Transcript American Foreign Policy 1865-1917

US Foreign Policy
1865-1917
Chapter 11
Unit 5
Ch. 9
Foreign Policy v. Domestic Policy
 Foreign Policy – any government action
involving relationships with other nations

Examples: treaties, military actions, trade agreements
 Domestic Policy – any government action within
the nation

Examples: programs like Medicare and Social Security,
taxes, business regulations, etc.
The Age of Imperialism
 Imperialism – the process of a powerful nation
exerting its will on a weaker nation or people
 Colonization – one nation actually owns and
occupies another region of the world
The Age of Imperialism - Causes
 Military – naval bases
Alfred T. Mahan (Military Historian) - The Influence of
Sea Power on History
 Economic
 new markets for goods
 sources of raw materials (not a big problem for the US)
 “Extractive Economies”- imperial country extracted
goods and shipped them to the home country
 Social
 missionary impulse- spread western values (religion)
 Social Darwinism- stronger rule over the weaker. God’s
will for Americans to settle the frontier
 “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling

US Foreign Policy Goals - General
 Increase trade
 Protect US business interests
 Avoid conflict with Great Powers
 Maintain the Western Hemisphere as US sphere of
influence
Pre-Civil War Foreign Policy
 George Washington’s Farewell Address
 Avoid foreign entanglements (alliances)
 Remain neutral in any international conflicts
 Behave “virtuously” in relations with other nations
 Manifest Destiny
 Major Territorial Expansion
Foreign Policy 1865-1890
 Alaska – purchased 1867 from Russia
 Secretary of State William Seward
 Seward’s Folly/Seward’s Icebox- why would US want a vast
tundra of snow and ice
 Hawaii
 US business interests – especially in sugar cane
 King Kalakaua and the Bayonet Constitution
 Queen Liliuokalani v. Sanford B. Dole & the Hawaiian
League
 Senate Investigations
 Annexation to the US – 1898
Pre-Civil War Foreign Policy
 Monroe Doctrine – 1823
 Open trade with Japan – 1853
 Commodore Matthew Perry

Sailed a fleet of American warships into present day Japan
“Seward’s Icebox”: 1867
Causes of The Spanish-American War
 The worldwide impulse toward imperialism
 US economic interests in Cuba
 Particularly sugar cane
 The Cuban Revolution
 Valeriano “Butcher” Weyler


Reconcentrados – concentration camps
José Martí – poet and symbol of revolution
 The Yellow Press
 William Randolph Hearst & the New York Journal
 “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”
 The sinking of the Maine
“Remember the
Maine and To
Hell With Spain!”
The War
 George Dewey led his ships to destroy the Spanish
Force
 Emilio Aguinaldo


Filipino nationalist
Led other nationalists fought against Spain and US
 Rough Riders
 US cavalry led by Theodore Roosevelt
 Secured grounds surrounding Santiago
Results of the Spanish American War
 Cuban independence
 US gained Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines (for
$20 million)
 The Platt Amendment


Prevented Cuba from making treaties without US permission
Gave US permission to intervene in Cuba if the US felt it was
necessary
 US becomes an imperial
power
The duty of the hour: to save her not only from Spain, but from a worse fate.
The US and Asia
1898-1914
The US & the Philippines
 Foreign Policy goal:
 Have a naval base from which to protect trade and US
interests in Asia
 Promote US expansion in the Pacific “following the sun”
 Philippine Insurrection
 Emilio Aguinaldo
 William Howard Taft – administrator
The Imperialist/Anti-Imperialist Debate
 Imperialist arguments:
 US should be a Great Power like others
 Increase trade around the world
 Necessary for naval bases and protection of international trade
 If the US doesn’t annex, someone else will
 Anti-Imperialist arguments:
 Against fundamental American principles
 Costs too much money
 Unnecessary to promote trade
How some
apprehensive people
picture Uncle Sam
after the war.
(Detroit News, 1898)
Declined, with thanks.
JOHN BULL: It’s really most
extraordinary what training will
do. Why, only the other day I
thought that man unable to
support himself.
(Fred Morgan, Philadelphia
Inquirer, 1898)
“What the US
has fought for.”
“The White Man's Burden”
By Rudyard Kipling (Feb. 1899)
Take up the White Man's burden-Send forth the best ye breed-Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden-In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden-The savage wars of peace-Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden-No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper-The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward-The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humor
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden-Ye dare not stoop to less-Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days-The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
“Take Up the White Man's
Burden, and Reap His Old
Reward”
By William H. Walker, Life (March 16, 1899)
Uncle Sam: "I don't
like the job,
Rudyard, my boy!"
Denver Post 1900
“The Real White Man’s Burden” by Ernest Crosby
Take up the White Man’s burden.
Send forth your sturdy kin,
And load them down with Bibles
And cannon-balls and gin.
Throw in a few diseases
To spread the tropic climes,
For there the healthy [savages]
Are quite behind the times.
And don’t forget the factories.
On those benighted shores
They have no cheerful iron mills,
Nor [huge] department stores.
They never work twelve hours a day
And live in strange content,
Although they never have to pay
A single [cent] of rent.
Take up the White Man’s burden,
And teach the Philippines
What interest and taxes are
And what a mortgage means.
Give them electrocution chairs,
And prisons, too, galore,
And if they seem inclined to kick,
Then spill their heathen gore.
They need our labor question, too,
And politics and fraud—
We’ve made a pretty mess at home,
Let’s make a mess abroad.
And let us ever humbly pray
The Lord of Hosts may deign
To stir our feeble memories
Lest we forget—the Maine.
Take up the White’s Man’s burden.
To you who thus succeed
In civilizing savage hordes,
They owe a debt, indeed;
Concessions, pensions, salaries,
And privilege and right—
With outstretched hands you raised to bless
Grab everything in sight.
Take up the White Man’s burden
And if you write in verse,
Flatter your nation’s vices
And strive to make them worse.
Then learn that if with pious words
You ornament each phrase,
In a world of canting hypocrites
This kind of business pays.
Source: Ernest Crosby, “The Real White Man’s Burden,” Swords and
Ploughshares (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1902), 32–
35.
US – Japanese Relations
 Foreign Policy Goal
 Limit the growth of Japanese influence in Asia and the
Pacific
 Maintain friendly relations with Japan
 Roosevelt arbitrates settlement to Russo-Japanese
War 1905

wins a Nobel Peace Prize
 Roosevelt encourages Japan to annex Korea
US – Japanese Relations
 Gentlemen’s Agreement 1907
 end segregation of American and Asian children in schools
 Great White Fleet
 New force of navy ships
 Demonstrated America’s increased military power around the
world
The Great White Fleet
US – Chinese Relations
 European “spheres of influence”
 US Foreign Policy goals:
 Support Chinese independence
 Maintain possibility of US trade with China
 US intervenes in the Boxer Rebellion – 1900
 Chinese secret society killed foreign missionaries and
diplomats0
 John Hay – Open Door Policy
 US didn’t want colonies in China, just wanted free trade
there
The Open Door Policy
The Boxer Rebellion
The US and Latin America
US Global Investments and
Investments in Latin America 1914
Theodore Roosevelt
 Big Stick Diplomacy
 Enforce the Monroe Doctrine
 Attempt negotiations
 Use force if necessary
 Protect and promote US business interests
 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
 Updates doctrine for an age of economic imperialism
Theodore Roosevelt
 Panama Canal
 Attempts to negotiate with Colombia to get control of the
Canal Zone
 Sends navy ships to Panama to support Panama’s revolution
against Colombia
 After Panama’s independence negotiates with THEM for use
for the Canal Zone
 Increase speed and reduce cost of international trade
Panama Canal
TR in Panama
(Construction begins in 1904)
The Roosevelt Corollary
William Howard Taft
 Dollar Diplomacy
 Enforce the Monroe Doctrine
 Replace European loans with American loans
 Economic ties will promote friendly relations
 Use force when necessary
 Protect and promote US business interests
Woodrow Wilson
 Moral Diplomacy
 Enforce the Monroe Doctrine
 Democratic governments will promote friendly relations
 Use force when necessary to ensure stability
 Promote and protect US business interests
 Intervention in Haiti
 Intervention in Mexican Revolution
 John J. Pershing led forces to chase rebel Pancho Villa
US Interventions in Latin America