Spanish American Imperialism Essay

1143 Words5 Pages

In the late 1800s, the Spanish government had a strong hold on the Cuban, Filipino, and Puerto Rican colonies. This unwanted involvement from the Spaniards caused frustration among these colonies because they had the Spanish forcing their ideals on them as well as controlling their government. America responded to this with The Spanish-American War. This war was all about America taking these colonies away from Spanish rule. Josiah Strong was an Anglo-Saxon minister that promoted both the Social Gospel as well as a more up to date version of the manifest destiny which was connected to the ideas of racial superiority and Christian missionary impulse (Foner, 536). Emilio Aguinaldo was the leader of the Filipino military, he led the Filipino …show more content…

Strong had always been on the conquering side of imperialism so he never saw the bad side of it, he was pro-Imperialism because he thought that expanding America would help the Philippines. He stated that “there is a tremendous overbearing surge of power in the Christian nations” and “if the others are not speedily raised to some vastly higher capacity, will inevitably submerge and bury them forever” (67). Strong is saying that if other nations are not converted to Christianity, and quick, then they will eventually fall. Aguinaldo was on the receiving end of Imperialism, the side where their land gets taken over and run by an outside government. He says in the beginning of his article “if the Americans nation at large knew exactly, as we do, what is daily happening in the Philippine Islands, they would rise en masse, and demand the this barbaric war should stop.” (68-69). Aguinaldo is saying how terrible it is to be on the receiving end of Imperialism, that if the American population could see what was actually going on in the Philippines, that they would want a stop to it. This shows their differing perceptions of American exceptionalism because Strong truly believed that expanding and taking over the Philippines would ultimately help liberate them, because of his idea that “the largest liberty, the purest Christianity” (67). While, for Aguinaldo, this was not a good thing to happen to him and his country because it was doing the exact opposite of what Strong was saying and taking away the liberty that the Filipino’s so desperately