Us Test

Define the main tenets of American Imperialism.
Explain its implementation with special

reference to the American-Spanish war of 1898
The same corporate elite that dominated late- nineteenth century domestic politics
influenced U.S. foreign policy as well, contributing to surg- ing expansionist
pressures. Not only business leaders but politicians, statesmen, and editorial writers
insisted that national greatness required that America match Europe’s imperial
expansion. Fanned by sensationalistic newspaper coverage of a Cuban struggle for
independence and by elite calls for greater American international assertiveness, war
between the United States and Spain broke out in 1898.
Ever since the first European settlers colonized North America’s Atlantic coast, the
newcomers had been an expansionist people. By the 1840s, the push westward had
acquired a name: Manifest Destiny. Directed inward after 1865 toward the settlement
of the trans-Mississippi West this impulse turned outward in the 1880s as Americans
followed the example set by Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, and
Japan, which were busily collecting colonies from North Africa to the Pacific islands.
National greatness, it appeared, demanded an empire.
Many business leaders believed that continued domestic prosperity required overseas
markets. As American industrial capacity expanded, foreign markets offered a safety
valve for potentially explosive pressures in the U.S. economy..
Advocates of a stronger navy further fueled the expansionist mood. In The Influence
of Sea Power upon History (1890), Alfred Thayer Mahan equated sea power with
national greatness and urged a U.S. naval buildup. Since a strong navy required bases
abroad, Mahan and other naval advocates supported the movement to acquire foreign
territories, especially Pacific islands with good harbors. Military strategy, in this case
and others, often masked the desire for access to new markets.
Religious leaders proclaimed America’s mission to spread Christianity. This

expansionist argument sometimes took on a racist tinge. As Josiah Strong put it in his
1885 work Our Country, “God is training the Anglo-Saxon race for its mission”—a
mission of Christianizing and civilizing the world’s “weaker races”
Advocates of expansionism, like Roosevelt and Lodge, built upon the Social
Darwinist rhetoric of the day and argued that war, as a vehicle for natural
selection, would test and refurbish American manhood, restore chivalry and
honor, and create a new generation of civic-minded Americans.
A series of diplomatic skirmishes between 1885 and 1895 revealed the newly
assertive American mood and paved the way for the war that Roosevelt desired.
In the mid-1880s, quarrels between the United States and Great Britain over
fishing rights in the North Atlantic and in the Bering Sea off Alaska reawakened
Americans’ latent anti-British feelings as well as the old dream of acquiring
Canada. The fishing-rights dispute was resolved in 1898, but by then attention
had shifted to Latin America. In 1891, the Chilean civil war a boundary dispute
between Venezuela and British Guiana in 1895.
The Spanish-American War, or as historian Michael Gonzales-Cruz more

accurately entitles it, the Spanish-Cuban-American-Philippine-Puerto-Rican
War of 1898, often marks the starting point in scholarship about the nature of
US imperialism in Latin America and the Pacific.
The war originated in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain, which
began in February 1895 organized by the Cuban writer José Martí and other
Cuban exiles in New York City. the rebels initially didn’t secure the backing of
Washington, which urged Spain to grant Cuba a degree of autonomy.
Spain’s brutally repressive measures to halt the rebellion were graphically
portrayed for the U.S. public by several sensational newspapers engaging
in yellow journalism(William Randolph Hearst’s Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s
World), and American sympathy for the Cuban rebels rose.
The growing popular demand for U.S. intervention became an insistent chorus
after the still-unexplained sinking in Havana harbor of the American
battleship USS Maine on February 15, which had been sent to protect U.S.
citizens and property after anti-Spanish rioting in Havana.
Despite further Spanish concessions, President William McKinley sent a war
message to Congress on April 11, and legislators enacted a joint resolution
recognizing Cuba’s independence and authorizing force to expel the Spanish.
The ensuing war was pathetically one-sided, since Spain had readied neither its
army nor its navy for a distant war with the formidable power of the United
States.
In the early morning hours of May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey

led a U.S. naval squadron into Manila Bay in the Philippines. He
destroyed the anchored Spanish fleet in two hours before pausing
the Battle of Manila Bay to order his crew a second breakfast. In total,
fewer than 10 American seamen were lost, while Spanish losses were
estimated at over 370. Manila itself was occupied by U.S. troops by
August.
The elusive Spanish Caribbean fleet under Adm. Pascual Cervera was
located in Santiago harbor in Cuba by U.S. reconnaissance. An army of
regular troops and volunteers under Gen. William Shafter
(including then-former assistant secretary of the Navy Theodore
Roosevelt and his 1st Volunteer Cavalry, the “Rough Riders”) landed on
the coast east of Santiago and slowly advanced on the city in an effort
to force Cervera’s fleet out of the harbor.
Cervera led his squadron out of Santiago on July 3 and tried to escape
westward along the coast. In the ensuing battle all of his ships came
under heavy fire from U.S. guns and were beached in a burning or
sinking condition.
Santiago surrendered to Shafter on July 17, thus effectively ending the

brief but momentous war.
The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish American War was signed on
December 10, 1898. In it, Spain renounced all claim to Cuba,
ceded Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States and transferred
sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States for $20 million.
Philippine insurgents who had fought against Spanish rule soon turned
their guns against their new occupiers. The Philippine-American War
began in February of 1899 and lasted until 1902. Ten times more U.S.
troops died suppressing revolts in the Philippines than in defeating
Spain.
The Treaty of Paris, the concluding agreement between the two countries,
assigned the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam to the
US, essentially bringing an end to the Spanish empire and spawning an
American one. Cuba was put under temporary American control and Spain was
remunerated for its losses
In 1898, these critics of empire formed the Anti- Imperialist League.
For the United States to rule other peoples, the anti-imperialists believed, was to
violate the prin- ciples of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
As one of them wrote, “Dewey took Manila with the loss of one man—and all
our institutions.” The military fever that accompanied expansionism also
dismayed the anti-imperialists. Some labor leaders feared that imperial
expansion would lead to competition from cheap foreign labor and products.

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Define the main tenets of American Imperialism.

Explain its implementation with special

Religious leaders proclaimed America’s mission to spread Christianity. This

The Spanish-American War, or as historian Michael Gonzales-Cruz more

In the early morning hours of May 1, 1898, Commodore George Dewey

Santiago surrendered to Shafter on July 17, thus effectively ending the

In 1898, these critics of empire formed the Anti- Imperialist League.

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