IMPERIALISM IN AMERICA

Imperialism in America



Imperialism in America

Imperialism in late 19th-century America involved both territorial and economic expansion, but not necessarily at the same time or in the same place. Imperialism was an international happening, but the Americans, who had a whole continent to offer raw material and local market, had few compulsions to obtain great territory; in comparison, the Europeans and Japanese had exclusively diverse attitudes towards imperialism. The United States, during 1870 to 1900, added 125,000 square miles, while Germany gained 1 million and Great Britain gained 4.7 million square miles (Ivie, 1972).

With the acquisition in 1898 of Spanish-held islands and Hawaii, the United States embraced overseas imperialism. Earlier efforts to acquire territory in the Caribbean and the Pacific had been frustrated in large part because of beliefs that territorial acquisitions should become states and that tropical islands with their nonwhite populations should not become states. Strategic, political, economic, and ideological considerations undermined these ideas, opening the door for American imperialism (Ivie, 1972).

Strategic concerns were straightforward. The surest way to thwart the imperialist ambitions of potentially threatening powerful, industrial nations was to acquire territory before they did. With a growing awareness of its need for an isthmian canal, the America required decreasing the occurrence of European power in the Caribbean; it seemed understandable that Hawaii in the tenure of hostile powers would pressure the safety of the West Coast. America also overwhelmed by social and political disturbances in the year 1890 and on ward. A rigorous economic depressions with extensive unemployment, violent strike, less farmer's incomes, and a disruptive arguments over the currency involved politician to an imperialist venture that would deflect concentration from sectional and class tension at quarters (Lasch, 1958).

Unlike political and strategic concerns, the economic factors affecting American imperialism were more complex, less compelling, and did ...