5.1 US Imperialism & the Spanish-American War

From Continental to Overseas Expansion

By the 1890s the continental frontier was closed, and American leaders looked outward. Imperialism, the policy of extending a nation's power over foreign lands and peoples, replaced the earlier Manifest Destiny drive across North America. A common Regents trap is confusing the two: Manifest Destiny justified settling the continent, while imperialism justified acquiring overseas colonies and coaling stations. Both rested on a belief in American superiority, but they operated in different geographic and moral contexts.

Three motives drove expansion, and stimulus questions expect you to identify them from a document or cartoon:

• Economic: closed frontier, industrial overproduction, and the search for new markets and raw materials abroad.
• Military and strategic: Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, in The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), argued that global power required a strong navy, overseas bases, and coaling stations.
• Cultural and ideological: Social Darwinism, missionary zeal, and the racialized idea of a 'civilizing mission' (later voiced in Rudyard Kipling's phrase 'the white man's burden').

Early acquisitions previewed the shift. The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 ('Seward's Folly'), and in 1898 it annexed the independent republic of Hawaii, whose planter class had overthrown Queen Liliuokalani in 1893.

The Spanish-American War, 1898

The war grew out of the Cuban independence struggle against Spain. Three causes recur on the exam:

1. Yellow journalism: sensational, exaggerated newspapers run by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer inflamed public sympathy for Cuba and outrage at Spain.
2. The USS Maine: the battleship exploded in Havana harbor in February 1898, killing about 260 sailors; 'Remember the Maine!' became a war cry although the cause was uncertain.
3. Economic interests: American investment in Cuban sugar.

Congress declared war in April 1898. The conflict lasted roughly ten weeks, prompting Secretary of State John Hay to call it a 'splendid little war.' Fighting spread beyond Cuba to Spain's Pacific colony: Commodore George Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines. The Treaty of Paris (1898) ended the war.

The Philippines exposed the central contradiction of imperialism. The Anti-Imperialist League (Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and others) argued that ruling a colony without consent violated the Declaration of Independence's principle of self-government. A frequent document-based item pairs an imperialist claim with an anti-imperialist rebuttal and asks you to identify the point of view.

Building an American Empire in Practice

The Open Door Policy

In 1899-1900, Secretary of State John Hay issued the Open Door notes, asking European powers and Japan to guarantee equal trading access to China rather than carving it into exclusive colonies. The goal was commercial, not territorial: the U.S. wanted markets, not a Chinese colony. When the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion erupted in 1900, the U.S. joined an international force to suppress it and reaffirmed the Open Door.

The Panama Canal and Roosevelt Corollary

President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy is captured by 'Speak softly and carry a big stick.' Two applications dominate the exam:

• Panama Canal: after Colombia rejected a canal treaty, the U.S. supported a Panamanian revolt in 1903, then signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty for the Canal Zone. Opened in 1914, the canal linked the Atlantic and Pacific, cut the sea voyage between the coasts by roughly 8,000 miles, and boosted U.S. naval and commercial power.
• Roosevelt Corollary (1904): an addition to the Monroe Doctrine asserting that the U.S. could act as an 'international police power' in the Western Hemisphere to prevent European intervention in Latin America. It justified repeated interventions in the Caribbean and Central America.

Later presidents adapted the approach: Taft's Dollar Diplomacy used investment, and Wilson's Moral Diplomacy claimed to promote democracy, yet both continued interventions. A geographic-reasoning item may show a map of U.S. bases in Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines and ask what claim it best supports; the answer is that the U.S. had become a Pacific and Caribbean power with a strategic overseas empire.

Common Traps and Exam Tips

Several distinctions decide close multiple-choice items in this section:

• Manifest Destiny vs. imperialism: Manifest Destiny was continental (settling North America); imperialism was overseas (colonies and bases). If a document mentions Hawaii, the Philippines, or Cuba, think imperialism.
• Cuba vs. Puerto Rico: after 1898, Cuba became independent (though limited by the Platt Amendment), while Puerto Rico was ceded to the U.S. and its residents later gained citizenship. Mixing these up is a frequent error.
• Open Door = trade, not territory: the policy sought equal commercial access to China, so any answer implying U.S. annexation of China is wrong.
• Roosevelt Corollary expanded, not limited, involvement: it justified intervention, so eliminate any 'non-involvement' option.

Worked example: a 1901 editorial argues the U.S. must keep the Philippines to spread civilization and secure Pacific trade. Ask for the author's purpose (to justify empire) and the counterargument an anti-imperialist would raise (ruling a people without their consent contradicts the Declaration of Independence). Naming the point of view and the historical context is exactly what Part II short-essay reliability questions reward.