Reference
- Outcomes & Further ImperialismA key outcome of the Spanish-American War was the acquisition of overseas territories, arguably for the first time in U.S. history. The United States became an imperial power, owning colonies it had no intention of incorporating into the nation as states. It newly ruled over Hawai'i, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines directly. The United States also exercised a large amount of indirect control over Cuba through the mechanism of the Platt Amendment, a U.S. law whose substance was written into the Cuban constitution. It placed limits on Cuban sovereignty regarding financial affairs and the nature of Cuba's government, mandated U.S. ownership of a base at Guantanamo, and forced Cuban acquiescence in U.S. intervention to guarantee these measures.
The U.S. empire was a layered one. Cuba experienced effective control, but indirectly. Hawai'i was governed as an incorporated territory, theoretically eligible for statehood, but its racial mix made that an unappealing prospect for many Americans. Hawai'i did not become a state until 1959. Guam was ruled directly by the U.S. Navy—which used it as a coaling station—and it remains part of the United States, governed by the Office of Insular Affairs in the Department of the Interior. Both the Philippines and Puerto Rico were governed directly as colonies through the Bureau of Insular Affairs, but their paths quickly diverged. Puerto Rico developed close links with the United States through revolving migration, economic and tourism ties, and increased political rights for its citizens. Puerto Rico is still part of the United States, as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The Philippines developed more modest and ambiguous relations with the United States, since Filipinos had restricted migration rights, and U.S. economic investment in the islands was limited. The Philippines achieved independence in 1946. The layered and decentralized nature of the U.S. empire developed out of the particular legal and political processes used to decide how to rule over territories acquired in the Spanish-American War. These decisions were widely and publicly debated in the early twentieth century, as Americans wrestled with the changing nature of territorial expansion involving overseas colonies.
The Spanish-American War and the resulting acquisition of colonies prompted heated debates in the United States about what it meant to be American. These debates may well be among the most important consequences of the war for the nation. One set of agruments revolved around whether the United States should acquire overseas colonies, and if so, how they should be governed. A vocal and prominent anti-imperialist movement had many older leaders, representatives of a fading generation. Most politicians of the day advocated acquiring the colonies as demonstration of U.S. power and benevolence.
Still, there remained a contentious debate about the status of these new territories, legally settled only by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Insular Cases, beginning in 1901 with Downes v. Bidwell and confirmed subsequently by almost two dozen additional cases. The 1901 decision found that Puerto Rico was “not a foreign country” but “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.” In other words, not all laws or constitutional protections extended to unincorporated territories such as Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Many Americans were disturbed by these decisions, finding no provision in the Constitution that anticipated ruling land not intended to be part of the United States. They worried that an important part of U.S. political identity was being discarded.
Overriding those concerns, however, was a strong desire on the part of almost all white Americans to avoid the racial implications of incorporating places like the Philippines and especially Cuba into the body politic. Jim Crow segregation was established by the 1890s, and colonial acquisitions promised to complicate an already contentious racial situation in the United States. Cuba was filled with what many commentators called an “unappealing racial mix” of descendants of Spaniards, indigenous peoples, and Africans brought to the island as slaves. U.S. politicians had no desire to bring the racial politics of Cuba into the nation; so Cuba was not annexed. The Philippines was almost as problematic: Filipinos might be the “little brown brothers” of Americans, but in the end they were Asians, including many ethnic Chinese. During these years of Chinese exclusion, the status of Filipinos, U.S. nationals eligible to enter to the United States but not eligible to become citizens, was contested and contradictory. Movement toward granting independence seemed a good way to exclude Filipinos altogether. Puerto Ricans were, apparently, white enough. When they moved to the continental United States, they could naturalize as U.S. citizens, and in 1917, citizenship was extended to all Puerto Ricans. Regarding these groups, however, racial politics complicated both colonial governance and conceptions of U.S. identity.
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American Imperialism: Crash Course US History #28
- American Imperialism: Crash Course US History #28ohn Green teaches you about Imperialism. In the late 19th century, the great powers of Europe were running around the world obtaining colonial possessions, especially in Africa and Asia. The United States, which as a young country was especially susceptible to peer pressure, followed along and snapped up some colonies of its own. The US saw that Spain's hold on its empire was weak, and like some kind of expansionist predator, it jumped into the Cuban War for Independence and turned it into the Spanish-Cuban-Phillipino-American War, which usually just gets called the Spanish-American War. John will tell you how America turned this war into colonial possessions like Puerto Rico, The Philippines, and almost even got to keep Cuba. The US was busy in the Pacific as well, wresting control of Hawaii from the Hawaiians. All this and more in a globe-trotting, oppressing episode of Crash Course US History.
Articles
- 1898 and Its Aftermath: America’s Imperial InfluenceThroughout the late nineteenth century, Cubans and Filipinos led calls for independence against Spanish colonial rule. In 1898 the United States entered the conflict under the guise of supporting liberty and democracy abroad, declaring war on Spain. The Treaty of Paris of 1898, which ended the war as well as Spanish colonial rule, resulted in the U.S. acquisition of territories off its coasts. This microsyllabus, 1898 and Its Aftermath: America’s Imperial Influence, collects articles that use the 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American War as a jumping-off point to understand how issues such as labor, citizenship, weather, and sports were impacted by America’s racism and white supremacy across the globe.
- Meanings of Citizenship in the U.S. Empire: Puerto Rico, Isabel Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court, 1898 to 1905Erman discusses citizenship in the US with an examination of the case of Isabel Gonzalez. The case, "Gonzales v. Williams" (1904), was the first in which the Supreme Court confronted the citizenship status of inhabitants of territories acquired by the United States during its deliberate turn toward imperialism in the late nineteenth century. As with many cases, a combination of Gonzalez's actions and circumstances gave rise to the challenge. The conclusion is drawn that Isabel Gonzalez's challenge to immigration officials' attempts to exclude her as an alien likely to become a public charge sparked administrative, legal, and media discussions about the status of Puerto Ricans. These discussions explicitly linked problems of colonial administration to issues of immigration and to US doctrines acquiescing in treatment of US citizens--chiefly women and people of color--as dependent and unequal.
- U.S. Control Over Cuban Sugar Production, 1898-1902For years many Americans have assumed that the United States has exploited Cuba. The greatest opportunity for this control existed when the United States occupied Cuba after the Spanish-American War. The island was ravaged by war, famine, and disease, and the Cubans were exhausted after nearly a decade of depression, and revolution. It would have been easy for the U.S. government and business interests to control Cuba economically. Yet this did not occur. By concentrating our attention upon Cuban sugar production, perhaps the real nature of United States-Cuban economic relations may become apparent.In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, the McKinley administration found itself caught between two forces. The Congressional Joint Resolution of April 20, 1898, bound the Americans to leave Cuba once the island was pacified, but the Paris Peace Treaty of December 10, 1898, assumed that the United States would remain for a period of reconstruction.
Perspectives
Empire for Liberty
The men who spoke of liberty to shape an American empire How could the United States, a nation founded on the principles of liberty and equality, have produced Abu Ghraib, torture memos, Plamegate, and warrantless wiretaps? Did America set out to become an empire? And if so, how has it reconciled its imperialism--and in some cases, its crimes--with the idea of liberty so forcefully expressed in the Declaration of Independence? Empire for Liberty tells the story of men who used the rhetoric of liberty to further their imperial ambitions, and reveals that the quest for empire has guided the nation's architects from the very beginning--and continues to do so today. Historian Richard Immerman paints nuanced portraits of six exceptional public figures who manifestly influenced the course of American empire: Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, William Henry Seward, Henry Cabot Lodge, John Foster Dulles, and Paul Wolfowitz. Each played a pivotal role as empire builder and, with the exception of Adams, did so without occupying the presidency. Taking readers from the founding of the republic to the Global War on Terror, Immerman shows how each individual's influence arose from a keen sensitivity to the concerns of his times; how the trajectory of American empire was relentless if not straight; and how these shrewd and powerful individuals shaped their rhetoric about liberty to suit their needs. But as Immerman demonstrates in this timely and provocative book, liberty and empire were on a collision course. And in the Global War on Terror and the occupation of Iraq, they violently collided.
American imperialism in 1898
Learn more about American imperialism as implicated in the Spanish American War.
American imperialism in 1898; the quest for national fulfillment.
Explore the role of American imperialism during the Spanish American role.
Websites
- American Imperialism in the Philippines- CSU Northridge University LibrarySpain established its first permanent settlement in the Philippines in 1565. Spanish colonial control of the Philippines continued until 1898, when the United States took possession of the islands as a territory after winning the Spanish-American War. The Philippine Revolution, a struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule, had been ongoing since 1896, and news that the US would replace Spain as colonial overlord was unwelcome to many Filipinos...
- Essay 1: Imperialism and Migration-NPSThe United States was conceived in imperialism. The origins of US imperial history date back to the expansion of Europeans in their search for Asia and their wars against Asians, beginning with the ancient Greeks and continuing through Portugal and Spain's 15th century voyages of "exploration."
- The History Of American Imperialism, From Bloody Conquest To Bird PoopHistorian Daniel Immerwahr shares surprising stories of U.S. territorial expansion, including how the desire for bird guano compelled the seizure of remote islands. His book is How to Hide an Empire.