all right this is openstax u.s history chapter 22 age of empire american foreign policy 1890-1914 we'll be looking at section one here turner mahan and the roots of empire so thus far we've been focusing and this was covered in some of the previous chapters in a time period known as the gilded age and the gilded age stretches you know roughly from you know we might say 1870 to about you know we'll say 1914 uh just for to use this date right here and this was what was going on mostly you know domestically talked about how the united states transformed itself from kind of a minor power into a major military power of the world a major economic power of the world that a lot had gone on specifically in this time period at home but now we're going to look at what the united states is doing in terms of foreign policy so there is some overlap with some of the domestic things right again domestic being at home in the u.s events going on while you know these events are transpiring overseas so one connection that we can make from the domestic to the foreign is this idea of manifest destiny which had more or less stated that the u.s was destined to stretch from atlantic ocean to pacific you know manifest destiny is related to the west right this was the idea that the united states would stretch across the entire north american continent well this desire to spread you know here in the west and typically we're talking about you know maybe places like california new mexico uh you know we might add you know states like you know i don't know nevada also in this you know this idea of the united states being destined to spread and all the motivations that went behind it you can just kind of take that and extend that overseas and one good way of maybe thinking about american foreign policy during the gilded age is that in some respects it's just a continuation of what's already been going on in the united states in the western territories that rather than california nevada or idaho being the frontier so to speak the new frontier becomes places like cuba hawaii um you know in other territories that are beyond just the continental united states and so uh some of these policies actually uh date back uh prior to the civil war uh but we'll be focusing more so on the ones from the civil war onward william seward he was the secretary of state uh in the 1860s so this was during the civil war under president lincoln and afterwards and he was one of the early pioneers maybe the early arc attacks so he's a early we'll call him architect uh every spell architect of us empire and empire is the desire to acquire overseas territories and some of the ways that he sought to spread america's influence overseas was specifically targeting places like asia and latin america he was responsible for acquiring the midway islands which are located in the pacific ocean uh but perhaps this most well-known and greatest accomplishment was purchasing the alaskan territory this was purchased by the us from russia so this was territory that had previously been claimed by russia alaska if you're not familiar is in the western hemisphere and one of the reasons why william seward wanted to purchase this territory from russia was to get rid of russian influence at the time seward was criticized for this seward's folly as it was called so this was sewards we might call it poor decision to buy alaska and that was at the time a lot of people criticized seward for not making a good deal in the long run it actually turned out to be a fantastic deal for the united states because alaska was much richer in resources especially you know later gold rushes right so gold oil and other valuable natural resources were eventually found in alaska but at the time it was heavily criticized right heavily criticized uh hamilton fish was another i believe he was secretary of state maybe not directly after william seward but a little bit later and one of the things that fish was really trying to do or work to do in terms of america's influence overseas was to negotiate and this is what the alabama claims are negotiate compensation for britons great britain support of the confederacy right so during the civil war the british had allowed the confederacy the group of states that sought to broke away or break away from the union allowed the confederacy to build a number of naval vessels and naval ships in british ports and the united states wanted to seek some sort of redress they essentially wanted great britain to pay the united states for that this was much more about you might say this was much more about gaining international respect from the british again this is still pretty early 1870s 1880s the united states hasn't quite emerged as a major industrial power and other nations don't quite respect the united states like they will on the eve of world war one the united states did get some money back from great britain but not the entire amount that was demanded now even though you had some of these early efforts to expand american influence by seward and fish it really doesn't get started until you start seeing the major economic changes taking place in the gilded age now recall gilded age you know this was the height or not really the height but you had a dramatic increase in material production right sometimes called the machine age you think about rockefeller's oil company carnegie steel company the railroad boom and the effect that the railroads had on pretty much every single other industry that in terms of production the gilded age experienced a very rapid change in producing law and that translated overseas because as much as carnegie wanted to sell steel inside the u.s carnegie also wanted to sell steel outside the u.s and so this this economic pressure right whether it is to find international markets which is essentially people to sell stuff to right or raw materials which of course are the resources needed to produce that this desire to sell stuff and to find valuable resources extended overseas and this was of course in part due to much of the economic change that was taking place at that time uh i don't usually like to talk a lot about statistics but just to give you an idea about u.s trade and how it was affected in these years in 1865 the united states exported 234 million dollars worth of goods by 1898 which is roughly 30 years later within a person's lifetime the united states was now exporting 1.3 billion dollars worth of goods and so all this increase so this is an increase in u.s economic activity overseas you know also led to a lot of desires or need for you know political so for example if you're going to do business in china you need some people who can deal with the chinese government it leads to in some sense cultural if you're going to do business in western africa you need people in the united states who can speak that language or if you're going to do business in germany need people who can speak german and also military you know you can imagine you're shipping 1.3 billion dollars worth of goods around the world you need more protection you need a bigger navy you need a stronger navy you need a navy that can be in germany be in china be in india all at the same time and so you know even though there are a lot of different reasons as to why the us expands overseas and there's a lot of motives behind it one major driving motive is the economics of it right the trade so just talk about some of the other motives of course there were religious motives or cultural motives you had missionary societies that wanted to spread christianity you had other social and cultural motives related to social darwinism this was you know this social darwinism we covered it in a previous chapter this was herbert spencer's take on darwinism applied to societies uh you know this was the idea of the survival of the fittest and what it really helped to do was to justify overseas expansion and at the same time exploitation more or less what social darwinism stated was that there were some societies that were the most fit those were the industrial societies and there were some societies that weren't and so you know if the united states were to go out and conquer a society that it deemed quote unquote less fit at the time being less technologically advanced it was perfectly justified in doing so because that's the way that darwinism works right it's survival of the fittest sink or swim you know whatever it ends up being these ideas related to social darwinism were very very closely related to racial science and ideas about racial superiority uh ideas about you know racial superiority and white supremacy served as a reason as to why the united states was right and justified in going out and conquering uh non-white nations this was probably best expressed in the poem by rudyard kipling called the white man's burden which essentially was a poem written by kipling who was british great britain at the time was kind of the the gold standard of imperialism right so of great britain it was said that the sun never sets on the british empire and pretty much what that meant was that at any given moment because the british empire had more or less conquered the world that there was sun shining on some portion of that empire now the united states has not built an empire that was as big as great britain and the united states was a little bit late to the game when it came to taking over and conquering overseas territories but uh you know the british were encouraging specifically roger kipling to follow the british model and the white man's burden is essentially the burden to uplift uh uplift uncivilized people right that in other words by going out and expanding your territory by exploiting other populations according to roger kipling and according to the white man white man's burden you are doing a service you're doing something good for those people it's not easy you may not want to do it but you're doing the right thing again all of these things help essentially to justify this this is also tied very closely to an id uh an ideology known as paternalism which kind of ties into all these points paternalism is the idea of looking after one's best interests right and specifically this would be of conquered people so this was the belief that you know in this case the united states was doing the right thing by going out and conquering other people because they were bringing civilization and technology and everything else that was supposedly good there uh it should also be noted that paternalism was also the same ideology that a lot of southern slave owners used prior to the civil war the idea being that slave owners were looking after the best interests of their slaves where that wasn't in fact the actual case it only served as a justification for it so again economics religious and social or cultural interests uh you know pretty much pave the way or or outline the type of motives that the united states has to go out and seek overseas territories and so uh on the political front there were a couple of ideas that were very important kind of paving the way for an explosion of american activity overseas uh turner mahan and the plan for empire turner iran are two individuals however we should say that one of the biggest advocates for american empire was theodore roosevelt he had been a secretary of the navy to the navy secretary probably secretary of the navy and later on became president of course and we could say of theodore roosevelt that he was probably one of the i don't know i'll just say biggest biggest advocates for oops u.s expansion biggest advocates for u.s expansion um but two very important authors kind of shaped america's kind of uh viewpoint on how it should approach the world one was frederick jackson turner we'd actually talked about him previously but he wrote in the 1890s the frontier thesis which more or less stated that the west again kind of a point that we talked about up here previously right this idea of manifest destiny but this idea of going westward was the core character of of the united states that you know to be american uh you know you really couldn't have an american identity without the west well beginning the 1890s the west essentially was closed right that there was no more territory out west we talked about this in the previous chapter and instead what should be the new frontier and of course the new frontier that the frontier at home is closed and there's no more room left well where should america expand beyond that and of course what turner was inferring to was overseas territory so again kind of a continuation on manifest destiny the frontier thesis being a publication that was written by turner uh more or less saying that the west was closed time to look for a new frontier alfred t mchand he had been he was in the navy i forgot exactly what his particular position in but he wrote a book called the influence of sea power upon history which more or less stated to be a world power you need to have a what they call the deep water navy you know he had looked at the history of those who were world powers and came to the conclusion that you could only be a world power if you had a deep water navy and what deep water means is that it could go well beyond the shores of one one's country so we had looked at countries like the netherlands and great britain during the 17 and 1800s and what they had in common was they had the most powerful navy in the world and this really influenced the united states to embark on modernizing its navy and building a navy that could rival the rest of the world it said that you had to have naval bases established around the world again at this time uh you know most of these uh are these fleets are primarily fueled by coal so you need calling stations so that if the u.s navy needs to be active in china it doesn't have to go all the way back to the u.s it can have a coaling station somewhere overseas it means that there needs to be some sort of canal construction so the u.s or the navy can travel quicker in order to spread u.s influence of course the proposed canal will eventually be right in this area cutting across central america that was the idea and you can see why a um a a canal here would be important because you know let's say you had a u.s navy that was stationed here you know typically they would have to sail all the way around right south america in order to get to the pacific ocean to attend to any sort of emergency that they would otherwise need to attend to and if there weren't any calling stations and you know the midway islands or any of these other areas well then it would have to go all the way back just to refuel that wouldn't make sense of course this canal makes it easier so that the u.s navy could potentially respond to emergencies in a much quicker way so all this all these suggestions about building uh calling stations and naval bases around the world and building canals so the united states can respond quicker all has to do with this idea that in order to become a world power the united states needs to be able to exert its influence much further beyond its borders and uh mahan was incredibly influential in politics the naval act of 1890 more or less modernized the us navy and uh you know by 19 well maybe by 1910 we'll say the us had the third most powerful navy right only great britain and uh and germany could really rival it with other countries like japan kind of hot on their heels but you know to go from a nation during the civil war which was considered an afterthought militarily to having the third most powerful navy in the entire world really meant the united states had risen to become one of the premier uh military powers of of the globe and uh soon you saw mahan's um you know suggestions go into action you know hawaii was one of these islands that had long been uh kind of on the radar of the united states hawaii is incredibly important strategically both for the economy and military because it was kind of a halfway point between the u.s and asia if the us was going to have any hopes of uh you know influencing asia whether that was trade or protecting its interests you know hawaii was like the perfect area that was there on top of it hawaii itself was rich in natural resources it was a good place to grow sugar in fact u.s sugar planters had been in hawaii you know approximately since the 1830s so the us already had a pretty strong economic influence there however as more and more americans arrived and in fact in hawaii the actual number of americans was pretty low it was american business owners so by the time you get to the 1880s 1890s uh you know it's something like 70 of all the land in hawaii is bought and purchased by the united states and because the u.s has such a strong business presence there you know the hawaiian government is also heavily influenced by these american businesses often at the expense of the native hawaiians uh queen lulu kalani uh really protested u.s uh occupation or influence might be you know on behalf of the native hawaiian population uh so she spoke out against kind of the american business interest there but because it was a highly sought after uh territory and because there were you know economic interests in hawaii american economic interest in hawaii trying to get sugar to the united states cheaper in the late 1800s an armed revolt by u.s planters succeeded in arresting the queen of hawaii and after you know five years or so of really questioning who is in control in hawaii the united states moved to annex it in 1898 primarily for military purposes that was the uh you know final sort of push and just like that in 1898 hawaii became a u.s territory u.s possession this uh there's a similar story that goes on in samoa uh the samoan islands somewhere around here i wanna say maybe right there uh but again important because of their uh you know strategic location close to asia close to australia uh samoa was a little bit different that he had two other nations germany and great britain but pretty much germany great britain and the us all agreed here's a picture of the queen of hawaii actually uh all agreed to split samoa uh between them again we're dealing with the three largest military powers on the planet and this time they all agreed to work together at the expense of the native samoan population there who much like the queen in hawaii was not all that thrilled with the new sort of role that you know outsider foreign presence would have in that area