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US History Notes -- Expansion of Naval Power, International Affairs
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Notes covering Chapter 27 of the textbook with various topics.
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BOOST IN AMERICAN NAVAL POWER● Caused by “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History” by Alfred Thayer Mahan
○ This book described (among other things) how England and Holland, two smaller
nations, used Sea Power to become powerful nations
○ Mahan described the factors needed to support a country’s powerful fleets (naval
and commercial)
■ One factor is ports around the globe for your ships to stop and supply from
● Key politicians and key people read this book and were influenced
○ The key people are all that mattered
● McKinley was president at the time (2nd term during the war)
● Impacts of the book:
○ The US (and many other countries around the world) started increasing their navy
and merchant marine
■ Germany and Japan did the same thing at the same time because they also
read this book
○ With the buildup of America’s Naval Fleet came the desire to look for
opportunities to acquire ports around the globe
● Who had the power to put Mahan’s theories into practice?
○ THEODORE ROOSEVELT
■ Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time
● Any time a country builds up its military or gets involved in an arms race, other countries
start building up their own because the only reason for building it up would be to use it
○ Started looking for opportunities to use their stronger military
WHY DID THEY WANT TO EXPAND?
● The frontier had closed off
○ Frederick Jackson Terrier in 1893 had a theory that the frontier closed
off and a census said they had nowhere to go
■ Said they had to expand because of this (“expand or explode”)
■ Some people just didn’t think they had to expand or explode
○ The idea that other countries were abandoning the Monroe Doctrine and taking
over other countries
■ They use the resources from the countries they take over and become rich
■ People were opposed to this because they didn’t like empires and
conquering because of their past with Britain
○ Needed ports for the strengthened navy
○ Wanted to spread anglo saxon ideas
■ Rudyard Kipling wrote “White Man’s Burden” in 1898
■ Believed it was the white men who had to create and innovate civilization
○ Had a surplus (produced more than they needed) because of the burst in factories
, in the past 30 years
■ Wanted to sell their surplus to make money, but couldn’t do that in other
countries because the empires were selling their things to those countries
○ Natural resources
■ Two resources that the United States doesn’t have a lot of is rubber and
rice, and it was extremely important
WHY DID THE US WANT TO GO TO WAR WITH SPAIN?
● Desire to become an imperialistic power and thirst for war
○ Spain represented an easy target
○ Warhawks
● Yellow journalism
○ Over exaggerating and sensationalizing stories
○ Picked on General Wiler who turned Cuba into basically a huge concentration
camp
● USS Maine explosion
○ The rebellion in Cuba began getting close to the Americans in Cuba
○ Sent the USS Maine to Havana to let the Cubans know of the American presence
○ Explosion happened, nobody knows what caused it
○ Captain Sigsbee, captain of the ship, sent a letter saying the cause was unknown
○ Yellow journalism blew up the issue, talked about Spain blowing up the ship
○ Declared war a month after the explosion
● Sympathy for Cuba
○ US watched other countries rebel and be free from Spain, but Cuba could not
shake Spain’s rule and the US felt bad
■ Spain like their exports: tobacco, sugar,
○ Had this sympathy for a long time
■ Rebellions were every 20 years because that’s when there were new
generations
○ Saw that Cuba was being oppressed
● DeLome Letter
○ Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish Ambassador to the United States, wrote a
personal letter that was intercepted in Cuba to the president because he got a
feeling that McKinley didn’t want to go to war
■ McKinley had PTSD from the Battle of Antietam so he didn’t want to go
to war
○ The letter was intercepted and published and McKinley as scared people thought
he was weak
■ Because of this, he succumbed more to pressure
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