Dan Ma said 2/24

In class today, we started going into a new topic, which was the United State’s role on Imperialism. Before starting, Mrs. Separ had handed back our DBQs we had written before break. In 1796, President George Washington had wanted America to stay out of foreign affairs or in other words was trying to tell the United States to become isolated. This meant that the U.S. had to remain neutral in world affairs and should not be involved in European conflicts. After many years, the time of U.S. isolation had to end due to the rise of industrialization. With the beginning of mass production and the new demand for resources, the need to trade with other countries could not be ignored any longer.

Moving down on our worksheet, we now come across the Monroe Doctrine where we reviewed how the United States closed off the west to further colonization by any other countries especially the Europeans. This policy also said that the U.S. had to stay out of foreign affairs. At this time, the Untied States was not as strong as we would be in later years and had no real power to back up their policy but we knew that Great Britain would help us. Next up was the Manifest Destiny in 1845. It said that it was the United State’s divine mission to expand west. Since the Untied States only occupied the east coast at this time, they had plenty of land to the west to take. The only problem was that other countries owned these lands and had people living on it such as people of Mexico living in areas around what is today California. This desire for land led to a war with Mexico where we were able to win California and New Mexico. To ease Mexico’s anger for losing valuable land, the United States paid them 15 million dollars.

After taking all the land they could up to the west coast, the Untied States began to look toward overseas expansion in the Pacific Ocean. Beginning in the 1890’s, there were many motives for overseas imperialism. Just to name a few there was the need to find new markets to trade, spread of democracy, and the creation of jobs. The major difference between European and American imperialism was that Europeans wanted political gain while we wanted economic gains. Hawaii was a great example of this because the United States was able to see all the great economic opportunities from starting businesses in Hawaii. In 1898, United States even annexes Hawaii, which is to take over. During the same year, The United States goes to war with Spain after blaming the Spanish for blowing up one of their ships that they didn’t really do but the Americans had wanted to fight Spain for a long time. This was only the spark that ignited the war because The United States were not involved and it was the Spanish colony of Cuba rebelling against Spain at first. After defeating Spain, the U.S. gains the Philippine islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam but not Cuba. The reason for this is because they wanted to keep their profiting businesses and companies on Cuba. The Philippines are not happy with them being controlled by the U.S. after just gaining independence from Spain so they fight and rebel again us. With all these colonies and islands, the U.S. needed a shorter route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. With the leadership of Teddy Roosevelt, we get Panama to successfully rebel against Colombia with our help and therefore given the O.K to build the Panama canal. Again the U.S. pays Colombia 25 million to wipe their tears with.

I tried to keep the blog short and to the point but that was not possible with all the information we learned today. There is supposed to be a blog quiz so don’t leave your computer just yet. Next blogger is Elan because he asked first >:o!

Quiz: Create a change over time timesline of American Imperialism. Hand in tomorrow in class. Separ