19th Century American Imperialism

Imperialism is defined as the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political control over other nations; the notion of a globally stretching “American Empire” with such connotations was first made popular after the Spanish-American War of 1898 with the US annexation of the Philippines. Although previous US expansionism shares many similarities with this “new” age of expansionism, they also diverged from one another in several key ways.
This new stage of American expansionism took place through the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century and was quite analogous to the original or traditional type expansionism conducted by the US throughout its
To begin there was a major difference in venue between the two periods. During the early era US expansion was limited to the North American continent only spreading out and making larger the already existing American nation to the surrounding area. This mostly consisted of westward extension toward the Pacific Ocean, and the settling largely wooded country side that was quite relatively scarcely populated with only a number of Native American Indian tribes. However the latter era was a more global form of expansion. Instead of having growth limited to the continent and immediate area the US began to obtain colonies and territories thousands of miles away in other parts of the world such as the Philippines, the only official colony, Puerto Rico, and Guam. According to the father of the modern US navy, Admiral Alfred T. Mahan the US had to start looking outward to distant territorial options due to the increasing need for raw materials and other growing production needs, an expansionistic desire form the American public, and the geographic position of the nation between the Atlantic and Pacific (Document C). The perceived need to keep up with the growing colonial possessions and therefore wealth and power of the European nations was also a driving force behind this colonizing outward look. The US had fallen behind in this arena as shown in works like Thomas Nast’s “The World Plunderers”, which shows the dominant European nations of Germany, England, and Russia taking land off different regions of the globe. The US is not however represented here among these powerful colonizing nations, serving to show how far behind the US was in that way and how it did not play as large or powerful role as these other countries (Document A). These new colonial territories were not made up of under populated wilderness ready