeing Cuba for almost a century."

On board the Maine that sultry Tuesday night were 350 crew and officers. Shortly after 9 p.m. the ship's bugler, C. H. Newton, blew taps. The ship bobbed listlessly, its imposing 100-yard length visible from stem to stern. "At 9:40 p.m.," writes Miller, "the ship's forward end abruptly lifted itself from the water. Along the pier, passersby could hear a rumbling explosion. Within seconds, another eruption--this one deafening and massive--splintered the bow, sending anything that wasn't battened down, and most that was, flying more than 200 feet into the air.... In all, 266 of the 350 men aboard the Maine were killed."

The American press was quick to point to an external explosion--a mine or torpedo--as the cause of the tragedy. An official U.S. investigation agreed. On April 25, 1898, Congress formally declared war on Spain. By summer's end, Spain had ceded Cuba, along with the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, to the United States.

In 1976, Adm. Hyman Rickover of the U.S. Navy mounted yet another investigation into the cause of the Maine disaster. His team of experts found that the ship's demise was self- inflicted--likely the result of a coal bunker fire. There are those, however, who still maintain that an external blast was to blame. Some people, it seems, just won't let you forget the Maine.

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On February 15, 1898, a mysterious explosion destroyed the American battleship in Havana Harbor and helped propel the United States into a war with Spain. The USS Maine was in Cuba, officially, on a mission of friendly courtesy and, incidentally, to protect American lives and property in the event that Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain might escalate into full-blown warfare.

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Peace

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Printable Version At noon on December 31, 1999, the United States voluntarily gave up the Panama Canal, ending 85 years of control. Prior to the development of the atomic bomb and the landing of astronauts on the moon, the Panama Canal was perhaps this country's signal engineering achievement. Fifty-one miles long, with about $3.5 billion in bases and infrastructure, the canal links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

At the end of the 20th century, the canal was no longer essential to U.S. strategic or economic interests. Aircraft carriers and oil tankers were too large to pass through the canal's locks. Earlier in the century, however, the canal was regarded as a vital national interest. During World War II, the United States stationed 65,000 troops in Panama to protect the canal. A number of U.S. interventions in the Caribbean and Central America were undertaken largely to protect the canal from hostile powers.

The canal's construction was a phenomenal undertaking. In 1850, U.S. interests in Panama built a railroad across the Isthmus to transport '49ers to California. In 1879, the French, fresh from their success in building the Suez Canal, started building the canal. Over the next 20 years, between 16,000 and 22,000 workers died from malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, snake bites, and accidents. Torrential rains averaging 200 inches a year washed away much of the work.

America's 1898 war with Spain made a canal seem essential. During the Spanish American War, the only way for U.S. battleships to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean was to make an 8,000 mile journey around Cape Horn at the tip of South America.

The canal was completed in the face of seemingly insurmountable political, medical, and technological obstacles. The Isthmus of Panama was located in Colombia, which had rejected a U.S. proposal to build a canal. "You could no more make an agreement with them than you could nail currant jelly to a wall," President Theodore Roosevelt said in response to the rejection.

A French adventurer, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, and an American lawyer, Nelson Cromwell, conceived of the idea of creating the Republic of Panama. They persuaded Roosevelt to support a Panama. Bunau-Varilla engineered a revolution and U.S. warships prevented Colombia from stopping Panama's attempt to break away (In 1921, the U.S. paid an indemnity to Colombia in recognition of the U.S. role in the Panamanian revolution). Bunau-Varilla repaid the United States for its assistance by signing a treaty on behalf of the Panamanians, which gave the United States a zone stretching five miles from each bank of the canal in perpetuity. Within the zone, U.S. laws, police, and courts ruled.

Years later, President Roosevelt said that the people of Panama rebelled against Colombia "literally as one man." A senator quipped, "Yes, and the one man was Roosevelt." In 1911, Roosevelt said bluntly, "I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal but to debate me." In 1906, eager to see the greatest accomplishment of his presidency, he became the first president to travel overseas. He went to Panama at the height of the rainy season and took the controls of a 95-ton steam shovel.

During the construction of the canal, William Gorgas, an army physician, tried to reduce the number of deaths caused by disease. He oversaw the massive draining of swamps in order to eliminate mosquitoes that carried yellow fever and malaria.

The French had attempted to build a canal at sea level, but grossly underestimated the difficulty of achieving this goal. To allow ships to travel between the oceans, American engineers designed a system of locks capable of raising and lowering ships 64 feet by using the force of gravity and 40-horsepower motors to move the gates. One set of locks used enough concrete to build a wall 8-feet thick and 12-feet high, stretching between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

At its peak in 1913, the workforce consisted of 44,000 persons. West Indian workers were the canal's unsung heroes. Each day, 200 trainloads of dirt had to be hauled away. More than 25,000 worked as canal diggers--three times the number of Americans who worked on the canal. Between 1904 and 1915, some 5,600 lives were lost to disease and accidents. Most of those who died were from Barbados. The quinine used to treat malaria left many workers deaf. In December 1908, a massive 22 tons of dynamite exploded prematurely, killing 23 workers.

Built at a cost of $387 million over a period of 10 years, the Panama Canal was a declaration of America's coming of age in the world.

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Printable Version At noon on December 31, 1999, the United States voluntarily gave up the Panama Canal, ending 85 years of control. Prior to the development of the atomic bomb and the landing of astronauts on the moon, the Panama Canal was perhaps this country's signal engineering achievement.

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The USS Maine Explosion: A Turning Point in a Decision to Declare War

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The USS Maine was the pride of the American people. It signified the power that America needed to protect the nation that had been weakened from the internal conflicts of the Civil War. The...

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The New Diplomacy

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Policing the Caribbean and Central America

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Policing the Caribbean and Central America

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Printable Version In 1904, Germany demanded a port in Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) as compensation for an unpaid loan. Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president after William McKinley's assassination, told Germany to stay out of the Western Hemisphere and said that the United States would take care of the problem. He announced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine:

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the western hemisphere, the adherence of the U.S. to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of international police power.

Several recent developments led Roosevelt to declare that the United States would be the policeman of the Caribbean and Central America. Three European nations had blockaded Venezuela's ports, violating the Monroe Doctrine's unilateral declaration that Europe should not interfere in the Americas. Meanwhile, an international court in The Hague in the Netherlands had ruled that a creditor nation that had used force would receive preference in repayment of a loan. Further, Roosevelt had recently gained the right to build the Panama Canal; he believed that any threat to the canal threatened U.S. strategic and economic interests.

To enforce order, forestall foreign intervention, and protect U.S. economic interests, the United States intervened in the Caribbean and Central America some 20 times over the next quarter century--namely, in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama. Each intervention followed a common pattern: after intervening to restore order, U.S. forces became embroiled in the countries' internal political disputes. Before exiting, the United States would train and fund a police force and military to maintain order and would sponsor an election intended to put into power a strong leader supportive of American interests. Unfortunately, the men who took power in many of these countries, such as Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and Francois Duvalier in Haiti, established despotic rule.

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Printable Version In 1904, Germany demanded a port in Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) as compensation for an unpaid loan. Theodore Roosevelt, who had become president after William McKinley's assassination, told Germany to stay out of the Western Hemisphere and said that the United States would take care of the problem.

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RPI History

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Political Strategy In 1900 the United States was planning for a Nicaraguan canal. Meanwhile, the French were desperate to sell their Panama Canal Zone rights to the U.S. for $109,000,000. The U.S deemed the price too high and continued with their decision for a Nicaraguan canal. Supposedly, just prior to the U.S. House ruling in favor of a Nicaraguan Canal, French lobbyist named Phillipe Bunua-Varilla mailed a Nicaraguan stamp depicting the eruption of Momotombo volcano spewing lava and smoke to each undecided U.S. senator. The House ruled in favor of Panama. The French offered the zone, and all rights and equipment for $40,000,000. The U.S. accepted the offer.

Colombia immediately created obstacles for the U.S. therefore the first order of business was to back Panama in becoming its own nation. President Theodore Roosevelt seized the opportunity to support a Panamanian revolt. Colombia, discouraged by the arrival of the U.S. warship Nashville, withdrew forces and within 24 hours Panama declared independence without any bloodshed. On November 3, 1903 the U.S. recognized the new nation and three days later Panama's ambassador granted full control of the Canal Zone to the U.S.

"Make the Dirt Fly" Between 1904 and 1914 construction of the Panama Canal fell under three different chief engineers: John F. Wallace, John F. Stevens and Colonel George Washington Goethals. Wallace lasted one year until the stress and toil nearly ruined him. John Stevens, engineer of the Great Northern Railroad, was then hired by President Roosevelt. Stevens exhibited a no nonsense attitude and a realistic vision. Defying Roosevelt's demands to "make the dirt fly" Stevens ordered all work to cease as soon as he arrived in Panama. He insisted the Panama Railroad be rebuilt and utilized for the canal project and that a lock canal, not a sea-level waterway (which Roosevelt still thought possible), be constructed. Perhaps Stevens's most important contribution was the support of Colonel William C. Gorgas, who abated yellow fever and malaria.

After two years Stephens resigned. Roosevelt, tired of delays, took a different hiring approach and appointed someone who couldn't resign. He chose Colonel G.W. Goethals, an Army engineer who served until the canal's completion in 1914. Under Goethals the greatest feats of engineering began: damming the violent Chagres River, building a dam at Gatun Lake, and designing the locks.

Rensselaer Engineers Between 1904 and 1914 seven Rensselaer engineers were involved in planning and construction of the canal. Walter Dauchy (Class of 1875) was appointed division engineer on the Culebra section in 1904. Ricardo Arango (Class of 1887), a Panamanian, was an engineer under both the Columbia and Panama governments. In 1904 he was division engineer in Ancon, Panama. Arango remained in Panama and became the chief engineer of the Republic of Panama. William Baucus (Class of 1887) was a civil engineer with the Municipal Engineering Department in Panama from 1904 to 1907, and was appointed consulting engineer for water works and sewerage systems by the Canal Commission. Baucus also contributed his expertise in the construction of the pipelines for the Pedro Miguel locks.

There were three Canal Commissions over the course of U.S. construction and a Rensselaer engineer was on each. William H. Burr (Class of 1872) served on the First Canal Commission appointed by President Roosevelt in 1904. In 1905 Burr was appointed to the International Board of Consulting Engineers to choose what kind of canal would be constructed. In 1905, Rear Admiral Mordecai T. Endicott (Class of 1868) was appointed to the Second Commission. After Endicott resigned, Rear Admiral H.H. Rousseau (Class of 1891) was appointed by Roosevelt to serve on the Third Canal Commission. Under G.W. Goethals, chief engineer of the Panama Canal, Rousseau was appointed as his assistant, a position he held until 1914. Rousseau designed the dry docks, wharves, piers, ship repair shops, coaling plants, fuel plants, breakwaters, and floating cranes.

Gatun Lake, the Chagres River, and Culebra Cut A giant dam was created at Gatun Lake to prevent the violent Chagres river from flowing into the sea. At the time the dam was created, it was the largest man-made lake in the world covering 164 square miles of what was once jungle. Between Bas Obispo (the spot where the Chagres flowed down from its source) and Pedro Miguel was the nine-mile stretch of continental divide known as Culebra where the canal had to be "cut" out of the mountains.

Equipment The steam shovels and dredgers employed by the Americans for canal work were famous in their own right. A ninety-five ton Bucyrus steam shovel excavated 4,823 cubic yards of earth and rock in five hours and twenty minutes. Disposing of the earth dredged by the Bucyrus steam shovel was the other battle. For this, the Lidgerwood System was adopted and consisted of trains of flat cars, a plow to sweep the load from the cars, and steel cables reaching the length of the train. Via this system a mass of earth 100 feet wide, 100 feet deep and 50 miles long was removed.

Locks The most remarkable feature of the canal are the six locks. Each has a steel gate with concrete chambers measuring 110' wide by 1,000' long. The lock gates themselves measure 7' thick, 65' long and 47' to 82' high, weighing 300 to 600 tons each.

An Engineering Marvel The Panama Canal is 50 miles long. In passing through the canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a vessel enters a sea-level channel in Limon Bay (Colon), travels seven miles to Gatun where it enters a series of three locks. The vessel is lifted 85' above sea level to Gatun Lake where it can travel at full ocean speed for 24 miles. At Bas Obispo it will enter Culebra Cut and travel a distance of 9 miles to reach Pedro Miguel Lock and be lowered 30' to a small lake, where it sails for about a mile to Miraflores. At Miraflores it enters a series of two locks and is lowered to sea level, passing out to the Pacific 8 ½ miles away. No vessel can enter or pass through the canal under its own power.

It takes approximately nine hours for a ship to pass through the canal. The largest ships that can pass through are called "Panamax." Many modern ships surpass the parameters of Panamax, therefore the canal is currently undergoing the construction of two new sets of locks - one on the Pacific and one on the Atlantic side of the canal. Furthermore, the project includes deepening existing navigational channels in Gatun Lake and Culebra.

In spite of the new construction on the Panama Canal, history comes full circle this year with plans for a Nicaraguan Canal to stretch 173 miles from Punta Gorda on the Caribbean through Lake Nicaragua to the mouth of the River Brito on the Pacific. Engineers for the Hong Kong-based HKND Group said the canal would be between 230m and 520m wide and 27.6m deep. The idea of a Nicaraguan canal is nothing new but unlike the canal A.G. Menocal mapped in the 1870s at a potential cost of $52,000,000, this canal could easily cost about $40 billion! See http://www.wired.com/2014/02/nicaragua-canal/

Before the Panama Canal was built ships traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific traveled around the southern tip of South America. The journey was 13,000 miles around Cape Horn from New York to California. The Panama Canal reduces the journey to 5,200 miles. Today, the canal accommodates 14,000 ships a year on average, carrying over 200 million tons of cargo, representing five percent of the world's shipping. The Rensselaer engineers who helped connect the oceans, helped changed the world forever. Today even more Rensselaer engineers continue this legacy with new lock construction in Panama.

This concludes our Panama Canal Centennial Celebration post blitz. Please check out the exhibit in Folsom Library on the 2nd floor.

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Panama Canal Centennial: American Success

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Political Strategy In 1900 the United States was planning for a Nicaraguan canal. Meanwhile, the French were desperate to sell their Panama Canal Zone rights to the U.S. for $109,000,000. The U.S deemed the price too high and continued with their decision for a Nicaraguan canal. Supposedly, just prior to the U.S.

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Reading and Questions

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Hip Hughes History Video

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The Spanish American War for Dummies- US History Review

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"It's Up to Them" -Joseph Keppler, 1902 by Darlene

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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The Man Who Can Make Dirt Fly

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Printable Version In July 1915, a mob murdered Haiti's seventh president in seven years. Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was dragged out of the French legation and hacked to death. The mob then paraded his mutilated body through the streets of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. During the preceding 72 years, Haiti had experience 102 revolts, wars, or coups; only one of the country's 22 presidents had served a complete term, and merely four died of natural causes.

With the European powers engaged in World War I, President Woodrow Wilson feared that Germany might occupy Haiti and threaten the sea route to the Panama Canal. To protect U.S. interests and to restore order, the president sent 330 marines and sailors to Haiti.

This was not the first time that Wilson had sent marines into Latin America. Determined to "teach Latin Americans to elect good men," he had sent American naval forces into Mexico in 1913 during the Mexican Revolution. American Marines seized the city of Veracruz and imposed martial law.

The last marines did not leave Haiti until 1934. To ensure repayment of Haiti's debts, the United States took over the collection of customs duties. Americans also arbitrated disputes, distributed food and medicine, censored the press, and ran military courts. In addition, the United States helped build about a thousand miles of unpaved roads and a number of agricultural and vocational schools, and trained the Haitian army and police. It also helped to replace a government led by blacks with a government headed by mulattoes. The U.S. forced the Haitians to adopt a new constitution which gave American businessmen the right to own land in Haiti. While campaigning for vice president in 1920, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had served as assistant secretary of the Navy in the Wilson Administration, later boasted, "I wrote Haiti's Constitution myself, and if I do say it, it was a pretty good little Constitution."

Many Haitians resisted the American occupation. In the fall of 1918, Charlemagne Peralte, a former Haitian army officer, launched a guerrilla war against the U.S. Marines to protest a system of forced labor imposed by the United States to build roads in Haiti. In 1919, he was captured and killed by U.S. Marines, and his body was photographed against a door with a crucifix and a Haitian flag as a lesson to others. During the first five years of the occupation, American forces killed about 2,250 Haitians. In December 1929, U.S. Marines fired on a crowd of protesters armed with rocks and machetes, killing 12 and wounding 23. The incident stirred international condemnation and ultimately led to the end of the American occupation.

By that time, Roosevelt had changed his mind. In 1928, he had criticized the Republican administrations for relying on the Marines and "gunboat diplomacy." "Single-handed intervention by us in the internal affairs of other nations in this hemisphere must end," he wrote. After he became president in 1933, Roosevelt proclaimed a new policy toward Latin America. Under the Good Neighbor policy, he removed American Marines from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.

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Printable Version In July 1915, a mob murdered Haiti's seventh president in seven years. Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was dragged out of the French legation and hacked to death. The mob then paraded his mutilated body through the streets of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.

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the Great Depression. It did however, feature 15,000 business failures and 17% unemployment, so take that 2008! According to American diplomatic historian, George Herring, imperialism was "just what the doctor ordered" to help America get out of its depression depression.

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Showing the Light to the Filipinos

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Objective 3.4- The Expanding American Empire

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Declined with

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American Imperialism Explained- U.S. History

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A Thing Well Begun is Half Done

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Objective 3.5- Progressive Foreign Policy

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Panama Canal

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Chronicles one of the most incredible engineering feats of all time: construction of the 51-mile canal that took 10 years to build and employed over 40,000 workers, 6,000 of whom died of yellow fever, malaria, and other horrors. An earlier, 9-year attempt by the French ended in failure and cost 20,000 lives.

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A People's History of American Imperialsim

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A People's History of American Imperialsim

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A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

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American Imperialism: Crash Course US History #28

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Imperialism

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American Imperialism: Crash Course US History #28