Chapter 21: An Emerging World Power, 1877-1914

The Roots of Expansion

Diplomacy in the Gilded Age
I. The US lapsed into diplomatic isolation, not out of weakness but for lack of any clear national purpose
in world affairs. The business of building the nation’s industrial economy absorbed Americans and
turned their attention inward.
A. Wide oceans kept America isolated and gave it a sense of security.
B. European power politics did not seem to matter very much.
C. America also did not feel the need to expand into Asia and Africa.
II. In these circumstances, with no external threat to be seen, what was the point of maintaining a big
navy? After the CW, the fleet gradually deteriorated. No effort was made to keep up with European
advances in weaponry or battleship design.
III. During the administration of Chester A. Arthur, the navy began a modest upgrading program,
commissioning new ships, raising standards for the officer corps, and founding a naval war college.
A. But the fleet remained small, lacked a unified naval command, and had little more to do than
maintain costal defenses and a modest cruising fleet whose task in wartime was to harass enemy
commerce.
IV. The conduct of diplomacy was likewise of little account. Appointment to the foreign service was
mostly made through the spoils system.
A. Domestic politics had made it hard to develop a coherent foreign policy.
B. The senate guarded its power to give advice to the president on treaties and diplomatic
appointments.
C. The state department tended to be inactive, exerting little control either over policy or its own
missions abroad.
Latin American Diplomacy
I. In the Caribbean the US remained the dominant power, but the expansionist enthusiasm of the CW era
subsided.
II. Diplomatic activity quickened when James Blaine became secretary of state in 1881. He got involved
in a border dispute between Mexico and Guatemala, tried to settle a war Chile was waging against Peru
and Bolivia, and called the first Pan-American conference of the Western Hemisphere countries.
A. Blaine’s disputes went badly and his successor canceled the Pan-American conference after Blaine
left office.
B. This was a characteristic instance of Gilded Age diplomacy, driver partly by partisan politics and
carried out without any clear sense of national purpose.
III. Pan-Americanism—the notion of a community of American states—took root, and Blaine, upon his
return in 1889, took up the plans of the outgoing Cleveland administration for a new Pan-American
conference.
A. Little came of it, except for an agency in Washington that was later named the Pan-American
Union.
B. Any goodwill won by Blaine’s efforts was soon blasted by the humiliation the US visited upon
Chile because of a riot against American sailors in the port of Valparaiso in 1891. Threatened with
war, Chile was forced to apologize to the US and pay an indemnity of $75,000.
Pacific Episodes
I. American interest in the Pacific centered on Hawaii, where American ministers had long been
proselytizing among the islanders. Hawaii had also attracted American planters and investors.
A. Nominally an independent monarchy, Hawaii fell increasingly under American control.
 B. In an 1875 treaty, Hawaiian sugar cane gained duty-free entry to the American market, and the
islands were declared off-limits to other powers.
C. A second treaty in 1887 granted the US the right to establish a naval base at Pearl Harbor.
II. When Hawaii’s favored access to the American market was canceled by the McKinley Tariff of 1890,
sugar planters began to plot an American takeover of Hawaii.
A. Aided by the US minister to Hawaii, the planters revolted in Jan 1893 against Queen Liliuokalani
and quickly negotiated a treaty of annexation with the administration of president Harrison.
B. Before the senate could approve annexation, Cleveland returned to the presidency and withdrew
the treaty.
III. Meanwhile, the American presence elsewhere in the Pacific was growing.
A. The 1867 of Alaska from imperial Russia gave the US not only a huge territory with vast natural
resources but a vast presence stretching across the northern Pacific.
B. The US also became involved in the Samoan Islands.
IV. In 1878 the US secured the right to a coaling station in Pago Pago harbor—a key link on the route to
Australia—and in exchange promised local Polynesian leaders to assist in Samoa’s relations with other
foreign powers. An informal protectorate resulted.
V. American diplomacy in these years has been characterized as a series of incidents, not the pursuit of a
foreign policy. Many things happened but intermittently and without a plan, driven by individuals and
pressure groups—not by any well-founded and coherent conception of national objectives.
Economic Sources of Expansion
I. What especially demanded that Americans look outward was their enormously expanding economy.
The Search for Foreign Markets
I. As the industrial economy expanded, so did factory exports.
II. Major American firms began to establish themselves overseas. The giant among American firms doing
business abroad was Standard Oil.
A. Starting with the Anglo-American Oil Company in 1888, Rockefeller’s firm created European
affiliates to operate its oil tankers and market its kerosene across the continent.
B. In Asia, Standard Oil kerosene cans, converted into utensils and roofing, became a visible sign of
American market penetration.
III. Foreign trade was important partly for reasons of international finance. As a developing economy, the
US attracted a lot of foreign investment capital but sent relatively little abroad. The result was a heavy
outflow of dollars from the US in the form of interest and dividend payments to foreign investors.
A. To balance this account, the US needed to export more goods than it imported.
B. A favorable import-export balance was achieved in 1876. But because of its dependence on
foreign capital, America would have to be constantly vigilant about its foreign trade.
IV. Even more important was the relationship that many Americans perceived between foreign markets
and the nation’s social stability. In hard times, farmers took up radical politics, and workers became
militant strikers.
A. The problem, many thought, was the nation’s capacity to produce was outrunning its capacity to
consume. And when the economy slowed and domestic demand fell, the impact on farmers and
workers was devastating, driving down farm prices and causing layoffs and farm foreclosures
across the country.
B. The answer was to make sure that there would always be enough buyers for American surplus
products, and this meant ensuring access to foreign markets.
Overseas Trade and Foreign Policy
I. The bulk of American exports in the late 19th century went to Europe and Canada. In those countries
the normal instruments of diplomacy sufficed.
 A. In Asia, Latin America, and other regions that Americans considered “backward,” a tougher brand
of American intervention seemed necessary because there the US was competing with other
industrial powers.
B. The real importance of these non-Western markets was not so much their current value as their
future promise. China, with its enormous population of potential customers, exerted a powerful
hold on the American mercantile imagination. Many felt that the China trade would one day be the
key to American prosperity.
II. In the mid-1880s, the pace of imperialist activity picked up. In Latin America, Britain, France, and
Germany began to challenge US interests more aggressively.
A. On the European continent, the free-trade liberalism of earlier years gave way after the 1870s
protectionism, threatening established European markets for American goods just as empire
building was closing off new markets elsewhere.
III. On top of these came the Panic of 1893, setting in motion industrial strikes and agrarian protests that
many Americans took to be “symptoms of revolution.”
A. With the nation’s social stability seemingly at stake, securing the markets of Latin America and
Asia took on new urgency, inspiring the expansion of diplomacy of the 1890s.
Creating an Expansionist Foreign Policy
I. Captain Alfred Mahan believed that the key to imperial power was control of the seas. From this
insight he developed a naval analysis that became the cornerstone of American strategic thinking.
A Global Strategy
I. Mahan believed that the US should regard oceans not as barriers but as highways. Transversing those
highways required a robust merchant marine, a powerful navy to protect American commerce, and
strategic overseas bases.
A. Here technology played a role because, having converted from sails to steam, navies required
coaling stations far from home.
II. Mahan called for a canal across Central America to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Such a
canal would enable the US to compete with Europe on equal terms for markets in East Asia.
A. The canal’s approaches would need to be guarded by bases in the Caribbean Sea. And Hawaii
would have to be annexed to extend American power in the Pacific, a step that Mahan considered
necessary.
B. What Mahan envisioned was a form of colonialism different from Europe’s. Mahan aspired not to
US rule over large territories and native populations but to US control over strategic bases for the
defense of America’s trading interests.
III. Mahan was offering the US a coherent foreign policy: first, foreign markets secured for the nation’s
surplus products; second, the nation’s development as a naval power; and third, to sustain both of those
goals, an expansionist strategy anchored on an interoceanic canal and bases in the Caribbean and
Pacific.
IV. Other advocates of a powerful America flocked to Captain Mahan. The influence of these men
increased during the 1890s. they pushed for a “large policy.”
A. But mainstream politics also accepted Mahan’s underlying logic, and from the inauguration of
Benjamin Harrison in 1889 onward, a surprising consistency began to emerge in the conduct of
American foreign policy.
Rebuilding the Navy
I. Mahan argued strongly for a battleship fleet capable of roaming the high seas and striking a decisive
first blow against an enemy.
A. In 1890 Congress appropriated funds for the first 3 battleships in the fleet envisioned by Benjamin
Tracy. The battleship took on a special aura for those who had grand dreams for the US.
 II. The incoming Cleveland administration was less spread-eagled and established its anti-expansionist
credentials by canceling Harrison’s scheme for annexing Hawaii. But Cleveland picked up the naval
program of his Republican predecessor, pressing Congress just as forcibly for additional battleships
and making the same basic argument.
A. America’s commercial vitality depended on its naval power.
B. While rejecting the colonial aspects of Mahan’s thinking, Cleveland absorbed the underlying
strategic arguments about where America’s vital interests lay.
The Venezuela Crisis
I. For years a border dispute had simmered between Venezuela and British Guiana. Now the US
demanded that it be resolved.
II. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine, secretary of state Olney warned that the US could not tolerate any
European attempt to intimidate or overthrow nations in the western hemisphere.
A. Olney intended to convey a clear message that the US would brook no challenge to its vital
interests in the Caribbean.
B. These vital interests were strictly America’s, not Venezuela’s; Venezuela was not consulted during
the entire dispute.
III. Despite its suddenness, the tough stand of the Cleveland administration was not an aberration but a
logical step in the new American foreign policy. Other countries would have to accommodate the
American need for access to more and larger markets.
The Ideology of Expansionism
I. As policy makers hammered out new foreign policy, it was receiving strong ideological support from a
variety of sources. One was the Social Darwinist theory that dominated the political thought of the era.
A. If, as Darwin had shown, animals and plants evolved through the survival of the fittest, so did
nations. If the US wanted to survive, it had to expand.
II. Linked to social Darwinism was a spreading belief in the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon
“race.” John Fiske lectured about the duties of the Anglo-Saxon world in a lecture titled “Manifest
Destiny.”
A. Roosevelt drew a parallel between the expansionism of his own generation and the suppression of
the Indians. To Roosevelt, what happened to “backward peoples” mattered little because their
conquest would better civilization.
III. In 1890 the US Census reported the end of the westward movement on the North American continent:
there was no longer a frontier line beyond which land remained to be conquered. The psychological
impact of that news on Americans was profound, spawning a new historical interpretation that stressed
the importance of the frontier in shaping the nation’s character.
A. Frederick Jackson Turner suggested a link between the closing of the frontier and overseas
expansion. As he predicted, Manifest Destiny did turn outward.
IV. Thus a strong current of ideas, deeply rooted in American experience and ideology, justified the new
diplomacy of expansionism. The US was eager to step onto the world stage.
An American Empire
I. After Spain lost its South American empire in the early 19th century, Cubans yearned to join their
mainland brothers and sisters in freedom. Independence movements sprang up repeatedly.
A. Under the leadership of Jose Marti, Cuban patriots rebelled against Spanish rule. The rebels built
up substantial fighting forces and mounted a guerrilla war against the Spaniards.
B. A standoff developed; the Spaniards controlled most of the towns, the insurgents held the
countryside.
The Cuban Crisis
I. Rebel leaders quickly saw that their best hope was not military but political: they had to draw the US
into the struggle.
 A. There were already Cubans in Florida, where cigar makers taxed themselves heavily for the cause
of independence. However, the nerve center of the US was NYC, and there it was a key group of
exiles—the junta—who set up shop to make the case for Cuba Libre.
II. By itself, their cause would not have stirred much interest. The Cuban exiles, however, came on the
scene at a critical juncture in American sensationalist journalism.
III. Across the country powerful sentiments stirred: humanitarian concern for the Cubans, sympathy with
their aspirations for freedom, and a superpatriotism that became known as jingoism.
A. Congress began to call for Cuban independence.
Presidential Politics
I. Grover Cleveland took a cooler view of the situation. His concerns were America’s vital interests,
which, he told Congress, were “by no means of a wholly sentimental or philanthropic character.”
A. The Cuban civil war was disrupting the sizable trade between the 2 countries and destroying
profitable American investments, especially in Cuban sugar plantations.
B. The President also worried that Spain’s troubles would draw other European powers into the
situation.
C. A chronically unstable Cuba was not compatible with America’s increasing strategic interests in
the region, especially its plans for an interoceanic canal whose approaches would be safeguarded.
Cleveland urged the Spanish government to make reforms and resolve the crisis.
II. Taking over in March 1897, the McKinley administration adopted much the same line. McKinley
considered the US to be the dominant Caribbean power, with vital interests that had to be defended.
But McKinley was inclined to be tougher on the Spaniards.
A. McKinley had to contend with the jingoism in the Republican Party, manifest at the 1986 national
convention in a bristling platform calling for Cuban independence and proclaiming a new
American imperialism.
B. He would not proceed unless he sensed a broad national consensus for war. He was sensitive to
business interests and fearful of disruption to an economy just recovering from depression.
The Road to War
I. American pressure on Spain at first seemed to pay off. The conservative regime fell, and a liberal
government moderated its Cuban policy. Cuban rebels, encouraged by the prospect of American
intervention, demanded full independence.
II. In Feb 1898, a week after a damaging letter was revealed by Spanish minister to the US Dupuy de
Lome, the US battleship Maine blew up sank in Havana harbor. From that moment on, popular
passions against Spain became a major factor in the march towards war.
III. McKinley assumed that the sinking was accidental. An American board of inquiry, however, submitted
a damaging report. The American board concluded that the sinking ship was caused by a mine. No
evidence linked the Spanish to the purported mine.
IV. The impression that Spanish control over Cuba had broken down was reinforced by a speech by
Senator Redfield Proctor after his visit to Cuba. The account by this anti-imperialist senior Republican
of the devastation in the Cuban countryside convinced even the skeptical that Spain had lost its claim
to Cuba.
V. McKinley had no enthusiasm for the martial split engulfing the country. He was not swept along by
calls to avenge the sinking of the Maine. But he did have to pay attention to aroused public opinion.
A. Business leaders now also became impatient for the dispute with Spain to end. War was preferable
to the unresolved Cuban crisis.
B. On March 27 McKinley cabled Madrid what was in effect an ultimatum: an immediate armistice
in 6 months, abandonment of reconcentration, and, with the US as moderator, peace talks with the
rebels. Only Cuban independence would be regarded as a satisfactory outcome to the
negotiations.
 C. Spain rejected these demands.
VI. On April 11 McKinley sent a message to Congress asking for authority to intervene to end the fighting
in Cuba.
A. The War Hawks in Congress—a mixture of Republicans and western Democrats—were impatient
with McKinley’s cautious progress.
B. But the president did not lose control, and he defeated the War Hawks on the crucial issue of
recognizing the rebel republican government, which would have greatly reduced the
administration’s freedom of action in dealing with Spain.
The Spoils of War
I. Hostilities formally began when Spain declared war on April 24, 1898. Across the US volunteer
regiments began to form up.
A. Raw recruits poured into makeshift bases around Tampa. Confusion reigned.
B. No provision had been made for getting the troops to Cuba. Fortunately, the small regular army
was a disciplined, highly professional force.
II. The navy was in much better shape.
III. On May 1 American ships corned the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and destroyed it. The victory
produced euphoria in the US.
A. With Dewey’s naval victory, American strategic thinking clicked into place.
B. An anchorage in the western Pacific had long been coveted by naval strategists. At this time, too,
the Great Powers were carving China into spheres of influence. If American commerce wanted a
place in that glittering market, the power of the US would have to be projected into Asia.
IV. Once the decision for a Philippine base had been made, other decisions followed almost automatically.
A. The question of Hawaii was quickly resolved. In July 1898 Hawaiian annexation went through
Congress by joint resolution. Hawaii had acquired a crucial strategic value: it was the halfway
station to the Philippines.
B. The navy pushed for a coaling base in the central Pacific. There was need also for a strategically
located base in the Caribbean
C. In the wake of Dewey’s victory, enthusiasm for colonial annexations swept the country.
V. The campaign in Cuba was something of an anticlimax.
A. The Spanish fleet was bottled up in Santiago harbor, and the city itself became a strategic key to
the military campaign. The Spanish fought to maintain their honor but had no stomach for a real
war against the Americans.
B. The main battle occurred near Santiago on the heights of Saint Juan Hill. The Spanish, driven from
their forward positions, retreated to a well-fortified second line.
VI. The 2 nations signed an armistice in which Spain agreed to give up Cuba and cede Puerto Rico and
Guam to the US.
The Imperial Experiment
I. The big question was the Philippines. Not even the most avid American expansionists had advocated
colonial rule over the area—that was European-style imperialism, not the acquisition of strategic bases
that Mahan and his followers had in mind. Both Mahan and Lodge initially advocated keeping only
Manila.
A. It gradually became clear that Manila was defensible without US control of the whole Luzon.
Taking the Philippines
I. McKinley and his advisors surveyed their options. Most plausible was the option of granting the
Philippines independence, though McKinley ultimately decided against this course of action.
The Anti-Imperialists
I. The narrowness of the administration’s victory signaled the revival of an anti-expansionist tradition
that had been briefly silenced by the patriotic passions of a nation at war.
 A. In the Senate, opponents of the treaty invoked the country’s republican principles. But making 8
million Filipinos eligible for citizenship was equally objectionable to the anti-imperialists.
II. Leading citizens enlisted in the anti-imperialist cause.
A. Andrew Carnegie offered a check for $20 million to purchase the independence of the Philippines.
B. Samuel Gompers, who feared the competition of cheap Filipino labor; and Jane Addams, who
believed that women should stand for peace, both supported the cause for independence.
C. They key group was the social elite of old-line Mugwump reformers.
D. In Nov 1898 a Boston group formed the first anti-Imperialist League, from which blossomed a
national movement over the next year.
III. Although skillful at publicizing their cause, the anti-imperialists never managed to build a truly
popular movement. They shared little but their anti-imperialism and lacked the common touch.
A. Nor was anti-imperialism easily translated into a viable political cause, because the Democrats,
once the treaty was adopted, waffled on the issue.
B. Philippine annexation lost the moral high ground because of grim events that began to unfold in
the Philippines.
War in the Philippines
I. Fighting broke out between American and Filipino patrols on the edge of Manila. Confronted by
American annexation, Aguinaldo asserted his nation’s independence and turned his guns on the
occupying American forces.
II. The US army resorted to tactics used by the Spanish forces in Cuba. Atrocities became commonplace
on both sides. The fighting ended in 1902.
A. Taft set up a civilian administration. He intended to make the Philippines a model of American
road building and sanitary engineering.
III. McKinley’s victory over Bryan in the 1900 election suggested a popular satisfaction with the country’s
overseas adventure. Yet a strong undercurrent of misgivings was evident.
A. Americans had not anticipated the brutal means used to subdue the Filipino guerrillas.
IV. There were disturbing constitutional issues to be resolved. A special commission appointed by
McKinley recommended independence for the Philippines after an indefinite period of US rule, during
which the Filipinos would be prepared for sefl-government.
A. In 1916 the Jones Act formally committed the US to granting independence but set no date.
V. The ugly business in the Philippines rubbed off some of the moralizing gloss but left undimmed
America’s global aspirations.
Onto the World Stage
I. In Europe the flexing of America’s companies called some consternation.
A Power Among Powers
I. Roosevelt had no doubt about America’s role in the world. It was important, first of all, to uphold the
country’s honor in the community of nations. Nor should the country ever shrink from a righteous
battle.
A. He sympathized with European imperialism and defended American dominance over the
Caribbean states.
B. He had an acute sense of the fragility of world peace. He believed in American responsibility for
helping to maintain the balance of power.
Anglo American Amity
I. After the Spanish-American war, the European powers had been uncertain about how to deal with the
victor. Germany toyed briefly with the notion of an American alliance, but only GB had a clear view of
what it wanted from the US.
A. In the late 19th century Britain’s position in Europe was steadily worsening in the face of industrial
and military challenges by a united Germany. In its growing isolation Britain turned to the US.
 B. This explains why Britain bowed to American demands in the Venezuela dispute of 1895. From
that time onward, Britain strove for rapprochement with the US.
II. In the Hay-Pauncefote Agreement of 1901 Britain gave up its treaty rights to joint participation in any
Central American canal project clearing the way for a canal exclusively under US control. 2 years later
the last of the US-Canadian border disputes—this one involving British Colombia and Alaska—was
settled, again to American satisfaction.
A. The lone British member of the US-Canadian tribunal cast the deciding vote, awarding to the US
the Pacific inlets and ports that provided the only convenient access to the Klondike goldfields of
the Canadian Yukon.
III. No formal alliance was forthcoming, but Anglo-American friendship was so firm that British planners
after 1901 based their war plans on the assumption that America and Britain would never have a war.
A. In his efforts to maintain a global balance of power, the cornerstone of Roosevelt’s policy was the
British relationship.
The Big Stick
I. Among nations, however, what counted was strength, not merely goodwill. Roosevelt believed that the
US needed a strong naval power.
II. Under Roosevelt, the battleship program went on apace.
A. At the top of Roosevelt’s agenda was a canal across Central America.
B. The Spanish-American War had demonstrated that strategic need in the most graphic way.
The Panama Canal
I. After Britain’s surrender of its joint rights in 1901, Roosevelt proceeded to the more troublesome task
of leasing from Colombia the needed strip of land across Panama, which was a Colombian province.
To this end, the US had purchased from the New Panama Canal Company the assets of de Lessep’s
earlier project.
A. The Colombian legislature voted down the proposed treaty, partly because the company’s rights
were about to expire and the lease to the US could then be renegotiated on terms more favorable to
Colombia.
B. Furious about what seemed to be a breath of faith, Roosevelt contemplated outright seizure of
Panama but settled on a more devious solution.
II. The key intermediary in the sale of the de Lesseps assets, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, let Roosevelt know
that an independence movement was brewing in Panama. The US then informed Bunau-Varilla that
American ships were steaming towards Panama.
A. The idea was that the Americans would covertly assist the expected uprising. However, the
American commander failed to prevent the landing of 400 troops sent by the Colombian
government to hold the province.
B. On November 7, 1903, the US recognized Panama. Less than 2 weeks later, with Bunau-Varilla
serving as the representative of the new republic, Panama signed a treaty that granted the US a
perpetually renewable lease on a canal zone.
C. Roosevelt never regretted the victimization of Colombia.
III. Building the canal was one of the heroic engineering feats of the 20th century. When the canal opened
in 1914, it gave the US a commanding commercial and strategic position in the Western Hemisphere.
Policeman of the Caribbean
I. Next came the task of making the Caribbean basin secure.
II. In the case of Cuba, good behavior was readily managed in the settlement that followed the Spanish-
American war. Before the US withdrew from Cuba in 1902, it reorganized Cuban finances and
concluded a swamp-clearing program that eliminated yellow fever.
 A. As a condition for gaining independence, Cuba was required to include in its constitution a
provisio called the Platt amendment, which gave the US the right to intervene if Cuban
independence was threatened or if Cuba failed to maintain internal order.
B. Cuba also granted the US a lease on Guantanamo Bay, where the US Navy built a large base.
III. Roosevelt believed that instability in the Caribbean invited the intervention of European powers. In
1904 Roosevelt announced that the US would act as “policeman” of the region, stepping in during
cases of wrongdoing.
A. This policy became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, transforming that
doctrine’s broad principle of opposition to European interference in Latin America into the
unrestricted right of the US to regulate Caribbean affairs.
B. The Roosevelt Corollary was not a treaty with other states; it was a unilateral declaration
sanctioned only by American power and national interest.
IV. Citing the Roosevelt Corollary, the US intervened regularly in the internal affairs of Caribbean states.
A. When internal order broke down, the US did not hesitate to send in the marines.
V. Roosevelt’s thinking was primarily strategic; Taft took a more commercial view. American investments
in the Caribbean region grew dramatically after 1900.
A. Taft quickly intervened when disorder threatened American property. But he also regarded
business investment as a force for stability in underdeveloped areas.
B. Taft spoke for dollar diplomacy—the aggressive coupling of American diplomatic and economic
interests abroad.
The Open Door to Asia
I. Commercial interests dominated American policy in East Asia, especially the prospect of the huge
China market. Fearful that the US would be frozen out, Secretary of State John Hay in 1899 sent them
an “open-door” note advancing the right of equal trade access for all nations that wanted to do business
with China.
A. Despite US control of the Philippines, the US lacked real leverage and received no better than
ambiguous and noncommittal responses from the occupying powers.
B. Hay chose to interpret them as accepting the American open-door position.
II. When a secret society of Chinese nationalists, the Boxers, rebelled against the foreigners in 1900, the
US sent 5000 troops from the Philippines and joined the multinational campaign to raise the siege of
the diplomatic missions in Beijing.
A. America took this opportunity to assert a second principle of the open door: that China would be
preserved as a “territorial and administrative entity.” As long as the legal fiction of an independent
China survived, so would American claims to equal access to the China market.
III. The European powers had acceded to American claims of preeminence in the Caribbean. But many
European powers were strongly entrenched in East Asia and not inclined to defer to American interests.
A. The US also faced a powerful Asian nation—Japan—that had its own vital interests.
B. Although the open-door policy was important to him, Roosevelt quickly saw in the Pacific a
deadlier game that called for American involvement.
C. In exchange for Japanese acceptance of American sovereignty over the Philippines, the US
approved of Japan’s protectorate over Korea in 1905 and then of its claim of a full sovereignty 6
years later.
D. A surge of Anti-Asian feeling in CA complicated Roosevelt’s efforts. In 1907 a “gentlemen’s
agreement” in which Japan agreed to restrict immigration to the US smoothed matters over, but
periodic resurgences of racism in CA led to continuing tensions with the Japanese.
IV. Roosevelt meanwhile moved to balance Japan’s military power by increasing American naval strength
in the Pacific. American battleships visited Japan in 1908 and then made a global tour in an impressive
display of sea power.
 A. Late that year, Roosevelt achieved a formal accommodation with Japan. The Root-Takahira
Agreement confirmed the status quo in the Pacific as well as the principles of free oceanic
commerce and equal trade opportunity in China.
V. Taft entered the whitehouse convinced that the US had been shortchanged. He pressed for a larger role
for American bankers and investors in East Asia, especially in railroad construction going on in China.
A. Taft hoped that American capital would counterbalance Japanese power and pave the way for
increased commercial opportunities.
B. Taft supported the Chinese Nationalists as a counterforce to the Japanese. The US thus entered a
long term rivalry with Japan that would end 30 years later.
VI. The US had become embroiled in a distant struggle that promised many future liabilities but few of the
fabulous profits that had lured Americans to Asia.
Woodrow Wilson and Mexico
I. When Wilson became president in 1913, he was bent on reform in American foreign policy no less
than in domestic politics. He opposed dollar diplomacy, which bullied weaker countries into
inequitable financial relationships and gave undue advantage to American business.
A. American banks joined an international consortium to provide a loan to China. When JP Morgan
sought Wilson’s approval, the president refused on the grounds that the terms of the loan
threatened the independence of the Chinese government.
II. The US, Wilson insisted, should conduct its foreign policy in conformity with its democratic
principles. He committed himself to advocating human rights, national integrity, and opportunity.
III. Mexico became the primary object of Wilson’s ministrations. A cycle of revolutions began there in
1911.
A. Wilson subjected Mexico to different pressures, including the threatened use of force.
IV. But the constitutionalists, ardent nationalists, had no desire for American intervention in Mexican
affairs.