Hawaii Cuba and The Philippines How Economic Factors Impelled Overseas Expansion of The United States at
Directly following the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States acquired territory overseas that it did not have before. People have disagreed as to the reason for why the United States decided to expand overseas. Some have suggested that it was Social Darwinism that changed peoples minds about this expansion or that they were motivated by altruistic goals, such as christianizing foreign peoples, but these have usually been the rationale behind being imperialistic rather than the causes for this expansion. Others have suggested that it was a sense of militarism that led to the expansion or that it mainly occurred due to luck. However, others have theorized that the expansion was caused by economic factors. The interest in expanding overseas was mainly impelled by economic factors even though it was not until the Spanish-American War that this interest became such that the United States finally expanded overseas and the interest became such while it became backed by big business and was supported by other economic factors. This interest in expansion was mainly directed towards Hawaii, Cuba and the Philippines. Beginning in the mid nineteenth century, interest in expanding overseas grew as first "southern statesmen who were then guiding the destinies of the United States were looking with longing eyes into. ... After the Civil War when the northern industrialists came into power, "the economic necessities of the northern capitalists led them in the same direction" (Nearing "Pan-Americanism"). ... During the 1880s this interest of expanding overseas grew greater though still quite small. ... One example of the United States growing interest overseas was its "participation in the Berlin Conference of European powers on trade rights in the Congo in 1884-85" (Blum 536). An important example of how economic factors impelled the interest in overseas expansion is the case of the annexation of Hawaii. ... In 1875 a reciprocity treaty was signed opening a free market in the United States to Hawaiian sugar planters which was followed by a tenfold increase in the amount of sugar production over the next twenty years. ... A few years later in the 1890s "when the McKinley Tariff of 1890 admitted other foreign sugar on the same terms [as the reciprocity treaty] and subsidized domestic producers, the blow precipitated an economic crisis in the island kingdom and contributed to a political crisis" (Blum 541).