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Reasons for Expansion
Ideological, Social, Economic, Political
Reconstruction and Depression
• Huge money supply from the industrialization
of the civil war
• Grant is forced to implement a restrictive
monetary policy
• Long depression 1873-79 was worsened by
the lack of access to capital
• Great Railway Strike of 1877
Economic Expansion
• As money (capital) was available, industrialists
consumed natural and human resources
• Immigration brought more labor
• Discovery of more iron, coal, and oil
• Infrastructure networks expanded as railway
brought supplies across the country
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New Business Organization
• Vertical
integration: a
number of steps in
the production of
a single product
are owned or
controlled by a
single company
New Business Organization
• Horizontal
integration: a single
company owns or
controls a number of
firms in the same
stage of production
of a single product
Standard Oil
New Business Organization
• Monopolies, trusts,
and corporations
become powerful
archetypes
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Rapid Urbanization
• Poor living conditions in the
cities
• Works experienced low
wages, long hours, unsafe
conditions, and no job
security
• Labor unions formed in
response
• New political alternatives:
socialism, Marxism, and
anarchism surfaced as a
response
Cityscape by City Beautiful
Reformer Jacob A. Riis, 1890
Ideological Reasons
• U.S. expansion coincided
with a new wave of
European expansionism
• Congress of Vienna
(following the Napoleonic
wars) was designed to
disempower independence
movements like in Latin
America
• Monroe Doctrine and
Roosevelt Corollary
Ideological (Social) Reasons
• Manifest Destiny (social Darwinian)
• Moral duty
– Herbert Spencer’s “Survival of the fittest”
– John Fiske and U.S. expansion being “natural”
– Racist theories for justification
– Josiah Strong Our Country
• Practical necessity
– National greatness comes from maritime trade
and its tools (for merchant and military)
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Economic Reasons
• U.S. domestic market was huge
• By 1890s, producers were
making more than domestic
markets could consume
• Leaders sought markets and
resources beyond North
America
• Depression of 1893
• Immigrants still continued to
pour in and cities grew
• Mood of national self-assertion
and aggression
Political Reasons
• Protectorate: territory that is nominally
independent but under the official military
and diplomatic protection of another country
• United States used Samoa as a coaling station
• Hawaii and the growing trade with China
Hawaii
• Sugar trade becomes a playing
card
• McKinley Tariff – increased
taxes on foreign goods and
paid subsidies to U.S. sugar
producers
• Overthrow of the Hawaiian
queen
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Implications of Annexing Hawaii
• U.S. citizens on the island petitioned for
annexation
• United States must confront to the theories of
Strong, Burgess, Fiske, and Mahan (imperialism?)
• Politicians are too split on the issue to act
immediately
• Revolution turns out to be led by U.S. businesses,
Cleveland chose non-violent means
• Annexed in 1898 under McKinley
Political: Monroe Doctrine
• Gold is discovered on the border
of British Guiana and Venezuela
(1890s)
• British challenged the Monroe
Doctrine
• U.S. and Britain agree on an
arbitration treaty, but not before
the U.S. threats become
aggressive
• Monroe Doctrine is alive and well
Could this event have influenced the
Roosevelt Corollary?
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