Pageant , Chapter 27 Study Guide
Empire and Expansion
1890-1909
Part 1 - (pp.607-612)
Why did most Americans take little interest in the outside world in the years immediately following the Civil War?
How was America’s position at the end of the century and “astonishing departure” from its anticolonial traditions?
What developments “fed the nation’s ambition for overseas expansion”?
“Yellow press
How did Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge interpret Darwinism?
What happened to Africa in the 1880s and China in the 1890s
Alfred Thayer Mahan
“Big Sister” policy and first Pan-American Conference (1889)
The Venezuela-British Guiana Boundary dispute
-What? U.S. involvement?
The Great Rapprochement
Hawaii
-Why important? What happened? What significance does this hold in the
“imperialistic debate?” What do the authors think of Cleveland’s actions?
Cuba revolt/ insurrectos
/General “Butcher” Weyler
What was the U.S. reaction to events in Cuba? How did Cleveland respond?
Battleship Maine
/”Remember the Maine!”
-What happened to it? According to a 1976 report, what caused the accident?
What was the significance of this event at the time?
What role did yellow journalism play in whipping up support for war?
According to the authors, why did McKinley decide to go to war with Spain?
Teller Amendment
Part 2 - (pp.612-621)
What were the advantages and disadvantages of each side going into the war?

Annexation of Hawaii
“Rough Riders”/Teddy Roosevelt/San Juan Hill
Puerto Rico
What do the authors mean when they say, “Profits thus joined hands with piety,” when referring to the acquisition of the Philippines?
Why did the signing of the pact of Paris touch off, “one of the most impassioned debates in American history?”
Anti-Imperialist League
What arguments did anti-imperialists use?
What arguments did expansionists use?
Bryan’s role in approval of the treaty
Foraker Act (1900)
Insular Cases
General Leonard Wood
Platt Amendment (1901)
What do the authors mean by, “Despite a common misconception, the conflict did not cause the United States to become a world power?”
What were some of the significant results of the “splendid little war?”
How did the war close the “bloody chasm”?
Part 3 - (pp.621-633)
Philippine insurrection
-When? Why? What?
-When did the Philippines finally receive independence?
William Howard Taft
“benevolent assimilation”
Why were many Americans alarmed by the “vivisection” of China?
John Hay/”Open Door” note
Boxer Rebellion
-What? Response?

-In what way was the role contrary to its earlier principles?
-How did the U.S. handle its share of the indemnity?
Election of 1900
-Who? Outcome?
-How/why did Teddy Roosevelt become VP?
-What was paramount issue in the election according to the Democrats?
-What did Republicans mean when they charged that “Byranism” was the paramount issue?
-Mandate for the two “Ps”
What happened to McKinley in 1901?
How do the authors describe Theodore Roosevelt? What do they mean when say he was a “direct actionist?”
How was Roosevelt’s knowledge of the outside world different from that of most of his predecessors?
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (1901)
Panama Canal
-How did Panama become the site?
-When was work completed? Cost?
How was the U.S. perceived by Latin America?
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
-What? How was this different from the Monroe Doctrine itself?
-What was it “dark side?”
Dominican Republic (1905)
Cuba (1906)
Russo-Japanese War/Treaty of Portsmouth
-What? Result? Impact on American relations with Russian and Japan?
Gentlemen’s Agreement (1907-1908)
The Great White Fleet
Root-Takahira agreement (1908)
Part 4-
Varying Viewpoints
-What was Richard Hofstadter’s view of American imperialism?
-What was the revisionist/New Left view of it?
-What is the criticism of this perspective?
-Upon what factors have more recent historians focused?

Julius Pratt, Expansionists of 1898 (1951).
A traditional view of imperialism:


“The Manifest Destiny of the 1840s had been largely a matter of emotion. Much of it had been simply one expression of a half-blind faith in the superior virility of the American race and the superior beneficence of American political institutions. In the intervening years, much had been done to provide this emotional concept with a philosophic backing.… Farfetched and fallacious as their reasoning may appear to us, it nevertheless carried conviction.… The observation must be made that the rise of an expansionist philosophy in the United States owed little to economic influences.… The need of American business for colonial markets and fields for investment was discovered not by businessmen but by historians and other intellectuals, by journalists and politicians.”
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1959).
A revisionist view of imperialism as a product of economic expansionism:
“Men like McKinley and other national leaders thought about America’s problems and welfare in an inclusive, systematized way that emphasized economics. Wanting democracy and social peace, they argued that economic depression threatened those objectives, and concluded that overseas economic expansion provided a primary means of ending that danger. They did not want war per se, let alone war in order to increase their own personal fortunes. But their conception of the world ultimately led them into war in order to solve the problems in the way that they considered necessary and best.”
1. Which of these two interpretations better explains (a) the war with Spain, (b) the decision to keep the Philippines, and (c) the U.S. involvement as a great power in world affairs?
2. Which historian would see American imperialism more as inevitable, and which would see it more as a matter of choice?
3. Which of the two would judge American imperialism more harshly as a violation of moral principles and a threat to American democracy?
Part 5-
Develop a draft thesis statement that explains/addresses American foreign policy in the late 19 th /early 20 th centuries. (This is your own thesis based upon the content in chapter 27, not one based upon a particular question.