DEBATES about American IMPERIALISM [APUSH Review]

[0:00]Welcome to Unit 7, y'all, and we're going to start by talking about the debates that led the United States to get its big boy imperialism pants on. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. Okay, now, before we jump straight into the debates over American imperialism, let me start with a definition and some context. Okay, so imperialism by definition describes a process by which a powerful state extends authority over another weaker state in order to exploit its resources. And that authority can come in a variety of flavors like economic control or direct political control, etc. But whatever the flavor, the ultimate outcome is a loss of sovereignty and self-determination for the colonized. And don't forget that this fair country that we've been studying throughout the whole course started as an Imperial venture, visavis Big Mama Britain. And further recall that Americans in those days fought Big Mama off precisely because they believed through and through, up and down, left and right, inward and outward that imperial empires were unjust and primarily exploitative. But it only took a little over 100 years for American policy makers to be like, well, you know, we were young and stupid back then, so, let's get this Imperial party started. So, how, my dear pupil, did Americans go from fighting and dying for freedom from an imperial state to becoming an imperial state of its own? Well, that's a fine question, and I'm about to Heims plain it up real nice for you. But first, let me mention that if you need help getting an A in your class and a five on your exam in May, then you might want to check out my A Push Heimler Review Guide. It's got exclusive videos, note guides to follow along, practice questions, practice exams, etc. It is the fastest way to study, and if that's something that you're into, the link is in the description. Okay, so now let me answer the question of how the United States got to the point where claiming an imperial empire seemed like a reasonable choice. So in the last period, we saw how foreign policy makers and wealthy industrialists began to look outside the borders of the United States in order to secure new markets for American goods and expanded access to raw materials. And this was going on at the very same time that European states were developing vast sea-based empires and colonizing the whole dang world. And the US was late to the overseas expansion party, mainly because the Civil War and Reconstruction claimed a lot of attention in the 19th century. But with the rapid expansion of industrialization and the growing wealth of the United States at the end of the 19th century, the country was now ready to join the rest of the Imperial European powers to build an overseas empire. And that's just the immediate context, like if you go back further, US policy has always favored imperial expansion in one way or another. Just ask the many groups of indigenous Americans who lost their land to westward expansion or ask the Mexicans who lost a third of their territory after the Mexican-American War. I could go on. And so now that we're crossing into the 20th century and America stands poised to expand overseas, it is not a surprising development because, you know, manifest destiny, it's just always been our thing. Okay, so as it became abundantly clear that a growing impulse for overseas expansion was driving the U.S. toward empire-building, it sparked a fierce debate about whether it was proper for the U.S. to play the role of an imperial power in the world. And there were two sides to that debate and first, I'll introduce you to the imperialists. They were the Americans who favored overseas expansion because they believed America was destined to expand their culture and institutions to people's around the world. And they had four reasons to support that claim. First, they argued that America ought to expand overseas to take advantage of economic opportunities. And the truth is, in almost every case of imperial expansion, the most powerful rational is always the boom boom. Anyway, much of the economic rationale for overseas expansion was rooted in the foreign policy of William Seward, who served under Abraham Lincoln and then Andrew Johnson. So, Seward believed that the key to accessing the great wealth bound up in Asian markets was to acquire a snowy, frozen piece of Russian territory, namely Alaska. And so in 1868, Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, and because many Americans didn't see the point of owning a massive piece of frozen territory that wasn't even connected to the mainland of the United States, the purchase became known as Seward's Folly. Man, that's Seward is such an idiot. I know, Seward, more like Sure, am I right? However, it turned out that Seward was just ahead of his time because by the last decade of the 19th century, the Panic of 1893 had created severe economic distress for many Americans. So foreign policy makers decided that the solution to improve the economy in the homeland was to open new markets in Asia in order to sell American goods, and at that point, Alaska became a critical asset for gaining access to those markets, and Seward was all... Okay, second, the imperialists argued that America ought to expand overseas because of their belief in various racial theories. For example, the growing acceptance of the ideas of social Darwinism encouraged the pursuit of overseas empires, and I shall explain why presently. So recall from the last unit that Charles Darwin argued that in nature only the strongest species survive precisely because they are the best adapted to the changing environment. And then further recall that social Darwinists applied the same logic to social realities in order to explain why some Americans were wealthy and other Americans were poor, namely, that the rich were those who had best adapted to the new industrial environment and the poor were those who had not. In other words, to say it real plain, if you were rich and powerful, that was the sign that you were best adapted to the new social and economic environment. And then it's not much of a journey from there to looking at the whole dang country and concluding that since industrialization had made it wealthy and powerful, it must mean that America had become among the fittest to survive. Furthermore, this ideology stoked the flames of American exceptionalism, which was an idea that the United States is a nation blessed above all other nations with liberty and a flourishing civilization. And therefore, in the context of debates about imperialism, some Americans believed that it was the duty of Americans to spread these blessings to "lesser" people throughout the world. And probably the most famous American articulation of this idea came from minister Josiah Strong. And he argued that the Anglo-Saxon race, particularly the American flavor of that race, was the absolute apex of human evolution. And as a minister Strong added that it was the Christian duty of Americans to acquire a worldwide empire so that they could spread Christianity and the glories of Western Civilization to those backward and dark people groups. And as it turned out, that idea was indeed a steaming pile of Christian duty. Anyway, the proper name for this impulse was known as the Civilizing Mission, the principles of which were most famously articulated in Rudyard Kipling's poem The White Man's Burden. Okay, the third argument for overseas expansion concerned American competition with European empires. You see, throughout the 19th century, Western European states have been expanding their sea-based empires rapidly, especially in Asia and Africa. And because the global balance of power was now decided by which state held the biggest empire, policy makers in the United States feared that if they did not begin a project of overseas expansion, then they could never compete with other European superpowers. And that would just be a bummer, you know. But anyway, in 1890, a US naval officer named Alfred Thayer Mahan provided a clear solution for this fear, namely an expanded U.S. Navy. Now, his book was called The Influence of Sea Power upon History, and in it, he argued that all the most powerful states in the world had one thing in common, namely, they had a navy powerful enough to make other states poop their pants. Therefore, the key to projecting power in such a world was to invest heavily in naval power. And so by 1886, the federal government had appropriated funds for two state of the art steel hold naval ships. And by the end of the century, they had built three more. And then finally, the fourth argument for overseas expansion was the closing of the Western frontier. So in 1890, the census revealed a shocking demographic truth, namely that the American Western frontier had at last been settled. In other words, the Western frontier was gone, and this was a big deal because since the earliest days of the American experiment, the Western frontier played a critical role in America's social and cultural development. And now that the frontier was closed, all that potential opportunity was closed as well, and to many people, that felt like an existential threat to life in America. But don't worry because here comes the historian Frederick Jackson Turner, who published what became known as his Frontier Thesis, arguing that it was simply not an option for Americans to lack a frontier in which to expand. In fact, the disappearance of the frontier was kind of an existential crisis by Turner's reckoning, because expansion was actually the condition in which American democracy could exist and thrive. And of course, that meant that the future of America depended on adopting a new frontier, which would come in the form of overseas expansion. Okay, so we've heard the arguments for American Imperial expansion, so now let's hear from the folks who opposed such a development, and they were known as the anti-imperialists. So in 1898, they formed the Anti-Imperialist League in response to America's attempt to annex the Philippines, and I'll tell you about that in the next video. Anyway, this group essentially articulated three reasons why it would be altogether dumb for the US to pursue an empire. First, they argued that Imperial expansion would violate the principles of self-determination for other nations. To that end, they invoked what they called the Spirit of 1776, arguing that a core principle of the founding of the United States was that each nation ought to have the right to govern themselves. And therefore, to rule another nation across the sea as a colony would violate the American commitment to the principle of government by the consent of the governed. In other words, that's kind of like our whole thing, so let's not dump on other people's self-determination. Okay, second, anti-imperialists evoke the long American tradition of isolationism with respect to world affairs. And you may recall that this was a principle that stretched all the way back to George Washington's farewell address in which he warned that getting involved in entangling foreign alliances would only drag the US into conflicts in which it had no business participating. And that isolationism also connects to the Monroe Doctrine since it mandated that European stay out of America's business and America will stay out of Europe's business. And then third, the anti-imperialists also made use of racial theories to support their side and pound for pound, the anti-imperialists actually leaned on these kind of arguments more than the imperialists. For example, Andrew Carnegie, one of the most famous anti-imperialists, wrote an essay in 1898 called Distant Possessions, and in it, he argued that by annexing the Philippines or any other overseas territory, millions of non-white people would be added to the American population. And he warned that in places like the Philippines, it would be quote, "impossible for our own race to be produced." And therefore, the expansion of American Empire should be opposed in order to uphold the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. And ultimately, as we'll discover in the next video, the imperialists won the debate and after the American victory in the Spanish-American War, the United States got his big boy Imperial pants all the way on and started a proper overseas empire. Well, okay, you can click here to watch my other videos for Unit 7, or you can click here to grab my A Push Heimler Review Guide which has everything you need to study as fast as possible. And I'm glad you came around and I'll catch you on the flip flop. Heimler out.