AP® United States History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/us-history/units/7/7-2)
Unit 7 · Topic 7.2
7.2 Imperialism: Debates
In the 1890s Americans debated whether the United States should build an overseas empire. Supporters wanted markets, naval bases, national prestige and a mission to spread American ways, while the Anti-Imperialist League argued that ruling other peoples without their consent betrayed the nation's founding ideals.
Key terms
- imperialism
- Alfred Thayer Mahan
- Anti-Imperialist League
- annexation of Hawaii (1898)
- Open Door Policy
See it on a map: 1867: Alaska · 1898: Hawaii · 1898: Hawaii and the war with Spain · 1900: American Samoa · 1917: The U.S. Virgin Islands
Why some Americans wanted an empire
- Markets: factories and farms produced more than Americans could buy, and the depression of 1893 made overseas customers seem urgent. China's huge population especially tempted business leaders.
- Sea power: naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890) argued that great nations need a strong navy, overseas coaling stations and bases, and a canal across Central America. Leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge agreed, and Congress built a modern steel navy.
- The closed frontier: with the 1890 census declaring the frontier closed, some argued that Americans needed new frontiers abroad to keep the nation vigorous.
- Mission and racial ideas: writers like Josiah Strong, in Our Country (1885), claimed Anglo-Saxon Protestants had a duty to spread Christianity and 'civilization'. Social Darwinist ideas about 'fit' and 'unfit' races were used to justify ruling others. Missionaries also went abroad, especially to China.
- Competition: European powers and Japan were carving up Africa and Asia, and expansionists feared the U.S. would be left behind.
Why others opposed it
The Anti-Imperialist League formed in 1898 to oppose taking the Philippines. Its members were a wide mix: writer Mark Twain, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, labor leader Samuel Gompers, reformer Jane Addams and former president Grover Cleveland.
Their arguments did not all agree:
- Principle: governing people without their consent contradicted the Declaration of Independence.
- Constitution: the Constitution did not provide for colonies whose people would not become citizens.
- Tradition and danger: since Washington's Farewell Address the U.S. had avoided foreign entanglements, and an empire would drag it into foreign wars and require a big military.
- Labor: unions feared competition from cheap colonial labor.
- Racism: some anti-imperialists did not want nonwhite peoples absorbed into the nation.
From Hawaii to the Open Door
Hawaii was annexed in July 1898 (6.12), five years after American planters overthrew Queen Liliuokalani. The war with Spain that year (7.3) brought Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.
In China, European powers and Japan had carved out 'spheres of influence', zones where each controlled trade. Secretary of State John Hay's Open Door Notes (1899–1900) asked them to let all nations trade equally in China and to respect China's territorial integrity. The U.S. wanted access to China's markets without taking colonies there. When the Boxer Rebellion (1900) attacked foreigners in China, the U.S. joined an international force to crush it.
In the Insular Cases (1901), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution did not fully apply in the new territories, so people there did not automatically get all constitutional rights. Critics put it this way: the Constitution did not 'follow the flag'.
U.S. power in Latin America after 1900
Theodore Roosevelt helped Panama break away from Colombia in 1903 and gained the rights to build the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914. His Roosevelt Corollary (1904) to the Monroe Doctrine said the U.S. could act as an 'international police power' in Latin America, and U.S. forces intervened repeatedly in the Caribbean. William Howard Taft's 'dollar diplomacy' used investment to gain influence, and Woodrow Wilson intervened in Mexico during its revolution.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Explaining a point of view
Short-answer practice: Explain one argument made by members of the Anti-Imperialist League around 1900.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Pick one argument and state it clearly.
- Step 2: Connect it to a specific belief or document, such as the Declaration of Independence.
- Step 3: Tie it to the specific situation they were arguing about, the Philippines.
Answer: Model answer: Members of the Anti-Imperialist League, such as Mark Twain, argued that taking the Philippines as a colony violated the principle in the Declaration of Independence that governments get their power from the consent of the governed. They pointed out that Filipinos were fighting for their own independence, so ruling them by force made the United States act like the European empires it had once rebelled against.
Common mistakes
- Assuming all anti-imperialists were motivated by equality. Some opposed empire partly from racism or fear of labor competition.
- Thinking the Open Door Policy created an American colony in China. It sought equal trading rights, not territory.
- Mixing up Mahan and Turner. Mahan argued for sea power; Turner wrote about the frontier's role in American history.
On the exam
- The imperialism debate is a natural source for short-answer questions with two contrasting primary sources. Identify each author's reasoning.
- Compare this debate with earlier expansion like Manifest Destiny (5.2): similar arguments about mission, but now aimed at overseas lands with no plan for statehood.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
4 questions on 7.2 Imperialism: Debates. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Source 1: "Shall we occupy new markets for what our farmers raise, our factories make, our merchants sell—aye, and please God, new markets for what our ships shall carry? . . . The Opposition tells us that we ought not to govern a people without their consent. I answer, The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government. . . . Would not the people of the Philippines prefer the just, humane, civilizing government of this Republic to the savage, bloody rule of pillage and extortion from which we have rescued them?"
Source 2: "We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is 'criminal aggression' and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government."
Source 1: Albert J. Beveridge, Indiana Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate a few months later, "The March of the Flag" campaign speech, September 1898. Source 2: Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League, October 1899.
Beveridge supports overseas expansion mainly on the grounds that it would
The authors of Source 2 object to imperialism mainly because they believe it
Arguments like Beveridge's were most strongly encouraged by
"It is not true that the United States feels any land hunger or entertains any projects as regards the other nations of the Western Hemisphere save such as are for their welfare. . . .
Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."
Source: President Theodore Roosevelt, Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904.
In the excerpt, Roosevelt claims that the United States has the right to
0 of 4 answered