The Role Of American Expansionism In The 1890's

Joel J Huerta Mr. Pineda AP US History 23 January 2023 Post Civil War, the United States went under two major insurgence most known as the Agricultural and Industrial revolutions. These new cultivated goods and transformative machinery formulated from both revolutions would bring America to new heights and attract the likes of people all over the world. However, due to these new high technological advancements, over production became a vast issue leading America to turn to policies of imperialism in order to prevent an economic downturn. Imperialism was the policy of extending power over a nation by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over political or economic life.

The Development of the American Economy Before Henry Clay’s American system, America has been importing goods from outside of the country and only buying goods within their region. Clay’s American system helped America limit buying consumer products from foreign countries and increased the sales of local producers. The post-Civil westward expansion plays an important role in expanding farmlands for agriculture. Large quantities of food supply were available and railroads were used to transport these foods because it was fast, efficient and inexpensive. Henry Clay’s American system and the post-Civil War westward expansion, and the significance of railroads all helped shaped the transition of America’s economy from regional to national economy.

Economic development, not geographical expansion, was the key to American’s

The United States was not interested in having people with different cultures, languages, and religions where an older generation of moralists thought it violate a core principle of republicanism, while a younger generation believed that the United States had a role to uplift backward societies. When the foreign policy changed after 1890, the US became an imperialist nation. After the United States bought Alaska from Russia the US quickly decided to look into overseas. Their plan was to take over other foreign lands and slowly gain an empire, and soon become a world power. The two major causes for US expansion after 1890 were for economic benefits and military control overseas.

Was American expansion justified during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s? This was a debate that Americans fought over then and still now fight over now. There were two types of people some were for expansion and others were against expansion of the U.S. Both sides of the story will be well explained in this essay. First, this will explain the people for expansion’s side.

William McKinley in his thoughts on American Expansionism has identified the reasons why America had no other choice but to incorporate Philippines as a part of it. This writing has been lifted from the excerpts of an interview with William McKinley soon after Spain had surrendered in the Spanish-American war. McKinley cleverly talks in this interview about how Philippines just came and fell into the laps of America thereby suggesting the helpless stance of America. He talks about how America’s sole intention and purpose had only been to safeguard its own interests as a country. He had to order that the Spanish fleets in Manila be destroyed because if left unattended, they would have crossed the Pacific and wreaked havoc in the American states

That is just one of many reasons there was Westward Expansion. Overpopulation, new inventions of transportation methods, and new opportunities. These are three of many reasons why Americans in the 1800’s felt urged to move west. Some may claim that Westward expansion was not right for America to do because of the conflicts that were aroused afterward.

Religion played a big part in expansion of America. Americans believe that they had a future destined by God to expand both land and their religion. They also believed that they should control and populate the land as they see fit. Expansionist also believed that it was their responsiblity

In a time when America was coming out of the bloodiest war that was ever fought, against themselves, The Civil War, and when America looked overseas for a new frontier with Imperialism. It is in this context that America started to grow westward with farm land and in industry with the million of workers, but America still felt growing pains. Two significant ways in which farmers and industrial workers responded to industrialization in the Gilded Age (1865-1900) were the formation of organizations to protect farmers, and the creation of labor unions and the use of strikes to protect the workers. One significant way in which farmers responded to industrialization in the Gilded Age (1865 - 1900) was the formation of organizations to protect farmers. During Westward Expansion farmers fell victims to the low pricing of the crops.

And lastly the desire for a new frontier to settle in order to maintain America’s identity and prosperity. All three of the examples: economically, politically/military, and culturally can simply explain why and how America became an imperialist nation in the late

Before the 20th century the United States was an isolationist nation but around the late 19th century America decided to convert into an imperialist power. They had numerous reasons to shift into being an imperialist nation. America didn’t want to begin imperializing to settle and live in the nations they were taking over, they already had America for that reason, they wanted to adopt these nations for what they had to offer, which was many things. America saw an opportunity to improving their nation and took it. Even if there were many causes for America to imperialize, three of them stood out the most.

How did the United States expand over the years and why? The expansion of the United States was a vital part of America’s history and greatly affects how we live today. America's early days only started in 13 states and then progressively grew to 50 states in total. The time throughout the 1800’s and what happened throughout that time greatly impacted how America expanded land, resources, opportunity, trade, and money. Two of many main causes that evoked American expansion was the amount of opportunity that America could take, the idea of Manifest destiny, and the amount of power that the US had on other countries.

In the beginning of the 19th century, the United States had minimal interest in becoming an empire who controlled overseas countries. Instead, Americans decided to just use Manifest Destiny on their own continent as their form of expansion. In the late 1800s, the frontier was announced to be “closed”, so Americans were forced to look overseas in order to expand trade by looking for new markets. After America made the decision to support Cuba in its revolt against Spain during the Spanish-American war, the United States gained its own colonial empire when it defeated Spain in 1898. Once the war ended, Americans had to debate between becoming an imperialist empire or remaining in isolationism.

United States Imperialism in the late 19th century was very selfish time. Many people in that time, debated about whether are not benefiting our country was the right way or the wrong way. The motiving factors that impacted our imperialism are economic, military, and cultural. These factors impacted the American Imperialism from 1890-194 by having control over weaker territories meeting our expanding needs.

Following the end of the Industrialist Era and the emergence of countless technological advancements, the United States entered the world stage. The United States was attempting to create an empire by expanding to land outside of its own borders in order to benefit the country’s economic interests. Many citizens, whose views were greatly influenced by their understandings of national identity, saw this overseas expansion in conflicting ways. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these groups differed in their opinions on the idea of expansion due to either their wanting to remain a democratic country built on the ideals of freedom and liberty to preserve their sense of national identity, or their wanting to expand for economic reasons and nationalism. Imperialism, which is the extension of a country’s power and influence through expansion, began as early as the 17th century, when Britain colonized the New World in order to expand economically and gain natural resources for manufacturing.