Steps toward Empire#
The circumstances that brought Privates Grayson and Miller from Nebraska to the Philippines originated deep in American history. As early as the seventeenth-century Puritan migration from England to Massachusetts Bay, Americans worried about how to do good in a world that does wrong. John Winthrop sought to set up a "city on a hill" in the New World, a model community of righteous living for others in the world to behold and imitate. "Let the eyes of the world be upon us," Winthrop said. That wish, reaffirmed during the American Revolution, became a permanent goal of American policy toward the outside world.
America as a Model Society#
Nineteenth-century Americans continued to believe in the nation's special mission. The Monroe Doctrine in 1823 pointed out moral differences between the monarchical, arbitrary governments of Europe and the free republican institutions of the New World. As Spanish colonies in South and Central America followed the American Revolutionary model, Monroe warned Europe to stay out. In succeeding decades, a number of distinguished European visitors came to study "democracy in America," to see for themselves the "great social revolution" at work. They found widespread democracy, representative and responsive political and legal institutions, a religious commitment to the notion of human perfectibility, unlimited energy, and the ability to apply unregulated economic activity and inventive genius to produce more things for more people.
The model seemed irresistible. In a world that was evil, Americans believed that they stood as a transforming force for good. But how could a nation committed to isolationism do the transforming? One way was to encourage other nations to observe and imitate the good example set by the United States. Often, however, other nations preferred their own society or were attracted to competing models of modernization, such as fascism or socialism. This implied the need for a more aggressive foreign policy.
Americans have rarely focused just on perfecting the good example at home, waiting for others to copy it. This requires patience and passivity, two traits not characteristic of Americans. Rather, throughout history, the American people have actively and some times forcefully imposed their ideas and institutions on others. The international crusades of the United States, well intentioned if not always well received, as recently as in Somalia, Kosovo, and the Gulf War have usually been motivated by a mixture of idealism and self-interest. Hence, the effort to spread the exemplary American model to an imperfect world has been both a blessing and a burden, both for others and for the American people themselves.
Early Expansionism#
Persistent expansionism marked the first century of American independence. Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803 and the grasping for Florida and Canada by War Hawks in 1812 signaled an intense American interest in territorial growth. Although the United States remained "unentangled" in European affairs for most of the century, as both Washington and Jefferson had advised, the American government and people were much entangled elsewhere. To the Cherokee, Seminole, Lakota, Apache, Cheyenne, and other American Indian nations, the United States was far from isolationist. Nor did the Canadians, the Spanish in Florida, nor Mexicans in Texas and California consider the Americans nonexpansionist. Until mid-century, the United States pursued its "Manifest Destiny" (see Chapter 13) by expanding across the North American continent. In the 1850s, Americans began to look beyond their own continent as Commodore Perry in 1853 "opened" Japan and southerners sought more cotton lands in the Caribbean and a canal connecting the two oceans.
After the Civil War, Secretary of State William Seward spoke of an America that would hold a "commanding sway in the world," destined to exert commercial domination "on the Pacific Ocean, and its islands and continents." He purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million and acquired a coaling station in the Midway Islands near Hawaii, where missionaries and merchants were already active. This paved the way for American commercial expansion in Korea, Japan, and China. Seward also advocated annexing Cuba and other islands of the West Indies and tried to negotiate a treaty securing an American built canal through the isthmus of Panama. Seward dreamed of "possession" of the entire North and Central American continent and ultimately "control of the world." Although his larger dreams went unrealized, his interest in expansion into the Caribbean persisted among business interests and politicians to the end of the century and beyond.
Expansion After Seward#
In 1870, foreshadowing the Philippine debates 30 years later, supporters of President Grant tried to force the Senate to annex Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola. They cited the strategic importance of the Caribbean and argued forcefully for the economic value of raw materials and markets that Santo Domingo would bring. Opponents responded that expansionism violated the American principle of selfdetermination and government by consent of the governed. They claimed that the native peoples of the Caribbean were brown-skinned, culturally inferior, non-English-speaking, and therefore unassimilable. Expansionism might also involve foreign entanglements, a large and expensive navy, bigger government, and higher taxes. So the Senate rejected the annexation treaty.
Although reluctant to add territory outright, American interests eagerly sought commercial dominance in Latin America and Asia. A number of statesmen asserted U.S. influence in these areas. President Hayes dismissed a treaty with England agreeing to joint construction and control of a canal across either Panama or Nicaragua. If such a canal were built, he said, it was sure to be "under American control" and would be considered "virtually a part of the coast line of the United States." But nothing came of diplomatic efforts with Nicaragua for an American-built canal except to cause Nicaraguan suspicions of U.S. intentions.
In 1881, Secretary of State James G. Blaine sought to convene a conference of American nations to promote hemispheric peace and trade. Latin Americans may have wondered what Blaine intended, for in 1881 he intervened in three separate border disputes in Central and South America, in each case at the cost of goodwill and trust. Ten years later, relations with Chile were harmed when several American sailors on shore leave were involved in a barroom brawl in Valparaiso. Two Americans were killed and several others injured. American pride was also injured, and President Benjamin Harrison sent an ultimatum calling for a "prompt and full reparation." After threats of war, Chile complied.
American expansion produced other incidents in the Pacific. In the mid-1870s, American sugar-growing interests in the Hawaiian Islands were strong enough to put whites in positions of influence over the native monarchy. In 1875, they obtained a reciprocity treaty admitting Hawaiian sugar duty-free to the United States, and in 1877 the United States also won exclusive rights to build a naval base at Pearl Harbor. Hawaiians resented the growing influence of American sugar interests, especially as they brought in Japanese to replace native people-many of whom died by white diseases-in the sugarcane fields. Between 1885 and 1924, 200,000 Japanese workers, pursuing "huge dreams of fortune across the ocean," migrated to Hawaii, and nearly another 200,000 went to the West Coast of the United States.
In 1891, the strongly nationalist Queen Liliuokalani assumed the throne in Hawaii and sought to establish control over whites in the name of "Hawaii for the Hawaiians." So in 1893, white planters, fearful that the queen might turn to Japan for support, staged a coup with the help of U.S. gunboats and marines. With the success of their bloodless coup, called one "of sugar, by sugar, for sugar," the whites sought formal annexation by the friendly Harrison administration. But then Grover Cleveland, who opposed imperial expansion, returned to the presidency for his second term and stopped the move. He was, however, unable to remove the white sugar growers from power in Hawaii. They waited patiently for a more desirable time for annexation, which came during the war in 1898.
Moving ever closer toward the fabled markets of the Far East, the United States acquired a naval station at Pago Pago in the Samoan Islands in 1878, sharing the port with Great Britain and Germany. In an incident in 1889, American and German naval forces almost fought each other, but a typhoon ended the crisis by wiping out both navies. Troubles in the Pacific also occurred in the late 1880s over the American seizure of several Canadian ships in seal fur and fishing disputes in the Bering Sea. This issue was settled only by the British threat of naval action and with the ruling of an international arbitration commission, which ordered the United States to pay damages.
The United States confronted the English closer to home as it sought to replace Britain as the most influential nation in Central American affairs. In 1895, a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana threatened to bring British intervention against the Venezuelans. President Cleveland, needing a popular political issue to deflect attention from the depression, asked Secretary of State Richard Olney to send a message to Great Britain. Olney's note, which was stronger than Cleveland had intended, invoked the Monroe Doctrine, declared the United States as "practically sovereign on this continent," and demanded British acceptance of international arbitration to settle the dispute. The British ignored the note, and war loomed. But then both sides realized that war between the two English-speaking nations would be an "absurdity." The dispute was settled by agreeing to an impartial American commission to settle the boundary.
These increasing conflicts in the Caribbean and the Pacific signaled the rise of American presence beyond the borders of the United States. Yet as of 1895, the nation had neither the means nor a consistent policy for enlarging its role in the world. The diplomatic service was small, inexperienced, and unprofessional. A.round the world, American emissaries kept sloppy records, issued illegal passports, involved themselves in petty local issues and frauds, and exhibited insensitive behavior toward indigenous cultures. No U.S. embassy official in Beijing spoke Chinese. The U.S. Army, with about 28,000 men, was ranked 13th in the world, behind Bulgaria. The navy, dismantled after the Civil War and partly rebuilt under President Arthur, ranked no higher than 10th and included many dangerously obsolete ships. These limited and backward instruments of foreign policy could not support the aspirations of an emerging world power, especially one whose rise to power had come so quickly.