Expansionism Essay, Research Paper
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States pursued an aggressive policy of expansionism, extending its political and economic influence around the globe. Attempting to control as much land and its people as they can. Strip mining what little resources the smaller countries had, just to fulfill their greed and to line their pockets with the green.
The fact that Americans at the time thought they needed to interfere with the lives of others wasn t to well justified. Americans though that they needed to baby-sit and civilize the uncivilized. The so-called white mans burden was only made a burden until we created it. Up to that point the other people didn t interfere or bother the Americans. The imperialistic Americans were themselves contradicting their own believes. The fact that everyone has his or her own right to religion, and they still needed to teach these uncivilized people religion. These ideas were only used to make the Americans feels better about what they were doing. They knew that they would burn in hell for doing such things, but they needed to create moral support for themselves so that they could continue on with the assimilation.
Document 1 best describes this assimilation of others: McKinley though that he shouldn t give the Philippines back to Spain because that would be cowardly and dishonorable. He states that he shouldn t give it to Germany or France because it would be bad business. The bad business would be that America would lose money. He doesn t want to cut them completely lose because he feels that would create a mad scramble of the powers that might drawn the United States into. He says this yet, America has been imperializing other countries and doing just that, getting drawn into conflict. He says that god gave all these ideas to him, the same god who gives him life, and lets him live in his own will. And yet he feels the need to intervene and change the lives of others who haven t been changed in 100 s of years. That s the Christian way though, a hypocrite.