HST165nxt

Between 1867 and 1917, the United States became a true world power for the first time in its history. To a large degree, this was a result of the Industrial Revolution. The search for overseas markets and the ideology of manifest destiny (which Americans had developed in conquering the West) spurred the United States to build up its navy in the 1880s and begin acquiring overseas territories. Many Americans also felt they had a duty to “civilize” the so-called “lesser” nations of the world, their superiority based in no small part on notions of racial superiority. Victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898 was a turning point, adding a string of island colonies in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean to U.S. territory, and declaring to the world that the United States was a global power. During these years, American military might backed up American commercial interests, creating an “economic imperialism” that sometimes weighed on other countries almost as heavily as outright conquest. Many Americans vigorously protested their country’s new imperialism, citing the U.S. government’s violent atrocities, the racialist ideals that propelled America’s imperial march, and the moral problem of allowing business interests to drive armed diplomacy. Nevertheless, these imperialist developments led the country into the First World War and then served as the basis for U.S. foreign policy for much of the twentieth century.”