The United States: An Expansionist Country

The United States has been an expansionist country since the pilgrims landed. Until the US established them selves as a definite world power, they had shown themselves to be a very expansionist country. The imperialism of the 1900s may have departed from past actions in terms of size and ambition, but the fundamental reasons and drive for expansion remained the same throughout much of America’s history. Past expansion of the US includes the Manifest Destiny-driven push to the West coast, the annexation of Texas, and the purchase of Alaska. Around the close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the United States was an expansionism; such events include the Spanish-American War and the annexation of Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The Spanish-American war was fought in Cuba and the Philippines and was the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence. The U.S. joined because of the Spanish’s treatment of the Cubans and they blamed Spain for the sinking of the USS Maine. The war only lasted for ten weeks; however, the U.S. gained Hawaii as the fiftieth state and received Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as territories. At the time, the U.S. was very jingoistic and thought they could just take what they wanted (B). This idea is what led to expanding outside of the continental U.S. The U.S. gained Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines as a result of the Treaty of Paris in 1898. The U.S. also gained temporary control of Cuba, which somewhat still exists today with Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. definitely received the favorable end of the deal. The Kingdom of Hawaii was sovereign from 1810 until 1893 when resident American businessmen overthrew the monarchy. Hawaii was annexed by the U.S. but did not become a state until 1959. The United States’ began expanding ever since the original thirteen colonies. Every country desires additional land for resources and economic reasons. After the United States had established itself as a world power, its expansionism did not stop there, the US then set its sights on the countries it sought, in particular the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Hawaii. Not to mention that the other world powers were not picking and choosing what they wanted as well, Britain and Japan were claiming all the weak territories they could on the other side of the world (A). America has also always been very interested in its own economy and making sure that no European countries such as Germany and Britain could dominate economically (C).