Essay On Spanish American Imperialism

Before 1898 the United States had, for the most part, stayed within its continental borders, focusing on transforming itself from a weak divided nation to a more united and strong nation. The decades leading to 1898 heralded tumultuous change in American military and consumer culture, which shockingly relate to one another in more ways than one. For instance, both catalyzed the call for America to expand and move away from being a “hermit nation…living off its own fat.” In a collective voice, American Imperialists, such as, President Theodore Roosevelt and Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, declared it was time for the United States to become the great superpower it was destined to be, and as the Spanish Empire was taking its last spastic breath in Cuba before its overdue death the United States involved itself in its first overseas war.
Although this war led to the expansion of American influence in the aforementioned regions and its markets it also redefined colonialism. The western hemisphere by
empire and the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War because this location, according to many scholars was the stepping stone for the U.S. in gaining access to the rest of the Caribbean, Central and South America. Moreover it laid the foundations for military interventions in many of Latina America’s most vulnerable countries, such as Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. In other words, the Platt Amendment was the key that opened the door for United States expansion in the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Thus, laying the foundations for the U.S. to easily intervene militaristically in those regions for natural resources to expand their capitalist