The Arc of Empire: America in the  Philippines, China and Panama

 Devoting equal attention to Asian and American perspectives, the long arc of conflict across seventy-five years

from the Philippines to Vietnam, traces along the way American ambition, ascendance, and ultimate defeat.

Essay Prompt:  After the Spanish-American War, the United States government sought to extend and solidify its global influence.  Analyze the effects of American foreign policy in the period 1899 to 1914.  

Acquisitions: Puerto Rico and Guam were ceded (To surrender possession of, especially by treaty) to the United States as indemnity(compensation for a particular loss suffered), and the Philippines were surrendered to the United States for a payment of $20 million.

#1 The war represented the first major military engagement beyond United States borders since the Mexican-American War (1846-48) and led to an assertion of United States interests throughout the Caribbean.  The breadth  and depth of our military engagements will change in the 20th century

#2 Step Away from S.A.F.E

Spanish-American War (1898) represented a major step away from generations of a foreign policy that, for most part, emphasized isolationism with respect to most areas beyond the continental United States.  

#3  As a result of the defeat of Spain, the United States eventually established control, or took possession, of the Philippines (1898), Puerto Rico, Cuba, and then Midway, Guam, Wake Island, and (American) Samoa (1899). At the same time the United States formally annexed Hawaii as well.  

 #4   The Spanish-American War accelerated policies promoting overseas investments, as seen in the Open Door policy regarding China (1899–1900) and later as “dollar diplomacy” under President Taft (1909-13).  

#5. The war’s outcome led to huge increases in the United States naval budget and United States military involvement in the Philippines, resulting in a three-year war (1899–1902) to pacify the Filipino people.  The Philippine Insurrection

#6  Spanish-American War (1898)  could also be seen in President Theodore Roosevelt’s engineering a revolt in Panama against the Colombian government (1903) and then negotiating for the Panama Canal Zone and construction of the Panama Canal (completed in 1914). 

#7 These events were stepping stones to Theodore’s Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and the United States assertion of a sphere of influence over the Caribbean for strategic reasons (1904). Following from that policy position came United States intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Mexico, and the purchase of the Danish West Indies (renamed the Virgin Islands) to keep German influence out of the region (1906-17).  

#8 Roosevelt’s decision to send the Great White Fleet (much of the United States Navy) around the world (1907-09), and especially to Japan, was a bold step to assert United States claims to the role of a major player in international diplomacy, as had been his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War two year earlier (1905). 

John T. McCutcheon - political cartoon from the Chicago Tribune from 1914. Via reprint in "What's to Be Done With 'Em?: Images of Mexican Cultural Backwardsness, Racial Limitations and Moral Decrepitude in the United States Press 1913-1915", Mexican Studies, Winter Vol. 14, No.1:23-70, by Mark C. Anderson

Political cartoon from the Chicago Tribune from 1914, expressing how the US was presented as liberating former Spanish colonies, 15 years after the Spanish-American War. "What the United States has Fought For". Figures of men with dark complexions represent Philippines, Hawaii, "Porto Rico", Cuba, and Panama. The top panel, "Before the United States intervened in behalf of these oppressed people", shows them in rags weighed down by oppressive burdens. The bottom panel, "After the United States had rescued them from their oppression", shows them standing tall and healthy in fashionable clothes.