Reasons for American Shift to Imperialism: an Explanation

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century the United States had turned into a main worldwide mechanical power. They became the world's prevailing economic, mechanical, and agricultural power, because of their new technologies (for example, the telegraph and steel), a growing railroad network, and plentiful of natural resources. But that was only possible because of an ideology called “isolationism” where the United States decided to “isolate” themselves from the rest of the world, and become self-sufficient, implementing new tariffs that helped the American economy itself. With the beginning of the 20th century, that ideology shifted from wanting to be self-sufficient to wanting more raw resources and power, so the United States underwent their period of imperialism. This shift led to many changes inside and outside the country politically, but it also affected its social views. The most important reasons on why the US decided it was a good idea to shift from isolationism to imperialism were economic, military and ideological.

Isolationism and Imperialism were two very complex and different policies. Isolationism was a policy that aimed at avoiding permanent ties and alliances with other states. In the United States it all started with the “Farewell Address” (1796) of George Washington, which proposed commercial relations to the nation, but not permanent political alliances with the rest of the world. “While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionally greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations.” In the same direction went the 'Monroe doctrine' (1823), which established a kind of non-intervention between the US and European states. “With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.” Monroe in his doctrine takes power away from Europe, and then says that America is a force to look upon to.

Imperialism on the other hand, is a policy where the priority is economic and political expansion is those countries of industrial capitalism, they were searching for low-cost prime markets and outlets for industrial products and investment capital. With imperialism, people started growing nationalist feelings and started believing in the superiority of European civilization and in the civilization mission of the white man; furthermore Social Darwinism, that is the application of Darwinian theories to human society, interpreted the cultural differences between peoples in terms of evolution and justified (based on the principle of natural selection) the competition between peoples and the domination of peoples stronger and more evolved on weaker, less evolved ones. It should be noted that the phenomenon of colonization, understood as an instrument of the progress of humanity, was also justified by many exponents of the socialist movement (including Marx himself). Imperialism experienced its peak from the late 1800s through the years that followed World War II.

As explained in the introduction, the shift from isolationism policy to an imperialist one was caused by three main factors. The first factor would be the economic factor. In 1893 an historian by the name of Frederick Jackson Turner published “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” and in this piece he argues the 1890 census. “That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom - these are the traits of the frontier.” He claimed that the frontier had ended or was closed, in fact the superintendent of the census said there was no longer a visible frontier out in the West. During that same year (1890) Wounded Knee, a war between the Indians and the Americans, marked the end of the major Indian Wars. In the essay, Jackson talks about the importance of the frontier in American history. He didn’t value the resistance of the Native people to Anglo colonization, he doesn’t even really talk about race or class, but he lays down this. Idea that the frontier is closed. Advocates of expansion took that idea and decided that since the frontier was closed the. Only way for America to expand was to go abroad, overseas.

Many imperialists cited economic opportunities as a justification for increased involvement of. The United States in world affairs. Between the Civil War and the 1890s the industrial manufacturing capabilities of the US just exploded in such a short amount of time. This rapid industrialization meant that the United States were producing more than its citizens required, and this gave rise to a belief among American Imperialists that the United States needed new markets for its manufactured as well as agricultural goods. The US also decided to expand overseas because they wanted cheap raw materials, and many foreign countries were able to provide that, and it would help fuel the Industrial Revolution. Many people believed that when there were economic. Downturn, such as the panic of 1893, that If we had these foreign markets to provide raw materials and as places to trade, they would get out of these economic downturns much quicker. So, they believed the best way to do that, and to maintain a strong economy, was to take over people’s land overseas.

Apart from taking over people’s lands they also wanted to take over their lives in order to integrate them into the American economic system, so that they could have these “new” markets where they could sell the goods they were producing. There were also strategic reasons why some Americans advocated for expansion and/or imperialistic policies. One of the things that was happening was that America’s Navy was extremely weak and not very impressive, and the US as it expanded throughout this period was largely getting areas that were islands, because they wanted to be close to foreign markets such as China. There were also strategic reasons why some Americans advocated for expansion and/or imperialistic policies. One of the things that was happening was that America’s Navy was extremely weak and not very impressive, and the US as it expanded throughout this period was largely getting areas that were islands, because they wanted to be close to foreign markets such as China. In the early months of 1893, the community of merchants of the Kingdom of Hawaii deposed the queen and sought annexation by President Harrison, who put forward the proposal to the Senate for approval. However, the newly elected President, Cleveland withdrew the proposed annexation. Nevertheless, the revolutionaries in Hawaii formed an independent Republic of Hawaii. This joined its sponte to the United States as part of its territory of 1898 and was granted to its residents the full American citizenship. At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States began to invest in a new naval technology that included steam warships and powerful armaments and steel bridges. During the mid-1990s, American public opinion denounced the Spanish repression of the Cuban independence movement as brutal and unacceptable. The United States increased the pressure but remained dissatisfied with the Spanish answers. When an American warship for reasons not well defined, exploded in the port of Havana, Cuba, on February 15, 1898, the matter took on an irrepressible dimension and McKinley could not oppose the continuous requests for immediate action. Most Democrats and many Republicans demanded a war to liberate Cuba.

Almost simultaneously the two countries declared war (every other country remained neutral). The United States won without problems the disproportionate Hispanic-American war, with a duration of four months, from around April to July. Thanks to the Treaty of Paris, the United States took over the states that were the remaining territories of what was once the Spanish empire, especially Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. This marked America's transition from a regional power to a world power. In Cuba independence was granted under American supervision. However, the permanent condition of the Philippines turned out to be a debated political issue. The Democrats, led by William Jennings Bryan, had tenaciously supported the war but did not oppose the annexation as tenaciously. McKinley was re-elected and the annexation was implemented. In 1890, Alfred T. Mahan, President of the Naval College in Annapolis, argued that in order to secure foreign markets and to become a world power you needed to have modern powerful navy and acquired naval bases. “Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the nation at sea.”

Finally, the last reason that pushed the shift from isolationism to imperialism is ideological reasons, more specifically “Social Darwinism”. The United States had just extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. So, the prior ideal of manifest destiny appeared to have been fulfilled. Be that as it may, during the 1890s “Manifest Destiny” all of a sudden took on an entirely different significance: it turned into America's divine mission, to not only reach the shores of the Pacific but to stretch out past. This was also perceived as Anglo-Saxon predominance. From 1865 to the 1900s Social Darwinism was used significantly to encourage human competition, to oppose intervention in the natural human order, and was the idea that humans compete for the struggle of existence. Numerous Americans believed in the superiority of Anglo-Saxons (people that had British ancestors). They thought that the white protestants, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, were a better race that merit to go over the others. Their conviction in Anglo-Saxon predominance fulfilled psychological needs in numerous Americans. Social Darwinist obtained their ideas from Charles Darwin’s hypothesis of evolution. They had confidence in “the survival of the fittest” and in the superior nature of the most dominant. This applied to plants and creatures as well as among human racial groups and social classes. Such convictions strengthened well-known supremacist demeanors.