Transcript America Claims an Empire Chapter 10

America
Claims an
Empire
Chapter
10
Imperialism
and
America
10.1 Notes
What is Imperialism?
• Policy in which stronger
•
•
•
nations extend their
economic, political,
or military control over
weaker territories
America looking to
expand
Pacific Ocean area –
Hawaii
Join Europe and
establish colonies
Global Competition
• Africa = prime target
of European
expansionism
– Ethiopia and Liberia
– only independent
countries
• Asia
– Competition for
China w/ Japan and
Europe
• Manifest Destiny led
U.S. to conquer all of
America
Factors Fueling Imperialism
• Desire for military strength
– Other countries establishing
military presence
– Admiral Alfred T. Mahan – U.S.
Navy
• Urged expansion of U.S. naval
power
– 9 steel-hulled cruisers built by
1890
– Modern battleships
• Maine and Oregon
– Become 3rd largest naval power
• Thirst for new market
– Advances in technology
– Farms and factory production extremely high
– Americans couldn’t consume everything
– Need to sell abroad
• More raw materials
needed too
• Foreign trade =
solution to
overproduction,
unemployment,
boosting economy
• Belief in cultural superiority
– Philosophy of Social Darwinism
• Free market competition would lead to the survival
of the fittest
– Belief in racial superiority of Anglo-Saxons
– U.S. responsibility to spread Christianity and
“civilization” to “inferior people” of the world
U.S. Acquires Alaska
• William Seward – expansionist Secretary
of State under Lincoln and Johnson
• Arranged to buy Alaska from Russia, 1867
– $7.2 million
– House of Reps
skeptical
– “Seward’s Icebox” or
“Seward’s Folly”
– 1959 – Statehood
– Rich in timber,
minerals, oil for 2 cents / acre
U.S. Takes Hawaii
• Took over vacant Midway Islands (1,300
miles N. of HI) – 1867
• HI economically important to U.S.
– Stopping point for American merchants
– Missionaries set up there
– Children and grandchildren –
sugar planters
– Crops mostly sold to U.S.
• ¾ of HI wealth = American-owned sugar
•
plantations
Laborers imported from Japan, Portugal, China
– HI natives
outnumbered
by 1900
• U.S. agree to import
sugar duty-free (no tax)
– Production increased 9X’s
• McKinley Tariff revoked duty-free sugar
• HI planters forced to compete in markets
• Militarists,
economists
knew value of
HI
– Pressured HI
to allow U.S.
naval base
– Pearl Harbor
becomes best
port
• Refueling
station for
U.S. ships
too