An Immerse Influence
On January 25, 1898,
one oft he most modern ships in the United States' navy steamed into the
harbour of Havana, Cuba. The ship was a cruiser called the Maine, A war
was being fought in Cuba at this time and the Maine had been sent to
Havana as a demonstration of American power. Three weeks later, on the nigh t
of February 15. huge explosion shook the
city. The Maine was blown to pieces and 260 of its crew
were killed.
To this day. the cause of the explosion that destroyed
the Maine remains a mystery. Some believe that it was set off by an
accidental spar kill the ship's magazine, or ammunition store. At the time,
however many Americans believed that the explosion had been caused by an enemy mine. The man who made this claim most loudly
was a newspaper owner named William Randolph Hearst. "THE WARSHIP MAINE SPLIT IN TWO BY AN ENEMY'S INFERNAL
[hellish] MACHINE, " read the headline in one of his newspapers on
February 17. The story which followed made it clear that to Hearst the
"enemy" in the headline was
Spain. Most America ns agreed with him. This was not because (hey had any
proof. It was because (hey wanted to believe it. Let us see why.
In 1867 (he United States had bought Alaska from
Russia. Apart from this it had brought no additional land under its rule since
gaining control of California and the Southwest in the Mexican War of 1846 to
1848 In the 1890, however, a new spirit started to enter American foreign
policy. These were years when Britain. Prance and Germany we re busy claiming
colonies, foreign lands which (hey could rule and exploit. Some Americans
believed that the United States should do the same. Colonies overseas meant
trade. wealth, power and prestige. " A policy of isolation did well enough
[was all right] when we were an embryo nation, but today thing s art'
different," said Senator Orville Piau in 1893. " We arc the most advanced and powerful nation on earth and
our future demands an abandonment of the policy of isolation. It is to the
ocean our children must look, as they once looked to the bound less west."
Many Americans agreed with Platt. Politicians,
businessmen, newspaper s and missionaries joined together to claim that "
the Anglo-Saxon race" – by which they meant Americans as well as North
Europeans. had a right and a duty to bring western civilization to the peoples
of Asia, Africa and Latin America. From 1895 onwards feelings of this kind were
focused mo re and more upon Cuba, which lay only ninety miles from the American
coast. Many Americans had invested money in sugar and tobacco plantations
there. Bur at this time Cuba was a Spanish
colony.
In 1895 the people of Cuba rose in rebellion against their
Spanish rulers. The rebels raided and burned villages. sugar plantations and
railroad depots. To cut off the rebels' supplies. Spanish soldiers moved thousands
of Cuban civilians into prison camps. The camps became badly overcrowded. As
many as 200.000 people died in them of disease and hunger. The
Spanish - American War was fought in two parts of the world. One was Cuba: the
other was the Philippines.
Monroe's Doctrine
In the early nineteenth century most of
Central and South America, or Latin America, was ruled by Spain. In the 1820s
these Spanish colonies rebelled. The Spanish government asked the great powers
of Europe to help it to defeat the
rebels. When Americans heard this they were alarmed. They did not want the
armies and navies of powerful European
nations m their part of the world, The rebel Spanish colonies were the United
States' nearest neighbours. Americans felt that it was important to their
country's safety to make sure that no foreign enemies gamed influence in them.
In 1823 President Monroe warned European nations nor to interfere in Latin
American affairs. "The American continents arc henceforth not to be
considered as subjects for future colonization by European powers," Monroe
told Congress. "We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this
hemisphere [half of the world] as dangerous to our peace and safety."
Monroe 's statement came to be caned the "Monroe Doctrine," It became one of the most
important ideas in American foreign policy.
The Philippines was another big Spanish colony near
the coast of South east Asia, It was said that President
McKinley had to search a globe to find out exactly where it was. But he saw
that the islands would be useful for the United States of control. From bases
in the Philippines American soldiers and sailors would be able to protect the
growing number of American traders in China.
The first battle of the Spanish -American War was
fought in the Philippines. American warships sank a Spanish fleet that was
anchored there. A few weeks later American soldiers occupied Manila. the chief
city in the Philippines and Spanish
resistance came to an end. American soldiers also landed in Cuba. In
less than two weeks of fighting. The Spanish were again defeated. Other
American soldiers occupied Puerto Rico,
another Spanish-owned island close to Cuba. In July the Spanish
government saw it was beaten; it asked the Americans for peace. When peace was
signed. Spain gave most of its overseas empire to the United Slates –
Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and a
small Pacific island called Guam. At the same time the United States also
annexed Hawaii. Hawaii was a group of islands in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean. Before this it had been Independent, but Americans owned profit able
sugar and pineapple plantations there. In less than a year the United States
had become a colonial power with millions of non-Americans under its rule. Some
Americans were worried by this. After all
they too had once been a colonial people. In rebelling against British
rule they had claimed that colonial peoples should be
free to rule themselves.
They continued to rule most of them until the middle
years of the century. The Philippines became an independent country in 1946. In 1953 Puerto Rico became self-governing but
continued to be closely tied to the United Stares. In 1959 Hawaii was admitted
as the fiftieth state of the Union. Cuba was treated differently. When Congress
declared war on Spain in 1898 it said that it was only doing so to help the
Cuban people to win independence. When the war ended. Cuba was soon declared an
independent country.
The Panama Canal
In the early 1900s the
American government wanted to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. The
isthmus is the neck of land that joins North and South America and separates
the Caribbean Sea from the Pacific Ocean. Building a canal across it would mean
that American ships could travel quickly between the cast and west coasts of
the United States instead of having to make a long sea journey around South
America. The main problem was that the United States did not own the isthmus; a
Latin American country called Colombia did. In 1903, when the Colombian
government was slow to give the Americans permission to build the canal.
President Theodore Roosevelt sent warships to Panama. The warships helped a
small group of Panamanian businessmen to rebel against the Colombian
government. The rebels declared that Panama was now an independent state. A few
days later they gave the Americans control over a ten-and-a-half-mile wide
strip of land called the Canal Zone across their new country. The way was clear
for the Americans to build their canal. They began digging in 1904 and the
first ships steamed through the completed canal in 1914. Most Latin Americans
thought that the Panama rebellion had been organized by Roosevelt. They thought
so even more when he openly boasted: "I took Panama."
Before the Americans took away their soldiers in 1902
they made the Cuban government gave them land at Guantanamo Bay on the Cuban
coast. A big American naval base was built there. The Cubans also had to accept
a condition called the Platt Amendment.
Bibliography:
1. The
Norton Anthology of American Literature.
2. A
History of American Literature, A. Grey
3. An
Outline of American History.
4. An
Illustrated History of the USA.
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