American imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th century was driven by four main factors: 1) Business interests seeking new markets and raw materials as industrial capacity grew. 2) A belief in social Darwinism and the white man's burden to civilize other races. 3) The closing of the American frontier increasing the focus outward. 4) Growing military and strategic interests to secure new naval bases and protect business investments abroad. This led the U.S. to aggressively expand its influence and territory through wars in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines as well as political and economic dominance in Latin America and Asia through the early 1900s.

1. American
Imperialism

3. Causes of
American
Imperialism

4. • Europeans had empires
• Extension of Manifest Destiny
1. Global Competition

5. World Colonial Empires, 1900

6. • Need raw materials
• Scientific farming  excess
production  low prices
• Exports = solution to Panic of 1893?
2. Business Interests

7. American Foreign Trade:
1870-1914
2. Business Interests

8. U. S. Foreign Investments: 1869-1908
2. Business Interests

9. • Alfred Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power
on History: 1660-1783
• Overseas markets essential for industrial
surpluses
• Large, strong navy needed
• 1889: Navy Sec. Benjamin Tracy  naval
construction
• U.S. gained offensive capability at sea
3. Military/Strategic Interests

10. 3. Military/Strategic Interests

11. 4. Social Darwinian Thinking
• Josiah Strong, Our Country (1885)
• “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling
(1899)

12. Rudyard Kipling,
“The White Man’s Burden” (1899)

13. Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

14. Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

15. Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

16. Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
…

17. Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

18. Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

21. American Missionaries
in China, 1905

22. 5. Closing of the American Frontier
Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the
Frontier in American History"

24. “Seward’s Folly”: 1867
$7.2 million =
$.02/acre

25. “Seward’s Icebox”: 1867

27. Hawaiian Islands

28. U. S. Missionaries in Hawaii
Imiola Church – first built in the late 1820s

29. U. S. View of Hawaiians
1849: Hawaii becomes a U. S. Protectorate

30. Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani
Hawaii for the
Hawaiians!

31. 1875: no tariff on
Hawaiian sugar
1893: American settlers
overthrew Liliuokalani
1894: Sanford Ballard
Dole proclaims Rep. of
Hawaii
1898: US annexation

32. Hawaiian
Annexation
Ceremony, 1898

34. Commodore Matthew Perry
Opens Up Japan: 1853
The JapaneseView
of Commodore
Perry

35. Treaty of Kanagawa: 1854

36. Lodge Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine: 1912
Sen. Henry Cabot
Lodge (R-MA)
Non-European
powers (ie - Japan)
excluded from
owning territory in
W. Hemisphere

38. Cuban Revolution
1895: Jose Marti leads
revolution against Spain
• Some oppose: American
businessmen fear
disruption of sugar
income
• Some support: followed
the ideals of American
revolution

39. Spanish Misrule in Cuba

40. Valeriano Weyler’s
“Reconcentration” Policy

41. Yellow Journalism/
“Jingoism”
“You furnish the pictures,
I’ll provide the war!”
-Hearst
Hearst vs. Pulitzer
 sensationalism

43. Feb. 1898: U.S.S. Maine explodes, kills
250+ sailors, press blames Spain

44. Remember the Maine
and to Hell with Spain!
Funeral for Maine
victims in Havana

45. The Spanish-American War:
“That Splendid Little War”
How prepared was the US for war?

46. Theodore Roosevelt
Ass’t Sec of Navy
Imperialist and
American nationalist.
McKinley has “the
backbone of a
chocolate éclair!”
Resigns to fight in
Cuba.

47. The
“Rough
Riders”

48. War in the Philippines

49. Dewey Captures Manila!

50. War in Cuba
US fleet blockades
Havana
Naval battle destroys
Spanish fleet near
Santiago
Kettle Hill (San Juan) =
Rough Rider victory to
take Santiago

51. The Treaty of Paris: 1898
Cuba freed from Spanish rule
US gains Puerto Rico, Guam, and the
Philippines; becomes an empire!

52. The Philippines:
Is He To Be a Despot?

53. Emilio Aguinaldo
Leader of
Filipino Uprising

54. Philippine Insurrection, 1899-1913
"KILL EVERY ONE OVER TEN.”
- General Jacob H. Smith

55. Did the US conduct genocide?
Scorched earth policy
Concentration camps
Water-board torture of prisoners
200,000-1,500,000 Filipino civilian dead
Philippine Insurrection, 1899-1913

56. “The town … surrendered to us a few
days ago … Last night one of our boys
was found shot and his stomach cut
open. Immediately orders were
received from General Wheaton to
burn the town and kill every native
in sight; which was done to a finish.
About 1,000 men, women and children
were reported killed. I am probably
growing hard-hearted, for I am in my
glory when I can sight my gun on
some dark skin and pull the trigger.”
- NY soldier

57. William H. Taft, 1st
Gov.-General of the Philippines
Great administrator.

58. Our “Sphere of Influence”

59. American Anti-Imperialist
League, 1899
Mark Twain,
Andrew Carnegie,
William James, and
William J. Bryan, et al.
Against annexation of
the Philippines and
other imperialist acts

60. Platt Amendment (1903)
1. Cuba not to enter foreign
treaties
2. U.S. to intervene in Cuba
as necessary
3. Guantanamo Bay =
U.S. naval base.
Cuban Independence?
Senator
Orville Platt

61. American Empire, 1900

62. Panama Canal
TR in Panama
(Construction begins
in 1904)

63. The Roosevelt Corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine, 1905
… [A]dherence of the
United States to the
Monroe Doctrine may
force the United States,
however reluctantly, in
flagrant cases of
[chronic] wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise
of an international
police power .

64. Speak Softly,
But Carry a Big Stick!

66. The Open Door Policy
Equal access to China.
Guaranteed that China would NOT be taken
over by any one foreign power.

67. The
Open Door
Policy

68. America as a Pacific Power

69. Constable of the World

70. Treaty of Portsmouth: 1905
Nobel Peace Prize for Teddy

71. The Great White Fleet: 1907

72. Taft’s “Dollar
Diplomacy”
Improve financial
opportunities for
American businesses.
Use private capital to
further U. S. interests
overseas.

73. U. S. Global Investments and
Latin America Investments, 1914

74. Wilson’s “Moral Diplomacy”
US = conscience
of the world
Spread democracy.
Promote peace
Condemn
colonialism

75. U. S. Interventions in
Latin America: 1898-1920s

76. Columbus, NM 1916
“Pancho” Villa

77. Mexico, 1916
John “Black Jack”
Pershing

78. Uncle Sam: One of the “Boys?”