With the conclusion of the 20th century it is possible to look back over the preceding hundred years and ascertain a few obvious facts about the current standing of the world. First, the century marked a dramatic change from the progress of human history as it was before the 20th century, as several hundred years of reigning monarchical government came crashing into oblivion with the onset of bloody war. This epochal moment in history gave opportunity for a nation, the United States, to burst more profoundly onto the world stage to claim its role as a dynamo among the great nations of the earth. With war not so neatly concluded and peace rudely imposed upon the defeated, life resumed its previous and distinctly American course. From this politically auspicious beginning, the United States would see its power flow over the course of the century without an apparent crest and decline up to the present. The process by which America came to its current status and power as the surviving global superpower began in the decades following the nation’s greatest moment of weakness during the Civil War. America’s meteoric rise to global power coincided with an explosive development of economy and industry into a staggering complex that would come to dwarf the powers of Europe. With this energy kinetically primed America soon adventured to flex its untested muscles and began to exercise with an increasingly imperialist foreign policy.
Before venturing to explain what the United States did when it came into being as a de facto force on the international scene, it is important to understand exactly what propelled the nation to such a lofty position. The Civil War had left the United States a nation weakened and bloody, but not broken. With the Union saved, America had to begin the task of righting the ship and reconstructing it. Included in this process would be stabilizing social order, but the task of physically rebuilding the nation was a major concern. Large chunks of Southern infrastructure had been decimated and needed reassembling. To this problem, though, America could apply its plentiful stock of natural resources. “Rich agricultural land, vast raw materials, and…modern technology” not only helped to quickly rebuild the nation, but also sped it along to much more than mere recovery. Indeed, the nation’s recovery quickly sprawled into a monolithic industrial machine. Rail lines were repaired and extended, reaching out to newly settled areas on the frontier, which was itself rapidly shrinking. Factories came online and began cranking out goods that soon sought markets outside the United States in increasingly greater volume. In general, American industry thundered and the world powers of Europe began to hear the impending storm.
While Europe began to notice America when her goods flowed more and more into domestic markets, other nations outside of Europe took even greater heed when the American economy moved in. Mexico is a prime example of a nation succumbing to the influence of America’s intoxicating agent, the dollar. Investment in Sonora, in northern Mexico, transfigured the regional landscape, and not just economically. “Mexico had fallen under the control of a foreign master more formidable than the hated Spaniard. He was the Yankee, the neighbor to the north.” With American capital came new developments, such as newly open markets for agricultural exports, railroads upon which to move those products, and higher paying jobs for Mexican workers collaborating with American entrepreneurship. However, for these developments Mexicans came to realize a cost. Evidently, with the influx of dollars came an influx of American culture that, for better or worse, intermingled with the indigenous cultures of Mexico wherever those dollars went. America’s developing economic might had affected the internal being of another state, and certainly not for the last time.
Where the momentum of America’s snowballing economy potentially risked slowing was in war. Economic depression in the 1890s cast an apprehensive shadow on the as yet unmitigated forward progress business enjoyed, but war was an uncertain variable. With a conflict brewing against Spain approaching the summer of 1898, it was unclear whether or not war would be favorable to business interests. A combination of factors, though, pushed aside worry of any potential harm from a decision to go to war, as business foresaw key benefits and the dissipation of eminent concerns. For example, “material advantages to be gained [from] Cuba” whetted American business leaders’ appetite for war. Furthermore, eased fears of “[in]adequate gold reserves, …European intervention,” and military capability all contributed to bringing business to the cause of war. Leading business to the conclusion that war was a good idea was belief that it would be beneficial to the depressed economy by “opening overseas markets in order to alleviate domestic distress caused by…overproduction.” With war thus decided upon, it only remained to be prosecuted, which the United States did with ample proclivity.
After flexing the military muscle grown powerful off economic and industrial strength, America was emboldened and ready to enjoy the spoils of Spain’s defeat. Ostensibly joining the Cuban-Spanish conflict to break a stalemate and thus speed the war’s conclusion, the United States also kept more than an eye out for its own considerable interests in Cuba. Just as Cuban and Spanish military forces were indecisive in concluding the struggle, so also were their envoys unsuccessful in negotiating an end to fighting. Cuba wanted independence, which Spain would not grant. By defeating Spain, America then had the opportunity to negotiate terms of peace, and of Cuban independence. With this power America would, of course, continue to monitor its own interests in Cuba. During the war, “McKinley seemed to have two separate positions on Cuban goals: with respect to Spain, the Cubans should not settle unless satisfied; with respect to the United States, the Cubans should accept whatever was offered.” This disparity clearly showed the in United States the beginnings of imperialist tendencies in behavior, as the fruits of military victory spurred America to a condescending position using its power to strong-arm Cuba to support American expectations. That this attitude appeared in American action then was not surprising, because America now indeed had an empire.
With the war against Spain complete, America found itself for the first time with a formal empire. The central issue arising out of American acquisitions was what to do with the Philippines. Having helped the United States fight against Spain, Filipino rebels expected but were not granted independence upon the conclusion of the war. Chagrined, relations deteriorated between the Filipinos and Americans with the inevitable result of what the United States called an insurrection, but which was really a Filipino crusade for independence. To counter, President McKinley “[implied] that the Filipinos were still savages [and] declared it his policy ‘to civilize’ the Filipinos.” In the American quest to maintain colonial possession, thereby preserving economic advantage and a potential inlet to Chinese trade, fighting raged on until 1902 with insufferable losses of life. Contributing to the tragic death toll were indelible American military tactics, such as using zones of concentration not unlike the Spanish had used in Cuba. One historian apologetic of American actions during the insurrection is Glenn A. May, saying, “But, while [high mortality rates in zones of concentration] can be demonstrated and while it also cannot be denied that [U.S. General] Bell’s policies contributed to the mortality crisis that occurred, it would be wrong to hold Bell and the U.S. Army solely, or even largely, responsible for that massive population loss.” This was, evidently, progress at any price, as the United States was willing to exact heavy a heavy toll in human lives just to be able to maintain an economically salient colony.
With the Philippine revolt thus crushed, the United States had a free hand to begin fashioning a more American social order. The fact that the American government did institute some good reforms is certainly commendable, but the mere fact of imposing reform implies absconding with a people’s right to self-determination. Had the Filipinos asked for American government the case would be different. However, as it was, change was in order without its being wanted by those whom such change was bound to strongly affect. As before in Cuba, American policy in the Philippines centered on economics. Where American policy in Cuba had developed in part to protect extant American interests, in the Philippines American policy developed primarily to extend and create new American economic interests. Such a policy had a profound impact upon the society of the Philippines, as a colonial-commercialist dynamic came into being. “The Philippine economy, largely reshaped to supply the United States, was also headed for a roller coaster of boom and bust as it t railed the ups, downs, twists, and turns of the American economy….” For better or for worse, the Filipinos were now inexorably tied to the fate of America’s progressive vision.
If one were to argue that, indeed, the United States was harsh in actively imposing its vision on its dependent states, one would be at a complete loss to explain the ramifications of such impositions by no fewer than six separate nations upon a single beleaguered state. Such was the case with China at the turn of the 20th century, as it was economically partitioned into spheres of influence, parceled out to six world powers, excluding the United States. China was manifestly weak, unable to prevent or dissuade the powers from carving up the country. Furthermore, as this inert state of weakness was favorable to the powers holding spheres of influence, the powers saw to it that China take no opportunity to either be strengthened or, more frequently, to resist further weakening, via land cessions or by granting larger spheres. As the United States was late to the imperialist game in China, the course of action taken was to pursue an Open Door policy. Rather than obtaining a specific sphere of influence, the United States sought to keep an open trade with China, so that the United States need not “[depart] from traditional policy and without the United States becoming ‘an actor in the scene.’” Ostensibly this meant that the United States did not want to devolve to the overtly imperialist and expansionist policies in which the other powers were engaging, an act truly prescient of future Wilsonian righteousness. In actuality, though, less philosophically and more fundamentally, “by the open door policy…, the United States strove to take the lead in Asian politics and to ask the other powers to follow…. Such a policy would open the way for an American hegemony in the Far East.”
Indeed, Americans were already pursuing a sort of hegemony in China, with or without the Open Door. As part of America’s progressive view of the world, cultural diffusion, or more precisely cultural imposition, was another means of helping to carry the “White Man’s Burden,” uplifting the savage and ignorant. This cultural uplifting was in addition to the political and economic uplift Americans felt it was their providential duty to perform. The mechanism used seeking to transmute Chinese culture into American was religion. Missionaries in China spread the Christian Gospel in an effort to obey the tenets of Christian faith. At the same time, though, this action borne of religious conviction helped to spread the American Gospel of progress. As a result, over time “American national leaders supported [a] shift in strategy, and with missionaries, sought cultural rather than political empire in China.” In such a way it can be argued that the United States continued to promote its own vision of the world to other nations, even in the lack of a centralized front.
No authority in American government is more centralized than that of the president. Also, few imperialists were as ardent as the man who ascended to the presidency after McKinley’s assassination. In the person of Theodore Roosevelt America had its most outspoken proponent for territorial and political aggrandizement. Using his Big Stick, Roosevelt was not afraid to intervene in the affairs of other states if it appeared necessary for the preservation of stability, or for the advancement of American interests. Intervention in Panama leading to revolution from Columbia was clearly not related to maintaining order, but it did allow the United States to obtain rights to a canal zone. In the Dominican Republic, Roosevelt’s actions presented Congress with a fait accompli that gave the United States control of Dominican customs, in an effort to ensure payment of international debts. Roosevelt’s justification for taking such intrusive actions into other states’ sovereignty resulted from his Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which had set the United States up as the policeman of the Western Hemisphere. “In 1823 [the Monroe Doctrine] had been created to protect Latin American revolutionaries against foreign intervention; in 1905, [Roosevelt] redefined it to protect U.S. interventionism against Latin American revolutionaries.” However, “what had been a declaration that Europe’s powers must keep their hands off the independent states of the Americas became the justification for unilateral United States intervention in the hemisphere at its own discretion. In the name of security, the nation now claimed a regional hegemony.” “Control, not expansion, was Roosevelt’s primary object,” as he sought to maintain order in the Caribbean. At this point, the states of Latin America had no choice but to accept Roosevelt’s ringing declarations, the embodiment of America’s vision.
By the time of Woodrow Wilson, America’s reach had truly become global. Having since before McKinley’s presidency established clear dominance in the Western Hemisphere, American power only increased in the interim. On the eve of World War I, the United States ranked as one of the eminent powers of the world, with Great Britain, Germany, and France. With a navy lesser than only the German and British fleets, an economy and industry unequaled, and no threat in the hemisphere, the United States sat in an enviable position on the world stage. With the outbreak of war, though, nothing could be guaranteed indefinitely, as the United States slowly gravitated into the conflict. Whether goaded by German U-boats or goading the U-boats by trans-Atlantic shipping to England, America’s eventual appearance on European battlefields did not go unnoticed. Whether or not the American military had an incredible effect on the outcome of the war, President Wilson’s invitation to the peace conference among the victorious allies gave him the opportunity to advance his soaring ideas on how to maintain world peace. Unfortunately, Wilson was “played to the limit by France and Japan in extracting concessions from him… and the Treaty as it stands is the result.” Holding out doggedly for the final Article of his Fourteen Points, Wilson sold out the rest of his points, just to save the league. Even though his plan failed, and though Congress did not ratify the Treaty, Wilson’s actions are clearly an effort to exert a progressive view upon the nations of Europe.
“Whatever the central cause of his historic failure, Wilson’s conservative and partisan adversaries earnestly believed that his was a dangerously radical vision, a new world order alien to their own understanding of how the world worked.” Whether Wilson’s adversaries knew it or not, their time was indeed the dawning of a new world order. With the war’s conclusion, life was set to return to normal, except that “normal” could no longer be defined in the terms it had previously known. Power had shifted. Governments had fallen, never to recover. Europe had been bled dry. Through this process, though, one nation passed through the fire stronger than when it had entered. The United States emerged as the eminent power on the world stage, prepared for a century of dominance in international affairs. From this vantage, of economic, industrial, and, when needed, military supremacy, the United States had the opportunity to exert its progressive vision of the future upon the world.