GOODBYE ISOLATIONISM, HELLO IMPERIALISM – HOW THE SPANISH AMERICAN WAR CHANGED AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY FOREVER
Logan Hart
History 311
Dr. Griffin
April 17, 2018
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From 1895 to 1898, Cuba was engaged in a war for independence from Spain. This was the third and final liberation war that Cuba had fought against Spain. The war was incredibly deadly, over 300,000 Cubans died. In the final three months of the conflict the war escalated into the Spanish American War. The United States, led by President William McKinley, deployed troops in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. The Americans joined forces with the Cuban and Filipino nationalists in their fight against the Spanish. The Spanish American War was a pivotal moment in American diplomatic history. The war ultimately became the key event marking the shift in American foreign policy from isolationism to imperialism.
There were several reasons why the United States decided to intervene in the conflict between Cuba and Spain. The first major factor that led to United States involvement was the major humanitarian crisis that was taking place on the island of Cuba. During the war the Spanish forced hundreds of thousands of Cuban citizens to leave their homes and make their way to cities controlled by the Spanish military. When the Cubans left their homes, the Spanish forces burned the towns, razed the crops, and killed the cattle in an effort to cut off rebel food supply. The Cubans who were forced to leave their homes suffered in the garrison towns. They were provided little food, inadequate housing, and medicine was extremely hard to come by. Malnourished citizens soon began to sicken and die. 240,000 of these refugees died from disease and starvation. U.S. intervention in the war was partially the result of the deplorable conditions that many Cubans were forced to face.
A second cause for U.S intervention was the severe impact that the war had the American economy. During the Cuban war for independence the United States was suffering from a severe
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depression. During the depression unemployment increased, industrial production decreased, and agricultural prices also decreased. The people responded to the economic crisis by going on strike, rioting, and marching in protest. The war in Cuba only further angered the people throughout America. Prior to the beginning of the war, trade between the two countries had reached approximately 100 million dollars. During the war this trade dropped by more than two thirds. Many shipping firms wanted the United States to intervene in the war to restore trade between the two countries.
Throughout the war the administrations of both President Grover Cleveland and President William McKinley tried to maintain a policy of neutrality. However, the United States did attempt to negotiate with Spain pressure them into a ceasefire. These attempts were unsuccessful. Spain refused to cooperate with the United States and refused to end the fighting in Cuba. Because of this, President William McKinley concluded that American military intervention was necessary. He believed that it was the only means in which to force Spain to give up Cuba and bring peace to the Cuban people. Although many in the United States supported American intervention in Cuba, many did not. McKinley’s April 11 message to America proved that the president what he was doing was the only option to secure peace. McKinley did what he “believed was right in the sight of God and my (his) own conscience”.
American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence began as an effort to expel the Spanish from the island, but soon escalated into something more. Shortly after the war the
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Americans began to question if granting total independence to the Cubans was ideal. There were many reasons why the Americans felt that controlling the island might be beneficial to them. One reason was economic value. The islands in the Caribbean were extremely profitable and valuable to the European powers that controlled them. When American became involved in the Spanish American War they took note of the impact these colonies had. “Colonial Cuba and Puerto Rico generated vast wealth, great enough to support not only resident plantocracies and a bloated colonial apparatus that included vastly increased military and police forces, but also to weigh heavily in the metropole’s economy.” The Americans wanted to benefit from the wealth that could come from controlling these island nations.
America’s desire to benefit from the islands evolved in to designing an entirely new economic model in Cuba. America wanted to develop a model based on advanced capitalism. They wanted Cuba’s economic model to be dependent and to US interests. American capitalists imagined earning huge profits from the island. The American ambassador at the time, General Woodford, once said “…recent investigations had shown Cuba to be ‘the richest slice of the earth.’ The 19,000,000 acres of waste or jungle land would produce the finest Havana tobacco and sugar. The present mines, which yield the best iron in the world, are only scratches, revealing the great mineral wealth of the island.”
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Another factor contributing to America’s change to imperialism was what was referred to as the “yellow press”. The “yellow press,” driven by an appetite for sensational headlines and sales, created a climate of opinion which egged on the populace, Congress, and ultimately the President to embark on an imperialist adventure. Academic leaders also played a significant role in influencing American opinion. Three learned societies made efforts to promote imperial expansion. The societies were the American Historical Association, the American Economic Association, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Economists within these societies believed that there was a connection between economic development in America and pushing into foreign markets. Columbia economist, John B. Clark once stated, “The opening of foreign countries means not only a chance to sell goods with profit, but a chance to invest our own capital with an even larger and more permanent profit.”8 Carol Wright, a lecturer on social economics and Commissioner of Labor, agreed with John Clark. She argued that “the expansion of American manufacturing and agricultural exports was necessary in order to maintain domestic prosperity.”8 Other academics had a different rationale for why we should expand into other countries’ affairs. Walter F. Wilcox, who was a professor at Cornell University, claimed that “developed people were obliged to teach modern economics to less advanced societies in order to expand the world market for American production.”8 Wilcox believed that imperial expansion would benefit both the United States and the country that is being colonized. He felt that without intervention by the United States the colony’s economy would fail.
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Although it had been common practice for many European nations, imperialism was not a practice in the United States of America before the Spanish American War. It actually was a direct contradiction to past American foreign policy. Many of our founding fathers expressed great disdain for imperial expansion. One President, James Monroe, even went as far as issuing the Monroe Doctrine. In the Monroe Doctrine, President Monroe declared that any European attempts to colonize territory in either North or South America would be seen as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.” From our nation’s founding up until the Spanish American War, the United States operated under a system of isolationism.
The first notion of isolationism came from our first president, George Washington. In his famous Farewell Address to the American People, President Washington said, “American should maintain liberal and impartial commercial relations with the rest of the world but have with them as little political connection as possible.” Washington believed that political alliances with other nations could result in unnecessary conflicts that could easily be avoided. Washington’s two immediate successors were able to successfully avoid conflicts by practicing nonintervention. John Adams, in spite of demands from the members of the Federalist Party, refused to ask Congress for a declaration of war against the French during the XYZ Affair.
The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was also a staunch advocate for isolationism. In his first inaugural address Jefferson called for “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” At the time, America was geographically isolated from the rest of the developed world. Jefferson believed that if the United
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States could stay out of alliances and remain at peace with other nations throughout the world, we could further improve our own nation and better ourselves. At the time the United States was still a very weak nation in comparison to the major European powers of Great Britain and France. America couldn’t afford to engage in any major conflicts with any of these empires. For this reason, the policy of isolationism was rarely ever questioned.
Another American president who was a strong supporter of isolationism was John Quincy Adams. Adams’ opinion makes since because it was he who authored the Monroe Doctrine as President Monroe’s Secretary of State. In a Fourth of July address to the nation, President Adams said, “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…” With this speech, Adams emphasized the importance of staying neutral and out of foreign conflicts. It comes as no surprise that the nation’s founders were against imperial expansion. They had just recently won a war gaining their own independence from Great Britain.
Support for isolationism continued right up until the late 19th century. One of the first presidents to have shown support for imperialism after the Spanish American War was Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt believed that governments should promote the common good and maintain order. He believed that governments that failed to do both were unfit to rule. Roosevelt’s belief led him to issue the Roosevelt Corollary. The Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine that was used to justify American intervention in Latin American affairs. Roosevelt stated that the United States would intervene to put an end to unrest and wrongdoing in Latin America.
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This is a drastic change from America’s past foreign policy and is a clear sign of America’s willingness to exert its influence across the globe.
Roosevelt’s belief that America should intervene in foreign affairs was shared by many of his successors. His ideas had a profound impact on the diplomacy of President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson believed that America had a responsibility to maintain international stability. According to Walter Lippmann, Wilson’s policies were based on the assumption that Americans had to “actively remake the international system more like their own if their own democracy were to flourish.” Wilson’s policies continue to affect presidents to this day. In several of the conflicts that the United States has engaged in since World War I, the United States had no issue with the citizens of the hostile states, rather it was their governments who they wished to remove. The Americans claimed to be liberators, rather than conquerors. An example of this was the Persian Gulf War. President George H.W. Bush declared “we have no quarrel with the people of Iraq, our only object is to oppose the invasion ordered by Saddam Hussein. The same Saddam Hussein who has used poison gas against the men, women, and children of Iraq. The same Saddam Hussein who heads a regime that stands in opposition to the entire world and to the interest of the Iraqi people.” President Bush acted because he felt that it was in the United States’ best interest to stop Saddam Hussein from invading another sovereign state.
America’s control over Cuban affairs after the Spanish American War played a role in the rise of Fidel Castro and hostility between the two nations. Fidel Castro spouted anti-American rhetoric that invoked an emotional response from American policymakers. As stated before,
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American’s believed that exerting their influence abroad was a means to not only support their own interest, but to benefit other nations as well. Eventually, President Dwight Eisenhower determined that Castro’s government was incompatible with U.S. interests. He and his successor President Kennedy both took steps to remove Castro from power. With Fidel Castro’s brother Raúl still in power, the relationship between the United States and Cuba remains tense to this day.
At the conclusion of the Spanish American War, the United States gained control of not only Cuba, but the Philippines as well. The United States used the Philippines as an extraction site of natural resources for industrial production. America also invested heavily in nearby markets, including China. A main goal of American expansion in these territories was to strengthen the American economy. One of the ways in which they planned to do this was by binding the Philippine currency to the American dollar. At the time the British pound sterling was the dominant world currency. The binding of the Philippine currency and the American dollar created a currency that was able to rival Great Britain. The binding of the currencies helped to increase America’s dominance over global capitalism. The Spanish American War, which was referred to as the “splendid little war” turned out to be a pivotal moment in American history. From the country’s founding up until this point, the United States’ foreign policy was based on isolationism. The United States rarely found itself forming alliances with foreign countries and rarely got involved in foreign conflicts. This completely changed with the Spanish American War. After the war, the United States started exerting its influence in territories and countries across the globe. The United States gained control over Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. To this day
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Puerto Rico and Guam remain American territories. The United States also found itself forming alliances with foreign countries and became involved in foreign conflicts. These conflicts included World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and the Iraq War. The effects of the change in foreign policy that started with the Spanish American War continues to be seen today.