SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR 4 8 5 Reversal of Fortune This reversal of the two nations’ positions initially led to a diminishment of the importance of Spanish-American relations. Early in the new century, Americans were fo- cused on events in Asia and the Western Hemisphere, precisely the areas from which Spain had been expelled. When World War I broke out in 1914, both nations de- clared their neutrality. While Spain’s caution led it to maintain that stance throughout the war, in 1917 the ex- panding interests of the United States drew it into the conflictandtentatively intoEuropeanpowerpolitics,thus setting the scene for the next stage in Spanish-American relations. Just as theAmericanRevolutionposedadilemmafor the Spanish, so too did the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 for the Americans. The rebellion of Fran- cisco Franco and his generals against the Spanish repub- lican government was amicrocosmof the ideological fer- mentof interwarEurope.Francoreceivedassistancefrom Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and the Republicans re- ceived assistance from the Soviet Union. Most democ- racies, including the United States, observed a formal neutrality thathad theeffectofdoomingtheSpanishgov- ernment to defeat. Franco remained technically neutral throughout World War II, but he favored the Axis when it seemed in command early on and tipped back toward the Allies as the war drew to a close. American policy during the war was to buy Spain’s neutrality by overpaying the Spanish for goods with military significance (such as tungsten) in order tokeep theSpanishnonbelligerentandthesupplies out of German hands. U.S. policy toward Spain grew harsher with the suc- cess of D-Day in 1944 and the growing likelihood of a Germandefeat.Citing the roleplayedby theAxispowers inFranco’s rise topower, inearly1945FranklinRoosevelt declared that the United States could not have normal relations with his government. The United States joined its allies in barring Spain from the United Nations and recalled its chiefs of mission from Madrid. Franco blunted American pressure to yield power to a more democratic regime by appealing to growing con- cern about the Soviet Union. While his quasi-fascist re- gime remained an international pariah, American leaders gradually reached the conclusion that Franco was pref- erable to a potential communist government in Spain. TheUnitedStates didnot includeSpain in either its eco- nomicormilitary plans forwesternEurope (theMarshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), but after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, Spain’s potential military value in aEuropeanwar against the Soviets overrode the Truman administration’s ideo- logical aversion to Franco. The rehabilitation of Franco culminated in the Pact of Madrid, signed in September 1953. While Spain re- mained outside NATO, the agreement (which gave the United States air and naval bases in Spain) effectively al- lied the two nations during the remainder of t.

1. SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
4 8 5
Reversal of Fortune
This reversal of the two nations’ positions initially led to
a diminishment of the importance of Spanish-American
relations. Early in the new century, Americans were fo-
cused on events in Asia and the Western Hemisphere,
precisely the areas from which Spain had been expelled.
When World War I broke out in 1914, both nations de-
clared their neutrality. While Spain’s caution led it to
maintain that stance throughout the war, in 1917 the ex-
panding interests of the United States drew it into the
conflictandtentatively intoEuropeanpowerpolitics,thus
setting the scene for the next stage in Spanish-American
relations.
Just as theAmericanRevolutionposedadilemmafor
the Spanish, so too did the outbreak of the Spanish Civil
War in 1936 for the Americans. The rebellion of Fran-
cisco Franco and his generals against the Spanish repub-
lican government was amicrocosmof the ideological fer-
mentof interwarEurope.Francoreceivedassistancefrom
Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, and the Republicans re-
ceived assistance from the Soviet Union. Most democ-
racies, including the United States, observed a formal
neutrality thathad theeffectofdoomingtheSpanishgov-
ernment to defeat.
Franco remained technically neutral throughout
World War II, but he favored the Axis when it seemed in

2. command early on and tipped back toward the Allies as
the war drew to a close. American policy during the war
was to buy Spain’s neutrality by overpaying the Spanish
for goods with military significance (such as tungsten) in
order tokeep theSpanishnonbelligerentandthesupplies
out of German hands.
U.S. policy toward Spain grew harsher with the suc-
cess of D-Day in 1944 and the growing likelihood of a
Germandefeat.Citing the roleplayedby theAxispowers
inFranco’s rise topower, inearly1945FranklinRoosevelt
declared that the United States could not have normal
relations with his government. The United States joined
its allies in barring Spain from the United Nations and
recalled its chiefs of mission from Madrid.
Franco blunted American pressure to yield power to
a more democratic regime by appealing to growing con-
cern about the Soviet Union. While his quasi-fascist re-
gime remained an international pariah, American leaders
gradually reached the conclusion that Franco was pref-
erable to a potential communist government in Spain.
TheUnitedStates didnot includeSpain in either its eco-
nomicormilitary plans forwesternEurope (theMarshall
Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), but
after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950,
Spain’s potential military value in aEuropeanwar against
the Soviets overrode the Truman administration’s ideo-
logical aversion to Franco.
The rehabilitation of Franco culminated in the Pact
of Madrid, signed in September 1953. While Spain re-
mained outside NATO, the agreement (which gave the
United States air and naval bases in Spain) effectively al-
lied the two nations during the remainder of the Cold

3. War. The death of Franco in November 1975 and the
subsequent return todemocraticgovernment inSpainre-
moved whatever residual cloud remained over Spanish-
American relations. Spain’s acceptance into NATO in
1982 and the European Community in 1986 further so-
lidified the normalization of relations. At the close of the
twentieth century, Spanish-Americanrelationsresembled
those of the United States with other European nations
and had lost the distinctive quality of years past.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beaulac, Willard L. Franco: Silent Ally in World War II.
Carbon-
dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986.
Cortada, James. Two Nations Over Time: Spain and the United
States, 1775–1977. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1978.
Edwards, Jill. Anglo-American Relations and the Franco
Question
1945–1955. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hayes, Carleton J. H. The United States and Spain: An Interpre-
tation. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951.
Little, Douglas. Malevolent Neutrality: The United States, Great
Britain, and the Origins of the Spanish Civil War. Ithaca,N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1985.
Rubottom, Richard R., and J. Carter Murphy. Spain and the
United States: Since World War II. NewYork:Praeger,1984.
Whitaker, Arthur P. Spain and Defense of the West: Ally and
Lia-

4. bility. New York: Harper, 1961. Reprint, Westport,Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1980.
———. The Spanish-American Frontier, 1783–1795. Boston and
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927. Reprint, Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1969.
Mark S. Byrnes
See also Spanish-American War.
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. The sinking of the
battleship Maine in Havana harbor on 15 February 1898
provided a dramatic casus belli for the Spanish-American
War, but underlying causes included U.S. economic in-
terests ($50 million invested inCuba; $100million inan-
nual trade, mostly sugar) as well as genuinehumanitarian
concern over long-continued Spanish misrule. Rebellion
in Cuba had erupted violently in 1895, and although by
1897 a more liberal Spanish government had adopted a
conciliatory attitude, U.S. public opinion, inflamed by
strident “yellow journalism,” would not be placated by
anything short of full independence for Cuba.
The Maine had been sent to Havana ostensibly on a
courtesy visit but actually as protection for Americancit-
izens. A U.S. Navy court of inquiry concluded on 21
March that the ship had been sunk by an external explo-
sion.Madrid agreed toarbitrate thematterbutwouldnot
promise independence for Cuba. On 11 April, President
William McKinley askedCongress for authority to inter-
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

5. 4 8 6
Spanish-American War. U.S. troops line up crisply; contrary
to this image, thousands of regular soldiers and volunteers
found shortages of weapons and supplies, as well as poor food
and sanitation, at the camps where they assembled. Getty
Images
vene, and, on 25 April, Congress declared that a state of
war existed between Spain and the United States.
The North Atlantic Squadron, concentrated at Key
West,Florida,wasorderedon22April toblockadeCuba.
TheSpanishhomefleetunderAdm.PascualCerverahad
sortied from Cadiz on 8 April, and although he had only
four cruisers and twodestroyers, theapproachof this “ar-
mada” provoked near panic along the U.S. East Coast.
Spanish troop strength in Cuba totaled 150,000 reg-
ulars and forty thousand irregulars and volunteers. The
Cuban insurgents numbered perhaps fifty thousand. At
the war’s beginning, the strength of the U.S. Regular
ArmyunderMaj.Gen.NelsonA.Mileswasonly twenty-
six thousand. The legality of using the National Guard,
numbering something more than 100,000, for expedi-
tionary service was questionable. Therefore, authorities
resorted to the volunteer system used in the Mexican-
American War and CivilWar. Themobilization act of22
April provided for a wartime army of 125,000 volunteers
(later raised to 200,000) and an increase in the regular
army to sixty-five thousand.Thousandsof volunteersand
recruits converged on ill-prepared southerncampswhere
they found a shortage of weapons, equipment, and sup-
plies, and scandalous sanitary conditions and food.
In the Western Pacific, Commo. GeorgeDeweyhad

6. been alerted by Acting Secretary of the Navy Theodore
Roosevelt to prepare his Asiatic Squadron for operations
in thePhilippines.On27April,Dewey sailed fromHong
Kong with four light cruisers, two gunboats, and a reve-
nue cutter—and, as apassenger,EmilioAguinaldo, anex-
iled Filipino insurrectionist. Dewey entered Manila Bay
in the early morning hours on 1 May and destroyed the
Spanish squadron,buthehad insufficient strengthto land
and capture Manila itself. Until U.S. Army forces could
arrive, the Spanish garrison had to be kept occupied by
Aguinaldo’s guerrilla operations.
In the Atlantic, Cervera slipped into Santiago on
Cuba’s southeast coast. Commo. Winfield Schley took
station off Santiago on 28 May and was joined four days
laterbyRearAdm.WilliamT.Sampson.Tosupportthese
operations, a marine battalion on 10 June seized nearby
Guantánamo to serve as an advance base. Sampson, re-
luctant to enter the harbor because of mines and land
batteries, asked for U.S. Army help. Maj. Gen. William
R. Shafter, at Tampa, Florida, received orders on31May
to embark his V Corps. Despite poor facilities, he had
seventeen thousandmen,mostly regulars, ready to sailby
14 June and by 20 June was standing outside Santiago.
On 22 June, after a heavy shelling of the beach area, the
V Corps began going ashore. It was a confused and vul-
nerable landing, but theSpanishdidnothing to interfere.
Between Daiquiri and Santiago were the San Juan
heights. Shafter’s plan was to send Brig. Gen. Henry W.
Lawton’s division north to seize the village of El Caney
and then to attack frontallywithBrig.Gen. JacobF.Kent’s
division on the left and Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s dis-
mounted cavalry on the right. The attack began at dawn
on 1 July. Wheeler, one-time Confederate cavalryman,

7. sent his dismounted troopers, including the black Ninth
andTenthcavalries and thevolunteer Rough Riders,un-
der command of Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, against
Kettle Hill. The Spanish withdrew to an inner defense
line, and, as theday ended, theAmericanshad their ridge
line but at a cost of seventeen hundred casualties.
Shafter, not anxious togoagainst theSpanishsecond
line, askedSampsontocomeintoSantiagoBayandattack
the city, but for Sampson there was still the matter of the
harbor defenses. He took his flagship eastward on 3 July
to meet with Shafter, and while they argued, Cervera in-
advertently resolved the impasse by coming out of the
port onorders of theSpanish captaingeneral.Hisgreatly
inferior squadron was annihilated by Schley, and on 16
July the Spaniards signed terms of unconditional surren-
der for the 23,500 troops in and around the city.
At the endof July theVIIICorps, somefifteen thou-
sand men (mostly volunteers) under Maj. Gen. Wesley
Merritt, had reached thePhilippines.Enroute, theescort
cruiser Charleston had stopped at Guam and accepted the
surrender of the island from the Spanish governor, who
had not heard of the war. Because of anunrepairedcable,
Dewey and Merritt themselves did not hear immediately
of thepeaceprotocol, andon13August anassault against
Manila was made. The Spanish surrendered after token
resistance.
The peace treaty, signed in Paris on 10 December
1898, established Cuba as an independent state, ceded
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, NAVY IN

8. 4 8 7
Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States, and provided
for the payment of $20 million to Spain for the Philip-
pines. Almost overnight the United States had acquired
an overseas empire and, in the eyes of Europe, had be-
come a world power. The immediate cost of the war was
$250 million and about three thousand American lives, of
which only about three hundred were battle deaths. A
disgruntled Aguinaldo, expecting independence for the
Philippines, declared a provisional republic, which led to
the Philippine Insurrection that lasted until 1902.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cosmas, Graham A. An Army for Empire: The United States
Army
in the Spanish-American War. Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane
Publishing, 1994.
Hoganson, Kristin L. Fighting for American Manhood: How
Gen-
der Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-
American Wars. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1998.
Linderman, Gerald F. The Mirror of War: American Society and
the Spanish-American War. Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
gan Press, 1974.
Musicant, Ivan. Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War
and
the Dawn of the American Century. New York: Holt, 1998.
Traxel, David. 1898: The Birth of the American Century. New
York: Knopf, 1998.

9. Edwin H. Simmons / a. g.
See also Jingoism; Maine, Sinking of the; Paris, Treaty of
(1898); Teller Amendment; Territories of the United
States; Yellow Journalism; and vol. 9: Anti-Imperialist
League Platform; A Soldier’s Account of the Spanish-
American War.
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, NAVY IN. Shortly
before the Spanish-American War, growing American
interest in a modern, powerful navy had resulted in in-
creased appropriations and a vigorous program of ship
construction, especially of battleships and cruisers. The
Spanish-American War (1898) lasted only about ninety
days, yet it marked the generally successful combat trial
of the then new American navy. Following by eight years
the appearance of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of
Sea Power upon History, the conflict illustrated principles
and techniques of war that were sometimes adhered to,
sometimes violated.
The main combat areas of the war were Spanish pos-
sessions in the Philippines and the Caribbean. In both
theaters, American naval ascendancy was first established,
although by different means, to assure sea control before
undertaking amphibious and military operations. On 1
May 1898, in the Battle of Manila Bay, which involved
secondary cruiser forces in a secondary area, Commodore
George Dewey easily defeated an antiquated Spanish
IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH

10. 2 4 2
IMPENDING CRISIS OF THE SOUTH, by Hin-
ton Rowan Helper, was one of the most sensational books
ever published in the United States. Appearing in the
spring of 1857 as the nation was sliding toward civil war,
the book became the centerpiece of an intense debate on
the floor of the U.S. Congress. Helper, an obscure yeo-
man farmer from North Carolina, claimed that slavery
was an economic disaster for the South and an insur-
mountable barrier to the economic advancement of the
region’s slaveless farmers. There was nothing new about
this argument. Political economists had long claimed that
slavery inhibited economic development and undermined
small farmers, craftsmen, and manufacturers. Much of
The Impending Crisis was a tedious recitation of dull sta-
tistics designed to prove this familiar argument. But
Helper also added a shockingly inflammatory threat: If
the southern planters did not voluntarily dismantle the
slave system, he warned, the small farmers would launch
a sustained class war across the South. Helper even hinted
at a slave rebellion, although he himself had racist pro-
clivities and little or no sympathy for the plight of the
slaves. Coming at such a sensitive moment in national
politics, it was no wonder southern leaders denounced
Helper’s northern supporters with such vehemence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Helper, Hinton Rowan. The Impending Crisis of the South; How
to Meet It. Edited with an introduction by George M. Fred-
rickson. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1968.
James Oakes
See also Slavery; and vol. 9: The Impending Crisis of the

11. South: How to Meet It.
IMPERIALISM. Americans have long thought of
themselves as an “anti-imperial” people. The nation was,
after all, founded in revolt against the British Empire. In
the twentieth century, the rhetoric of national “self-
determination” pervaded American discussions of foreign
affairs. From Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson, the
United States defined itself in opposition to the imperi-
alism of other empires.
Imperialism, in this American usage, refers to the
domination of another society against the expressed will
of its people. Imperialism can be both formal and infor-
mal. In the case of formal empire—as in the British rule
over the thirteen American colonies during the eigh-
teenth century—a powerful foreign state manages the
day-to-day political, social, and economic affairs in an-
other land. Informal empire, in contrast, refers to a more
indirect arrangement, whereby a foreign state works
through local intermediaries to manage a distant society.
In early nineteenth-century India, for example, British
authorities negotiated favorable trade arrangements with
native monarchs rather than bear the heavy costs of direct
imperial control.
Close attention to these two kinds of imperialism has
led many scholars to conclude that, despite popular as-
sumptions, imperialism as a general term applies to Amer-
ican history. In particular, the years after the Civil War
show abundant evidence of Americans expanding their
economic, political, military, and cultural control over
foreign societies. The post-1865 period is distinguished
from previous decades, when the young Republic was
both struggling for its survival and expanding over con-
tiguous territory that it rapidly incorporated into the con-

12. stitutional structures of the United States. Imperialism
implies something different from continental expansion.
It refers to the permanent subordination of distant soci-
eties, rather than their reorganization as states of equal
standing in a single nation. America extended its federalist
structure of governance across the North American con-
tinent before the Civil War. After that watershed, a pow-
erful United States established areas of domination in
distant lands, whose people were not allowed equal rep-
resentation in governance. By the dawn of the twentieth
century, the United States had a large informal empire
and a smaller but still significant formal empire as well.
From the Civil War to the Twentieth Century
William Henry Seward, secretary of state during and im-
mediately after the Civil War, recognized that the United
States needed an overseas empire for its future peace and
prosperity. The wounds of the bloody North-South con-
flict would heal, he believed, only with the promise of
overseas benefits for all sections of the country. Informal
U.S. expansion into foreign markets—especially in Asia
and the Caribbean—provided farmers and industrialists
with access to consumers and resources. At a time when
the U.S. economy had begun to employ factory manu-
facturing, mechanized agriculture, and railroad transpor-
tation, large overseas outlets became necessary for pros-
perity. Americans were dependent on assured access to
international markets, Seward believed, and this required
expansion across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Seward began by building a “highway” to Asia. This
included annexation of the Brooks Islands in 1867 (re-
named the Midway Islands in 1903). The secretary of
state also negotiated a treaty guaranteeing Americanbusi-
nesses access to the island kingdom of Hawaii. The U.S.
Senate eventually approved this treaty in 1875. Seward

13. expected that the Brooks Islands and Hawaii would serve
as important stepping-stones for American influence in
the lucrative markets of China and Japan.
When the United States encountered resistance to
its post–Civil War expansion in Asia, the government em-
ployed diplomatic and military pressures. In 1866, after
the Japanese government closed itself to foreign trade,the
United States joined other imperial powers—the British,
the French, and the Dutch—in forcing Western access to
the island nation over the objections of native interests.
Seward dispatched a warship, the U.S.S. Wyoming, to join
in naval exercises off the Japanese coast.
IMPERIALISM
2 4 3
In China, the largest and most promising market,
Seward used diplomacy instead of explicit force. Accord-
ing to the Burlingame Treaty, signed in September
1868, the Chinese government gave the United States
trading access to designated coastal areas, with the addi-
tional right to build railroads and telegraphs facilitating
penetration of the hinterland. In return, the United States
allowed thousands of Chinese laborers to migrate across
the Pacific. This arrangement helped to relieve China’s
overpopulation difficulties, and it provided American com-
panies—particularly on the West Coast—with a large pool
of low-wage workers. The U.S. government worked with
the Chinese emperor to guarantee a market for the export
of American products and the import of cheap labor.
Seward’s imperialism set the stage for succeeding

14. secretaries of state, but his policies inspired strong do-
mestic resistance. By the time he left office in 1869, Sew-
ard had built an American overseas empire that included
formal possessions, including the Brooks Islands and
Alaska (1867), as well as larger informal areas of influence,
which included Hawaii, Japan, and, most important of all,
China. Many Americans expressed discomfort with this
evidence of imperialism, including Republican Senator
Charles Sumner and Horace Greeley, editor of the New
York Tribune. Seward’s other ambitious plans—including
acquisition of the Danish West Indies (the U.S. Virgin
Islands) and the construction of an isthmian canal con-
necting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through a sliver
of Colombia—died at the hands of anti-imperialists on
the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Despite these setbacks, Seward and his successors
recognized the overriding imperialist trend in American
foreign policy at the time. In addition to the economic
advantages derived from overseas expansion, a series of
internal social and cultural pressures pushed the United
States to become more involved in managing distant so-
cieties. Religious belief—in particular a desire to spread
Christian “civilization”—had motivated Western settle-
ment across the North American continent during the
period of manifest destiny, before the Civil War. Now
these same urges inspired overseas proselytism. Ministers
like Josiah Strong of the Home Missionary Society called
upon thousands of their followers to establish churches
and schools throughout China and other foreign coun-
tries. Christian missionaries would not only save less
privileged souls, they would also display the profound
righteousness of American society. As was the case with
Britain and many other imperial powers in the nineteenth
century, the United States defined its national identity by
asserting superiority over—and a duty to convert—“Ori-

15. ental” heathens.
American imperialism, in this sense, was part of a
much larger international competition. Britain, France,
and Russia—and by the last decades of the nineteenth
century, Germany and Japan—were all competing for in-
fluence in Asia, Africa, and other “open” spaces for ex-
pansion. American leaders felt they had to adopt impe-
rialistic policies of their own. Otherwise, the United
States risked permanent exclusion from future oppor-
tunities abroad. Secretary of State John Hay’s Open Door
Notes of 1899 and 1900 codified this argument,proclaim-
ing that the United States would assert its presence in
China and other countries to make sure that other im-
perialist powers did not close off American access. As a
self-conscious great power with a civilizing mission and a
growing dependence on foreign markets, the United
States needed its own empire—preferably informal. The
historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s influential 1893 es-
say, “The Significance of the Frontier in American His-
tory,” captured this sense that the proving ground for
American society was no longer on the North American
continent, but now overseas.
One could not build an empire—even an informal
one—without an adequate military. After an initial decade
of demobilization after the Civil War, the United States
embarked upon a period of extensive naval construction
in the late nineteenth century. Alfred Thayer Mahan,
president of the newly created Naval War College, out-
lined a new military doctrine for American imperialism in
his widely read lectures, The Influence of Sea Power upon
History, 1660–1783. First published in 1890, Mahan’s text
mined the history of the Roman and British empires to
show that a large trading state could ensure its wealth and

16. security by asserting dominance of the sea. A large bat-
tleship navy, in control of important strategic waterways
and coaling stations across the globe, would guaranteethe
flow of commerce. It would also allow for the United
States to influence foreign societies, transporting concen-
trated forces across great distances.
Largely as a consequence of Mahan’s influence, the
U.S. naval fleet grew consistently between 1890 and 1914.
More ships created new opportunities for force projec-
tion. New overseas naval interests, in turn, justified ever
larger estimates of strategic necessities. By 1898, the U.S.
Navy had become both an advocate and a tool of Amer-
ican imperialism.
The United States used its growing naval power to
force the declining Spanish empire out of Cuba and the
Philippines. In both areas, America became the new im-
perial power. In 1901, the United States—now in formal
control of Cuba—forced the native government of the
island to include in its constitution a series of stipulations
known as the Platt Amendment (named for Senator Or-
ville Platt, a Republican from Connecticut). These in-
cluded assurances of American political and economic
domination. The U.S. Navy acquired possession of a ma-
jor facility on the island, Guantánamo Naval Base. Wash-
ington also asserted the future right to intervenemilitarily
in Cuba if U.S. interests were jeopardized. After granting
the island nominal independence in 1902, the United
States did indeed send an “army of pacification” to the
island in 1906 for the purpose of repressing anti-American
groups. The United States practiced a combination of in-
formal and formal imperialism in Cuba.

17. IMPERIALISM
2 4 4
In the case of the Philippines, the United States ini-
tially went to war with Spain in 1898 for the purpose of
acquiring an informal naval coaling station. Native resis-
tance to U.S. interests and a growing recognition in
Washington that the archipelago would serve as an ideal
point of embarkation for trade with the Chinese mainland
led President William McKinley to declare the Philip-
pines a permanent U.S. colony on 21 December 1898.
America fought a bloody forty-one-month war to secure
possession of the entire archipelago. During this Philip-
pine Insurrection, the United States created an occu-
pation army that waged total war on local resistance.
Forty-two hundred Americans died in battle for posses-
sion of this colony. As many as twenty thousand Filipino
insurgents also died. As never before, the United States
had established direct control over a foreign society—
seven thousand miles from North America—throughbrute
force. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the evidence
of American imperialism was unmistakable.
Liberal Imperialism
During the first half of the twentieth century, the United
States was both an advocate of democracy and a practi-
tioner of imperialism. The two are not necessarily con-
tradictory. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson both believed they had an obligation to spread
American ideas and interests across the globe. As a new
world power, the United States had an apparent oppor-
tunity to remake the international system in a way that
would eliminate the old ravages of war and corrupt alli-
ances. Roosevelt and Wilson sought to replace militaristic
aristocracies with governments that promised economic

18. development and, eventually, democracy. International
change of this variety would, they assumed, best serve
America’s long-term interests.
In the short run, however, the “new diplomacy” of
Roosevelt and Wilson required more extensive American
imperialism. When societies refused to follow the alleged
tide of “modern” economic development and democracy
symbolized by the United States, Washington felt an urge
to intervene. On a number of occasions, U.S. leaders went
so far as to force societies to be “free” on American terms.
This was the rationale behind a series of early twentieth-
century U.S. interventions in the Western Hemisphere
that included, among others, Cuba, the Dominican Re-
public, Nicaragua, and Mexico. In each case, the United
States asserted strategic and economic interests, and a
long-term commitment to the betterment of the society
under Washington’s control. When U.S. military forces
left their foreign areas of occupation, the threat of their
redeployment served to intimidate those who wished to
challenge U.S. influence.
In Europe and Asia, the United States pursued a con-
sistent policy of informal imperialism during the first de-
cades of the twentieth century. Contrary to the image of
American diplomatic isolation before and after World
War I, U.S. businesses worked with Washington’s ex-
plicit—though often “unofficial”—support to build new
overseas markets during this period. Investment firms like
J. P. Morgan and Company lent large sums to countries
such as Great Britain and France, forcing them to allow
more American influence in the daily workings of their
economies. Industrial concerns like Standard Oil, Singer
Sewing Company, and International Harvester became
more active in controlling natural resources overseas and

19. marketing their products to foreign consumers. Perhaps
most significant of all, intellectual and charitable groups
like the Carnegie Council and the Rockefeller Founda-
tion began to advise leaders in Europe, Asia, and Latin
America on how they could make their societies and econ-
omies look more like that of the United States. Their
seemingly “objective” counsels encouraged private prop-
erty concentration, natural resource extraction, and in-
creased trade—all factors that served to increase the in-
fluence of American firms.
The worldwide economic depression of the 1930s
and the rise of fascism restricted much of the international
commerce and communication that had flourished in the
first decades of the century. These conditions, however,
only heightened the pressures for informal American im-
perialism. Fearful that economic and political forces—es-
pecially in Germany—were moving against trade, eco-
nomic development, and democracy, the U.S. government
continued to encourage the activities of American com-
panies and advisory groups abroad.
The administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, in par-
ticular, sponsored the overseas marketing of Hollywood-
produced films. Movies helped to proselytize theindividual
freedoms and personal prosperity that Americans believed
were essential for a peaceful, liberal world. Hollywood
helped nurture foreign consumers who would soon want
to purchase the American-made automobiles and other
products glorified on the silver screen. Most significant
of all, policymakers like Roosevelt believed that movie
exports would help inspire positive views of the United
States in foreign societies. The president even thought
this might work with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin—an
avid consumer of American movies. Roosevelt hoped
that Hollywood depictions of Soviet-American friend-

20. ship would help solidify the two nations in their fight
against Nazi fascism.
World War II and the Cold War
U.S. participation in World War II formalized America’s
liberal imperialism of the prior decades. As part of the
Atlantic Charter—negotiated when Roosevelt and British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in secret between
9 and 12 August 1941—the United States proclaimed that
the war against fascism would end with a “permanent sys-
tem of general security” that would embrace national self-
determination, free trade, and disarmament. Citizens of
foreign countries would benefit from “improved labor
standards, economic advancement, and social security”
when they restructured their societies to look like the
IMPERIALISM
2 4 5
United States. The Atlantic Charter laid out an agenda
for total war against the large standing armies, state-run
economies, and dictatorial governments that character-
ized fascist regimes. This is what one scholar calls the
“American way of war.” Between 1941 and 1945, the
United States deployed unprecedented military force—
including two atomic bombs—to annihilate its most direct
challengers in Asia and Europe. American commitments
to free trade, economic development, and democracy re-
quired the unconditional surrender of Japanese, German,
and Italian fascists. U.S. leaders and citizens not only as-
serted that their nation was the necessary “arsenal of de-
mocracy,” they also proclaimed that they would remake
the world after the horrors of war and genocide. The de-

21. feat of fascism would christen the “American Century,”
when the United States would play the unabashed role of
liberal imperialist, planting the seeds of American-style
economic growth and democracy across the globe.
The United States undertook this task with extraor-
dinary resolve as soon as World War II came to a close
in 1945. In the western half of Germany and the Euro-
pean continent, American policymakers rebuilt war-
devastated societies. The Economic Recovery Program of
1947 (also known as the Marshall Plan, after Secretary
of State George Marshall) provided a staggering $13 bil-
lion of U.S. aid to feed starving people, reorganize in-
dustry, and jump-start economic production. Instead of
the reparations and loans that weighed down European
economies after World War I, the United States used the
Marshall Plan to foster postwar stability, prosperity, and
integration in Europe. With their economies organized
along liberal capitalist lines, the west European countries
developed favorable markets for American exports only a
few years after the end of World War II.
In Japan and the western half of Germany, America’s
liberal imperialism was formal and incredibly successful.
In both societies, U.S. officials helped to write new con-
stitutions. The Japanese national charter of 1946 pro-
hibited militarism and state control over the economy.
It gave Japanese women the right to vote for the first
time, promoted noncommunist labor unions, encouraged
free public expression, and created new opportunities for
American-style schooling. The new German “Basic Law,”
promulgated in 1949, similarly outlawed fascism and en-
sured individual rights, personal property ownership, and
free elections. In both societies, the United States worked
with a series of local politicians to uproot authoritarian
traditions and impose liberal democracy. American offi-

22. cials sought to prevent future war, improve the lives of
foreign citizens, and ensure U.S. strategic and economic
interests. These goals were not incompatible; in fact, they
reflected a formalization of American assumptions dating
back to 1865.
The Soviet Union objected to America’s liberal im-
perialism for obvious reasons. Joseph Stalin and his suc-
cessors recognized that U.S. expansion in Europe and
Asia prohibited the spread of communist ideals. Instead
of the worker rights and economic equality championed
by the Soviet Union—in words, if not in practice—Amer-
ican influence privileged personal liberties and individual
wealth accumulation. The conflict between America’s lib-
eral democratic vision and the Soviet Union’s communist
alternative created an environment of competing impe-
rialisms, which contemporaries called the “Cold War.”
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Soviet criticisms
of U.S. imperialism gained some popular support in
Asian, African, and Latin American societies struggling
for independence against inherited European and Amer-
ican domination. This was most evident in Indochina.
Despite its anticolonial inclinations, U.S. leaders sup-
ported French colonialism in this region of Southeast Asia
after World War II. In the eyes of U.S. policymakers,
national independence for Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cam-
bodian citizens threatened to undermine the stability and
security of the region. Nationalist governments would al-
legedly threaten trade and economic development. Most
significantly, American leaders feared that newly inde-
pendent governments would fall under the influence of
Soviet and, after 1949, Chinese communism. Liberal
imperialism appeared necessary to contain communist
expansion and prepare “underdeveloped” societies for

23. eventual independence.
When Vietnamese nationalists—aided, as Washing-
ton predicted, by China and the Soviet Union—forced
the French out of Indochina in 1954, the United States
took over as a formal imperialist in the region. By the end
of 1965, U.S. soldiers were fighting an extensive ground,
sea, and air war against Vietnamese nationalists. Before
the last U.S. troops withdrew from the region in 1975,
hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of peasants
had died or suffered dislocation as a consequence of
American military activities. In addition, 58,193 U.S. sol-
diers perished in this war.
The Vietnam War illustrated the extended brutality
of American imperialism during the Cold War. Long-
standing economic and political impulses had combined
with militant anticommunism to devastate much of South-
east Asia. Observers in countries around the world—in-
cluding the United States—condemned Americanforeign
policy for undermining the liberal purposes that it claimed
to serve. The global revolt witnessed in 1968 on city
streets across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin
America was an international reaction against American
imperialism.
After Vietnam and to the Twenty-First Century
American foreign policy was never the same after the
Vietnam War. Aware of the resistance that the formal ele-
ments of American imperialism had inspired, policymak-
ers returned to more informal mechanisms for asserting
influence abroad. Economic globalization and human
rights advocacy took center stage, along with continued
anticommunism. The promise of American-style pros-
perity and individual rights—championed by politicians,

24. IMPLIED POWERS
2 4 6
businesspeople, and Hollywood writers—triumphed over
the gray authoritarianism of communist regimes. By 1991,
societies across the globe rushed to attract American in-
vestment and aid. Citizens sought out American cultural
exports—including McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, and Michael
Jordan.
America’s informal imperialism in the late twentieth
century was remarkably effective. It did, however, inspire
serious resistance. Instead of adopting communist slo-
gans, as they had in the 1950s and 1960s, opponents of
U.S. influence after 1991 turned largely to religion. Fun-
damentalisms of many varieties—Christian, Jewish, and
Islamic—arose to challenge the decadence and hypocrisy
of American liberal democracy. They condemned the
United States for undermining traditional sources of au-
thority and morality in foreign societies. They recognized
that the free trade, economic development, and popular
elections advocated by the United States would destroy
many local hierarchies.
International terrorism—symbolized most frighten-
ingly by the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon—emerged, in part, as a
reaction to a long history of formal and informal Ameri-
can imperialism. This observation does not, in any way,
justify the abhorrent terrorist activities. American impe-
rialism has produced both positive and negative out-
comes, as the contrast between post–World War II Japan
and Vietnam makes clear. Nonetheless, the extraordinary

25. overseas influence of the United States, dating back to
1865, has inspired violent resistance. Americans probably
will not abandon their liberal imperialist assumptions in
the twenty-first century, but they will surely develop new
strategies for isolating and defeating foreign challengers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cooper, John Milton, Jr. The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow
Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 1985. A superb comparative study that
analyzes the politics and foreign policy of early twentieth-
century America.
Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies
ofContainment:ACriticalAppraisal
of Postwar American National Security Policy. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1982. The best analysis of the
sources and implications of America’s anticommunist con-
tainment policy during the Cold War.
Gardner, Lloyd C. Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars
for Vietnam. Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1997. A pro-
vocative analysis of how American liberal imperialism con-
tributed to the Vietnam War.
Hahn, Peter L., and Mary Ann Heiss, eds.
EmpireandRevolution:
The United States and the Third World since 1945. Columbus:
Ohio State University Press, 2001. A useful survey of
American imperialism in the “third world” during the Cold
War.
Hogan, Michael J. The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the
Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–1952. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987. A penetrating account

26. of how the Marshall Plan reconstructed Western Europe
on America’s model.
Hunt, Michael H. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New
Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987. A stimulating account
of how ideas about liberty, race, and revolution shaped
American imperialism.
Iriye, Akira, ed. The Cambridge History of American Foreign
Re-
lations: The Globalizing of America, 1913–1945. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1993. A compelling discus-
sion of Americanization in the first half of the twentieth
century.
Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and
theQuest
for a New World Order. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1995. An excellent account of Wilson’s liberal
approach to foreign policy.
LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of
American
Expansion, 1860–1898. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1998. A classic history of American imperialism be-
tween the Civil War and the War of 1898.
Leffler, Melvyn P. A Preponderance of Power: National
Security, the
Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1992. A rich account of how
American values and fears of Soviet power drove foreign
policy in the early Cold War.

27. McCormick, Thomas J. China Market: America’s Quest for
Infor-
mal Empire, 1893–1901. Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1990. A pro-
vocative account of American imperialism in Asia at the end
of the nineteenth century.
Ninkovich, Frank. The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Policy
since 1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. A
compelling account of Wilson’s influence on American im-
perialism in the twentieth century.
Rosenberg, Emily S. Spreading the American Dream: American
Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1982. A thoughtful account of America’s
cultural and economic imperialism between the two world
wars.
Smith, Tony. America’s Mission: The United States and the
World-
wide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century. Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994. A provocative
analysis of American liberal imperialism.
Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of
United
States Military Strategy and Policy. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1977. A compelling analysis of America’s
imperialistic approach to war.
Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplo-
macy. New York: Norton, 1988. Originally published in
1959 and one of the most important works on the history
of American foreign relations—a penetrating discussion of
economics, ideas, and imperialism.
Jeremi Suri

28. See also Anti-Imperialists; China, Relations with; Cuba, Re-
lations with; Hawaii; Intervention; Japan, Relations
with; Philippines; Spanish-American War; Vietnam
War; and vol. 9: Anti-Imperialist League Platform.
IMPLIED POWERS. At the end of Section 8 of Ar-
ticle I of the U.S. Constitution, which enumerates the
During World War I, life in the trenches was
a living hell for soldiers on either side of the line
' hat began as a clash of mobile armies
maneuvering across vast swaths of terrain
' soon degenerated into a static conflict in
which territorial gains and losses were
measured in yards. Conditions were
especially harsh on the Western Front, where daily life
for soldiers—^whether French, British, German or American
—was a nightmare of mud, blood and grinding misery
Death was a constant companion, injury a virtual certainty
and madness often a refuge.
The conflict was also one in which photographers
captured the true face of modern war. Their images
depicted every aspect of the struggle, from the raising of
armies through the final, convulsive clashes that ultimately
An Australian infantryman b r o u g h t p e a c e . P e r h a p s t
h e m o s t

29. retrieves the identification papers c a p t i v a t i n g p h o t o s r
a p h s , h o w e v e r ,
of a fallen comrade following an r
October 1917 action in Belgium. are t h o s e t a k e n o n t h e
front lines,
Australian photographer Frank ¡ ^ S U c h h a u n t i n g a n d e
v o c a t i v e
Hurley, among the best combat
photographers of World War I. i m a g e s a s t h o s e o n t h e f
o l l o w i n g
was perhaps best known for p ^ a g g ^ ^ ^^.^ ^^^^ ^ ^ g^g ^-^^
^^^
his Images of the 1914-1916 t ' & '
Shackieton Antarctic expedition, as s o l d i e r s e x p e r i e n c
e d it.
Taken during the 1917 Third
Battle of Ypres, Hurley's
portrait of Australian Private
John Hines shows the
haggard soldier surrounded
by souvenirs-including
a helmet, a hand grenade
and personal items-he took
during the Allied advance
through Polygon Wood.
'Zero hour the
whistles were
blown. Ladders
were put up to

30. mount out of
'he trench....
We had been
told "there's
no need for this
short rushes
and getting
down on your
stomach, go
straight over as
if you were on
parade. There's
no fear of
|enemy attack!
'hat's been
ish guns!"'
-CorporalJames Tansky.
're and Lancashire Regiment
'Our living
conditions were
lousy, dirty
and insanitary.
...There were
rats as big as
cats....For four
months I was in
France I never
had a bath'
-Harry Patch.
Cornwall Light Infantry

31. (at age 110. Patch is one of Britain's
two surviving World War I veterans)
An advancing British artillery unît pas
widespread military use of motor vehic.
ar. Though Wo.
's moonscape battlefiel north of Ypres, mud was the enemy
hand of an unknown casualty ties on the hattlefield at Verdun.
OUOTATIONS eiCERPTED FROM
THÍ WCÊS O f WOHIO *IHK I. av MAU »HTHUR
'Even the rats
used to become
hysterical. They
came into our
flimsy shelters
to seek refuge
from the terrific
artillery fire'
-Lieutenant Stefan Westmann.
German army
'After the
gas attacl(
the men came
tumbling from
the front line.
...They were
tearing at their

32. throats and
their eyes were
glaring out'
-Private W.A. Quintan.
Tor a young
man who had
a long and
worthwhile
future awaiting
him, it was
not easy to
expect death
almost daily.
I gradually
lost the terrible
fear of being
wounded
or killed'
-Reinhold Spengler.
German volunteer
The body of a German
soldier symbolizes his
nation's defeat at the
First Battie of the Marne
«in September 1914. Though
. airictory for the Aliies, the
battle marktd t N w i n n l n g
of tbe static trencn

33. tbat charactertzed tbe V
-