The White Man’s Burden?
Task 1: Background Analysis
The late 19th century was a time of great hope and anxiety for the United States. Several decades of extraordinary growth had transformed the United States into the world’s leading industrial power; yet a financial panic in 1893 plunged the nation into a major economic depression. The American people were now a generation removed from the fierce divisions created by the Civil War (setting apart the continuing mistreatment of African-Americans). But other potentially violent fault lines had emerged between debtors (especially farmers) and creditors, as well as between labor and capital. The major European powers scrambled for new colonies and influence in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. These aggressive European empires and a newly-rising Japan threatened to exclude American business from vital overseas markets and to expand into the Western Hemisphere. Yet there was considerable hope that science, commerce and civilization had reached the point where international conflict might be prevented or limited by international cooperation.
Some Americans felt that they must exercise greater influence over this brave yet frightening new world if they were to restore their economic prosperity, domestic peace, and sense of national purpose. But they did not agree on the best means of looking outward. Should the United States enter a new era of Manifest Destiny and further expand American territory, especially beyond continental North America? If so, should the United States become a European-style empire (that is, a nation that governed other peoples without extending to them the full rights of citizens)? Were there other ways besides expansion and empire by which the United States could legitimately pursue its material interests and sense of national purpose?
Several broad intellectual currents and political assumptions affected how Americans approached these questions. The United States, it was generally agreed, required greater access to foreign markets to avoid economic crises like the Panic of 1893. American manufacturers and farmers were thought to be producing too many goods and foodstuffs for the U.S. domestic market to absorb, at a time when European nations and their empires had become increasingly protectionist. (The United States itself had adopted very high tariff rates after the Civil War.) The U.S. government and American businesses looked to lands like China, with hundreds of millions of potential consumers, as outlets for American products, if they did not fall victim to great power imperialism.
Americans were also influenced by the concept of Social Darwinism. Certain peoples and nations were supposedly superior, a fact demonstrated by their ability to expand and dominate others. Inferior races were condemned naturally to extinction or colonization. (Such views, a distortion of biological Darwinism, unfortunately fit in with older racial prejudices still held by many Americans). Frederick Jackson Turner’s seminal essay on the frontier in U.S. history suggested to some that the American democratic character was integrally linked to the challenges of expansion. Variants of Social Darwinism held that culture was the defining variable and that inferior peoples were capable gradually of being elevated toward higher forms of civilization. It was the “white man’s burden” to lift up their lesser brethren through benevolent colonization. This outlook fit into long-standing U.S. missionary impulses and genuine humanitarian concerns.
Americans were not completely given over to racial prejudices or to the argument that war was necessary to strengthen the national character. They did appreciate, however, that the strategic map of their world had been altered by new technologies, especially steam power, railroads, and the telegraph. These technologies heralded major changes in warfare, lessened Americans’ traditional sense of geographic security, and challenged their ability to protect the nation’s overseas commerce. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a widely-read military historian, and political allies such as Theodore Roosevelt argued that the United States must develop a modern navy, obtain new overseas bases, and secure critical lines of communication and commerce.
These strategic trends and political assumptions did not necessary point towards the establishment of a formal U.S. empire. Public opinion was deeply influenced by a strong anti-imperialist movement, even if the anti-imperialists did not always win out on particular policy matters. Interest, ideals and experience pointed towards solutions other than expansion. Americans retained a deep attachment to the principle that peoples could be governed only with their own consent. The United States arguably could obtain access to overseas markets and military bases without establishing colonies. Perhaps domestic economic and political reform was the answer to overproduction. Racist assumptions cut both ways. Many supporters of an interventionist American foreign policy, as well as their opponents, did not want the country “tainted” by acquiring non-white peoples. And if foreign cultures were indeed highly resistant to change, perhaps the costs and risks of “civilizing” others was simply too great. The coming twentieth century would witness Americans trying to operate in a difficult, contentious middle ground between empire and non-intervention.