Seizing an American Empire (Key Events That Continue Today)

Lesson 4-------------------------------------------------------------
Use the 2 map quizzes.

17.  The shift to colonies off the continent

·         Manifest destiny, racism, imperialism

·         Alfred Thayer Mahon, Influence of Sea Power

·         Yellow journalism, Pulitzer and Hearst

18.  Hawaii, coup by Sanford Dole, annexation

19.  Spanish colony of Cuba

·         Events: The Maine, Rough Riders

·         and the Teller Amendment

·         and the Platt Amendment (and Guantanamo)

20.  Territories gained from Spanish American War

·         Philippines (Anti-Imperialist League), Guam

·         Puerto Rico

21.  China- Open Door Policy and John Hayes

 

Background in the United States and World Imperialism.. 2

Background: 1860s - Alaska – Seward’s “Folly” (but later gold and oil). 2

Late 1880s and 1890s Events and People Who Have Ripple Effects. 3

1885 Josiah Strong – – Letting Him Speak for Himself. 3

1890 US Demographics – Census Bureau declares the end of the frontier. 3

1890s Alfred Thayer Mahon – Letting Him Speak for Himself. 3

1890s Rivalry -Yellow Journalism, Pulitzer, and Hearst – the New Journalism and New Goal 4

1882 1894 Reminders of the Chinese and the Beginning of What Happens to Hawaii 4

1895-1899 Cuba (The Teller Amendment), Puerto Rico, Guam (and 2 more Pacific Island), the Ending of Hawaii, and the Surprise That Is the Philippines. 5

1899-1901 Cuba (The Platt Amendment), China, and the Ending the Philippine Insurrection. 6

 

Color coding in Chronologies to help you spot these areas that we will be talking about in each section of time:

Pink

China

Light Red

Hawaii/Pacific (including Alaska, Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Wake Island)

Light Grey

Latin America/Caribbean

Teal

Germany (the closest color to the one on the World Map)

Background in the United States and World Imperialism

1.       Before the Civil War, the Pageant textbook explains that United States had the Monroe Doctrine:

·         In 1823, a combination of verbal support for new republics (185) and the ”Self-Defense Doctrine” by avoiding an enemy “foothold” (187)

What is self-defense: the act of defending oneself, one's property, or a close relative” or “an affirmative defense (as to a murder charge) alleging that the defendant used force necessarily to protect himself or herself because of a reasonable belief that the other party intended to inflict great bodily harm or death” (URL:  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/self-defense)

·         In the 1840s, with Texas annexation because of feared British desires (272)

·         In the 1840s, combined with “manifest destiny,” a term usually associated with newspaperman John Louis O’Sullivan

·         In the 1840s, with the Mexican War and the subsequent Mexican territories gained to the West Coast, including the “golden prize” of California rumored to be a British desire (276) 

·         In the 1860s during the American Civil War, with the French taking over Mexico and US action limited until after the defeat of the South when Secretary of State Seward uses diplomacy and treats to get the French to leave.

(URL: https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/seward - covers both this event and the purchase of Alaska)

2.       Before the Civil War and after it, the US had racism toward African Americans and had anti-immigrant (nativism) responses to the Irish and others.

3.       Since the late 1400s, European nation-states created colonies in the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Far East—but not Africa.

4.       In the late part of the 1800s, European nation (and Japan) made one last race for empire. (See the map of imperialism in 1900 in the course.) This imperialistic push included 2 late comers:

·         Germany

·         United States

Background: 1860s - Alaska – Seward’s “Folly” (but later gold and oil)

19

Date

Presidential Election

Beyond America

 

1865-04

A. Johnson, President

 

 

1867-02

 

Russia, Alaska as willing sale; bribes

 

Late 1880s and 1890s Events and People Who Have Ripple Effects

1885 Josiah Strong – – Letting Him Speak for Himself

·         Background – Minister and popularizer

·         Author of Our Country: Its Popular Future and Its Present Crisis Representative quotation.
“God with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. … And can anyone doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the "survival of the fittest?" [Bold added]
If you want to read the text where the … are click
here (URL: http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-JStrong.htm )
Notice that racism and considering national origin a race and Herbert Spenser’s Social Darwinism is part of the world view

1890 US Demographics – Census Bureau declares the end of the frontier

Think what that means at least these 2 groups:

·         For those not doing well and looking for a fresh start

·         For manufactures and sellers of good

1890s Alfred Thayer Mahon (1840-1914) – Letting Him Speak for Himself

  • Background– naval officer; lecturer on naval history and what is called “tactics”
  • Author of Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 in 1890-among other books, including one that goes to 1812
    Who is the big sea power 1660-1812?

·         Influential in the United States, on the US Secretaries of the Navy and particularly on Theodore Roosevelt, and on Germany

·         Major arguments:

o   Big navy is quantity and in size of ships (battleships)  (Why?0

o   Naval bases (Why?)

o   Colonies (Why?)

·         Representative quotations:

o   “Whether they will or not, Americans must now begin to look outward. The growing production of the country demands it.”
The Interest of America in Sea Power (1897) Why?

o    “War now not only occurs more rarely . . . [but is] an occasional excess, from which recovery is easy."
Not from my book collection but I had been looking for it and this—thus far—is the closest I can find. Click here for the source. (URL: Click  http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/alfred_thayer_mahan.html)
Notice the date of his death. How did the years beginning in 1914 modify that view by Europe and the US?

1890s Rivalry -Yellow Journalism, Pulitzer, and Hearst – the New Journalism and New Goal

·         Yellow Journalism – why the name?

·         William Randolph Hearst – New York Journal

·         Joseph Pulitzer – New York World - What else is Pulitzer known for?

1882 1894 Reminders of the Chinese and the Beginning of What Happens to Hawaii

 

Date

Presidential Election

Beyond America

Gov. Institutions

US Land

US Economy

Issue/Organization

Political Party

> 

1882

 

 

Chinese Exclusion Act – 10 year

 

 

 

 

 

1887-02

 

Hawaii-US treaty renewed & sugar

 

 

 

 

 

1888-11

Benjamin Harrison v. Grover Cleveland

 

 

 

 

 

 

1889-04

 

 

 

Oklahoma Land Rush

 

Hull House– Jane Addams

 

1890

 

 

Sherman Anti-Trust

Wounded Knee, South Dakota

McKinley Tariff & sugar in Hawaii

> 

1890

 

A.T. Mahan - The Influence of Sea Power upon History

Census Bureau: end of frontier

 

 

 

Sherman Silver Purchase Act

> 

1892

 

 

Chinese – new 10 year extension

 

 

 

 

Date

Presidential Election

Beyond America

Gov. Institutions

US Land

US Economy

Issue/Organization

Political Party

> 

1892-01

 

Coup, Hawaii – Sanford B. Dole,[i]

elected President; US minister to Hawaii declaration of US protectorate

Ellis Island opens

 

Homer A. Plessy, case begins

 

> 

1892-02

 

Hawaii annexation treaty proposed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1892-11

Benjamin Harrison v. Grover Cleveland v. James B. Weaver

 

 

 

 

 

Panic of 1893

 

 

> 

1893-03

Cleveland’s decision

Hawaii investigation

 

 

 

 

 

 

1893-08

Cleveland, special session -Why?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1893-11

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sherman Silver Purchase Act -repeal

 

 

> 

1893-12

Cleveland’s decision

Hawaii annexation treaty not submitted

 

 

 

 

 

> 

1894

 

Republic of Hawaii recognized

 

 

Pullman Strike – American Railway Union Strike – E.V. Debs

“Legal Tender” Jacob Coxey’s Army – petition for road building (jobs)

 

1895

 

Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Co.[1]

 

US Bond sale - handled by J.P. Morgan

Atlanta Exposition[ii] speech – Booker T. Washington

  

 

1895-1899 Cuba (The Teller Amendment), Puerto Rico, Guam (and 2 more Pacific Island), the Ending of Hawaii, and the Surprise That Is the Philippines

Caution about this Period: What’s guerrilla warfare? This is a different kind of world:

·         Spain and the reconcentration camps (bad and deadly, but not the Nazi version in the 1940s) against groups wanting Cuba to be a nation (and the British version of this)

·          United States and its methods in the Philippines

Date

Presidential Election

Beyond America

Gov. Institutions

US Land

Issue/Organization

Political Party

 

1895

 

Cuban rebellion

Knight case –Supreme Court

 

 

 

 

1896

 

Cubans establish a PR branch in the US

Plessy V. Ferguson - decided

 

 

 

 

1896-11

William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan

 

 

 

 

Populist support for Bryan - What are the Populists’ issues.

> 

1898-01

 

Cuban riot

 

 

 

 

> 

1898-028-01

 

Battleship Maine –US sends

de Lôme letter

 

 

Reminder: Hearst and Pulitzer –

 

 

1898-02

 

Maine explosion

 

 

 

 

 

1908

 

War authorized -  Teller Amendment

 

 

 

 

 

> 

1898-05

 

Dewey in Manilla – Planned since 1895

 

 

 

 

> 

1898-07

 

 

 

Hawaii annexation – by joint resolution (not treaty) - Why? When before?

 

 

> 

1898-11

 

 

 

 

US -Anti-Imperialist League formed- key issue will be the Philippines  

> 

1899

 

Treaty ending war - Senate approval

 

Notice Cuba is not in this list > 

Guam

Philippines

Puerto Rico

 

 

> 

 

 

Filipino resistance - Emilio Aguinaldo

 

 

<Caution This unrest continues

 

1899-1901 Cuba (The Platt Amendment), China, and the Ending the Philippine Insurrection

 

Date

Presidential Election

Beyond America

Gov. Institutions

US Land

Issue/Organization

Political Party

> 

> 

1899

 

Open Door – China – trade –Secretary of State John Hay[iii]

 

Annexation

- Wake Island

- Eastern Samoa Islands- US splits Samoa with Germany

 

 

 

1900-08

 

Boxer Rebellion and US troops

 

 

 

 

> 

1901

 

Aquinaldo capture (resistance through 1902, 1906) – end military rule; Taft, governor.

 

 

<Caution This unrest continues

 

> 

1901-03

 

Platt Amendment –Cuba - Guantanamo and our right to intervene

< Notice US indirectly took Cuba

 

 

 

Background: Terms on Spanish American War:

·         “Smoked Yankees” – name for African Americans (not in the test, but a clue to the world)

·         “splendid little war” – phrase by John Hay

·         Rough Riders

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2019

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2019

WCJC Home:

http://www.wcjc.edu/

 



[1] It is the 1894 income tax that goes to the Supreme Court and the court declares this tax unconstitutional—thus the later amendment to the Constitution.



[i] Where have you seen the name Dole in a grocery store?

[ii] W.E.B. Du Bois calls it the Atlanta Compromise – given American history and what events we have labeled as a Compromise, not a compliment..

[iii] John Hay also coined the phrase a “splendid little war.”