american foreign policy...
TRANSCRIPT
US Foreign Policy 1865-1917
Foreign Policy v. Domestic Policy
• Foreign Policy – any government action involving relationships with other nations
– Examples: treaties, military actions, trade agreements
• Domestic Policy – any government action within the nation
– Examples: programs like Medicare and Social Security, taxes, business regulations, etc.
The Age of Imperialism
• Imperialism – the process of a powerful nation exerting its will on a weaker nation or people
• Colonization – one nation actually owns and occupies another region of the world
The Age of Imperialism - Causes • Military – naval bases
– Alfred T. Mahan - The Influence of Sea Power on History
• Economic
– new markets for goods
– sources of raw materials (not a big problem for the US)
– “Extractive Economies”
• Social
– missionary impulse
– Social Darwinism
– “safety valve”
– “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling
US Foreign Policy Goals - General
• Increase trade
• Protect US business interests
• Avoid conflict with Great Powers
• Maintain the Western Hemisphere as US sphere of influence
Pre-Civil War Foreign Policy
• George Washington’s Farewell Address
– Avoid foreign entanglements (alliances)
– Remain neutral in any international conflicts
– Behave “virtuously” in relations with other nations
• Manifest Destiny
– Major Territorial Expansion
Foreign Policy 1865-1890 • Alaska – purchased 1867
– Secretary of State William Seward
– Seward’s Folly/Seward’s Icebox
• Hawaii
– US business interests – especially in sugar cane
– King Kalakaua and the Bayonet Constitution
– Queen Liliuokalani v. Sanford B. Dole & the Hawaiian League
– Senate Investigations
– Annexation to the US – 1898
Pre-Civil War Foreign Policy
• Monroe Doctrine – 1823
• Open trade with Japan – 1853
– Commodore Matthew Perry
“Seward’s Icebox”: 1867
Causes of The Spanish-American War • The worldwide impulse toward imperialism
• US economic interests in Cuba
– Particularly sugar cane
• The Cuban Revolution
– Valeriano “Butcher” Weyler
• Reconcentrados – concentration camps
– José Martí – poet and symbol of revolution
• The Yellow Press
– William Randolph Hearst & the New York Journal
– “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”
• The sinking of the Maine
• The De Lome letter
“Remember the Maine and To Hell
With Spain!”
The War
• Teller Amendment
• Disorganized invasion
• The Battle of San Juan Hill
• Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders
• Most casualties from disease
Results of the Spanish American War • Cuban independence. • US gained Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines
(for $20 million) • The Platt Amendment
– Prevented Cuba from making treaties without US permission
– Gave US permission to intervene in Cuba if the US felt it was necessary
• US becomes an imperial power
The duty of the hour: to save her not only from Spain, but from a worse fate.
The US and Asia
1898-1914
The US & the Philippines • Foreign Policy goal:
– Have a naval base from which to protect trade and US interests in Asia
– Promote US expansion in the Pacific “following the sun”
• Philippine Insurrection
– Emilio Aguinaldo
• William Howard Taft – administrator
The Imperialist/Anti-Imperialist Debate • Imperialist arguments:
– US should be a Great Power like others
– Increase trade around the world
– Necessary for naval bases and protection of international trade
– If the US doesn’t annex, someone else will
• Anti-Imperialist arguments:
– Against fundamental American principles
– Costs too much money
– Unnecessary to promote trade
How some apprehensive people picture Uncle Sam after the war.
(Detroit News, 1898)
Declined, with thanks.
JOHN BULL: It’s really most extraordinary what training will do. Why, only the other day I thought that man unable to support himself.
(Fred Morgan, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1898)
“What the US
has fought for.”
“The White Man's Burden” By Rudyard Kipling (Feb. 1899)
Take up the White Man's burden-- Send forth the best ye breed-- Go, bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait, in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild-- Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. Take up the White Man's burden-- In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain, To seek another's profit And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought) Watch sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hope to nought. Take up the White Man's burden-- No iron rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper-- The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go, make them with your living And mark them with your dead. Take up the White Man's burden, And reap his old reward-- The blame of those ye better The hate of those ye guard— The cry of hosts ye humor (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:-- "Why brought ye us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?" Take up the White Man's burden-- Ye dare not stoop to less-- Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness. By all ye will or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent sullen peoples Shall weigh your God and you. Take up the White Man's burden! Have done with childish days-- The lightly-proffered laurel, The easy ungrudged praise: Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years, Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers.
“Take Up the White Man's Burden, and Reap His Old Reward”
By William H. Walker, Life (March 16, 1899)
Uncle Sam: "I don't like the job, Rudyard, my boy!"
Denver Post 1900
“The Real White Man’s Burden” by Ernest Crosby
Take up the White Man’s burden. Send forth your sturdy kin, And load them down with Bibles And cannon-balls and gin. Throw in a few diseases To spread the tropic climes, For there the healthy [savages] Are quite behind the times. And don’t forget the factories. On those benighted shores They have no cheerful iron mills, Nor [huge] department stores. They never work twelve hours a day And live in strange content, Although they never have to pay A single [cent] of rent. Take up the White Man’s burden, And teach the Philippines What interest and taxes are And what a mortgage means. Give them electrocution chairs, And prisons, too, galore, And if they seem inclined to kick, Then spill their heathen gore.
They need our labor question, too, And politics and fraud— We’ve made a pretty mess at home, Let’s make a mess abroad. And let us ever humbly pray The Lord of Hosts may deign To stir our feeble memories Lest we forget—the Maine. Take up the White’s Man’s burden. To you who thus succeed In civilizing savage hordes, They owe a debt, indeed; Concessions, pensions, salaries, And privilege and right— With outstretched hands you raised to bless Grab everything in sight. Take up the White Man’s burden And if you write in verse, Flatter your nation’s vices And strive to make them worse. Then learn that if with pious words You ornament each phrase, In a world of canting hypocrites This kind of business pays. Source: Ernest Crosby, “The Real White Man’s Burden,” Swords and Ploughshares (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1902), 32–35.
US – Japanese Relations • Foreign Policy Goal
– Limit the growth of Japanese influence in Asia and the Pacific
– Maintain friendly relations with Japan
• Roosevelt arbitrates settlement to Russo-Japanese War 1905
– wins a Nobel Peace Prize
• Roosevelt encourages Japan to annex Korea
• Gentlemen’s Agreement 1907
• Great White Fleet
US – Chinese Relations • European “spheres of influence”
• US Foreign Policy goals:
– Support Chinese independence
– Maintain possibility of US trade with China
• US intervenes in the Boxer Rebellion – 1900
• John Hay – Open Door Policy
The Open Door Policy
The Boxer Rebellion
