Imperialism

Imperialism is the extension by a government of power or authority over areas outside the controlling nation. It results in the imposition of one nation's ways on another, creating an unequal relationship.

The imperialist extension of power is usually achieved through expansionism—acquiring or seizing territory. In the nineteenth century, the United States was intent on expanding its territory and economic influence. The doctrine of Manifest Destiny held that America was destined to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. The United States's expansionist goals were achieved through acquisitions such as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; the Texas annexation of 1845; the Mexican cession that resulted from the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and gave the United States California , Nevada , Utah , and parts of Texas, Colorado , Arizona , New Mexico , and Wyoming ; and the annexation of Hawaii in 1898.

Throughout history, expansionist and imperialist aims have often overlapped. Both involve a sense of mission and national identity. A nation's confidence that it is superior to others can contribute to imperialist goals. For example, as white American settlers moved across the continent during the era of westward expansion , they believed they had the right to take land away from Native Americans and to force their ways on the native populations.

Imperialism differs from expansionism in that it denies the rights of citizenship to the people of the lands that have been imposed upon. In many instances, an imperialist country exploits native populations for cheap labor, thereby increasing its own wealth and power. A country trying to expand its land holdings is not necessarily interested in domination or exploitation.

Anti-imperialism

As America continued to expand in the belief that the greatness of a nation depended on its size and power, many Americans grew uncomfortable with the idea. They believed expansionism was too costly, and they objected to bringing nonwhite populations into the country. In 1899, a group of anti-imperialists formed the Anti-Imperialist League in direct response to the Philippine-American War (1899–1902), which occurred following the Spanish-American War (1898). As a result of that war, the United States had won control of the Philippine Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Also known as the Philippine Insurrection, the conflict was one of the bloodiest wars of the era. Filipinos were not willing to accept the United States as their landlord or their boss, and anti-Imperialists agreed with them.

The league was established in Boston, Massachusetts , but it soon had a national membership of more than thirty thousand. Its members tended to hold liberal, progressive political views. Among them were writer Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), also known as Mark Twain, and millionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919).

The U.S. government threatened to imprison antiwar activists, including league members, in 1900. By the time the insurrection ended in 1902, more than four thousand U.S. troops had lost their lives and more than two hundred thousand Filipino civilians (some historians estimate the figure as a half-million or more) had died as a result of violence or disease. The league was unsuccessful at preventing U.S. colonial rule over the Philippines, which continued for the next thirty years. The league disbanded in 1921, but the efforts of this early peace movement raised awareness of the uglier side of imperialism.

Caribbean and Latin America

After 1900, America turned its focus to the Caribbean and Central America. The Panama Canal , a manmade waterway designed as a passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through Central America, opened for business on August 15, 1914. The United States had total control of the ten-mile waterway, which became a major military asset and helped America become the dominant power in Central America. By World War I (1914–18), Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua were protectorates (nations in formal or informal agreement with the United States to accept military and political protection from them in exchange for specific obligations). Puerto Rico was a colony (a territory under immediate and total control of a more powerful nation).

The United States's participation in World War I led to a reluctance regarding overseas commitments. The U.S. government withdrew its troops from Caribbean and Central America nations, relaxing its control in the region. Yet in economic terms, the U.S. government continued to push American exports and foreign loans, which some historians labeled “open door imperialism.”

World War II and the Cold War

The Great Depression (1929–41) refocused American attention on domestic concerns. Then, with the advent of World War II (1939–45), global matters again took center stage. The United States, together with its allies , Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, China, and others, defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan. The cost was immense, and only the Soviet Union and the United States emerged with enhanced power.

These two superpowers entered into an era known as the Cold War (1945–91), during which they engaged in an intense political and economic rivalry. The United States began to wield its influence to a degree greater than ever before. It supported anticommunist regimes in Guatemala (1954) and Cuba (1961), and as a prevention tactic, intervened in the Dominican Republic in 1965. Throughout the Vietnam War (1954–75), which was an effort to prevent the Soviet Union from achieving communist control in the region, Southeast Asia relied heavily on the United States for military aid. The United States became involved in other initiatives in the Middle East and Africa. In politics and in the media, debates intensified as to whether the United States had become a global imperialist.

The global reach of the United States

In the second half of the twentieth century, the cultures of many nations around the world began to emulate American lifestyles, fashions, foods, and trends. American movies and television programs were enormously popular overseas, and foreign students flocked to American colleges and universities. By the twenty-first century, “Americanness” saturated the world. Some historians called this phenomenon cultural imperialism.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, bringing the Cold War to an end in 1991, America remained the lone superpower. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the United States on several occasions deployed its forces overseas. It sent troops to Panama (1989) to protect the neutrality of the Panama Canal and depose the military leader, who had ties to drug trafficking. It sent troops to Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1995), and Kosovo (1999), primarily for humanitarian reasons. The Gulf War of 1991, following Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's (1937–2006) invasion of Kuwait, involved sending more than five hundred thousand troops to Iraq in an effort to protect the world's oil supply. And in 2003, the United States led coalition forces into war in Iraq; the U.S. government's primary stated reasons for the Iraq invasion were to bring democracy to the ailing nation and to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction believed to have been developed and stored there, but which were not found. The war was a subject of intense political debate and controversy. For instance, a 2007 poll conducted in Iraq for several American and European media companies indicated that 50 percent of Iraqis felt things in their homeland before the U.S. invasion had been better, while 12 percent felt they had not changed. As of 2008, U.S. troops remain in Iraq.