Imperialism

As the United States became more powerful in the late 1800s, and particularly in the 1890s, we began to "flex our muscle" and exert influence over small foreign countries. This influence by a large, developed country over a smaller, less-developed one is known as "imperialism". We were getting bigger and more powerful. Thanks to Manifest Destiny, we had expanded to the Pacific Ocean. Many felt, why stop there? The United States took Hawaii in the 1890s.

Americans then started wanting to free Cuba from Spanish control, and newspapers got into this act. "Yellow journalism" consisted of newspapers increasing their sales by stirring up a desire to go to war. The term is named after a popular comic strip called the "Yellow Kid."

In the 1890s the two leading publishers were Joseph Pulitzer, who published the New York World, and William Randolph Hearst, who published the New York Journal. They were in a "circulation war," with each running more and more sensationalistic headlines to try to sell more papers. The result of their greed for power and influence was the Spanish-American War.

In 1895, some Cubans wanted to become independent from Spain. Americans seemed to like the idea. It would push Spain back to Europe. This idea also sparked idealism, reminding people of our own American Revolution. Big business like the idea also, because it saw ways to profit from the island. So newspapers whipped the public into the mood for war, which the United States had not experienced since the Civil War, over 30 years earlier.

Spanish-American War

Two specific events triggered this war: the Spanish minister to the U.S., Enrique Dubuy de Lome, wrote a secret letter insulting our president, William McKinley, by calling him a "low politician." Cuban rebels intercepted it and leaked it to the press. The second event was an explosion on the battleship "Maine" in the Havana, Cuba harbor. The ship sunk, and immediately the press blamed Spain. In fact, the explosion was probably just an accident.

As a result of newspaper sensationalism about these events, the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, and began fighting them in the Spanish colonies of the Philippines and Cuba. The Teller Amendment added to the congressional war declaration a promise of self-determination ("freedom") for Cuba.

Victory for America was swift in Cuba, and it produced a future president: Theodore Roosevelt and his "Rough Riders." They heroically conquered a hill during brief fighting in Cuba, which was nothing compared to John McCain's 7 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, but the media played up Roosevelt's conquest as much as possible.

The fighting in the Philippines was much fiercer, and cost far more lives and money. In 1898, Commander George Dewey sneaked into Manila Bay in Philippines and destroyed the entire Spanish Pacific Fleet. The United States thereby defeated Spain quickly there, but some Muslim natives of the Philippines and surrounding areas intensely rebelled for three years, using "guerrilla" or terrorist tactics that became more familiar to the world a century later.

This type of unrelenting resistance was a precursor to the difficult Vietnam War, and fighting terrorists in the 21st century. Finally the United States Army simply killed nearly all the insurgents. But Muslim fighting to establish Islam as the primary religion in the Philippines and neighboring territory continues to this day.^[13]

After the fighting stopped in the Philippines, the issue was presented to President McKinley as to what to do with the territory. Newspapers opposed an American return of the Philippines to Spain, fearing Spain would mistreat the Filipino people. President McKinley agreed with the newspapers and kept the Philippines as an American territory. It remained a U.S. territory until 1946, when the United States granted it independence shortly after World War II.

After the Spanish-American War, the United States granted Cuba independence on the condition that it insert the "Platt Amendment" into its constitution. This Amendment gave the U.S. the right to intercede in Cuba whenever necessary, and allowed the U.S. to keep a naval base (called Guantanamo Bay) on the island. More than a century later, the Bush Administration imprisoned terrorists there after they were captured in Afghanistan following 9/11, and liberals have complained about continued use of that facility for this purpose. President Obama promised to move these suspected terrorists to United States jails and try them in American courts, but public opposition to his plan prevented this from happening.

The Treaty of Paris in 1898 ended the Spanish-American War based on Spain leaving Cuba, the United States buying the Philippines for $20 million dollars, and the United States also acquiring Guam and Puerto Rico.

Debate: Was our imperialism driven by business interests, such as sugar in Cuba and Philippines? Many critics said so, calling our foreign policy "dollar diplomacy" (diplomacy motivated by profit-making).