1. America Turns Its Sights Abroad
The March Toward Imperialism

2. The Growth of Imperialism
“Imperialism” means stronger nations attempt to create empires by dominating or influencing weaker nations…

3. This domination can be done economically, politically, culturally, or militarily

4. Imperialism will become of interest to the US for six main reasons:

5. 1. The need for markets abroad
To rectify financial crisis

6. 2. The need for many natural or “raw” resources

7. 3. Nationalism (devotion to one’s nation) started to grow in the heart of many Americans

8. 4. America is missing out on the “action”

10. 5. The ability and use of military power requires the use of land throughout the world
Fuel and supply bases

11. 6. The US felt they had a humanitarian duty to spread America’s wonder and blessings to all

12. First Steps Toward Imperialism
1. We send an American fleet to negotiate trade with Japan in 1853
Led by Commodore Matthew Perry

13. 2. We purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867, though many called it a
“barren, worthless,
God-forsaken region”

14. 3. In the 1860s the U.S. joined others in “cutting up the Chinese melon” for economic benefits
Open Door Policy (1900s)

15. 4. The U.S. annexed some un-inhabitated islands like Midway for the sake of naval bases
Unincorporated organized territories Guam Northern Mariana Islands (commonwealth) Puerto Rico (commonwealth) United States Virgin Islands The United States Miscellaneous Pacific Islands is an obsolete term used to collectively describe Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Kingman Reef, and Palmyra Atoll, all of them territories controlled by the United States by the Guano Islands Act in the Pacific Ocean.
The islands were given the ISO country codes of PU (alpha-2), PUS (alpha-3), and 849 (numeric) before 1986, and the FIPS country code of IQ before For ISO purposes, the islands are now defined as part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands, together with Johnston Atoll, Midway Atoll, Navassa Island, and Wake Island, while each island is now given a separate FIPS code.
[edit] Unincorporated unorganized territories American Samoa, technically unorganized, but self-governing under a constitution last revised in Baker Island, uninhabited Howland Island, uninhabited Jarvis Island, uninhabited Johnston Atoll, uninhabited Kingman Reef, uninhabited Bajo Nuevo Bank, uninhabited Serranilla Bank, uninhabited Midway Islands, no indigenous inhabitants, currently included in the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge Navassa Island, uninhabited (claimed by Haiti) Wake Atoll consisting of Peale, Wake and Wilkes Islands[4], no indigenous inhabitants, only contractor personnel (claimed by the Marshall Islands)

16. 5. By the 1870s, the United States had signed trading treaties with Hawaii
U.S. fully controlled by 1893
1893 overthrew the queen

17. 3 cruisers
2 battleships including USS Maine
By 1900, we will have one of the most powerful navies in the world
6. In the 1880s, the U.S. increased its Navy budget and began building new steam-powered, steel-hulled ships

18. 7. In the 1890s, the US reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine of 1832 to protect US interests in the Americas
keep Europe out of the Western Hemisphere
In the 1890s, the United States, once again by unilateral action, extended the doctrine to include the right to decide how a dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain over the boundaries of British Guiana should be settled. Secretary of State Richard Olney told the British, ‘Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition…. its infinite resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers.’ The British, troubled by the rise of Germany and Japan, could only acquiesce in American pretensions. But Latin American nations protested the way in which Washington had chosen to ‘defend’ Venezuelan interests.
The greatest extension of the doctrine’s purview came with Theodore Roosevelt’s famous corollary. He announced that henceforth European nations would not be allowed to use force to collect debts owed to them by Latin American countries. In Roosevelt’s mind, however, the biggest problem he faced was not European intervention but the need to establish governments in Latin America that would maintain ‘order within their boundaries and behave with a just regard for their obligations toward outsiders.’ But the Roosevelt Corollary soon became the justification for interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, and the creation of a series of semiprotectorates on the order of the American-imposed Platt Amendment to the Cuban-American Treaty of The United States had gone to war against Spain in 1898, ostensibly to free Cuba from colonial rule. With the Platt Amendment, however, Washington placed restrictions on Cuban freedom that lasted down to the Castro revolution of 1959.