THE AGE OF IMPERIALISM
Imperialism
·
What is imperialism?
·
Describe the two main waves of imperialism.
·
Where did most of the second wave of imperialism occur?
Imperialism is
the practice by which powerful nations
seek to rule over weaker areas or peoples, usually in less developed areas. This process can mean either that areas are totally
controlled and made colonies of the “mother country” or that the more powerful
nation just uses its power to influence the actions of the weaker country
without any formal annexation.
The world has experience two major phases of
imperialism. The first began with Columbus’s
voyage to America
in 1492, which touched off a race between the major European powers to colonize
North America. In
addition to the colonization of North America, the
sixteenth through eighteenth centuries also saw European powers (mainly Great
Britain) occupy areas such as India,
Australia, and
small parts of southern Africa, northern Africa,
and the Middle East.
Prevailing economic theories of the time encouraged the seeking of
colonies and monopolies in overseas trade.
A combination of political and economic factors, however, slowed down
the imperialistic drive after 1815. Britain’s
desire for empire (a country and its
collection of colonies) had been diminished after the loss of the thirteen
American colonies in 1783, and France
had lost nearly all of its overseas possessions by the end of the Napoleonic
Wars in 1815. In addition, the laissez-faire school of economics argued
against the possession of colonies, believing that their expense did not
justify their advantages.
Spurred by the industrial revolution, the second great
wave of imperialism began in the late nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1870s, the Europeans
indulged in a spree of overseas conquests that reduced most of Africa,
Asia, and the Pacific Ocean
region to colonial possessions by the time of the outbreak of the First World
War in 1914. During each year of that time period an area larger than France
was conquered by the different Western powers.
By 1914, Europe and its colonial possessions
occupied over 60% of the inhabitable lands of the earth. Areas not annexed directly, such as China
and Persia (now
Iran), were
forcibly “opened” to European trade and investment, and divided into informal
“spheres of influence” of the various Western nations.
France reignited its drive for world empire as a way to
restore national pride after their humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian
War (1870-1871), and the scramble for colonies among the major European
countries heated up after 1870. In his
six years as British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli annexed Fiji
and Cyprus,
fought a war against the Zulus to conquer southeastern Africa,
purchased controlling interest in the Suez Canal, and proclaimed
Queen Victoria empress of India. The other major powers (Belgium,
Germany, Italy,
the Netherlands,
Japan and the United
States) followed Britain
and France’s
lead and the race to carve up the globe began in earnest.
Motives for Imperialism
·
Explain the economic and non-economic factors that contributed to
imperialism.
·
What was “The White Man’s Burden?”
·
What justifications does Lord Legard give for
British imperialism?
As Western Europe and the United
States began to industrialize, they needed
more and more raw materials, many of which could not be found in their own countries. Supplies of rubber, bauxite (for aluminum),
copper, and tin were either non-existent or in short supply in most of the
industrialized world. To maintain their
industrial growth, countries needed to guarantee an uninterrupted supply of
these key materials at the most advantageous prices. Colonies provided a ready source of raw
materials free from the trade interruptions that could occur when dealing with
independent countries.
In addition to needing more and more natural resources, the
industrialized countries also needed to expand the markets for their
products. Many industries were producing
more products that their own countries could consume. Colonies would provide new markets for the
products of the mother country. The
English explorer and newspaperman Henry Morton Stanley explained:
There are forty million people beyond the gateway of
the Congo (in Africa),
and the cotton spinners of Manchester
are waiting to clothe them. Birmingham
foundries are glowing with the red metal that will presently be made into ironwork
for them....
Beyond providing a source of natural resources and
expanded markets, colonies also provided an opportunity for investment. Colonial investments were far riskier than investing
in businesses in one’s own country. As a
result, the higher risks yielded potentially greater rewards. British investors could get returns of 15% on
Indian railway bonds, whereas bonds issued by British railways yielded only
7%. The huge sums of money accumulated
by the industrial tycoons of the industrial nations needed additional opportunities
for investment, and colonies provided a destination for this capital with
potentially high rewards.
Economic factors brought about by the industrial
revolution were not the total explanation for the renewed interest in
imperialism. In 1914, only 25% of
British and 10 % of French exports went to their colonies. Similarly, only 20% of British overseas investment
went to her colonies. A greater amount
of British capital was invested in the United
States than in all of her colonies
combined. Therefore, non-economic
factors also obviously played an important role in late nineteenth century
imperialism.
One of the key differences between the two periods of
imperialism was that, prior to 1870, Britain
had only a weak France
with which to compete in the outside world.
This meant that the British seldom needed to act out of the fear that
another European power was about to seize potentially valuable colonies. This also allowed the British to rely heavily
on threats and small military raids rather than outright conquest to bring
African kings or Asian emperors into line.
With its “white” settler colonies (Canada,
Australia, and New
Zealand) and India,
plus smaller possessions in Africa and Southeast
Asia, the British already had all the empire they could
handle. Most British politicians were cautious
about or firmly opposed to adding more colonies. Other European countries were far too weak
economically and too politically divided to contest Britain’s
naval mastery or its standing as the greatest colonial power.
Once Germany
was united in 1871, and other countries began rival Britain
as industrial powers, the situation was significantly altered. By the last
decades of the century, Belgium,
France, and
especially Germany
and the United States were challenging Britain’s
industrial supremacy and actively building (or in the case of France,
adding to) colonial empires of their own.
Many of the political leaders of these nations viewed the possession of
colonies as an essential characteristic of countries that aspired to
great-power status. A French writer
stated:
Colonization is for France
a question of life and death: either France
will become a great African power, or in a century or two it will be no more
than a secondary European power; it will count for about as much in the world
as Greece and Rumania
in Europe.
To the British, India
and the rest of the empire were now seen as essential to Britain’s
maintenance of its great-power standing.
The British obsession with protecting strategic overseas naval stations,
such as those in Aden, Malaya,
and South Africa,
was linked to an underlying perception of growing threats to their Indian Empire. British politicians worried that if Britain
stood still while the rest of the powers built up overseas empires, it would
soon be replaced as the number one naval and colonial power. International rivalries served to increase
interest in colonization. Even if a
colony seemed to be of little importance when it was conquered, it could prove
to be a valuable asset later. Each power
felt compelled to conquer and annex vast territories—which often consisted of
scantily populated, arid (dry) lands—because it feared that otherwise a
rival would take them. In letting a
competitor grab what might prove to be a mineral-rich colony, Britain
or Germany
might be harming its future chances to remain a great power. Germany
and Italy, two
countries that were not unified until the mid-nineteenth century, fell behind
the more established European powers and believed that they had been stuck with
mainly leftovers as Britain
and France
grabbed the prime colonies in Asia and Africa.
In addition to the economic and world power rivalries behind
nineteenth century imperialism, there was a religious aspect to the European
conquest of Africa and Asia. Europeans justified imperialism on the basis
that it benefited both colonizer and
those colonized. They believed that it was
their duty to bring Christianity and the benefits of western civilization to
the “unenlightened” areas of the world.
Religious missionaries were often the first colonizers in newly
conquered lands. The missionaries taught
Christianity, and set up hospitals and schools.
The British poet Rudyard Kipling expressed the belief that imperialism
spread the benefits of civilization in his 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden”:
Take up the White
Man’s Burden,
Send forth the
best ye breed--
Go, bind your
sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in
heavy harness,
On fluttered
folk and wild--
Your
new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and
half-child.
In 1893, a British official,
Lord Lugard, provided a succinct summary of the way
in which the Europeans justified imperialism in Africa:
The “Scramble for Africa” by
the nations of Europe, an incident without parallel in
the history of the world, was due to the growing commercial rivalry, which
brought home to civilized nations the vital necessity of securing the only remaining
fields for industrial enterprise and expansion.
It is well, then, to realize that it is for our advantage—and not alone
at the dictates of duty—that we have undertaken responsibilities in East
Africa. It is in order to
foster the growth of the trade of this country, and to find an outlet for our
manufactures and our surplus energy, that our far-seeing statesmen and our
commercial men advocate colonial expansion....
There are some who say we have no right in Africa
at all, that “it belongs to the natives.”
I hold that our right is the necessity that is upon us to provide for
our ever-growing population—either by opening new fields for emigration, or by
providing work and employment which the development of over-sea extension entails
(requires)—and to stimulate trade by finding new markets, since we know what
misery trade depression brings at home.
While thus serving our own interests as a nation, we
may, by selecting men of the right stamp for the control of new territories,
bring at the same time many advantages to Africa. Nor do we deprive the natives of their
birthright of freedom, to place them under a foreign yoke
(harness). It has ever been the keynote
of British colonial method to rule through and by the natives, and it is this
method, in contrast to the arbitrary and uncompromising rule of Germany,
France, Portugal, and Spain, which has been the secret of our success as a
colonizing nation, and has made us welcomed by tribes and peoples in Africa,
who ever rose in revolt against the other nations named. In Africa, moreover,
there is among the people a natural inclination to submit to a higher authority. That intense detestation (hatred) of
control, which animates our race, does not exist among the tribes of Africa,
and if there is any authority that we replace, it is the authority of the
Slavers and Arabs, or the intolerable tyranny of the “dominant tribe.”
Unequal Combat: Colonial Wars
·
What factors made it relatively easy for Europeans to conquer Africa and Asia during the late nineteenth century?
·
Describe the extent of European imperialism by 1914.
Industrial change not only inspired the Europeans’ grab
for colonial possessions, it made them much easier to acquire. By the last decades of the nineteenth century,
scientific discoveries and technological innovations had catapulted the
Europeans far ahead of all other peoples in the capacity to wage war. The Europeans could tap mineral resources
that most peoples did not even know existed, and European chemists mixed ever
more deadly explosives. Advances in metallurgy
(metal working) made possible the mass production of light and mobile artillery
pieces that rendered suicidal the massed cavalry or infantry charges that were
the mainstay of Asian and African armies.
Advances in artillery were matched by great improvements in hand
arms. Much more accurate and faster
firing, breech-loading rifles replaced the clumsy muzzle-loading muskets of the
first phase of empire building. By the
1880s, after decades of experimentation, the machine gun had become an
effective battlefield weapon. Railroads
gave the Europeans the mobility of the swiftest African or Asian horsemen as
well as the ability to supply large armies in the field for extended periods of
time. Telegraphs made it possible to
rapidly transmit orders from the capitals of Europe to
men-on-the-spot in the tropics. On the
sea, Europe’s already formidable advantages were
awesomely increased by industrial transformations. After the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869, steam power supplanted the sail, iron hulls
replaced wood, and massive guns, capable of hitting enemy vessels miles away,
were introduced into the fleets of the great powers.
The dazzling array of new weaponry with which the Europeans
set out on their expeditions to the Indian frontiers or the African “bush” made
the wars of colonial conquest very lopsided affairs. This was particularly true when the Europeans
encountered resistance from peoples, such as those in the interior of Africa or
the Pacific islands, who had been cut off from most pre-industrial advances in
technology and thus fought the European machine guns with spears, arrows, and
leather shields. One African leader,
whose people struggled with little hope to halt the German advance into East
Africa, resorted to natural imagery to account for the power of
the invaders’ weapons:
On Monday we heard a shuddering like Leviathan
(Biblical huge whale), the voice of many cannon; we heard the roar like waves
of the rocks and rumble like thunder in the rains. We heard a crashing like elephants or
monsters and our hearts melted at the number of shells. We knew that we were hearing the battle of Pangani; the guns were like a hurricane in our ears.
Not even peoples with advanced pre-industrial technology
and sophisticated military organization, such as the Chinese and Vietnamese,
could stand against, or really even comprehend, the fearful killing devices of
the Europeans. In advising the
Vietnamese emperor to give in to European demands, one of his officials, who
had led the fight against the French invaders, warned: “Nobody can resist them. They go where they
choose…. Under heaven, everything is
feasible to them, save only the matter of life and death.”
Despite the odds against them, African and Asian peoples
often fiercely resisted the imposition of colonial rule. West African leaders held back the European advance
for decades, and when rulers, such as the Vietnamese emperors, refused to
fight, local officials organized guerrilla resistance in defense of the
traditional regime. Combative peoples,
such as the Zulus in South Africa,
had the courage and discipline to face and defeat sizable British forces in
conventional battles, such as that at Isandhlwana in 1879.
Resistance, however, almost always eventually ended in defeat: The guerrilla
bands in Vietnam
were eventually run to the ground. Even
at Isandhlwana, 3,000 Zulus lost their lives in the
massacre of 800 British and 500 African troops.
In addition, within days of the Zulu victory, a tiny force of 120
British troops held off an army of three or four thousand Zulus. There was only one major example of a
European country failing to subdue an area.
In 1896, the Ethiopians destroyed an Italian-led army in the Battle of Adawa. In a matter of hours, the forces of Emperor Menelik defeated an opposing army of 25,000, including
6,000 Italians and 19,000 of their native allies. As an example of the brutality frequently
present in these conflicts, the unfortunate Italians who were taken captive were
promptly castrated and their native allies had their right hands and left feet
amputated.
Adawa was, however, a lone
exception to the general pattern of European conquest. By the turn of the century in 1901, only Ethiopia
and Liberia
(which had been established by former American slaves in the 1820s and remained
under the influence of the United States)
maintained any form of African independence.
Standards of colonial rule varied greatly among the European powers with
the British and French being the most benevolent (kindhearted) and the
Germans and Belgians being the most brutal.
It has been estimated that in 1800 Europeans did not know
fully half of the world. By 1900 more
land had been explored and acquired by them than in the previous four centuries. The nations of the small, northwest peninsula
of the Europe now claimed control of 60% of the earth’s
surface. In the fifty years before World
War I, international trade rose from $7 billion to $42 billion.
In 1914, Great Britain,
with its far-flung empire, was the world’s richest nation. Even though it imported more goods than it exported,
it earned nearly a billion dollars a year from overseas investments, shipping
fees, and banking and insurance services.
Germany
had also become an economic giant. Its population had risen from 41 million to
65 million between 1871 and 1910. France
lagged behind Germany
in both population and industrial output, but it was still a major economic
power.
Excepting Ethiopia
and Liberia,
all of Africa had been divided between the European powers
by 1900. Maps of the continent became a
patchwork of colors—red for Great Britain,
green for France,
blue for Germany,
and so on. In Southeast Asia,
only Siam remained
independent, in part because Britain
and France
could not decide which of them should have it.
The Americans had replaced the Spanish as the colonial overlords of the Philippines,
and the Dutch were completing the conquest of the “outer islands” of the Indonesian
archipelago (chain of islands).
Even the island clusters of the Pacific had been divided among the
hungry industrial powers. China,
Persia, and the
Middle East had not yet been occupied, but many believed
that the “informal” political and economic influences the European powers
exerted in these areas were the prelude to formal annexation. Two other European powers, Russia
and the Ottoman Empire, had not participated in the grab
for Africa and Asia, but had
previously conquered non-Russian and Turkish areas contiguous (connected) to
their own countries.
Europeans had conquered most of the earth in a matter of
decades with a remarkably low level of expense and loss of European lives. They had divided the world with little
thought for the reactions of the peoples who came under their rule. European leaders quarreled and bargained at
green, felt-topped tables in Paris
or Berlin over lands about which
they scarcely knew anything. It was like
a colossal game of Diplomacy or Risk, with armies and fleets moved, and
colonies won, lost, and traded at the gaming tables of the European
diplomats. To expand on an image offered
by the arch-imperialist King Leopold of the Belgians, industrial technology had
turned the world into a giant gateau (cake), to be sliced up and divided
between the European powers.
American Imperialism
·
What factors led to the United States’ interest in imperialism?
·
What influence did Alfred Thayer Mahan have on American leaders?
While the Europeans were pursuing their interests in Africa
and Asia, a new imperial power was emerging in the
Pacific and Caribbean—the United
States.
The United States
had traditionally followed a policy of isolationism,
choosing to avoid conflicts with other countries. A guiding principle of U.S.
foreign policy was the Monroe Doctrine,
which had been issued in 1823 by President James Monroe. This proclamation warned European countries
not to attempt any more colonization in the Western Hemisphere
or interfere in the affairs of any existing country in our part of the
world. In return, the U.S.
pledged not to interfere with existing European colonies or interfere in
European matters. During the last two
decades of the century; however, the United
States was increasing drawn further and further
into international events. Foreign trade
had become increasingly important to the industrialized American economy in the
late nineteenth century. The nation had
exported about $392 million worth of goods in 1870; by 1890, the figure was
$857 million; and by 1900, it had leapt to $1.4 billion. Once convinced of the great advantages of
overseas markets, many Americans began to consider the possibility of acquiring
colonies to expand such markets further.
“Today,” Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana
cried in 1899, “we are raising more than we can consume. Today, we are making more than we can
use. Therefore, we must find new markets
for our produce, new occupation for our capital, new work for our labor.”
Americans could not, moreover, totally ignore the
imperialist fever that was raging through Europe. Some Americans feared that their nation would
soon be left out and that no territory would remain to be acquired. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts,
a leading imperialist, warned that the United
States “must not fall out of the line of
march.” In addition, the western
frontier, which had served as the focus of American expansionism, was coming to
an end. The 1890 census declared that
there was no longer any land frontier, within the United
States.
The ablest and probably the most effective American
advocate of imperialism was Alfred
Thayer Mahan, a captain and later admiral in the navy. Mahan presented his philosophy in three major
works: The Influence of Sea Power upon
History, 1660-1783 (1890), The
Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812
(1892), and The Interest of America in
Sea Power (1897). His thesis
(main point) was reasonably simple: The sea-power nations were the great
nations of history, and the United States,
a huge island, had to base its greatness on sea power. The essential links in sea power were a productive
domestic economy, foreign commerce, a strong merchant marine, a navy to defend
trade routes and colonies, which
would provide raw materials and markets, and could also serve as bases for the
navy. Specifically, Mahan advocated that
the United States
construct a canal across the isthmus of Central America
to join the oceans, acquire defensive bases on both sides of the canal in the Caribbean
and the Pacific, and take possession of Hawaii
and other Pacific islands. “Whether they
will or not,” he proclaimed, “Americans must now begin to look outward.” Mahan’s works influenced a large number of
influential Americans including the political leaders of both parties who took
steps to build up the U.S.’s
small navy. Congress authorized the construction of four
battleships during the 1890s. By 1898,
the United States
had advanced to fifth among the world’s naval powers; and by 1900, to third.
America’s
First Colonies
·
What were the United States’ first four colonial possessions?
·
Describe how the United States acquired control of Hawaii.
In 1867, the U.S.
occupied the Midway Islands and purchased Alaska
from the Russians. The next step was in
the Hawaiian Islands.
The islands of Hawaii, in
the mid-Pacific, had been an important stopover station for American ships in
the China trade
since the early nineteenth century and were the home of a growing number of
American settlers. New
England missionaries had arrived in Hawaii
as early in 1820; and like their fellow missionaries elsewhere, they advertised
the economic possibilities of the islands in the religious press. Soon, other Americans arrived to become sugar
planters. Eventually, officers of the
growing U.S. Navy looked longingly on the magnificent natural base of Pearl
Harbor on the island of Oahu.
The American residents of Hawaii
gradually came to dominate the economic and political life of the islands,
despite the presence of native rulers.
Commercial relations were also pushing Hawaii
into the American orbit. A treaty signed
in 1875 permitted Hawaiian sugar to enter the United
States duty-free (without tariffs) and
obliged the Hawaiian kingdom to make no territorial or economic concessions to
other powers. The trade arrangement tied
the islands to the American economy, and the political clauses meant that, in
effect, the United States
was guaranteeing Hawaii’s
independence and hence was making the islands a protectorate (area under
its protection). In 1887, a new treaty
renewed the existing arrangements and granted the United
States exclusive use of Pearl
Harbor as a naval station.
In addition, the settlers forced the native king, Kalakaua,
to sign a constitution that made the monarch a figurehead subordinate to the
settler-dominated legislature and used property qualifications to deprive most
Hawaiians the right to vote. Hawaiians
greatly resented this “bayonet constitution,” but the weak king was powerless
to prevent domination.
Sugar production in Hawaii
boomed, and prosperity flourished for the American planters. Then the McKinley Tariff of 1890 dealt the
planters a harsh blow by removing taxes on all foreign raw sugar and giving a
bonus for sugar produced within the United
States.
This deprived Hawaii of
its privileged position in the American sugar market. In response, American sugar planters in Hawaii,
led by Sanford Dole and Lorrin Thurston, began to demand annexation to the United
States.
In the midst of growing sentiment among white Hawaiians
for union with the United States,
King Kalakaua died in 1891. He was succeeded by his sister, Queen Liliuokalani, who was determined
to eliminate American influence in the government. Two years later, Liliuokalani attempted to
repeal the hated “bayonet constitution,” and the American residents staged a
revolution aimed at deposing her. At a
critical moment in the bloodless insurrection, on January 16, 1893, the American
minister, John L. Stevens ordered 160 marines from a warship in Honolulu
harbor to go ashore to aid the rebels.
The queen was forced to yield her authority, Dole was made the head of a
provisional government, and a delegation representing the triumphant rebels set
out for Washington to negotiate a
treaty of annexation. President Harrison
happily signed an annexation agreement in February 1893, only weeks before
leaving office but the Senate refused to ratify the treaty. Grover Cleveland, the new president, refused
to support annexation. He withdrew the treaty
and sent a special representative to the islands to investigate. When his agent reported that Americans had
engineered the revolution, Cleveland
tried to restore the queen to her throne.
The Americans planters, now firmly in control of the kingdom, refused to
budge. Reluctantly, the president had to
recognize their government as the new Republic
of Hawaii. Debate over the annexation of Hawaii
continued until 1898, when, with the Republicans again in power and
expansionist sentiment fueled by the Spanish-American War, Congress annexed Hawaii.
In 1899, the United States
divided the islands of Samoa with Germany,
ending a thirty-year struggle between the U.S.,
Britain, and Germany. More than a thousand miles to the south of Hawaii,
the Samoan islands dominated the sea-lanes of the South Pacific and had long
served as a way station for American ships in the Pacific trade.
Imperial ambitions had thus begun to stir within the United
States well before the late 1890s, but it
was the war with Spain
in 1898 that turned those stirrings into an overt (open)
expansionism. The war transformed America’s
relationship to the rest of the world, and it left the nation with a far-flung
overseas empire.
Causes of the Spanish-American War
·
What effect did Cuba’s fight for independence have on the United States?
·
What factor did “Yellow Journalism” play in the Spanish-American War?
·
What events led the United States to declare war on Spain?
The immediate background of the Spanish-American War lay
in the Caribbean island
of Cuba, which along with nearby Puerto
Rico represented nearly all that was left of Spain’s
once extensive Latin American Empire.
The Cubans had long resented Spanish rule, and they had engaged in an
unsuccessful attempt to overthrow it between 1868 and 1878 in which 250,000
were killed. During that revolt, many
Americans were strongly sympathetic to the Cuban cause, but such feelings did
not lead to any official support for the Cuban rebels.
In 1895, under the leadership of José Marté,
the Cubans rose up again. From the beginning,
the struggle took on aspects of ferocity that horrified Americans. The Cubans deliberately devastated the island
to force the Spaniards to leave. To put
down the insurrection, the Spanish resorted to methods equally extreme. General Valeriano Weyler, or “Butcher Weyler” as he
soon came to be known in the American press, confined all civilians in certain
areas to hastily prepared concentration camps, where 200,000 died, victims of
disease and malnutrition.
At this time, newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer with
his New York World and William Randolph Hearst with his New
York Journal
were revolutionizing American journalism.
The new “Yellow Journalism”
specialized in vivid and sensational news to sell papers in the fiercely competitive
arena. When such news did not exist,
editors were not above creating it. To
Hearst and Pulitzer, engaged in a ruthless battle for subscribers to their
papers, the struggle in Cuba
was a journalist’s dream. The revolt of
1895 was reported sensationally by the American press in a manner that left the
impression that all the cruelties were being committed by the Spaniards. Major newspapers sent batteries of reporters
and illustrators to Cuba
with orders to provide accounts of Spanish atrocities. “You furnish the pictures,” Hearst supposedly
told artist Frederic Remington, “and I’ll furnish the war.” The mounting storm of indignation against Spain
left President Cleveland unmoved.
Convinced that both sides in Cuba
were guilty of atrocities and that the United
States had no interests justifying
involvement in the struggle, he issued a proclamation of neutrality. When Congress passed a resolution favoring
recognition of Cuban independence, he ignored it. His only concession to the demands for intervention
was to offer to mediate the conflict, a proposal that Spain
declined.
When William McKinley became president in 1897, he renewed
the American mediation offer, which the Spanish again refused. Taking a stronger line than his predecessor,
he protested to Spain
against its “uncivilized and inhuman” conduct.
At virtually the same time, a liberal regime took power in Spain
and intended to modify its colonial policies, offering partial independence to
both Cuba and Puerto
Rico. The new Spanish government
recalled Weyler and modified the concentration camp
policy. At the end of 1897, with the
insurrection losing ground, it seemed that war might be avoided.
Whatever chance might have existed for a peaceful settlement
vanished as a result of two dramatic incidents in February 1898. The first occurred when a Cuban agent in Havana
stole a private letter written by Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish minister in Washington,
and turned it over to the American press.
Published first in Hearst’s New
York Journal, and later in
newspapers across the land, the de Lôme letter described McKinley as a weak man and “a
bidder for the admiration of the crowd.”
This was no more than many Americans, including some Republicans, were
saying about their president (Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore
Roosevelt described McKinley as having “no more backbone than a chocolate
eclair”), but because a foreigner had made the remark it was considered a
national insult. Popular anger was intense,
and de Lôme resigned before McKinley could demand his
recall.
While the excitement was still at fever pitch, even more
sensational news hit the front pages: the American battleship Maine had
blown up in Havana harbor with a
loss of more than 260 lives. The ship
had been ordered to Cuban waters in January to protect American lives and
property against possible attacks by Spanish loyalists. Many Americans, including Theodore Roosevelt
and Hearst, jumped to the conclusion that the Spanish had sunk the ship and
screamed for war. This opinion seemed to
be confirmed when a naval court of inquiry reported that an external explosion
by a submarine mine had caused the disaster.
In fact, the real cause of the Maine disaster
was never determined. Later evidence suggested
that it was the result of an accidental explosion inside one of the engine
rooms. Nevertheless, war hysteria swept
the country, and Congress unanimously appropriated $50 million for military
preparations. “Remember the Maine!” became a national chant for revenge.
After the Maine incident, there was little chance
that the government could suppress the popular demand for war. McKinley still preferred to avoid a conflict,
but many others in his administration were clamoring for America
to join the hostilities. In March 1898,
the president asked Spain
to agree to an armistice (end to the fighting), with negotiations for a
permanent peace to follow, and an immediate ending of the concentration
camps. After a slight delay, Spain
accepted some of the American demands but refused to agree to negotiate with
the rebels. Two days later, McKinley
asked Congress for authority to use military force to end the hostilities in Cuba,
in short for a declaration of war, “in the name of humanity, in the name of
civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests.” On April 25, 1898, Congress passed a formal
declaration of war. At the time, the U.S.
professed only a desire to free the Cuban people and the Teller Amendment, passed by Congress, disavowed any intention to
annex Cuba.
“A Splendid Little War”
·
Why was the war described as “a splendid little war?”
·
Describe the role that Theodore Roosevelt played in the war.
·
Where did most of the fighting take place during the war?
·
Why was the Battle
of San Juan Hill important?
The Spanish-American conflict was, in the words of Roosevelt’s
friend John Hay, “a splendid little war.”
Indeed, to virtually all Americans it seemed almost an ideal
conflict. It was the last small, short,
individualistic war before the huge, lengthy, impersonal struggles of the
twentieth century. Declared in April, it
was over in August, mainly because the Cuban rebels had already greatly
weakened the Spanish resistance. The
American intervention, therefore, was in many respects a “mopping up”
exercise. Newspaper readers easily and
eagerly followed the campaigns and the exploits of American soldiers and
sailors. Only 460 Americans were killed
in battle or died of wounds, but some 5,200 perished of disease: malaria,
dysentery, and typhoid, among others.
The United States
was ill prepared for war. American
soldiers fighting in tropical regions were clothed in the traditional heavy
blue uniforms and often fed spoiled canned rations that they called “embalmed
beef.” Medical supplies and services
were inadequate, which contributed to the heavy impact of tropical diseases on
the troops. The regular army, numbering
only 28,000 troops and officers scattered around the country at various posts,
was mainly skilled at quelling Indian outbreaks, but had no experience in
large-scale warfare. National Guard
units, organized by local communities and commanded for the most part by local
leaders, did the bulk of the fighting in the war. Each unit considered itself a representative
of its own town, and friends and relatives at home took a special pride in the
performance of the “boys” and their unit.
More than a million young men volunteered for service, nearly ten times
the number the president had requested.
No agency in the American military had clear authority
over strategic planning. Only the navy
had worked out an objective, and its objective had little to do with freeing Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt was unrestrained by the
fact that he was in a relatively minor official position as Assistant Secretary
of the Navy. With his boss out of
office, Roosevelt ordered the commander of the U.S.
Pacific Fleet, Commodore George Dewey,
to attack the Philippines
in the event of war. Immediately after
war was declared, Dewey left the China
coast and headed for Manila, where
an aging Spanish fleet was stationed. On
May 1 he steamed into Manila Bay, and, as his ships prepared to pass down the
line of anchored enemy vessels, he uttered the first slogan of the war: “You
may fire when ready, Gridley.” When the firing
ended, the Spanish fleet had been completely destroyed, one American sailor lay
dead (of a heat stroke), and Dewey had become the first hero of the war. The Spaniards, however, still held Manila,
the capital of the Philippines,
and Dewey had no troops with which to attack them. While he waited nervously, the American government
assembled an expeditionary force to relieve him and take the city. On August 13, the Americans received the
surrender of Manila. In the rejoicing over Dewey’s victory, few
Americans paused to note that the character of the war was changing. What had begun as a war to free Cuba
was becoming a war to strip Spain
of its colonies.
While the navy was monopolizing the first phases of the
war, the War Department was trying to mobilize and train an army. The army’s commanding general, Nelson A.
Miles, a veteran of the Civil War, had planned to train the troops until
autumn, then occupy Puerto Rico and, in conjunction with
the Cuban rebels, attack Havana. When a strong Spanish naval force occupied Santiago,
Cuba, Miles’ plans
hastily changed. In June, a force of
17,000 left Florida to take Santiago. Once landed, the army moved toward Santiago,
and eventually surrounded and captured it.
On the way, American troops fought and defeated the Spaniards at the
crossroads at Las Guasimas and, a week later, in two
simultaneous battles, El Caney and San Juan Hill. While the Santiago
campaign was in its last stages, an American army landed in Puerto
Rico and occupied it against little opposition.
It was the Battle
of San Juan Hill that made Theodore Roosevelt the greatest American
military hero since the Civil War. After
the declaration of war, Roosevelt resigned his position
in the Naval Department and formed his own volunteer cavalry unit. This unit was made up of a diverse mix of
cowboys, Indians, western sheriffs, Ivy League polo players, and eastern
gentlemen. In all the Cuban engagements
the Rough Riders were in the middle
of the fighting and on the front pages of the newspapers. Roosevelt’s men made a
bold charge up Kettle Hill (a minor part of the larger battle for the adjacent San
Juan Hill) directly into the face of Spanish guns. Roosevelt himself emerged unscathed, but
nearly a hundred of his soldiers were killed or wounded. To the end of his life, he remembered the
battle as “the great day of my life.”
After the fall of Santiago
and the defeat of the Spanish navy off the Cuban coast, Spain
was aware that their cause was defeated.
Through the French ambassador in Washington,
the Spanish government asked for peace; and on August 12, an armistice ended
the war.
The Debate Over Imperialism
·
What territory did the United States gain in the Spanish-American War?
·
Why did President McKinley say he decided to annex the Philippines?
·
What arguments were made against the United States becoming an imperial power?
·
What arguments were raised in favor of American imperialism?
The terms of the armistice
confirmed what the military situation had already established. Spain
recognized the independence of Cuba
and ceded (gave) Puerto Rico to the United
States.
It also surrendered the Pacific island
of Guam, between Hawaii
and the Philippines.
There was little controversy about the annexation of Puerto
Rico and Guam. Puerto Rico was close
enough to the mainland to seem a tempting acquisition to almost everyone. Guam seemed too small
and insignificant to be worthy of dispute.
The Philippines,
however, constituted a large and important territory; and American annexation
of it would mean a major change in the nation’s position in the world.
McKinley weighed a number of
options for dealing with the Philippines:
I have been
criticized a good deal about the Philippines,
but I don’t deserve it. The truth is, I
didn’t want the Philippines,
and when they came to us, as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do
with them. When the Spanish war broke
out, Dewey was at Hong Kong, and I ordered him to go to Manila,
and he had to; because, if defeated, he had no place to refit on that side of
the globe, and if the Dons (Spanish) were victorious they would likely cross
the Pacific and ravage our Oregon
and California coasts. And so he had to destroy the Spanish fleet,
and did it. But that was as far as I
thought then. When next I realized that
the Philippines
had dropped into our lap, I confess that I did not know what to do with
them. I sought counsel from all
sides—Democrats as well as Republicans—but got little help. I thought first we would take only Manila;
then Luzon; then other islands, perhaps all. I walked the floor of the White House night after
night until midnight; and I am not
ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty
God for light and guidance more than one night.
And one night late it came to me this way—I don’t
know how it was, but it came:
That we could not give them back to Spain—that would
be cowardly and dishonorable; that we could not turn them over to France or
Germany—that would be bad business and discreditable; that we could not leave
them to themselves—they were unfit for self-government—and they would soon have
anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and that there was
nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos,
and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and, by God’s grace, do the very
best we could by them, as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died.
And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept
soundly, and next morning I sent for the
chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker), and told him to put the
Philippines on the map of he United States (pointing to a large map on the wall
of his office); and there they are, and there they will stay while I am president!
In October 1898, commissioners from the United
States and Spain
met in Paris to negotiate a treaty
formally ending the war. Spain
readily agreed to recognize Cuba’s
independence and to cede Puerto Rico and Guam
to the United States. Then the American commissioners, acting under
instruction from McKinley, startled the conference by demanding the cession of
all the Philippines. Stubbornly the Spanish resisted the American
demand, although they realized they could retain the islands only by resuming
the war. They finally yielded when the United
States offered to pay $20 million for the
islands. The Treaty of Paris was signed
on December 10, 1898, and sent to the United
States for ratification by the Senate.
When the treaty was submitted to the Senate it encountered
immediate and fierce criticism. The
chief point at issue was the acquisition of the Philippines,
denounced by many, including prominent Republicans, as a repudiation
(rejection) of America’s
high moral position in the war and a shameful occupation of a land that wanted
to be free. The anti-imperialists were a varied and powerful group and included
some of the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful figures: Andrew Carnegie,
William Jennings Bryan, Mark Twain, Samuel Gompers,
and others. Their opposition to
annexation stemmed from various motives.
Some feared the “pollution” of the American population by introducing “inferior”
Asian races into the national community.
Industrial workers feared a flood of cheap laborers from the new
colonies who would undercut their wages and take their jobs. Conservatives feared annexation would produce
a large standing army and entangling foreign alliances, which would threaten
American liberties. Certain economic interests
(most notably sugar growers) feared the new territories would provide unwelcome
competition. Many Democrats opposed
annexation because they considered it a Republican tactic to enhance the
party’s prestige. Others saw in
annexation a repudiation of basic American principles of independence and
self-determination: the United States
could not impose colonial rule on other peoples without debasing its own
democratic heritage:
Favoring ratification was an
equally varied group. There were the
exuberant imperialists such as
Theodore Roosevelt, who saw the acquisition of empire as a way to reinvigorate the
nation. Supporters of annexation included
businessmen who saw economic potential in the Philippines
and believed annexation would position the United
States to dominate the Oriental trade, and
shipbuilders and others who stood to benefit from the creation of a larger
navy, which the new empire would certainly require. The Protestant clergy also strongly supported
imperialism as they saw an opportunity for missionary activities. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of
annexation, however, was the apparent ease with which it could be
accomplished. The United
States, after all, already possessed the islands
as a result of its military triumph. The
imperialists argued, too, that annexation was fully in accord with American
traditions. The nation’s long-standing
policies toward Indians treating them as dependents rather than as citizens had
created a precedent for annexing land without absorbing people. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts,
one of the leading imperialists in Congress, made the point explicitly:
The other day a great Democratic thinker announced
that a Republic can have no subjects. He
seems to have forgotten that this Republic not only has held subjects from the
beginning, but [that we have] acquired them by purchase... [We] denied to the Indian tribes even the
right to choose their allegiance, or to become citizens.
Other exponents of annexation argued that the
“uncivilized” Filipinos “would occupy the same status precisely as our
Indians.” After weeks of bitter
wrangling, the Senate ratified the treaty by a single vote on February 6,
1899. The treaty did, however, prove to
be very popular with the American people.
William Jennings Bryan attacked the policy of imperialism in his rematch
with McKinley for the presidency in 1900 and was soundly defeated.
America As
An Imperial Power
·
How did the United States rule its new colonies?
·
What problems did the United States experience in regard to Cuba and the Philippines?
The new American colonial empire was a small one by the
standards of the great imperial powers of Europe, but it
spanned a vast area of the globe. It
stretched from the Caribbean to the far reaches of the
Pacific, embracing Puerto Rico, Alaska,
Hawaii, a part of Samoa,
Guam, the Philippines,
and a chain of minor Pacific islands.
With the empire came new problems. The new possessions were considered unincorporated
territories, subject to the total authority of the U.S. Congress under the
Territorial Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states: “The Congress shall have
the power to dispose of and make all needed rules and regulations respecting
the territory or other property belonging to the United
States” (Article IV, Section 3). In most of the territories, a governor
appointed by Congress ruled the residents, but they were eventually permitted
to elect a local legislature to handle many decisions. Three of the territories—Hawaii,
Alaska, and Puerto
Rico—received the right to elect legislatures relatively
quickly. A 1900 act granted American
citizenship to all citizens of Hawaii. The discovery of gold in Alaska
in 1896 caused the first substantial influx of Americans. In 1912, Alaska
elected its first legislature, and its inhabitants were given the rights of
citizenship. In Puerto Rico
military occupation of the island ended quickly, and Congress granted
citizenship to all Puerto Ricans and the right to vote for a local legislature
in 1917. Smaller possessions in the
empire received more arbitrary treatment.
Guam came under the control of naval officials;
and some of the small Pacific islands, containing only a handful of inhabitants,
experienced no form of American government at all. Eventually, the larger territories achieved
the status of being a commonwealth,
electing both their own governor and legislature.
American military forces remained in Cuba
until 1902 under orders to prepare the island for the independence promised in
the peace treaty of 1898. The occupiers
built roads, schools, and hospitals, reorganized the legal, financial, and
administrative systems, and introduced far-reaching sanitary reforms. It also became apparent that the United
States was determined to exert its influence
over the island even after Cuba’s
independence. In 1901 the U.S. Congress
placed several conditions on Cuban independence. Cuba
could not treaties with any foreign powers, the United
States maintained the right to intervene in Cuba
to preserve Cuba’s
independence, and Cuba
was forced grant the United States
a naval base at Guantánamo
Bay. American businesses dominated the island’s
sugar industry as well as the railways, electricity, and telephone system. Despite official independence in 1902, Cuba
essentially remained an American colony as U.S.
troops were dispatched to the island three times between 1906-1920 to protect
American interests and quell domestic disturbances.
Like other imperial powers,
the United States soon discovered as it had often discovered at home in its
relations with the Indians that subjugating (conquering) another people
required more than ideals; it also required strength, and often brutality. In the Philippines,
American forces soon became engaged in a long and bloody war with native
forces, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, fighting for independence. This fight lasted from 1898 to 1902 and
resulted in 4,300 American deaths, nearly ten times the number who died in
combat in the Spanish-American War. An
anti-imperialist, Ernest Howard Crosby, wrote an ironic parody of Kipling’s
“White Man’s Burden,” entitled “The Real ‘White Man’s Burden:’”
Take up the White Man’s burden.
Send forth your sturdy kin,
And load them down with Bibles
And
cannon-balls and gin.
Throw in a few diseases
To spread the trop climes,
For there the healthy niggers
Are quite
behind the times.
They need our labor question, too,
And politics and fraud—
We’ve made a pretty mess at home,
Let’s make a
mess abroad.
In a
similar vein, industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who had opposed the treaty, wrote
a sarcastic letter to McKinley, congratulating him on “civilizing the
Filipinos…. About 8,000 of them have
been completely civilized and sent to Heaven.
I hope you like it.”
President McKinley finally sent a special commission to
the islands in 1900, under the direction of William Howard Taft, to establish a
civilian government to prepare the islands for independence. Taft oversaw the creation of a civilian
government that gave the Filipinos broad local self-rule. The Americans also built roads, schools,
bridges, and sewers; instituted major administrative and financial reforms; and
established a public health system.
Filipino autonomy gradually increased after their failed fight for independence. In 1902 Congress granted the islands the
right to elect a legislature, and in 1935 the Philippines
were declared a “commonwealth” with the right to elect its own president. In 1946, after World War II, the islands
finally gained their independence.
The Big Stick
·
Describe Theodore Roosevelt’s style in dealing with foreign policy
issues.
·
Why was Roosevelt awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?
·
What did the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine mean?
Upon becoming president in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt was as
determined to expand America’s
influence in the world as he had earlier been to acquire an empire during the
war with Spain. His motto of “Speak Softly and Carry a Big
Stick” not only indicated his aggressiveness, but also his desire to expand U.S.
military power. Roosevelt’s
presidency, following on the heals of the Spanish-American War, completed the
transition of the United States
from an isolationist country to one fully involved in world affairs. Symbolic of this new role, in 1907 he sent
the U.S. Navy on a worldwide tour. This
journey of “The Great White Fleet” served to show off the country’s naval
strength and announce America’s
new status as a world power.
One of Roosevelt’s most important
goals was maintaining American trade in the Pacific and preventing any single
nation from establishing dominance there.
He looked with alarm at the military rivalries involving Japan,
Russia, Germany,
and France in
the region. He was particularly
concerned by Russian efforts to expand southward into Manchuria,
a province of China.
When, in 1904, the Japanese attacked the Russian fleet at Port
Arthur in southern Manchuria, Roosevelt,
like most Americans, was inclined to side with Japan. Yet the president was no more eager for Japan
to control Manchuria than for Russia
to do so. In 1905, therefore, he eagerly
agreed to a Japanese request to mediate an end to what had become known as the Russo-Japanese War. Russia,
faring badly in the war and, as a result, already experiencing a domestic
turmoil that twelve years later would culminate in revolution had no choice but
to agree. At a peace conference in Portsmouth,
New Hampshire, Roosevelt
extracted from the embattled Russians recognition of Japan’s
territorial gains including control of Korea. Japan,
in return, agreed to cease the fighting and expand no further. As the first non-European country to defeat a
modern European power, Japan
now emerged as the strongest naval force in the Pacific. Roosevelt’s mediation
of the war earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
Roosevelt took a special interest
in events in what he (and most other Americans) considered the nation’s special
sphere of interest: Latin America. Ever since the 1820s, with the proclamation
of the Monroe Doctrine, the United
States had maintained its right to resist
any European interference in Latin America. Roosevelt added a new
“corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. In a
1904 message to Congress, he claimed that the United States had the right not
only to oppose European intervention in the Western Hemisphere, but to intervene
(step in) itself in the domestic affairs of its neighbors if those neighbors
proved unable to maintain order on their own.
The Roosevelt Corollary was
later used to justify U.S.
intervention in many Latin American countries, not just to maintain order, but
to protect U.S.
interests in the region.
Panama
·
Describe how Roosevelt acquired the right to build the Panama Canal.
The most celebrated accomplishment of Roosevelt’s
presidency, and the one that illustrated most clearly his own expansive view of
the powers of his office and the role of the United States abroad, was the
construction of the Panama Canal. Creating
a channel through Central America linking the Atlantic
and the Pacific had been a dream of many nations since the mid-nineteenth
century, but the canal had never been built due to disease and the enormous
engineering obstacles. Roosevelt,
however, was determined to accomplish the task.
At first, the Roosevelt
administration favored a route across Nicaragua,
which would permit a sea-level canal requiring no locks. A possible alternative was the Isthmus
of Panama in Colombia,
the site of an earlier, abortive effort by a French company in the 1880s to
construct a canal. The Panama
route was shorter (although not at sea level), and construction was already
about 40% complete. When the French
company lowered its price to sell its holdings from $109 million to $40
million, the president and Congress changed their minds.
Roosevelt quickly attempted to
negotiate an agreement with Colombian diplomats in Washington
that would allow construction to begin without delay. Under heavy American pressure, the Colombian charge d’affaires
signed an agreement considered highly unfavorable to his own nation. The United
States would gain perpetual
(permanent) rights to a six-mile-wide “Canal Zone”
across Colombia;
in return, it would pay Colombia
$10 million and an annual rental of $250,000.
The treaty produced outrage in the Colombian Senate, whose members
refused to ratify the agreement and sent a new representative to the United
States with instructions to demand at least
$20 million from the Americans plus a share of the payment to the French. Roosevelt was
furious. The Colombians, he charged,
were “inefficient bandits” and “blackmailers.”
He began to contemplate ways to circumvent (go around) the
Colombian government. In November 1903,
he helped organize and finance a revolution in Panama
against Colombian rule. There had been
many previous revolts, all of them failures.
This one, however, had an important additional asset: the support of the
United States. Roosevelt landed
troops from the U.S.S. Nashville in Panama
to “maintain order.” Their presence prevented
Colombian forces from suppressing the rebellion, and three days later the United
States recognized Panama
as an independent nation.
The new Panamanian government quickly agreed to a treaty
with the United States. It granted America
a canal zone ten miles wide; the United States
would pay Panama
the $10 million fee and the $250,000 annual rental that the Colombian Senate
had rejected. Work on the 51-mile canal
proceeded rapidly, despite the enormous cuts and elaborate locks that the
construction required. The construction took 10 years, and cost the
lives of 5,600 laborers, mostly due to disease. Enough earth was moved during the construction
process to fill a series of railway cars that would circle the globe at the
equator four times! The canal opened in
1914, three years after Roosevelt had proudly boasted to
a university audience, “I took the Canal Zone and let
Congress debate!” In all, the canal cost
$336 million.
One effect of the acquisition of the canal was to increase
U.S.
involvement in Central America and the Caribbean. Eager to protect its investment in the canal,
the U.S. frequently
invoked the Roosevelt Corollary to justify U.S.
intervention in the region. During the
presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and his successor William Taft, the U.S.
sent troops to Cuba,
the Dominican Republic,
Guatemala, Nicaragua,
and Honduras.
Woodrow Wilson and Latin America
·
What countries did the United States intervene in during Wilson’s presidency?
·
Briefly describe the factors that led Wilson to send U.S. troops to Mexico in 1915.
“It would be the irony of fate,” Woodrow Wilson remarked
shortly before assuming the presidency, “if my administration had to deal
chiefly with foreign affairs.” Ironic or
not, Wilson faced international
challenges of a scope and gravity unmatched by any president before him. Wilson
not only presided over a foreign policy that greatly increased American
intervention in the Caribbean and in Latin
America, but also led the United
States into the First World War.
The list of American interventions in Latin
America was already lengthy by 1913 when Wilson
became president. Having already seized
control of the finances of the Dominican
Republic in 1905, the United
States established a military government
there in 1916 when the Dominicans refused to accept a treaty that would have
made the country a virtual American territory.
The military occupation lasted eight years. In Haiti,
Wilson landed the marines in 1915
to subdue a revolution in the course of which a mob had murdered an unpopular
president. American military forces
remained in the country until 1934. When
Wilson began to fear that the
Danish West Indies might be about to fall into the hands of Germany,
he bought the colony from Denmark
and renamed it the Virgin
Islands. Concerned
about the possibility of European influence in Nicaragua,
he signed a treaty with that country’s government ensuring that no other nation
would build a canal there and winning for the United
States the right to intervene in Nicaragua’s
internal affairs to protect American interests.
It was in Mexico
that Wilson’s view of America’s
role in the Western Hemisphere received its greatest
test and suffered its greatest frustrations. For many years under dictator Porfirio Diaz, American businessmen had established an
enormous economic presence in Mexico,
with investments totaling more than $1 billion.
In 1911, however, the popular leader Francisco Madero overthrew the
corrupt and tyrannical Diaz. Madero excited
many of his countrymen by promising democratic reforms but alarmed many
American businessmen by threatening their investments in his country. With the approval of American business
interests, including the American ambassador in Mexico,
Madero was unseated and later murdered in 1913 by a conservative general, Victoriano Huerta. Wilson
displayed no hesitation in responding to the atrocity. He would never, he insisted, recognize
Huerta’s “government of butchers.”
At first, Wilson
hoped that simply by refusing to recognize Huerta he could help topple the
regime and bring to power the opposition to Huerta, led by Venustiano
Carranza. When Huerta established a full
military dictatorship in October 1913, the president chose a more forceful
approach to indicate his displeasure. In
April 1914, an officer in Huerta’s army briefly arrested several American
sailors from the U.S.S. Dolphin who had gone ashore in Tampico. Although a superior officer immediately
released them and apologized to the ship’s commander, the American admiral demanded
that the Huerta forces fire a twenty-one-gun salute to the American flag as a
public display of penance (atonement).
The Mexicans refused. Wilson
seized on the insignificant incident as an excuse for sending all available
American naval forces into Mexican waters.
A few days later, eager to prevent a German ship from delivering
munitions to the Huerta forces, he ordered the navy to seize the Mexican port
of Veracruz. In a clash with Mexican troops, the Americans
killed 126 of the defenders and suffered 19 casualties of their own. With the two nations at the brink of war, Wilson
now drew back and began to look for alternative measures to deal with the
crisis. His show of force, however, had
helped strengthen the position of the Carranza-led opposition, which captured Mexico
City in July and forced Huerta to flee the country. At last, it seemed the crisis might be over.
It was not to be.
Wilson reacted angrily when Carranza refused to accept American
guidelines for the creation of a new government, and he briefly considered
throwing his support to still another aspirant to leadership—Carranza’s former lieutenant Pancho Villa, who was now leading a rebel army of his own. Wilson’s
Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan argued forcefully in favor of Villa,
impressed that he abstained from smoking or drinking alcohol. When Villa’s military position deteriorated,
however, Wilson abandoned the
scheme and in October 1915 granted recognition to the Carranza government. Angry at what he considered an American betrayal,
Villa retaliated in January 1916 by taking sixteen Americans off a train in
northern Mexico
and shooting them. Two months later, he
led his soldiers (or bandits, as the United
States preferred to call them) across the
border into New Mexico, where
they burned the town of Columbus
and killed nineteen more Americans.
Villa’s goal, apparently, was to destabilize relations between Wilson
and Carranza and provoke a war between them, which might provide him with an
opportunity to improve his own declining fortunes.
Villa almost succeeded.
With the permission of the Carranza government, Wilson
ordered General John J. Pershing to lead an American expeditionary force across
the Mexican border in pursuit of Villa.
The American troops, during their 300-mile penetration of Mexico,
were never able to manage a clash with Villa.
They did, however, engage in two ugly skirmishes with Carranza’s army, in which 40 Mexicans and 12 Americans
died. Again, the United
States and Mexico
stood at the brink of war. At the last
minute, Wilson agreed to the
face-saving gesture of referring the dispute to an international commission,
which debated for six months without agreeing on a solution. In the meantime, Wilson was quietly
withdrawing American troops from Mexico; and in February 1917, having spent
four years of effort and gained nothing but a lasting Mexican hostility toward
the United States, the last U.S. troops were removed from Mexico.
Jeffrey
T. Stroebel, The Sycamore School, 1995. Revised
2000.