Imperialism Dbq Essay

After the Civil War, the United States had begun to prosper because of this second industrial revolution. With this property, the people had begun to expand across the whole of the United States causing the frontier line within the US to disappear, which lead to the rise of the idea of imperialism and stronger foreign policy. Because of the rise of yellow journalism, the closing of the frontier line, the expansion of the United States Navy, and the rise of colonization of foreign European powers within Asia, debates and conflicting views had begun to arise on the idea of imperialism and whether or not it is a good idea to expand overseas and become a world power. Advocates for the expansion of the United States argued that it was the duty of

These people did not think of the US in the same way, they wanted to stick closer to what George Washington stated in his farewell address. These same people were opposed to different business and military ventures like the Panama Canal. They also opposed the Spanish-American War and the idea of the US as an empire were two things that these same people did not like and stand behind. William Graham Sumner, who was a scholar, was a person that was strictly opposed to the Spanish American War, for he believed that the United States was following the path of Spain and that the U.S. would eventually lose these territories, similar to how Spain did (Doc. 2). Because of the problems at home that the US was having, he thought that these colonies would just cause more problems for the United States and not solve any. There were other anti-imperialists, like Jane Addams, who believed that imperialism lead to militarism. Addams was one of the few people who actually argued that the Spanish-American War caused more problems at home because of how people started to openly hate Spaniards and wanted them dead. This was something that the United States could not stand for in the eyes of her. William Bryan Jennings argued and believed a similar idea to this (Doc. 6). In his beliefs, he thought that the government of the United States could not accurately represent the desires of both citizens and the foreigners equally. During the time of imperialism, Racism was a massive problem that was plaguing the US and this was without the Filipinos so that there was no way that the American people could get along with the Filipinos if they couldn’t with the Blacks and treat them as social and political equals. Some people thought of imperialism as a way for the US to spread its wings of liberty and free the people of other nations, while others knew this was not the case (Doc 7.). One example of