In the late 19th century, a series of converging ideas began to popularize the case for American imperialism. The American frontier had closed. New frontiers needed to be found, according to some, in order to preserve the values of individualism, entrepreneurship, and freedom that had characterized the romantic vision of Western expansion.
Other reasons also played a role. The late 19th century had seen European powers rapidly seize colonies across Asia and Africa. The latest news about this or that imperial conquest by European power was hard to ignore because millions of Americans had become avid readers of newspapers.
These newspapers practiced a form of journalism known as Yellow Journalism. Yellow Journalism did not overly concern itself with facts, but rather it focused on sensationalist telling of stories with bold headlines and lurid recounting of treachery. The stories about European imperial adventures did not lead people to the direct conclusion that foreign territorial conquest by America was necessary. But it did alarm many Americans who wondered whether the United States was somehow in danger by European expansion.
There was a strong commercial rationale for imperialism as well. Simply put, American manufacturers needed new markets to continue to grow and employ workers. Foreign expansion could deliver new markets where those goods...
could be sold. And overall, there was a strong element of racial superiority in the call for empire. The imperial powers must take up the white man's burden of ruling darker-skinned peoples around the world.
As we see in this ad for Peers Soap, the white man's burden meant foreign rule would have a civilizing effect. It would make subjected peoples better off. As the ad suggests, it would make them cleaner. In order to impart these lessons, imperial control would deliver better government, as defined in this cartoon on the right as railroads and infrastructure, Christianity, and Western education.
Imperialism was a largely abstract issue for Americans, until really the late 1890s, when the U.S. would formally annex Hawaii. The first American missionaries arrived in Hawaii back in 1820, but beyond preaching the gospel, missionaries often worked alongside businessmen, who were largely sugar planters. Over the course of the century, Hawaii came to be dominated by a handful of sugar companies. together known as the Big Five.
The white American elite who ran these companies were extremely powerful, and they brokered a series of treaties between the Hawaiian government and the U.S. government. In 1887, for instance, Hawaii allowed the U.S. to install a naval base on the islands called Pearl Harbor, but These businesses still operated outside the formal expression of American state power, and problems arose for the sugar planters in 1893 when a new queen took power in Hawaii. She sought to undo the generous terms enjoyed by American businesses, and she sought to get rid of the U.S. naval base.
The American businessmen overthrew her. They ended the Hawaiian monarchy, and they began encouraging the U.S. to directly acquire the islands. The U.S. did so five years later, annexing the Hawaiian islands and its rich plantations as part of the United States.
The annexation of Hawaii wasn't something the U.S. government really set out to do. The American businesses on the islands... had just managed to create a web of ties that compelled the U.S. to act by 1898. And so we see here a cartoon of the U.S. annexation of Hawaii depicted as a shotgun wedding with the Hawaiian bride not at all eager about the arrangement. The larger, more appealing target of American imperialism was Cuba, just 90 miles off the tip of Florida. Cuba was controlled by Spain.
and it was the last major European colony in Latin America. Since the 1860s, Cuban nationalists had been pushing for independence. The nationalists staged a rebellion against Spanish colonial rule in 1868, and that lasted for 10 years before being crushed.
17 years later, in 1895, the Cubans launched a second rebellion, relying primarily... on guerrilla tactics as they fought against the Spanish. The Spanish responded with harsh policies, the most notorious of which was the establishment of re-concentration camps into which great numbers of Cuban civilians were herded to separate them from the rebels.
A lack of adequate food and sanitation caused the deaths of tens of thousands of these Cuban civilians. Yellow journalists seized on the mistreatment to portray Cuba in article after article as a place that would be less backward and more developed if only Spanish rule on the island were ended. With Cuba gaining headlines, President William McKinley's administration pressured the Spanish to end human rights violations. But these pleas were... largely ineffective.
Then the U.S. sent a battleship there. Under the guise of monitoring the situation, the USS Maine docked in Havana Harbor for two weeks. Then on the night of February the 15th, 1898, the Maine exploded in Havana Harbor. 260 American sailors were killed.
The explosion was likely a boiler accident. In fact, the Cuban colonial government's official report of the incident said that an explosion on board caused the ship to sink. But the major New York newspapers, one led by William Randolph Hearst, the other led by Joseph Pulitzer, which between them were the biggest publishers of newspapers in America, and also the pioneers of yellow journalism, well, they began to circulate accusations that a Spanish mine in Havana's harbor had sunk the main. As we see in this front page story from Pulitzer's newspaper, The World, the American public became convinced that it had been the result of Spanish treachery.
In April, after a few weeks of diplomatic pressure on the Spanish, McKinley requested from Congress the authority to use force in Cuba. Two weeks later, Congress declared war on Spain. The Spanish-American War was the shortest and most decisive in U.S. history. Hundreds of thousands of American men volunteered for military service.
Among them was Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned from his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to raise his own regiment in order to participate in the invasion of Cuba. But even before that offensive in Cuba took place, a U.S. victory against the Spanish halfway around the world helped redraw the world map. It was in the Philippines. This Spanish colony, a vast collection of islands in the Pacific, held great strategic value. U.S. expansionists and business interests were eager to gain access to the lucrative markets of Asia.
And the U.S. Navy saw the Philippines as an important base for refueling ships in the Pacific. Only a week after America declared war against Spain, Commodore George Dewey led the U.S. Pacific Fleet into Manila Bay. and quickly defeated a weak Spanish navy there.
U.S. troops subsequently landed and secured the islands as American possessions. Two months later, the American army began its assault on Cuba. The most publicized land battle of the war involved the assault on San Juan Hill, outside of Santiago, Cuba. The assault...
was made by the regiment led by Theodore Roosevelt, a group that Roosevelt named the Rough Riders. And by the way, the name Rough Riders was taken from the group of horsemen and performers in Buffalo Beal's Wild West show. Roosevelt was an imperialist. He believed war would unite the nation and its men, that war was a purifying experience.
and he thought that it would restore masculinity to the American male. Although Roosevelt organized the Rough Riders to be a cross-section of America, it excluded blacks. In fact, black cavalrymen, the Buffalo Soldiers, had already taken the top of San Juan Hill before Roosevelt arrived, but he neglected to mention that in his account. And it was Roosevelt's account that made the headlines of the sensationalist newspapers. A member of one of New York's wealthiest families, Roosevelt not only paid out of his own pocket for the expenses of his regiment, he also paid journalists handsomely to write stories about his exploits, which were then enlivened, burnishing the battlefield accomplishment of Roosevelt's men and captivating American readers.
On August 12, 1898, the U.S. and Spain signed a ceasefire, ending all hostilities. In the treaty that followed, the United States acquired from Spain control of Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. These were large, wealthy territories, and only a few hundred Americans died in the war, making it, according to one American diplomat, A splendid little war. Suddenly, the young republic had become an imperial power, and no one benefited more than Theodore Roosevelt.
By one account, some 75% of the news articles published during the brief conflict in Cuba mentioned Roosevelt's Rough Riders. His exploits made him a national hero. and he quickly parlayed that fame into a meteoric political career.
Upon his return to the U.S., he was quickly elected New York's governor. Then, barely two years later, McKinley named Roosevelt as his vice president in 1900. But the United States soon discovered that imperialism was a complicated business.