imperialism definition us history

imperialism definition us history

Understanding Imperialism in US History

1. Introduction to Imperialism

Imperialism was not always done with force. Instead, the US focused on influencing other nations economically and politically. For example, the US used money, loans, trade, and other rewards to direct the policies of nations in Latin America. Many have argued that concern for ideas such as Anglo-Saxonism, Social Darwinism, and Manifest Destiny motivated the US in its overseas expansion. The fact that the US has historically been a democratic land of the pure and a source of New World inspiration for others, it is surprising to see the nation acting quite the opposite with imperialism. Because of a belief that expanding/controlling territories and other areas gains economic advantage and increases global dominance, the US has neglected its traditional values. Internet provider America Online has coaxed millions of people since the late 1980s into recognizing that “you… belong in America.” This kind of propaganda attempts to express the idea that the US truly deserves the name when the definition stresses freedom, equality, and justice for all. However, it still seems as though we Americans have been leading a double life ever since our national birth.

At the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States emerged as an imperial power. In the years that followed, the US claimed colonies such as the Philippines and took over or established control in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, and Puerto Rico. With interventionist policies, the United States intended to guide the development of other nations for the nation’s interests. With strong economic and global motives, imperial powers such as the US and many European nations scrambled to acquire lands for resources, military strategy, and prestige. Until the onset of World War II, the US sought to protect its business interests and other matters in lesser-developed areas.

2. Causes and Motivations for US Imperialism

But by the 1890s, Northern capitalists’ wealth had produced too few jobs for the South and West crowding an industrial labor pool. An explosive economic surplus developed by the very economic laws that were further widening the rich/poor gap. Three solutions were possible for this crisis of too much money for too few jobs, especially as the same laws produced a global problem regarding what to do with too much expensive production for too few solvent customers.

The U.S. economic structure changed significantly between the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century, when industry rather than agriculture became dominant. Allowed to develop within the protected Republican-directed Federal structures, Northern capital grew stronger and wealthier behind the walls of the Republican tariffs, which in effect amplified and intensified the firming and channeling created within the mercantilist-nationalism phase.

3. Key Events and Territories of US Imperialism

An old and somewhat forgotten attempt to include the entire basin of the Caribbean Sea in a more decentralized and perhaps freer Latin American space is the concept of Greater Caribbean. It was proposed by intellectuals in the wake of the 1960s revolutionary process in Latin America and especially in the 1970s Cuban revolution, inspired by the 1847 Bolivarian vision of a unified Latin America. It would be an autonomous region of 51 sovereign states and 39 million square kilometers. The concept never found a leader, animation, articulation, and initiatives around which states and societies could come to an agreement at least to discuss the possibility. U.S. strategic interests and practices had defined a zone—Panama—around which the political and economic life of the other countries came to gravitate. In the post-1989 scenario, as previously analyzed, the United States systematically pressured the countries of this vast geographic area to liberalize their economic activity, dismantling an extant State-structured infrastructure that led to smaller countries whose governments were weaker, more corrupt, more clientelist, and altogether more easily managed by foreign interests, although many of them were not much interested or competent in managing their own affairs.

Expelling ex-colonial power Spain from the Americas and therefore from the logic of colonialism, the Monroe Doctrine, and the vast geography involved, were key elements in the United States becoming itself an imperial power. Since then, it has officialized the United States programmed and executed numerous invasions to control the geography and its assets, organized coups to control governments, and instituted numerous trade, finance, and currency conditionalities to control societies and dismantle extant infrastructures. The Panama Canal in Central America allowed the United States to interfere in the affairs of most Latin American countries. Today, the military use of the Panama Canal has been succeeded by Washington’s international financial and intelligence practices in Panama.

4. Impact and Legacy of US Imperialism

US imperialism acted to protect the newly planted seeds of democracy. They marshaled their civilizing mission up as a reason for a whole number of Cold War foreign interventions, mostly within the Western Hemisphere and Asia. Grafting foreign assistance programs to stimulate economic growth, for the purpose of reducing the economic factors of communism, helped buttress the link. These new roles and guiding messages helped transform the United States’ self-image from that of a humble post-colonial society to the self-perceived leader of the Free World.

Independence for many countries did not bring economic prosperity. Economies that had been made dependent on the colonial power for specific products found it difficult to absorb the new businesses and political systems inherited from their colonizer. Changes in this economy were slow and many of the colony’s people lived in poverty, even after independence. These elements made many people believe that the US had a moral obligation to help make those economies and governments more democratic, more market-based, and more secure.

5. Conclusion and Reflections on Imperialism in US History

As someone interested in the history of US foreign relations, I (Mark) have always struggled with what I see as a peculiar American unwillingness to come to terms with the fact that, no matter how noble our intentions may have been at times, we were an imperial power. I say peculiar because there is superabundant evidence of our holding colonial possessions for decades, lording it over innumerable dominions under a variety of guises, overthrowing people we could not subjugate with our “soft power” through a willful misuse of our military might, playing oligarchic great games for our own benefit, and acting as a “rogue superpower” to satisfy the dreams and desires of ideologists intent on promoting their own agendas with “other people’s armies.” What is peculiar about all of this is that we pretend these actions did not happen. When they are pointed out to us, we go through all sorts of contortions to “explain” why, in point of fact, we did what we did for the good of all.