The New Empire An Interpretation Of American Expansion Summary

Expansion has played a large part in American history, coming with a collection of problems and triumphs. Walter LaFeber discusses American Expansionism through U.S. policymaking even discussing how and why he believes it should be more conservative as he claims this to be the backbone of all of his writings.1 Also it’s important to define how he uses the term expansionism as he states “I have used the term expansionism in discussing American attempts to find trade and investment opportunities in areas where the United States did not want to exert formal political control”.2 The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 by Walter LaFeber, examined the period of 1860-1898 of the “American overseas empire” by addressing the

LaFeber claims, “an open door policy eliminated colonial problems, and American factories and farms boomed so successfully that the resulting glut of goods threatened to inundate the economy” leaving Seward’s successors able to complete much of what he was unable to finish.7 LaFeber makes it clear his trust remains with Seward and his approach to expansionism provided tribute to his claim expansionism was not sudden in 1890 and Seward was fully aware of the political choices he was

Evarts, and he begins with a perspective reflecting that of an American businessman referring to the perspective that a commercial empire could be acquired without war. From this perspective, Evarts placed heavy emphasis on Asian policies establishing some freedom of action and commercial privileges. Blaine and Frelinghuysen were similar to all of their fellow policymakers in their search for new trade opportunities. They devoted much of their time to finding “Latin-American markets for American goods”, and foreign markets were extremely important in LaFeber’s analysis of a new empire.10 Together they took hold of new trading opportunities and created a successful policy with Latin-America bringing forth a new attitude in relation to the U.S.’s southern neighbors. All of these policymakers from LaFeber contribute to his claim that expansion was an ongoing ordeal and was not a random act in the 1890’s. These policymakers were clear in their goals and set out to achieve nothing less through policy in attempts to find trade and investment opportunities creating a new American Empire through economic