World Class Educationwww.kean.edu

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Topic 11

What is imperialism?

The “New Imperialism” – Africa, Asia, Caribbean

Causes of American overseas expansion - Imperialism

The Spanish American War

Emergence of America as a new World Power

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John Hopson, Imperialism (1902) – domestic overproduction –domestic under-consumption - new markets – overseas investment

Vladimir Lenin, “Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism”(1916) –“exploitation of …small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations” – “intensification of antagonisms between imperialist nations”

Niall Ferguson (Harvard University/ Oxford University) , “No organisation in history has done more to promote the free movement of goods, capital and labour than the British Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And no organisation has done more to impose Western norms of law, order and governance around the world.”

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The Industrial Revolution

The End of the American Continental

Expansion

The “New Imperialism”

The Apostles of Empire

“Non-colonial imperial expansion”

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Alfred Thayer Mahan

Albert J. Beveridge

William McKinley

Theodore Roosevelt

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The Influence of Sea

Power On History,

1660-1783 (1890)

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“We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient.

We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee under God, of the civilization of the world. The Pacific is our ocean... . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus?

China is our natural customer...

The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East....”

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McKinley on taking the Philippines

“…that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them….”

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“The guns that thundered

off Manila and Santiago

left us echoes of glory,

but they also left us a

legacy of duty. If we

drove out a medieval

tyranny only to make

room for savage

anarchy we had better

not have begun the task

at all.”

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China (The Open Door Policy)

Pacific (Hawaii, Philippines, Guam. Midway Island,

Wake island)

Latin America (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Central America,

Virgin Island )

Panama Canal

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Sympathy for Cuban rebels

Decline of Spanish Empire

Economic Interests –sugar interests

“Yellow” Journalism –William Randolph Hearst / Joseph Pulitzer

Sinking of the battleship Maine (1898)

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Hawaii (1898)

Samoan islands / Midway (1899)

Spanish-American War (1898)

Annexation of Philippines

Open Door Policy - China (1900)

Boxer Rebellion (China, 1900)

Puerto Rico (1900/1917/1952)

Panama Canal (1903)

Teddy Roosevelt - Corollary to Monroe Doctrine (1904)

Teddy Roosevelt – Big Stick Diplomacy

Cruse of the “Great White Fleet” (1907)

America continued intervention in the Caribbean (late 19th and 20th

Centuries)

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America becomes a World Power

Takes its place with Britain, France, Germany as an imperial power –

“non-colonial expansion” – emphasis on economic penetration v outright ownership

Power to be reckoned with in the Pacific and Caribbean regions and world wide

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David. Healy, U.S. Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s

Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900

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