Topic 5: Overseas Expansion

 Readings: AY, Chapter 19

II. Patterns of American Interventions

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III. 1898

Lecture videos: Overseas Expansion 1

American Overseas Expansionism

The United States becomes a colonial power - Change in American Foreign policy

• Taking over places they are not invited, taking over & bring in institutions, and controlling the economy  
• Isolationism – an approach to US foreign policy that advocates non-participation in alliances or in the affairs of other nations
• Reasons for isolationism
• Focus on industrialization and westward expansion
• Foreign markets are not yet essential
• Geographical separation - not a lot of commercialism
• Monroe Doctrine of 1823 - example of isolationism policy
• The United States would not get involved in European affairs
• The US would not interfere with existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere
• No other nation could form a new colony in the Western Hemisphere.
• If a European nation tried to control or interfere with a nation in the Western Hemisphere, the United States would view it as a hostile act against the nation. 
• A fundamental shift from Isolationism to Internationalism:
• 1890: Close of the frontier
• see foreign markets abroad
• Economic Overproduction reached and commercial production still needs to happen
• An outlet for domestic turmoil 
• Class warfare during this time - Social tension
• War was an outlet for all this tension (Spanish American War)
• Pursuit of national greatness (gained by territorial aggrandizement)
• greatness was measured by the number of territories you held abroad
• signaled our country's entry into international stature
• Cultural Reasons: "Civilising Mission/Whiteman's Burden)
• disguised our intentions
• spreading civilization 

Lecture videos: Overseas Expansion 2

Spanish American War 1898

•  "Yellow Journalism" - convincing the American people to go to war
• Sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba - exploded
• The US blamed Spain & declared war
• The war was one-sided because Spain could not deal with it
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  Surrender - transfer of colonies from Spain to the US
• The Spanish-American war marked the US entry into the world stage
  
• Irreversible transition/change
• Anti-imperialist leagues
• Philippines - reasons to keep the Philippines
  
• China's illimitable markets
• The mission of our race
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  God - the US is his chosen people 
• the US can remake the world
• The Philippines gives us the door for all the east 

• Sets up the civilizing mission
• These "people do not understand the art of democracy
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  Saying that in the end, it is about race. We must take the "savages" and make them civilized

Lecture videos: Overseas Expansion 3

Philippine-American War 1899 - 1902

• Is about imperialism
• Longer in duration, more deadly and costly in American and Filipino lives, and more costly in expenditures than Spanish American War
• American atrocities: Torture; killing 'for sport', concentration camps, civilian 'de-population campaigns'
• Use of torture by "water cure" - American invention - waterboarding
• "Benevolent Assimilation" - colonial rule in the Philippines

Topic 5: Overseas Expansion

1. From traditional isolationism to imperialism
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2. Economic/geopolitical factors
3. Cultural factors
4. Historical amnesia surrounding American imperialism
5. “Benevolent Assimilation” in the Philippines
6. Moral/economic reason for US colonialism (Beveridge’s speech)