In the early 1880s, western Europeans, although never shy about extending their control over other peoples, became obsessed with a desire to own more of the earth’s surface (Lebergott 1980). Africa’s interior, which before 1875 had been almost entirely unexplored and unmapped by Europeans, was partitioned among the major European powers, with only Liberia and Ethiopia remaining independent. In Asia, the French took over all of Indochina, Britain added Burma to British India, and Britain extended its hold over the Malay states. Although it avoided physical disintegration, China nevertheless had to make humiliating economic concessions to the major European powers. By the end of the nineteenth century, not much of the world was left to colonize.
A detailed study by Lance Davis and Robert Huttenback (1988) has shown that the costs of the British Empire to the British people outweighed the economic benefits, although some citizens and enterprises benefited. Nevertheless, a combination of special interests, fears of other European powers, and exaggerated claims about potential economic gains kept the competition for colonies going full tilt.
Through most of the nineteenth century, the United States remained somewhat apart from the race to acquire colonies in other parts of the world. Before the Civil War, southern politicians had looked to Central and South America for colonies that might be incorporated as slaveholding areas within the United States, but these efforts came to naught. Americans concentrated on westward expansion in North America, wresting control as necessary from the European powers and from Native Americans. The U. S. war with Mexico (1846-1848) added valuable new territories, above all California. It was imperialism, to be sure, but not what Americans of the late nineteenth century had in mind when they debated the merits of an empire. The only major territory acquired before 1898 that did not border on the United States was Alaska (1867), which was presumed at the time to be almost worthless. In 1893, agitation to annex Hawaii began, but many Americans balked at the high-handed methods used to depose the existing Hawaiian government, and the islands were not finally annexed until 1898. A new phase of American imperialism, however, began with the Spanish-American War (1898).
American sympathy for the Cuban revolutionaries fighting for independence from Spain rose in the late 1890s, fueled in part by dramatic accounts in the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers of brutal Spanish attempts to suppress the revolution. However, there was also considerable opposition to going to war, especially in the business and financial communities. J. P. Morgan and other business leaders were worried about the value of Spanish securities held by American banks and the value of American investments in the Cuban sugar industry. Perhaps most of all, they were worried that the war would be inflationary—the inflation of the Civil War was a personal memory for many business people—and that inflation would undermine America’s commitment to the gold standard. All this changed, however, when a martial spirit was whipped up by the destruction of the U. S. battleship Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898. The quick and favorable outcome of the “splendid little war” (as Secretary of State John Hay described it to Theodore Roosevelt) that followed forced Americans to make decisions regarding expansion outside their continental borders.
The first decisions concerned disposition of the former Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Cuba was given nominal independence, but the Platt Amendment of 1901 so restricted Cuban independence that Cuba, in effect, became a protectorate of the United States. Instead of granting independence to Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, however, the United States claimed them as colonial
American soldiers on the march in the Philippines. The war to annex the Philippines and “plant an American flag 500 miles from China” bitterly divided the American people.
Possessions. Once American forces had entered the Philippines, the caution of the business community had evaporated: It was important to America’s economic interests to maintain an “open door” in China and to have an American flag “only 500 miles from China.” America’s attempt to take over the Philippines met determined resistance. At first, the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) went well for the United States; Manila and the insurgent’s capital at Malagos were captured quickly. But when the insurgents turned to guerilla warfare, the days of quick American victories ended. Ultimately, resistance was crushed after a series of long and often brutal campaigns.
With these islands in the Pacific and a growing interest in trade with the Orient, the United States insisted on economic opportunities in East Asia equal to those of the European powers. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States in 1903 acquired a perpetual lease of the Panama Canal Zone from the newly independent Republic of Panama, and the completion of the canal in 1914 ensured a lasting American interest in the Caribbean and Central America.
The policy known as the “Roosevelt Corollary” (to the Monroe Doctrine) was enunciated by President Theodore Roosevelt in a message to Congress in 1904. According to Roosevelt, the United States might be forced to exercise police power in “flagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence” by countries in Latin America. Otherwise, the Europeans might intervene, and that could not be tolerated under the Monroe Doctrine. Europeans were not disturbed by such an assumption of international police power, but Latin Americans were—and they had reason to be—apprehensive.
The United States did not wait long to apply the Roosevelt Corollary. When the Dominican Republic could not meet its financial obligations, certain European states threatened to collect payments by force. Roosevelt’s new doctrine required American intervention to forestall such moves. A treaty was signed in 1905 between the United States and the Republic, giving the United States authority to collect customs duties, of which 55 percent was to be paid to foreign creditors. In 1916, the Dominican government tried to escape American domination, and U. S. marines were sent in to quell the rebellion. In 1914, Haiti was made a protectorate of the United States, again with the aid of the marines. American forces landed so often in Nicaragua that the succession of episodes became a standing joke.
After the 1910 Mexican Revolution against the country’s dictator, Porfirio Diaz, American and other foreign investors, who were heavily committed in railroads and oil, pressed for intervention and the restoration of order. For a time, President Wilson encouraged Latin Americans by declining to invade Mexico. But “watchful waiting” could last just so long amid the cries of outrage at the destruction of American property, and U. S. politicians were unable to tolerate these repeated affronts to American honor.
Troops crossed onto Mexican soil in 1914 and 1917—the second time, under the leadership of General John “Black Jack” Pershing—to seize the “bandit” Pancho Villa.
Military Spending, 1895-1914
FIGURE 20.3
Military Spending, 1895-1914
Source: Historical Statistics of the United States, Earliest Times to the Present, 2006, series Ca13 and Ea 638-40.
With the adoption of the Mexican constitution in 1917, the turmoil subsided temporarily, only to begin again in the early 1920s.
Figure 20.3 shows American military spending (adjusted for inflation) from 1895 to 1914. The impact of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American war, and the Roosevelt Corollary are clearly visible. Spending ratchets upward with the Spanish-American War, but never falls back to what it was before.
Economic motives were invoked to justify America’s imperialist adventures. America sought foreign colonies, some have said, to provide an outlet for American capital and a cheap source of raw materials. Little evidence, however, backs up such explanations. Only a small fraction of U. S. foreign investment went to areas under U. S. political control, and only a small fraction of raw materials imported from the rest of the world came from these areas (Zevin 1972; Lebergott 1980). A more satisfying economic explanation could be based on the role of special interests anxious to collect debts or protect particular interests. As Robert Zevin (1972) has argued, one of those special interests may well have been the military itself. Far-flung wars and colonies created opportunities to move up the ladder of command.
Clearly, however, noneconomic motives were also important in U. S. imperialism. Theodore Roosevelt, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and other supporters of American imperialism believed that the United States had to play a role in the “great game” of international power politics, and that to do so, the United States needed overseas bases and colonies, especially coaling stations for its fleets. Many Americans, however, remained unconvinced. The years from 1898 to 1918 were marked by an uncomfortable conviction that euphemisms such as “manifest destiny” and “extending the areas of freedom” could not long cover up the high-handed methods used to acquire America’s growing empire. Nor would it be possible to maintain approval for a diplomacy that was devoted largely to promoting or protecting private financial or commercial interests. Critics of imperialism contended that investors seeking profits in the countries of Central America and the Caribbean should be willing to take the risks of venturing under
Unstable governments. Recall Economic Reasoning Proposition 4, laws and rules matter— that is, the “rules of the game” influence choices.
The economic consequences of America’s imperialistic ventures were relatively small, but the diplomatic consequences were important. These adventures forced the United States to turn its attention outside itself and increase its military strength. Offsetting these gains were the fears and hatreds built up among natural allies in central and South America, with whose aspirations Americans should have sympathized. It would take a new generation of Americans and a second world war to remove part of this emotional conflict. Even so, the harm of two decades of harsh diplomacy could not be easily undone.
World History
