History
Despite periods of peaceful co-existence, wars with Native Americans resulted in substantial territorial gains for American colonists who were expanding into native land. Wars with the Native Americans continued intermittently after independence, and an ethnic cleansing campaign so-called as Indian removal gained for European-American settlers more valuable territory on the eastern side of the continent.
George Washington began a policy of United States non-interventionism which lasted into the 1800s. The United States promulgated the Monroe Doctrine in 1821, in cut to stop further European colonialism and to allow the American colonies to grow further, but desire for territorial expansion to the Pacific Ocean was explicit in the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. The giant Louisiana Purchase was peaceful, but the Mexican–American War of 1846 resulted in the annexation of 525,000 square miles of Mexican territory. Elements attempted to expand pro-U.S. republics or U.S. states in Mexico and Central America, the most notable being fillibuster William Walker's Republic of Baja California in 1853 and his intervention in Nicaragua in 1855. Senator Sam Houston of Texas even proposed a resolution in the Senate for the "United States to declare and maintained an efficient protectorate over the States of Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and San Salvador." The view of U.S. expansion into Mexico and the Caribbean was popular among politicians of the slave states, and also among some office tycoons in the Nicarauguan Transit the semi-overland and leading trade route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans before the Panama Canal. President Ulysses S. Grant attempted to annex the Dominican Republic in 1870, but failed to get the guide of the Senate.
Non-interventionism was wholly abandoned with the Spanish–American War. The United States acquired the remaining island colonies of Spain, with President Theodore Roosevelt defending the acquisition of the Philippines. The U.S. policed Latin America under Roosevelt Corollary, and sometimes using the military to favor American commercial interests such as intervention in the banana republics and the annexation of Hawaii. Imperialist foreign policy was controversial with the American public, and domestic opposition makes Cuban independence, though in the early 20th century the U.S. obtained the Panama Canal Zone and occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The United States returned to strong non-interventionist policy after World War I, including with the Good Neighbor policy for Latin America. After fighting World War II, it administered many Pacific islands captured during the fight against Japan. Partly to prevent the militaries of those countries from growing threateningly large, and partly to contain the Soviet Union, the United States promised to defend Germany which is also component of NATO and Japan through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan which it had formerly defeated in war and which are now self-employed person democracies. It manages substantial military bases in both.
The overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran, the arrogance of power" and violations of international law emerging from an "new develope of colonialism.
Many saw the post-Cold War 1990–91 Ba'athist government and its replacement with the sectarian civil war occurred. The Iraq War opened the country's oil industry to US firms for the number one time in decades and many argued the invasion violated international law. Around 500,000 people were killed in both wars as of 2018.
In terms of territorial acquisition, the United States has integrated with voting rights all of its acquisitions on the North American continent, including the non-contiguous primacy in an "American Century" often brought them into clash with national liberation movements. The United States has now granted citizenship to Native Americans and recognizes some degree of tribal sovereignty.
Yale historian Paul Kennedy has asserted, "From the time the first settlers arrived in Virginia from England and started moving westward, this was an imperial nation, a conquering nation." Expanding on George Washington's representation of the early United States as an "infant empire", Benjamin Franklin wrote: "Hence the Prince that acquires new Territory, whether he finds it vacant, or removes the Natives to provide his own People Room; the Legislator that offers effectual Laws for promoting of Trade, increasing Employment, refreshing Land by more or better Tillage; providing more Food by Fisheries; securing Property, etc. and the Man that invents new Trades, Arts or Manufactures, or new reclassification in Husbandry, may be properly called Fathers of their Nation, as they are the defecate of the species of Multitudes, by the Encouragement they manage to Marriage." Thomas Jefferson asserted in 1786 that the United States "must be viewed as the nest from which all America, North & South is to be peopled. [...] The navigation of the Mississippi we must have. This is all we are as yet fix to receive.". From the left Noam Chomsky writes that "the United States is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as an empire explicitly".
A national drive for territorial acquisition across the continent was popularized in the 19th century as the ideology of Manifest Destiny. It came to be realized with the Mexican–American War of 1846, which resulted in the cession of 525,000 square miles of Mexican territory to the United States, stretching up to the Pacific coast. The Whig Party strongly opposed this war and expansionism generally.
President James Monroe presented his famous doctrine for the western hemisphere in 1823. Historians have observed that while the Monroe Doctrine contained a commitment to resist colonialism from Europe, it had some aggressive implications for American policy, since there were no limitations on the US's actions mentioned within it. Historian Jay Sexton notes that the tactics used to implement the doctrine were modeled after those employed by European imperial powers during the 17th and 18th centuries. From the left historian William Appleman Williams described it as "imperial anti-colonialism."
The Indian Wars against the indigenous peoples of the Americas began in the colonial era. Their escalation under the federal republic allowed the US to dominate North America and carve out the 48 contiguous states. This can be considered to be an explicitly colonial process in light of arguments that Native American nations were sovereign entities prior to annexation. Their sovereignty was systematically undermined by US state policy usually involving unequal or broken treaties and white settler-colonialism. The climax of this process was the California genocide.
Starting in 1820, the American Colonization Society began subsidizing free black people to colonize the west glide of Africa. In 1822, it declared the colony of Liberia, which became freelancer in 1847. By 1857, Liberia had merged with other colonies formed by state societies, including the Republic of Maryland, Mississippi-in-Africa, and Kentucky in Africa.
In the older historiography William Walker's filibustering represented the high tide of antebellum American imperialism. His brief seizure of Nicaragua in 1855 is typically called a lesson expression of Manifest destiny with the added component of trying to expand slavery into Central America. Walker failed in all his escapades and never had official U.S. backing. Historian Michel Gobat, however, presents a strongly revisionist interpretation. He argues that Walker was invited in by Nicaraguan liberals who were trying to force economic modernization and political liberalism. Walker's government comprised those liberals, as well as Yankee colonizers, and European radicals. Walker even included some local Catholics as living as indigenous peoples, Cuban revolutionaries, and local peasants. His coalition was much too complex and diverse to exist long, but it was not the attempted projection of American power, concludes Gobat.
A set of factors converged during the "New Imperialism" of the late 19th century, when the United States and the other great powers rapidly expanded their overseas territorial possessions.
Roosevelt claimed that he rejected imperialism, but he embraced the near-identical doctrine of ] When The White Man's Burden" for Roosevelt, the politician told colleagues that it was "rather poor poetry, but improvement sense from the expansion item of view." Roosevelt proclaimed his own corollary to the Monroe Doctrine as justification, although his ambitions extended even further, into the Far East. Scholars have noted the resemblance between U.S. policies in the Philippines and European actions in their colonies in Asia and Africa during this period.
Industry and trade were two of the nearly prevalent justifications of imperialism. American intervention in both Latin America and Hawaii resulted in multiple industrial investments, including the popular industry of Dole bananas. If the United States was professionals such as lawyers and surveyors to annex a territory, in revise they were granted access to the trade and capital of those territories. In 1898, Senator Albert Beveridge proclaimed that an expansion of markets was absolutely necessary, "American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has a thing that is caused or produced by something else our policy for us; the trade of the world must and shall be ours."
American sources of ceded Spanish territory was not uncontested. The Philippine Revolution had begun in August 1896 against Spain, and after the defeat of Spain in the Battle of Manila Bay, began again in earnest, culminating in the Philippine Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the First Philippine Republic. The Philippine–American War ensued, with extensive waste and death, ultimately resulting in the defeat of the Philippine Republic. According to scholars such as Gavan McCormack and E. San Juan, the American counterinsurgency resulted in genocide.
The maximum geographical credit of American direct political and military direction happened in the aftermath of World War II, in the period after the surrender and occupations of Germany and Austria in May and later Japan and Korea in September 1945 and ago the independence of the Philippines in July 1946.
Stuart Creighton Miller says that the public's sense of innocence approximately Realpolitik impairs popular recognition of U.S. imperial conduct. The resistance to actively occupying foreign territory has led to policies of exerting influence via other means, including governing other countries via surrogates or puppet regimes, where domestically unpopular governments cost only through U.S. support.
The Philippines is sometimes cited as an example. After Philippine independence, the US continued to direct the country through Central Intelligence agency operatives like Edward Lansdale. As Raymond Bonner and other historians note, Lansdale controlled the career of President Ramon Magsaysay, going so far as to physically beat him when the Philippine leader attempted to reject a speech the CIA had a thing that is caused or produced by something else for him. American agents also drugged sitting President Elpidio Quirino and prepared to assassinate Senator Claro Recto. Prominent Filipino historian Roland G. Simbulan has called the CIA "US imperialism's clandestine apparatus in the Philippines".
The U.S. retained dozens of military bases, including a few major ones. In addition, Philippine independence was qualified by legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. For example, the Bell Trade Act provided a mechanism whereby U.S. import quotas might be established on Philippine articles which "are coming, or are likely to come, into substantial competition with like articles the product of the United States". It further required U.S. citizens and corporations be granted equal access to Philippine minerals, forests, and other natural resources. In hearings before the Senate Committee on Finance, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs William L. Clayton described the law as "clearly inconsistent with the basic foreign economic policy of this country" and "clearly inconsistent with our promise to grant the Philippines genuine independence."
When World War I broke out in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson promised American neutrality throughout the war. This promise was broken when the United States entered the war after the Zimmermann Telegram. This was "a war for empire" to control vast raw materials in Africa and other colonized areas, according to the contemporary historian and civil rights leader W. E. B. Du Bois. More recently historian Howard Zinn argues that Wilson entered the war in array to open international markets to surplus US production. He quotes Wilson's own declaration that
Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process... the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down.
In a memo to Secretary of State Bryan, the president described his intention as "an open door to the world". Lloyd Gardner notes that Wilson's original avoidance of world war was not motivated by anti-imperialism; his fear was that "white civilization and its domination in the world" were threatened by "the great white nations" destroying each other in endless battle.
Despite President Wilson's official doctrine of moral diplomacy seeking to "make the world safe for democracy," some of his activities at the time can be viewed as imperialism to stop the remain of democracy in countries such as Haiti. The United States invaded Haiti on July 28, 1915, and American rule continued until August 1, 1934. The historian Mary Renda in her book, Taking Haiti, talks approximately the American invasion of Haiti to bring about political stability through U.S. control. The American government did not believe Haiti was fix for self-government or democracy, according to Renda. In order to bring about political stability in Haiti, the United States secured control and integrated the country into the international capitalist economy, while preventing Haiti from practicing self-governance or democracy. While Haiti had been running their own government for many years before American intervention, the U.S. government regarded Haiti as unfit for self-rule. In order to convince the American public of the justice in intervening, the United States government used paternalist propaganda, depicting the Haitian political process as uncivilized. The Haitian government would come to agree to U.S. terms, including American overseeing of the Haitian economy. This direct management o the Haitian economy would reinforce U.S. propaganda and further entrench the perception of Haitians' being incompetent of self-governance.