![]() ![]() ![]() That same year, the United States also annexed the independent country of Hawaii. Either way, by declaring war, the United States seized an opportunity to remove the last vestiges of the Spanish empire from the Caribbean and the Pacific and, in so doing, cement American influence in the two regions.Īfter just months of fighting, a defeated Spain agreed to leave Cuba and to cede to the United States other Caribbean and Pacific territories, including Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Others argued the United States had a responsibility to support Cuban revolutionaries who were rising up against their Spanish colonizers. At the time, certain American leaders justified their war efforts by pointing to the explosion of a warship-the USS Maine-which they initially (but almost certainly incorrectly) attributed to Spanish malfeasance. The exact causes of the Spanish-American War are still in dispute. The United States put these new warships to use in 1898, launching a war to expel Spain from Cuba. As one sign of this stirring ambition, Congress began to approve the construction of battleships-vessels capable of taking on the fleets of other great powers. Over the course of the 1890s, influential Americans began to call for the United States to acquire geopolitical influence commensurate with its economic strength. If the guano islands represented the United States’ first step toward overseas expansion, then the Spanish-American War of 1898 served as the country’s first giant leap toward global ambitions. Business interests in those islands’ guano-also known, unceremoniously, as seabird poop-drove this offshore expansion: the resource functioned as a valuable natural fertilizer for farmers to use on their nutrient-depleted soils. And between 18, the United States acquired its first overseas territories-a collection of fifty-nine small, uninhabited islands in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Navy to Japan, where he succeeded in opening diplomatic and trading relations after threatening to attack the island nation, which had been largely closed off to the Western world for the previous two hundred years. In 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry sailed a contingent of the U.S. With this burgeoning power, the United States began to look beyond its shores. Meanwhile, technological innovations, such as steamboats, passenger trains, and factory machines, transformed the United States from an agrarian country to an industrial one and produced newfound prosperity that enabled U.S. National independence movements expelled Europe’s empires from their colonies in the region. Slowly but surely, this power dynamic shifted throughout the nineteenth century. (Today, the country makes up nearly a quarter of the world’s economy.) In 1820, the United States accounted for under 2 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). However, the so-called Monroe Doctrine-although bold-was largely dismissed by Europeans, as the United States lacked the ability to enforce its threats. Any further colonization would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States. In 1823, President James Monroe warned Europe’s empires not to meddle in the region. presidents who viewed the Americas as their backyard and rightful sphere of influence. The British, French, and Spanish all controlled territory in the region, from which they had profited immensely. Let’s first go back to the early 1800s when the United States was still a young and vulnerable country that faced threats from far wealthier and militarily superior European empires. This lesson examines three wars between 18 that transformed the United States into a preeminent global power. So when did the United States begin to take a more active role in affairs beyond its shores? GDP Per Capita in the Seven Wealthiest Countries, 1870 to 1930"> Yet despite their growing wealth, Americans still steered clear of foreign entanglement. By the middle of the 1880s, the United States had surpassed Britain as the world’s leading producer of manufactured goods and steel. Between 18, coal production rose by 800 percent and railway track mileage by 567 percent. Its economy took off after the Civil War. ![]()
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