American Imperialism: A Comprehensive Overview

Introduction

Empires can manifest in various forms beyond military conquest, colonization, occupation, or resource exploitation.
The question of American imperialism explores direct interventions (e.g., Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico) and the broader history of American engagement influencing other nations' choices.

American Identity Questions

As the U.S. expanded abroad, it encountered growing numbers of foreign peoples at home through immigration.
Imperialism and immigration raised questions about American identity: Who is an "American"? What are the nation's obligations to foreign powers and peoples? How accessible should American identity be to newcomers?

Patterns of American Interventions

American interventions in Mexico, China, and the Middle East showed a new eagerness to intervene in foreign governments to protect American economic interests abroad.
American ships had been traveling to China since 1784.
Asian trade remained small as a percentage of total American foreign trade. The idea that Asian markets were vital to American commerce affected American policy and prompted interventions when those markets were threatened.
Open Door Policy (1899): Secretary of State John Hay called for equal access to Chinese markets for all Western powers, fearing the carving of China into spheres of influence.
In 1900, American troops joined a multinational force to suppress the Boxer Rebellion, which opposed foreign businesses and missionaries in China.
President McKinley sent the U.S. Army without consulting Congress, establishing a precedent for presidential military action abroad.

American Travelers in the Pacific

Christian missionaries followed explorers and traders.
The first American missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820 and China in 1830.

Territorial Acquisition

The United States was willing to take territory.
Guano Islands Act of 1856: Authorized Americans to claim islands with guano deposits (popular fertilizer), establishing the first insular, unincorporated territories of the United States.
- These territories were neither part of a state nor a federal district, and they were not on the path to ever attain such a status.

American Interests in Latin America

The United States had a new aggressive and interventionist attitude toward its southern neighbors.
American capitalists invested heavily in Mexico during Porfirio Diaz's regime. The Mexican Revolution in 1910 challenged American business interests.
American businessmen requested intervention.
The U.S. government tried to control events and politics that could not be controlled.

Intervention in Mexico

Victoriano Huerta's Coup (1913): President Woodrow Wilson pressured Mexico after Huerta executed President Francisco Madero, refusing to recognize the new government and demanding free elections.
Tampico Incident (1914): The arrest of American sailors led to the U.S. invasion of Veracruz to prevent a German arms shipment from reaching Huerta's forces.
Pancho Villa's Raid (1916): After Wilson supported Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa attacked American interests, leading to a punitive expedition led by General John J. Pershing.

US-Mexican Relations

In 1917, with war in Europe looming and great injury done to U.S.-Mexican relations, Pershing left Mexico.
American 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.

Middle East Engagement

Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad highlights the American sense of superiority during travels in the Middle East.
Prior to World War I, American involvement in the Middle East primarily consisted of education, science, and humanitarian aid led by missionaries.
American missionaries led the way.
The first Protestant missionaries had arrived in 1819.
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 established hospitals, schools, and Western-style universities, such as Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey (1863), the American University of Beirut (1866), and the American University of Cairo (1919).

Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (1898-1902)

The Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars marked a turning point in American interventions abroad, expanding the scope and strength of its global reach.
The United States would become increasingly involved in international politics, particularly in Latin America.
Expansion led to Americans confronting the ideological elements of imperialism.
Should the United States act as an empire?

Cuban Independence

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.
Newspapers sensationalized Spanish atrocities.
Cubans and their allies in the United States raised cries of Cuba Libre!
President McKinley ordered the battleship Maine to Havana harbor in January 1898, expressing concern for American lives and property in Cuba.
The sinking of the Maine led to calls for war, fueled by "yellow journals." Congress declared war on April 25.
Military victories for the United States came quickly.
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.
American troops took Cuba’s San Juan Heights.
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.
Treaty of Paris: The United States acquired Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
John Hay called it a “splendid little war.”

Imperialism Debate

Senator Albert J. Beveridge advocated for American imperialism, seeing it as a mission and duty.
After the Spanish-American War, the question of whether the United States should become an empire was sharply debated.
At the behest of American businessmen who had overthrown the Hawaiian monarchy, the United States annexed the Hawaiian Islands and their rich plantations.
Arguments for expansion included economic and political advantages. Opponents worried about conflicting with founding ideals.
American actions in the Philippines led to discussions about the role of America as an occupying force.
Conversations about how to proceed occupied the attentions of President McKinley, political leaders from both parties, and the popular press.
Mr. Dooley's Perspective: Expressed the bewilderment of ordinary Americans regarding the Philippines.
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.
Filipinos, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, fought for freedom against the United States.

Philippine-American War

The Philippine Insurrection 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 so-called Indian Wars of the late nineteenth century.
Reports of cruelty on both sides and a few high-profile military investigations ensured continued public attention to events across the Pacific.
The federal government sent two Philippine Commissions to assess the situation.
A civilian administration was established with military support, with William H. Taft as the first governor-general (1901–1903).
President Theodore Roosevelt declared the war to be over in 1902, resistance and occasional fighting continued into the second decade of the twentieth century.

American Identity

Debates about American imperialism tapped into core ideas about American identity.
The Filipino conflict was framed as a Protestant, civilizing mission or an extension of westward expansion.
Some saw imperialism as a way to reenergize the nation. Others saw the opportunities the Philippine Islands presented for access to Asian markets.
The American Anti-Imperialist League, including Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and Jane Addams, protested American imperial actions.

Theodore Roosevelt and American Imperialism

Under President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States aimed for global power through military might, territorial expansion, and economic influence.
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.
He oversaw naval construction, new technology implementation, and the establishment of new shipyards to project American power.
Roosevelt advocated for the annexation of Hawaii.
- 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,
- it would act as a fueling station on the way to pivotal markets in Asia.
Roosevelt acted to expand the military, bolstering naval power to protect American interests abroad, including 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.
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.

Latin America Interventions

The United States actively intervened in Latin America. Roosevelt exerted U.S. control over Cuba and Puerto Rico, and deployed naval forces to ensure Panama’s independence from Colombia in 1903 in order to acquire a U.S. Canal Zone.
Roosevelt Corollary (1904): Proclaimed U.S. police power in the Caribbean, expanding the Monroe Doctrine to justify intervention in Latin American nations 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.
Gunboat diplomacy involved using naval forces to protect American interests and dictate policies.
In 1905 Roosevelt sent the Marines to occupy the Dominican Republic and established financial supervision over the Dominican government.
Imperialists framed such actions as humanitarian, celebrating Anglo-Saxon societies as advanced practitioners of nation-building and civilization.
Advocated 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.

Dollar Diplomacy

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.
Rising debts to European and American bankers allowed for the inroads of modern life but destabilized much of 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.
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.

Women and Imperialism

U.S. imperialism focused on humanitarianism, morality, religion, and ideas of “civilization,” including significant participation by American women.
Women could serve as missionaries, teachers, and medical professionals, and as artists and writers they were inspired by and helped transmit ideas about imperialism.
The rhetoric of civilization that underlay imperialism was itself a highly gendered concept.
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.
By adopting the use of such progressive products in their homes, consumers could potentially absorb even the virtues of American civilization.
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.
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.

Immigration

For Americans at the turn of the century, imperialism and immigration were two sides of the same coin.
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.
Nativists opposed mass immigration for various reasons

Immigration Restriction

From the 1870s to the 1920s, the federal government passed a series of laws limiting or discontinuing the immigration of particular groups.
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.
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.
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.
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.

Catholicism

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.
The 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.
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.

Conclusion

American imperialism at the turn of the century saw the US embrace cultural, economic, religious influence, and military power to control nations and peoples.
Debates over immigration and imperialism drew attention to the interplay of international and domestic policy.