Cover Slide
The American
Pageant
Chapter 27
Empire and
Expansion
Adapted from: Ms. Susan M. Pojer
Horace Greeley HS
Chappaqua, NY
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
America Turns Outward
• Background:
– End of the Civil War to the 1880s:
• US = very isolationist
– 1890s: began to expand onto the world stage, why?
• rising exports
• manufacturing capability
• power, and wealth
• overseas markets needed to sell goods
• “yellow press” or “yellow journalism” (Joseph Pulitzer and
William Randolph Hearst)
• missionaries inspired by Reverend Josiah Strong’s Our
Country: It’s Possible Future and Its Present Crisis
– Strong spoke for civilizing and Christianizing savages.
America Turns Outward
• Darwin’s influence:
– People interpreted survival-of-the-fittest to mean that
the US = the fittest
• needed to take over other nations to improve them.
• Remember: Europeans had carved up Africa and China
by this time.
• Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan’s 1890 book, The Influence
of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783
– argued that every successful world power once
held a great navy.
– helped start a naval race among the great powers
– moved the U.S. to naval supremacy
– motivated the U.S. to look to expanding overseas.
America Turns Outward
• Secretary of State James G. Blaine pushed his “Big
Sister” policy
– sought better relations w/ Latin America
– 1889, he presided over the first Pan-American Conference,
held in Washington D.C.
• Other diplomatic affairs
– US & Germany almost went to war over the Samoan
Islands
• over whom could build a naval base there
– Italy & US almost fought
• due to the lynching of 11 Italians in New Orleans,
– U.S.& Chile almost went to war
• after the deaths of 2 US sailors at Valparaiso in 1892.
America Turns Outward
• Venezuela & Britain
– strengthening the Monroe Doctrine
– British Guiana & Venezuela had been disputing
their border for many years
– when gold was discovered, the situation
worsened
– the U.S., (President Grover Cleveland)
• sent a note written by Secretary of State Richard
Olney to Britain
– informing them that the British actions were trespassing the
Monroe Doctrine
– U.S. controlled things in the Americas.
America Turns Outward
• GB & Venezuela (cont)
– British replied—said was none of the U.S's business.
– Cleveland replied
• Created a committee to set new boundary & if GB would
not accept it, then U.S. implied it would fight for it.
– GB didn’t want to fight --fear of the damage to its merchant
trade
• & the Dutch Boers of South Africa were about to go to
war & Germany’s Kaiser Wilhem -- beginning to challenge
Britain's power
– GB sees benefits of an alliance w/ the "Yankees"
• began a period of "patting the eagle's head," instead of
"twisting the lion's tale."
• referred to as the Great Rapprochement or reconciliation.
1. Commercial/Business
Interests
U. S. Foreign Investments: 1869-1908
1. Commercial/Business
Interests
American Foreign Trade:
1870-1914
2. Military/Strategic Interests
Alfred T. Mahan  The Influence of Sea
Power on History: 1660-1783
3. Social Darwinist Thinking
The Hierarchy
of Race
The White Man’s
Burden
4. Religious/Missionary Interests
American
Missionaries
in China, 1905
5. Closing the American Frontier
Spurning the Hawaiian Pear
• From the 1820s, when the 1st U.S.
missionaries came, the US had always
liked the Hawaiian Islands
• Treaties signed in 1875 & 1887
– guaranteed commercial trade
– U.S. rights to priceless Pearl Harbor
• Hawaiian sugar=very profitable
• in 1890, the McKinley Tariff raised the
prices on this sugar, raising its price.
U. S. Missionaries in Hawaii
Imiola Church – first built in the late 1820s
U. S. View of Hawaiians
Hawaii becomes a U. S. Protectorate in 1849
by virtue of economic treaties.
Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani
Hawaii for the
Hawaiians!
U. S. Business Interests In Hawaii
1875 – Reciprocity
Treaty
1890 – McKinley Tariff
1893 – American
businessmen backed an
uprising against Queen
Liliuokalani.
Sanford Ballard Dole
proclaims the Republic
of Hawaii in 1894.
Spurning the Hawaiian Pear
• Americans felt that the best way to offset this
was to annex Hawaii
– opposed by its Queen Liliuokalani
– in 1893, desperate Americans in Hawaii revolted
• Succeeded--Hawaii seemed ready for
annexation
• Grover Cleveland became president again
– investigated the coup
– found it to be wrong
– delayed the annexation of Hawaii until he basically
left office.
To The Victor Belongs the Spoils
Hawaiian
Annexation
Ceremony, 1898
Cubans Rise in Revolt
• 1895--Cuba revolted agst Spain
– citing years of misrule
– Cubans torched their sugar cane fields
• hoped that such destruction would either make Spain leave
or America interfere (the American tariff of 1894 had raised
prices on it anyway)
• America supported Cuba
• situation worsened…Spanish General Valeriano
“Butcher” Weyler came to Cuba
– Tried to crush the revolt
– put many civilians into concentration camps & killed
many.
Spanish Misrule in Cuba
Cubans Rise in Revolt
• American public clamored for action,
– spurred on by the yellow press, but Cleveland
would do nothing.
• yellow press
– competed agst each other to come up w/more
sensational stories
• Hearst even sent artist Frederick Remington to
draw pictures of often-fictional atrocities
– he drew Spanish officials brutally stripping & searching
an American woman
– in reality, Spanish women, not men, did such acts.
Valeriano Weyler’s
“Reconcentration” Policy
Cubans Rise in Revolt
• Dupuy de Lôme Letter (Spanish minister to
Washington):
– February 9, 1898, ridiculed President McKinley
– published by Hearst
• February 15, 1898, the U.S. battleship
U.S.S. Maine mysteriously exploded in
Havana Harbor
– killed 260 officers & men.
– Despite an unknown cause, America was warmad and therefore Spain received the blame.
De Lôme Letter
Dupuy de Lôme, Spanish
Ambassador to the U.S.
Criticized President
McKinley as weak and a
bidder for the admiration
of the crowd, besides
being a would-be politician
who tries to leave a door
open behind himself while
keeping on good terms
with the jingoes of his
party.
Cubans Rise in Revolt
• Hearst called down to Cuba, “You supply
the pictures, I’ll supply the story.”
• What really happened?
– an accidental explosion had basically blown
up the ship—a similar conclusion to what
Spanish investigators suggested—but
America ignored them.
• American public wanted war
• McKinley privately didn’t like war or the
• Wall Street didn’t want war because it
would upset business
“Yellow Journalism” & Jingoism
Joseph Pulitzer
William Randolph Hearst
Hearst to Frederick Remington:
You furnish the pictures,
and I’ll furnish the war!
Remember the Maine
and to Hell with Spain!
Funeral for Maine
victims in Havana
Cubans Rise in Revolt
• April 11, 1898, the president sent his war
message to Congress anyway, since:
– (1) war with Spain seemed inevitable
– (2) America had to defend democracy
– (3) opposing a war could split the Republican party
and America.
• Congress also adopted the Teller Amendment
– proclaimed that when the U.S. had overthrown
Spanish misrule, it would give the Cubans their
freedom and not conquer it.
Dewey’s May Day Victory at Manila
• On paper, at least, Spanish had advantage over
U.S.
– more troops
– a supposedly better army
– younger (& seemingly more daring) generals
• Navy Secretary John D. Long & his assistant
secretary, T. Roosevelt modernized U.S. navy
– February 25, 1898, Roosevelt cabled Commodore
George Dewey, commanding the American Asiatic
Squadron at Hong Kong
• told him to take over the Philippines.
• Dewey did so brilliantly, completely taking over
the islands from the Spanish.
Theodore Roosevelt
Assistant Secretary
of the Navy in the
McKinley
administration.
Imperialist and
American nationalist.
Criticized President
McKinley as having
the backbone of a
chocolate éclair!
Resigns his position to
fight in Cuba.
Dewey’s May Day Victory at Manila
• August 13, 1898, American troops arrived
& captured Manila
• They collaborated w/ Filipino insurgents,
led by Emilio Aguinaldo, to overthrow the
Spanish rulers.
• On July 7, 1898, U.S. annexed Hawaii (so
that it could use the islands to support
Dewey, supposedly)
– Hawaii received full territorial status in 1900.
The Confused Invasion of Cuba
• Spanish sent warships to Cuba
• American ground troops, led by General
William R. Shafter, were ill-prepared for
combat in the tropical environment
– i.e. they had woolen long underwear
• “Rough Riders,”
– regiment of volunteers led by Theodore
Roosevelt & Colonel Leonard Wood
– rushed to Cuba & battled at El Caney stormed
up San Juan Hill.
The Confused Invasion of Cuba
• Soon afterwards--August 12, 1898
– Spain signed an armistice.
• IF the Spaniards had held out for a few
more months, they might have won
– American army was plagued w/ dysentery,
typhoid, & yellow fever
The
“Rough
Riders”
The Spanish-American War (1898):
“That Splendid Little War”
How prepared was the US for war?
The Treaty of Paris: 1898
Cuba was freed from Spanish rule.
Spain gave up Puerto Rico and the island of
Guam.
The U. S. paid Spain
$20 mil. for the
Philippines.
The U. S. becomes
an imperial power!
America’s Course (Curse?) of Empire
• When U.S. took Philippines, uproar broke
out, why?
– until now, US had mostly acquired territory from
the American continent
– even with Alaska, Hawaii, & the other
scattered islands, there weren’t many people
living there.
• Anti-Imperialist League is formed:
– firmly opposed to this new imperialism of America
– members included Mark Twain, William James,
Samuel Gompers, and Andrew Carnegie.
– Even the Filipinos wanted freedom & denying that
to them was un-American.
The American Anti-Imperialist
League
Founded in 1899.
Mark Twain, Andrew
Carnegie, William
James, and William
Jennings Bryan among
the leaders.
Campaigned against
the annexation of the
Philippines and other
acts of imperialism.
America’s Course (Curse?) of Empire
• Expansionists say that the Philippines could
become another Hong Kong.
– British writer Rudyard Kipling wrote about “The White
Man’s Burden,” urging America to keep the
Philippines and “civilize them.”
• In the Senate, the treaty was almost not passed
– finally, William Jennings Bryan argued for its passage
• said that the sooner the treaty was passed, the sooner the
U.S. could get rid of the Philippines.
• The treaty passed by only one vote.
Puerto Rico: 1898
1900 - Foraker Act.
 PR became an “unincorporated territory.”
 Citizens of PR, not of the US.
 Import duties on PR goods
1901-1903  the Insular Cases.
 Constitutional rights were not automatically
extended to territorial possessions.
 Congress had the power to decide these rights.
 Import duties laid down by the Foraker Act
were legal!
Puerto Rico: 1898
1917 – Jones Act.
 Gave full territorial status to PR.
 Removed tariff duties on PR goods coming
into the US.
 PRs elected their
own legislators &
governor to enforce
local laws.
 PRs could NOT vote
in US presidential
elections.
 A resident commissioner was sent to
Washington to vote for PR in the House.
Perplexities in Puerto Rico & Cuba
• Cuba
– America couldn’t improve it that much
– Did rid of yellow fever w/ the help of General
Leonard Wood and Dr. Walter Reed
– 1902: U.S. walks away from Cuba
– encouraged Cuba to write & pass the Platt
Amendment, which became their constitution
• (1) the U.S. could intervene and restore order in
case of anarchy
• (2) that the U.S. could trade freely with Cuba
• (3) that the U.S. could get two bays for naval
bases, notably Guantanamo Bay.
Cuban Independence?
Platt Amendment (1903)
Senator
Orville Platt
1. Cuba was not to enter into any agreements with foreign
powers that would endanger its independence.
2. The U.S. could intervene in Cuban affairs if necessary
to maintain an efficient, independent govt.
3. Cuba must lease Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. for naval
and coaling station.
4. Cuba must not build up an excessive public debt.
New Horizons in Two Hemispheres
• Spanish-American War lasted only 113
days:
– AFFIRMED AMERICA’S PRESENCE AS A
WORLD POWER.
– America’s actions after the war made its
German rival jealous
– Made Latin American neighbors suspicious
– Narrowed the bloody chasm b/w the U.S.
North & South, which had been formed in the
Civil War.
“Little Brown Brothers” in the Philippines
• The Filipinos had assumed that they would
receive freedom after the SpanishAmerican War
– they didn’t
– they revolted against the U.S.
– Insurrection began on February 4, 1899,
• led by Emilio Aguinaldo
– took his troops into guerrilla warfare after open combat
proved to be useless
• Stories of atrocities abounded
• rebellion was broken in 1901 when U.S. soldiers
invaded Aguinaldo’s headquarters & captured him
Emilio Aguinaldo
Leader of the Filipino
Uprising.
July 4, 1946:
Philippine independence
“Little Brown Brothers” in the Philippines
• President McKinley formed a Philippine
Commission in 1899
– deal with the Filipinos
– in its second year, the organization was
headed by William Howard Taft
• He developed a strong attachment for the Filipinos,
calling them his “little brown brothers.”
• Americans tried to assimilate the Filipinos,
– islanders resisted
– finally got their independence on July 4, 1946.
William H. Taft, 1st
Gov.-General of the Philippines
Great administrator.
Hinging the Open Door in China
• Background:
– Following its defeat by Japan in 1894-1895,
China had been carved into “spheres of
influence” by the European powers.
• Americans = alarmed
• churches worried about their missionary
strongholds
• businesses feared that they would not be
able to export their products to China.
Hinging the Open Door in China
• Secretary of State John Hay dispatched his
famous Open Door note:
– urged the European nations to keep fair competition
open to all nations willing and wanting to participate
– became the “Open Door Policy.”
• All the powers already holding spots of China
didn’t like
– only Italy, which had no sphere of influence of its own,
accepted unconditionally.
• Russia didn’t accept it at all
• Other nations did, on certain conditions,
• Thus, China was “saved” from being carved up.
The Open Door Policy
Secretary John Hay.
Give all nations equal
access to trade in China.
Guaranteed that China would NOT be taken
over by any one foreign power.
Hinging the Open Door in China
• Boxers’ Rebellion (1900)
– super-patriotic group known as the “Boxers”
revolted & took over the capital of China,
Beijing, taking all foreigners hostage,
including diplomats
– a multi-national force broke the rebellion
• powers made China pay $333 million for damages,
• U.S. eventually received $18 million
– Fearing that the European powers would
carve China up for good, now, John Hay
officially asked that China not be carved.
The Boxer Rebellion: 1900
The Peaceful Harmonious Fists.
“55 Days at Peking.”
The
Open Door
Policy
America as a Pacific Power
Imperialism or Bryanism in 1900?
• Election of 1900:
– McKinley sits on his front porch & Bryan actively &
personally campaigns
– Theodore Roosevelt’s (McKinley’s VP choice) active
campaigning took the momentum away from Bryan’s.
– Bryan’s supporters concentrated on imperialism—a bad
move
• Americans were tired of the subject
– McKinley’s supporters claimed that “Bryanism,” not
imperialism, was the problem,
• if Bryan became president, he would shake up the prosperity that
was in America at the time;
• McKinley won easily.
TR: Brandisher of the Big Stick
• William McKinley is assassinated 6 months
after election
• Theodore Roosevelt = the youngest president
ever at age 42
• TR promised to carry out McKinley’s policies.
– Born into a rich family
– graduate from Harvard
– highly energetic and spirited
– his motto = “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” or
basically, “Let your actions do the talking.”
TR: Brandisher of the Big Stick
• Roosevelt
– developed into a master politician
– a maverick uncontrollable by party machines
– he believed that a president should lead
– =the “first modern president.”
Building the Panama Canal
• Background:
– during the Spanish-American War, the
battleship U.S.S. Oregon had been forced go
around the tip of South America to join the
fleet in Cuba
• Such a waterway would also make
defense of the recent island acquisitions
easier (i.e. Philippines, Puerto Rico,
Guam, Hawaii).
Building the Panama Canal
• the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with
Britain had forbade the construction by
either country of a canal in the Americas
without the other’s consent and help, but
• Nullified in 1901 by the Hay-Pauncefote
Treaty
Building the Panama Canal
• A Nicaraguan route = possible place for a
canal
– opposed by the old French Canal Company
that was eager to build in Panama
• Wanted to salvage something from their costly
failure there.
• Their leader = Philippe Bunau-Varilla.
• The U.S. finally chose Panama after
Mount Pelée erupted and killed 30,000
people.
Building the Panama Canal
• U.S. negotiated a deal that would buy a 6mile-wide strip of land in Panama for $10
million and a $250,000 annual payment
– treaty was retracted by the Colombian
government, which owned Panama
– TR = furious
• wanted construction of the canal to begin before
the 1904 campaign.
Building the Panama Canal
• TR & the U.S. decided time for action
– November 3, 1903, another revolution in Panama began
with the killing of a Chinese civilian and a donkey
– when Colombia tried to stop it, the U.S., citing an 1846
treaty with Colombia, wouldn’t let the Colombian fleet
through
– Panama =recognized by the U.S.
– 15 days later, Bunau-Varilla, the Panamanian minister
despite his French nationality,
signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty
• gave a widened (6x10 mi.) Panamanian zone to the U.S. for $15
million.
Building the Panama Canal
• 1904, construction began on the Panama Canal
– problems with landslides and sanitation occurred.
– Colonel George Washington Goethals finally organized
the workers
– Colonel William C. Gorgas exterminated yellow fever.
• When TR visited Panama in 1906, he was the first
U.S. president to leave America for foreign soil.
• canal was finally finished & opened in 1914, at a
cost of $400 million.
Panama Canal
TR in Panama
(Construction begins in
1904)
TR’s Perversion of the
Monroe Doctrine
• Latin American nations like Venezuela &
the Dominican Republic were having a
hard time paying their debts to their
European debtors
– Britain & Germany decided to send force to
South America to make the Latinos pay
TR’s Perversion of the
Monroe Doctrine
• TR feared that if European powers interfered in the
Americas to collect debts, they might then stay in
Latin America
• =blatant violation of the Monroe Doctrine
• so he issued his Roosevelt Corollary
– stated that in future cases of debt problems, the U.S. would take
over and handle any intervention in Latin America on behalf of
Europe, thus keeping Europe away & the Monroe Doctrine
intact.
• said in effect, no one could bully Latin America except the U.S.
• Corollary didn’t bear too well with Latin America, whose countries
once again felt that Uncle Sam was being overbearing.
The Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine: 1905
Chronic wrongdoing… may
in America, as elsewhere,
ultimately require
intervention by some
civilized nation, and in the
Western Hemisphere the
adherence of the United
States to the Monroe
Doctrine may force the
United States, however
reluctantly, in flagrant
cases of such wrongdoing
or impotence, to the
exercise of an
international police power .
Speak Softly,
But Carry a Big Stick!
Roosevelt on the World Stage
• Background:
– 1904--Japan attacked Russia (Russia had been in
Manchuria) & proceeded to administer a series of
humiliating victories until the Japanese began to run short
on men
– they approached Theodore Roosevelt to facilitate a peace
treaty
– Treaty of Portsmouth (in NH, 1905)
• both sides met, & though both were stubborn (Japan wanted all
of the strategic island of Sakhalin while the Russians disagreed)
• TR negotiated a deal in which Japan got half of Sakhalin but no
indemnity for its losses.
– TR: Receives the Nobel Peace Prize for this
– America lost allies in Russia & Japan, neither of which felt
that it had received its fair share of winnings.
Japanese Laborers in California
• After the war, many Japanese immigrants poured
into California, and fears of a “yellow peril” arose
again.
• The showdown came in 1906 after the San
Francisco earthquake when the city decreed that,
due to lack of space, Chinese, Japanese, &
Korean children should attend a special school
– became an international issue, but TR settled it
eventually.
– San Francisco would not displace students while
Japan would keep its laborers in Japan.
Gentleman’s Agreement: 1908
A Japanese note agreeing
to deny passports to
laborers entering the U.S.
Japan recognized the U.S.
right to exclude Japanese
immigrants holding passports
issued by other countries.
The U.S. government got the
school board of San Francisco
to rescind their order to
segregate Asians in separate
schools.
1908  Root-Takahira Agreement
pledged the U.S. and Japan to respect each
other’s territorial possessions in the Pacific and
to uphold the Open Door Policy in China.
The Cares of a Growing Family
Constable of the World
Roosevelt on the World Stage
• To impress the Japanese, Roosevelt sent
his entire battleship fleet, “The Great
White Fleet,” around the world for a
tour, and it received tremendous salutes in
Latin America, New Zealand, Hawaii,
Australia, and Japan, helping relieve
tensions.
The Great White Fleet: 1907