Spanish American Imperialism

During the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States emerged as victors of the Spanish American war. As a result, they received territorial concession on behalf of the Spanish. These territorial gains were the start of an era of American imperialism and expansion. This expansion was both a continuation and a departure from previous foreign policy and expansion.
American imperialism demonstrated the same cultural and social justification of previous expansionism. Manifest destiny emerged in the 1840s and advocated a belief that America was destined by God to expand its borders across the continent in order to spread the blessings of liberty. As Senator Albert J. Beveridge explains in his 1900 speech to 56th Congress, this belief was
equally influential in later imperial America; he expresses the Americans’ self-recognition as God’s chosen people, a race not only blessed, but bound by a holy duty to enlighten the rest of the world through their own expansion. This idea was also expressed in the poem “The White Man’s Burden”, by Rudyard Kipling. This poem expressed the idea that it was the social responsibility of the American race to elevate the primitive peoples of the earth. Josiah Strong reaffirmed this ideology in his book Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis as he described the holy mission of the Anglo-Saxon race to spread civil liberty and Christianity throughout continents across the globe. He thereby justified American imperialism with an assertion of cultural and racial superiority that had been a motivation of American expansion since the early nineteenth century. Although expansionism around the year 1900 shared some similar motivation with that of earlier decades, it was also the result of new economic and political pursuits.
Past expansion had involved annexing nearby territory, such as land next to existing states that enabled the spread of American settlement; it helped to encourage the spread of agriculture and the American population, and the new territories were intended to become states. However, in the age of imperialism, new territory was acquired with the economic intent of use as a colony. It would provide raw materials and markets for the products of American factories. By denying citizenship to the inhabitants of the territory of the Philippines in the Insular Case Downes v. Bidwell the Supreme Court demonstrated that the Constitution did not “follow the flag”, therefore proving that the United States had no intention of granting new territories equal status to states. They would instead become colonies serving American economic interests that differed with the settlement-based expansion of past
decades.
Another departure from past expansionism that served as a political motivation of imperialism was the United States’ attempt to become a world power.
In The Interest of America in Sea Power, Alfred T. Mahan expressed the need for America to prevent foreign acquisition of ideal territories that would serve American economic interests. He further mentioned the pressure that other expanding empires were putting upon the United States to acquire crucial territories before other world powers did. This pressure was also illustrated in Thomas Nast’s cartoon, “The World’s Plunderers.” It shows how world powers such as Germany, Britain, and Russia chose the countries they wanted to colonize at will. Theodore Roosevelt answered this demand by supporting the entering into the Spanish-American war, to acquire new territory. As president of the United States, Roosevelt would also be an advocate of America as a world power. He expressed in his Annual Message to Congress the responsibility of the United States to keep social and political stability of all nations in the Western Hemisphere. He compared his nation to an international police force that will dominate the affairs of all Latin American nations. This idea is also expressed in a famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” This political motivation was new to American imperialism, since past expansionism had only extended the country’s borders and maintained its policy of isolationism, as all
presidents before Roosevelt had done.
The idea that it was the white man’s responsibility to civilize minorities was also seen in America in the 19th century. Whites established Carlisle schools for Native Americans. These schools took Native American children from a young age and sought to rid the children of their Native American culture. The school also forced the children to wear “civilized” clothing and have “normal” haircuts.
The early twentieth century fostered an era of American expansionism that contrasted with past principles in its pursuit of economic and political interests, while it maintained cultural and social incentives of past continental expansion. As the United States began to acquire a colonial empire however, it justified imperialism with the notion of Manifest Destiny. The pursuit of new territory promoted American imperialism and ultimately aided the establishment of America as a world power.