Chapter Annotated Outline

I. The Roots of Expansion

A. Diplomacy in the Gilded Age

1. In 1880 the United States had a population of 50 million, and the nation’s industrial production ranked second only to Britain’s.

2. The Civil War had put the United States at odds with Britain and France; the United States opposed France’s attempt to establish a puppet regime in Mexico; with Britain, the issues involved damages to Union shipping by the Alabama and other Confederate sea raiders operating from English ports.

3. In the years after the Civil War, the United

States lapsed into diplomatic inactivity as the

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An Emerging World Power

1877–1914

building of the nation’s industrial economy turned Americans’ attention inward.

4. Americans shared a sense of security and isolation from the rest of the world, even though new international telegraphic cables provided overseas communication after the 1860s. 5. The U.S. Navy fleet gradually deteriorated; the administration of Chester A. Arthur (1881–

1885) began a modest upgrading program, but the navy remained small.

6. Domestic politics made it difficult to develop a coherent foreign policy, and appointment to the foreign service was mostly through the spoils system.

7. The State Department tended to be inactive and exerted little control over either policy or its missions abroad; the American presence often consisted of independent religious missionaries. 8. Diplomatic activity quickened when James G. Blaine became secretary of state in 1881; he tried his hand at settling disputes in South America, and he called the first Pan-American conference.

9. After the McKinley Tariff of 1890 cancelled Hawaii’s favored access to the American market, sugar planters backed by the Harrison administration planned an American takeover, but Grover Cleveland halted the annexation that would, he said, have violated America’s “honor and morality” and nonimperial tradition. 10. In 1867 the United States purchased Alaska from imperial Russia, and to the south it secured rights in 1878 to a coaling station in Pago Pago Harbor in the Samoan Islands. 11. American diplomacy during the Gilded Age has been characterized as a series of incidents rather than the pursuit of a clear foreign policy.

B. The Economy of Expansionism

1. America’s gross domestic product quadrupled between 1870 and 1900, and as the industrial economy expanded, so did factory exports. 2. American firms such as the Singer Sewing Machine Company and Standard Oil began to establish their factories overseas.

3. Foreign trade was important for reasons of international finance: to balance its foreign debt account, the United States needed to export more goods than it imported.

4. Many thought that the nation’s capacity to produce had outpaced its capacity to consume, so the United States needed buyers in foreign markets to purchase its surplus products. 5. Europe and Canada represented the bulk of American export trade in the late nineteenth century, and Asia and Latin America represented a modest part.

6. The importance of the non-Western markets was not so much their current value as their future promise, especially the China trade, which many felt would one day be the key to American prosperity.

7. The pace of European imperialism accelerated in the mid-1880s: Africa was carved up after the Berlin Conference, and European powers challenged American interests in Latin America. 8. The Panic of 1893 set in motion industrial strikes and agrarian protests that many Americans took to be symptoms of revolution.

9. Securing the markets of Latin America and Asia became an urgent necessity and inspired the expansionist diplomacy of the 1890s. C. The Making of a “Large” Foreign Policy 1. In his book The Influence of Seapower upon History (1890), Captain Alfred T.Mahan, a leading naval strategist, argued that the key to imperial power was control of the seas. 2. Traversing the oceans required a robust merchant marine, a powerful navy to protect American commerce, and strategic overseas bases.

3. Mahan called for a canal across Central America to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, with control over strategic points in defense of American trading interests.

4. Politicians accepted Mahan’s underlying logic, and pushed for a “large policy”; from 1889 onward, a surprising consistency began to emerge in the conduct of American foreign policy. 5. In 1890, under Benjamin Harrison’s administration, Congress appropriated funds for three battleships as the first installment on a twoocean navy.

6. Grover Cleveland’s administration cancelled Harrison’s scheme for annexing Hawaii but picked up the naval program; the nation’s commercial vitality depended on its naval power.

7. For years, a border dispute simmered between Venezuela and British Guiana, and the United States demanded that the British resolve it. 8. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine, Secretary of State Richard Olney warned Britain that the United States would brook no challenge to its vital interests in the Caribbean.

9. Realizing that the Cleveland administration meant business, the British agreed to arbitration of the border dispute.

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10. Secretary of State Olney asserted that other countries would now have to accommodate America’s need for access to “more markets and larger markets.”

D. The Ideology of Expansionism

1. One source of expansionist dogma was the social

Darwinism theory: if the United States

wanted to survive, it had to expand.

2. Linked to social Darwinism was a spreading belief in the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race.

3. John Fiske’s “Manifest Destiny” lecture espoused the belief that every land on the earth’s surface should become English in its language, religion, political habits, and bloodline. 4. Frederick Jackson Turner suggested a link between the closing of the western frontier and overseas expansion, and as Turner predicted, American confidence in Manifest Destiny turned outward.

II. An American Empire

A. The Cuban Crisis

1. In February 1895, Cuban patriots rebelled and began a guerrilla war for their freedom from Spain; the Spanish commander,Valeriano Weyler, adopted a policy of “reconcentration.” 2. The Junta, a key group of exiles, tried to make a case for the Cuba Libre in New York;William Randolph Hearst put Cuba’s plight on the front page of the New York Journal.

3. Americans felt concern and sympathy for the Cubans, and their anger against Spain came to be known as “jingoism.”

4. Congress began calling for Cuban independence, but Grover Cleveland was more concerned that the Cuban civil war was disrupting trade and harming American property interests. 5. William McKinley, like Cleveland, felt that the United States was the dominant Caribbean power with vital interests to be protected, but McKinley was tougher on the Spaniards. 6. McKinley was sensitive to business fears that any rash action might disrupt an economy just recovering from the depression.

7. On September 18, 1897, the United States informed the Spanish government that it was time to end the war, or the United States would take steps to end it.

8. Spain backed away from reconcentration and offered Cuba a degree of self-rule, but the Cuban rebels demanded full independence. 9. The New York Journal published the private letter of Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish minister to the United States, which called President McKinley weak and implied that the Spanish government did not take American demands seriously.

10. A week later the U.S. battle cruiser Maine blew up and sank in Havana Harbor, killing 260 seamen; now,McKinley had to contend with popular clamor for a war against Spain.

11. Spain rejected McKinley’s demands for an immediate armistice, abandonment of the practice of reconcentration, and peace negotiations.

12. The War Hawks in Congress chafed under McKinley’s cautious progress, but the president did not lose control.

13. The resolutions authorizing intervention in Cuba contained an amendment disclaiming any intention by the United States of taking possession of Cuba.

14. It was not because of expansionist ambitions that McKinley forced Spain into a corner, but once war came,McKinley saw it as an opportunity for expansion.

B. The Spoils ofWar

1. When Spain declared war on April 24, 1898, Theodore Roosevelt was commissioned lieutenant colonel in the volunteer cavalry regiment known as the Rough Riders.

2. Confusion reigned in the swelling volunteer army: uniforms did not arrive, the food was bad, the sanitation was worse, rifles were in short supply, and no provisions had been made for getting troops to Cuba.

3. The small regular army provided a nucleus for the civilians who had to be turned into soldiers inside of a few weeks.

4. The navy was in better shape, as Spain had nothing to match American battleships and armored cruisers.

5. On May 1, American ships cornered the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and destroyed it;

Manila, the Philippine capital, fell on August 13, 1898.

6. After Commodore George Dewey’s naval victory, Americans were not going to let the Philippine Islands go; the Philippines made a strategic base in the western Pacific and projected American power into Asia and its markets. 7. Hawaiian annexation went through Congress by joint resolution in July 1898; now, Hawaii was a crucial halfway station on the way to the Philippines.

8. The navy also pressed for a coaling base in Guam in the central Pacific and a base in Puerto Rico in the Caribbean.

66 Chapter 21 An Emerging World Power, 1877–1914

9. The main battle in the campaign in Cuba occurred near Santiago on the heights commanded by San Juan Hill; convinced that Santiago could not be saved, Spanish forces surrendered.

10. In an armistice, Spain agreed to liberate Cuba and cede Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States, and American forces occupied Manila pending a peace treaty.

C. The Imperial Experiment

1. As to the question of what to do with the

Philippines, not even avid American expansionists

advocated colonial rule over subject

peoples.

2. McKinley and his advisors felt that they could neither return the islands to harsh Spanish rule nor did they believe that the Filipinos were fit to rule themselves.

3. In the Treaty of Paris, the Spanish ceded the Philippines to the United States for a payment of $20 million.

4. Opponents of the treaty invoked American republican principles, declaring that the federal government could not conquer an alien people and hold them in subjugation.

5. In November 1890, a social elite of old-line Mugwump reformers from Boston formed the first of the Anti-Imperialist Leagues that began to spring up around the country.

6. The anti-imperialists never developed a popular movement: they shared little other interests, and they lacked “the common touch.”

7. Before the Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris, fighting broke out between American and Filipino patrols; confronted with American annexation, Cubans turned their guns on American forces.

8. Fighting tenacious Philippine guerrillas, the U.S. Army resorted to the reconcentration tactic the Spaniards had used in Cuba.

9. The fighting ended in 1902, and, as governorgeneral, William Howard Taft intended to make the Philippines a model of American road building and sanitary engineering. 10. Americans had not anticipated the brutal methods needed to subdue the Filipino guerrillas; the Jones Act (1916) formally committed the United States to granting Philippine independence but set no date.

11. In a few years the United States had acquired the makings of an overseas empire and had moved into a position of what is commonly called a world power.

III. Onto the World Stage

A. A Power among Powers

1. Roosevelt justified American dominance in the Caribbean by saying that it was incumbent upon the civilized powers to insist on the proper policing of the world and the maintenance of the balance of power.

2. Britain’s position in Europe was steadily worsening, challenged by a Germany bent on imperial supremacy and weakened by soured relations with France and Russia. Now, Great Britain had a new and clear need of rapprochement with the United States.

3. In the Hay-Pauncefote Agreement of 1901, the British gave up their rights to participate in any Central American canal project.

4. There was no formal alliance, but Anglo-American friendship had been placed on such a firm basis that it was assumed that the Americans and the British would never have a parricidal war.

5. In regard to American power, especially naval power, Roosevelt said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”

6. Roosevelt was furious when the Columbian legislature voted down his proposal to lease land for a canal; he contemplated outright seizure of Panama but instead lent covert assistance that ensured a bloodless Panamanian revolution against Columbia.

7. On November 7, 1901, the United States recognized Panama and two weeks later received a perpetually renewable lease on a canal zone. 8. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished the Panama Canal in 1914, giving the United States a commanding commercial and strategic position in the Western Hemisphere.

9. A condition for Cuban independence had been a proviso called the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States the right to intervene if Cuba’s independence or internal order was threatened.

10. The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine translated into an unrestricted American right to regulate Caribbean affairs.

11. On occasions when Caribbean domestic order broke down, the U.S.Marines occupied Cuba in 1906, Nicaragua in 1909, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic in later years.

B. The Open Door in Asia

1. In 1890,U.S. secretary of state John Hay sent the powers occupying China an “open door” note claiming the right of equal trade access for all nations that wanted to do business there. 2. In 1900, the United States joined a multinational campaign to break the Boxers’ siege of the diplomatic missions in Peking.

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3. As long as the legal fiction of an independent China survived, so would American claims to equal access to the China market.

4. Britain, Germany, France, and Russia were strongly entrenched in East Asia and not inclined to defer to American interests.

5. Anxious to restore some semblance of power, Roosevelt mediated a settlement of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905; Japan emerged as the predominant power in East Asia.

6. A surge of anti-Asian sentiment in California complicated Roosevelt’s efforts to achieve Asian accommodation for American interests in the Pacific.

7. The Root-Takahira Agreement confirmed the status quo in the Pacific as well as the principles of free oceanic commerce and equal trade opportunity in China.

8. William Howard Taft hoped that with “dollar diplomacy”American capital would counterbalance Japanese power and pave the way for increased commercial activities.

9. When the Chinese Revolution of 1911 toppled the Manchu dynasty, Taft supported the victorious Chinese nationalists, and the United States entered a long-term rivalry with Japan.

C. Wilson and Mexico

1. Woodrow Wilson opposed dollar diplomacy, which he believed bullied weaker countries financially and gave undue advantage to American business.

2. Wilson insisted that the United States should conduct its foreign policy in conformity with its democratic principles.

3. Porfirio Diaz,Mexico’s dictator, was overthrown by Francisco Madero, who spoke for liberty and constitutionalism much as did Wilson.

4. But before Madero could carry out his reforms, he was deposed and murdered in 1913 by Victoriano Huerta.

5. Although other powers were quick to recognize Huerta’s provisional government,Wilson abhorred him, and the United States did not recognize his government.

6. Wilson intended to force Huerta out and to put the Mexican revolution back on the constitutional path started by Madero.

7. Venustiano Carranza, leading a Constitutionalist movement in northern Mexico, did not want American intervention; he only wanted recognition so that he could purchase U.S. weapons.

8. In 1914, American weapons began to flow to Carranza’s troops; but as it became clear that Huerta was not going to fall,Wilson ordered the American occupation of the port of Veracruz. 9. Huerta’s regime began to crumble, yet Carranza nonetheless condemned the United States, and his forces came close to engaging the Americans. Carranza’s rival Pancho Villa did engage Americans, so Wilson sent troops under General John J. Pershing into Mexico, which further antagonized Mexico to the point that war was only narrowly averted.

D. The Gathering Storm in Europe

1. In Europe, there was rivalry between Germany, France, and Britain; in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary and Russia were maneuvering for dominance.

2. These conflicts created two groups of allies:

Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy made up the Triple Alliance, and France and Russia made up the Dual Alliance.

3. Britain reached an entente with France and Russia by 1907, laying the foundation for a Triple Entente; a war between two great European power blocs became more likely.

4. On becoming president, Roosevelt took a lively interest in European affairs, and as the head of a Great Power, he was eager to make a contribution to the cause of peace there.

5. At an international conference in 1906 at Algeciras, Spain, the U.S. role was defined: the United States would be the apostle of peace, distinguished by a lack of selfish interest in European affairs.

6. The Hague Peace Conference of 1899 offered a new hope for the peaceful settlement of international disputes in the Permanent Court of Arbitration.

7. Both Roosevelt and Taft negotiated arbitration treaties with other countries, only to have them crippled by a Senate afraid of any erosion of the nation’s sovereignty.

8. William Jennings Bryan’s “cooling off” treaties with other countries were admirable but had no bearing on the explosive power politics of Europe.