UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
Welcome to Unit 7. We’re going to start by talking about the debates that led the United States into imperialism.
FIRST, CONTEXT
Before we jump straight into the debates over American imperialism, let me start with a definition
and some context. Imperialism , by definition, describes a process by which a powerful state extends
authority over another weaker state in order to exploit its resources. That kind of authority can
come in a variety of flavors like economic control or direct political control , etc. Whatever the flavor,
the ultimate outcome is a loss of sovereignty and self-determination for the colonized . Don’t forget, this
fair country that we’ve been studying throughout the course started as an imperial venture vis-a-vis Big
Mama Britain. And recall that Americans in those days fought Big Mama off precisely because they believed
through and through, up and down, left and right, inward and outward, that imperial empires were unjust
and primarily exploitative. But it only took a little over a hundred years for American policy makers to decide,
Well, we were young and stupid back then… so let’s get this imperial party started. So, how did Americans go
from fighting and dying for freedom from an imperial state to becoming an imperial state of its own?
Here’s how the United States got to the point where claiming an imperial empire seemed like a reasonable
choice . In the last period we saw how foreign policy makers and wealthy industrialists began to look
outside the borders of the United States in order to secure new markets for American goods and to expand
access to raw materials. This was going on at the same time that European states were developing
vast sea -based empires and colonizing the world. The U.S. was late to the overseas expansion party
mainly because the Civil War and Reconstruction claimed a lot of attention in the 19th century. But with
the rapid expansion of industrialization and the growing wealth of the United States at the end of the
19th century, the country was now ready to join the rest of the imperial European powers to build
an overseas empire. That’s just the immediate context. If you go back further, U.S. policy has always
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
FIRST, CONTEXT cont’d
favored imperial expansion in one way or another. Just ask the many groups of indigenous
Americans who lost their land to westward expansion. Or ask the Mexicans who lost a third of
their territory after the Mexican-American War …I could go on. Now that we’re crossing into the 20th
century, and America stands poised to expand overseas, it’s not a surprising development . Manifest
Destiny has always been our thing.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
IMPERIALIST ARGUMENTS
As it became abundantly clear that a growing impulse for overseas expansion was driving the U.S. toward
empire-building, it sparked a fierce debate about whether it was proper for the U.S. to play the role
of an imperial power in the world. There were two sides to that debate, and first I’ll introduce you to the
Imperialists . They’re the Americans who favored overseas expansion because they believed America
was destined to expand her culture and institutions to peoples around the world. They had four
reasons to support that claim.
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
IMPERIALIST ARGUMENTS cont’d
First, they argued that America ought to expand overseas to take advantage of economic
opportunities. The truth is, in almost every case of imperial expansion, the most powerful rationale
is always the money. Much of the economic rationale for overseas expansion was rooted in the foreign
policy of Secretary of State William Seward who served under Abraham Lincoln and then Andrew
Johnson. Seward believed that the key to accessing the great wealth bound up in Asian markets was to
acquire a snowy, frozen piece of Russian territory, namely, Alaska . In 1868, Seward negotiated the
purchase of Alaska from Russia, and because many Americans didn’t see the point in owning a massive
piece of frozen territory that wasn’t even connected to the mainland of the United States, the
purchase became known as Seward's Folly . However, it turned out that Seward was just ahead of
his time, because by the last decade of the 19th century, the Panic of 1893 had created severe economic
distress for many Americans. Foreign policy makers decided that the solution to improve the
economy in the homeland was to open new markets in Asia in order to sell American goods . At that point,
Alaska became a critical asset for gaining access to those markets .
Second, the Imperialists argued that America ought to expand overseas because of her belief in various
racial theories. For example, the growing acceptance of the ideas of Social Darwinism encouraged
the pursuit of overseas empires. Recall from the last unit that Charles Darwin argued that in nature,
only the strongest species survive precisely because they are the best adapted to the changing
environment. Then further recall that Social Darwinists applied this logic to social realities in order to
explain why some Americans were wealthy and many other Americans were poor . Namely, the
rich are those who have best adapted to the new industrial environment and the poor are those who have
not . In other words, if you were rich and powerful, that was the sign that you were best adapted to
the new social and economic environment. It’s not much of a journey from there to looking at the
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
IMPERIALIST ARGUMENTS cont’d
whole country and concluding that since industrialization had made it wealthy and powerful, it must
mean that America had become among the fittest to survive. Furthermore, this ideology stoked the
flames of American Exceptionalism , which was an idea that the United States is a nation blessed
above all other nations with liberty and a flourishing civilization. Therefore, in the context of the debates
about imperialism, some Americans believed that it was the duty of Americans to spread these blessings to
those “lesser” people throughout the world. Probably the most famous articulation of this idea came
from a minister named Josiah Strong . In his book, Our Country, he argued that the Anglo -Saxon
race, and particularly the American flavor of that race, was the absolute apex of human evolution. And as a
minister , Strong added that it was the Christian duty of Americans to acquire a worldwide empire
so that they could spread Christianity and the glories of western civilization to those backward and dark
people groups . As it turned out, that idea was indeed a steaming pile of Christian duty. The proper
name for this impulse was known as the civilizing mission , the principles of which were most famously
articulated in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, White Man's Burden .
The third argument for overseas expansion concerned American competition with European
empires. Throughout the 19th century, western European states had been expanding their sea-based
empires rapidly, especially in Asia and Africa . Because the global balance of power was now
decided by which state held the biggest empire, policy makers in the United States feared that if they
did not begin a project of overseas expansion then they could never compete with other European
superpowers . In 1890, a U.S. naval officer named Alfred Thayer Mahan provided a clear
solution for this fear, namely, an expanded U.S. Navy. His book was called The Influence of Sea Power upon
History, and in it he argued that all the most powerful states in the world had one thing in common: they
had a navy powerful enough to make other states tremble. Therefore, the key to projecting power
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
IMPERIALIST ARGUMENTS cont’d
in such a world was to invest heavily in naval power. By 1886 the federal government had appropriated
funds for two state of the art steel-hulled naval ships, and by the end of the century they had built
three more.
Finally, the fourth argument for overseas expansion was the closing of the western frontier .
In 1890, the Census revealed a shocking demographic truth, namely, that the American western frontier
had at last been settled . In other words, the western frontier was gone. This was a big deal
because since the earliest days of the American experiment, the western frontier played a critical role
in America’s social and cultural development. Now that the frontier was closed, all that potential
opportunity was closed as well, and to many people that felt like an existential threat to life in America. But
don’t worry because here comes historian Frederick Jackson Turner who published what became known
as the Frontier Thesis , arguing that it was simply not an option for Americans to lack a frontier
in which to expand. In fact, the disappearance of the frontier was kind of an existential crisis by Turner’s
reckoning, because expansion was actually the condition in which American democracy could exist and
thrive . That meant the future of America depended on adopting a new frontier which would come
in the form of overseas expansion.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
ANTI-IMPERIALIST ARGUMENTS
We’ve heard the arguments FOR American imperial expansion, let’s hear from the folks who opposed
such a development, and they were known as the Anti-Imperialists . In 1898, they formed the
Anti-Imperialist League in response to America’s attempt to annex the Philippines , and I’ll tell
you all about that in the next video. They essentially articulated three reasons why it would be altogether
dumb for the U.S. to pursue an empire.
First, they argued that imperial expansion would violate the principles of self-determination for
other nations. To that end, they invoked what they called the “ Spirit of 1776” arguing that a core principle
of the founding of the United States was that each nation ought to have the right to govern
themselves. Therefore, to rule another nation across the sea as a colony would violate the American
commitment to the principle of government by the consent of the governed. In other words,
that’s our WHOLE THING, so let’s not dump on other people ’s self-determination.
Second, Anti-imperialists invoked the long American tradition of isolationism with respect to world
affairs . You may recall that this was a principle that stretched all the way back to George Washington’s
Farewell Address in which he warned that getting involved in entangling foreign alliances
would only drag the U.S. into conflicts in which it had no business participating . That isolationism also
connects to the Monroe Doctrine since it mandated that Europeans stay out of America’s business ,
and America will stay out of Europe’s business.
Third, the Anti-imperialists also made use of racial theories to support THEIR side, and pound for
pound, the Anti-Imperialists actually leaned on these kinds of arguments more than the imperialists.
For example, Andrew Carnegie , one of the most famous Anti-Imperialists, wrote an essay in 1898
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
ANTI-IMPERIALIST ARGUMENTS cont’d
called Distant Possessions. In it he argued that by annexing the Philippines, or any other overseas
territory, millions of non- white people would be added to the population. He warned that in places like the
Philippines, it would be “ impossible for our own race to be produced,” and therefore the expansion of
American empire should be opposed in order to uphold the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race .
Ultimately, as we’ll discover in the next video, the Imperialists won the debate and after the American victory
in the Spanish -American War, and the United States embraced imperialism and started a proper
overseas empire.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
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UNIT 7 TOPIC 2
Imperialism: Debates H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : America in the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
RESPOND to the learning objective with an evidence-based, argumentative thesis.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation’s proper role in the world.
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