American Imperialism: Crash Course US History #28 — Transcript

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1. 0:00Episode 28: American Imperialism
2. 0:01Hi, I’m John Green, this is CrashCourse U.S. History and today we’re gonna talk
3. 0:03about a subject near and dear to my white, male heart: imperialism.
4. 0:07So, here at CrashCourse we occasionally try to point out that the U.S., much as we hate
5. 0:11to admit it, is actually part of a larger world.
6. 0:13Mr. Green, Mr. Green, you mean like Alaska?
7. 0:15No, Me from the Past, for reasons that you will understand after your trip there before
8. 0:18your senior year of college, I do not acknowledge the existence of Canada’s tail.
9. 0:22No, I’m referring to all of the Green Parts of Not-America and the period in the 19th
10. 0:26century when we thought, “Maybe we could make all of those green parts like America,
11. 0:29but, you know, without rights and stuff.”
12. 0:31Intro So, the late 19th and early 20th centuries
13. 0:42were a period of expansion and colonization in Asia and Africa, mostly by European powers.
14. 0:47As you’ll know if you watched Crash Course World History, imperialism has a long, long
15. 0:51history pretty much everywhere, so this round of empire building is sometimes called, rather
16. 0:56confusingly, New Imperialism.
17. 0:58Because the U.S. acquired territories beyond its continental boundaries in this period,
18. 1:02it’s relatively easy to fit American history into this world history paradigm.
19. 1:06But there’s also an argument that the United States has always been an empire.
20. 1:09From very early on, the European settlers who became Americans were intent on pushing
21. 1:13westward and conquering territory.
22. 1:15The obvious victims of this expansion/imperialism were the Native Americans, but we can also
23. 1:20include the Mexicans who lost their sovereignty after 1848.
24. 1:23And if that doesn’t seem like an empire to you, allow me to draw your attention to
25. 1:27the Russian Empire.
26. 1:29Russians were taking control of territory in Central Asia and Siberia and either absorbing
27. 1:33or displacing the native people who lived there, which was the exact same thing that
28. 1:36we were doing.
29. 1:37The empires of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were different because they were
30. 1:40colonial in their own special way.
31. 1:43Like, Europeans and Americans would rule other places but they wouldn’t settle them and
32. 1:47more or less completely displace the native people there.
33. 1:49(Well, except for you, Australia and New Zealand.)
34. 1:51American historians used to try to excuse America’s acquisitions of a territorial
35. 1:55empire as something of an embarrassing mistake, but that’s misleading because one of the
36. 2:00primary causes of the phenomenon of American imperialism was economics.
37. 2:04We needed places to sell our amazing new products.
38. 2:07And at the time, China actually had all of the customers because apparently it was opposite
39. 2:12day.
40. 2:13It’s also not an accident that the U.S. began pursuing imperialism in earnest during
41. 2:16the 1890s, as this was, in many ways, a decade of crisis in America.
42. 2:20The influx of immigrants and the crowded cities added to anxiety and concern over America’s
43. 2:25future.
44. 2:26And then, to cap it all off, in 1893 a panic caused by the failure of a British bank led
45. 2:30the U.S. into a horrible economic depression, a great depression, but not The Great Depression.
46. 2:36It did however feature 15,000 business failures and 17% unemployment, so take that, 2008.
47. 2:42According to American diplomatic historian George Herring, imperialism was just what
48. 2:46the doctor ordered to help America get out of its Depression depression.
49. 2:50Other historians, notably Kristin Hoganson, imply that America embarked on imperial adventures
50. 2:54partly so that American men could prove to themselves how manly they were.
51. 2:57You know, by joining the Navy and setting sail for distant waters.
52. 3:00In 1890, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan published “The Influence of Seapower upon History”
53. 3:06and argued that, to be a great power like Great Britain, the U.S. needed to control
54. 3:10the seas and dominate international commerce.
55. 3:13Tied into this push to become a maritime power was the obsession with building a canal through
56. 3:17Central America and eventually the U.S. decided that it should be built in Panama because
57. 3:21you know how else are we gonna get malaria.
58. 3:23In order to protect this canal we would need a man, a plan, a canal.
59. 3:27Panama.
60. 3:28Sorry, I just wanted to get the palindrome in there somewhere.
61. 3:30No we would actually need much more than a man and a plan.
62. 3:32We would need ships and in order to have a functioning two-ocean navy, we would need
63. 3:36colonies.
64. 3:37Why?
65. 3:38Because the steamships at the time were powered by coal and in order to re-fuel they needed
66. 3:42coal depots.
67. 3:43I mean, I suppose we could have, like, rented harbor space, but why rent when you can conquer?
68. 3:46Also, nationalism and the accompanying pride in one’s “country” was a worldwide phenomenon
69. 3:51to which the U.S. was not immune.
70. 3:52I mean, it’s no accident that the 1890s saw Americans begin to recite the pledge of
71. 3:57allegiance and celebrate Flag Day, and what better way to instill national pride than
72. 4:01by flying the stars and stripes over … Guam.
73. 4:04So pre-Civil War attempts to expand beyond what we now know as the continental United
74. 4:08States included our efforts to annex Canada, which were sadly unsuccessful, and also filibustering,
75. 4:14which before it meant a senator talking until he or she had to stop to pee was a thing where
76. 4:19we tried to take over Central America to spread slavery.
77. 4:21But, the idea of taking Cuba persisted into the late 19th century because it is close
78. 4:25and also beautiful.
79. 4:27The Grant administration wanted to annex it and the Dominican Republic, but Congress demurred.
80. 4:31But we did succeed in purchasing Canada’s tail.
81. 4:34You can see how I feel about that.
82. 4:35To be fair, discovery of gold in the Yukon made Seward’s icebox seem like less of a
83. 4:39Seward’s folly and it did provide coaling stations in the Pacific.
84. 4:43But we could have had rum and Caribbean beaches.
85. 4:45Ugh, Stan, all this talk about how much I hate Alaska has me overheated, I gotta take
86. 4:51off my shirt.
87. 4:52Ughhh.
88. 4:53Waste of my life.
89. 4:55So hard to take off a shirt dramatically.
90. 4:58I’m angry.
91. 4:59Anyway, coal stations in the Pacific were important because in 1854 we “opened”
92. 5:03Japan to American trade by sending a flotilla of threatening black ships under Matthew Perry.
93. 5:07No Stan, not that Matthew Perry.
94. 5:09You know better.
95. 5:10By far, America’s best piece of imperial business before 1898 was Hawaii.
96. 5:14Like, I like oil and gold as much as the next guy but Hawaii has pineapples and also had
97. 5:19sugar, which was grown on American owned plantations by Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and native
98. 5:23workers.
99. 5:24Treaties between the U.S. and the Hawaiian governments exempted this sugar from tariffs,
100. 5:27and America also had established a naval base at Pearl Harbor, which seemed like a really
101. 5:31good idea...then.
102. 5:33We eventually annexed Hawaii in 1898 and this meant that it could eventually become a state,
103. 5:37which it did in 1959, two years before Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
104. 5:41And this leads us nicely to the high tide of American imperialism, the Spanish-American-Cuban-Fillipino
105. 5:47War.
106. 5:48The war started out because native Cubans were revolting against Spain, which was holding
107. 5:51on to Cuba for dear life as the remnant of a once-great empire.
108. 5:55The Cubans’ fight for independence was brutal.
109. 5:5895,000 Cubans died from disease and malnutrition after Spanish general Valeriano Weyler herded
110. 6:03Cubans into concentration camps.
111. 6:04For this Weyler was called “Butcher” in the American yellow press, which sold a lot
112. 6:08of newspapers on the backs of stories about his atrocities.
113. 6:11And at last we come to President William McKinley who responded cautiously, with a demand that
114. 6:16Spain get out of Cuba or face war.
115. 6:18Now Spain knew that it couldn’t win a war with the U.S. but, as George Herring put it,
116. 6:22they “preferred the honor of war to the ignominy of surrender.”
117. 6:25Let that be a lesson to you.
118. 6:27Always choose ignominy.
119. 6:28Oh, it’s time for the Mystery Document?
120. 6:33The rules here are simple.
121. 6:35I guess the author of the Mystery Document.
122. 6:36I’m either right or I get shocked.
123. 6:38Alright, let’s see what we’ve got today.
124. 6:40With such a conflict waged for years in an island so near us and with which our people
125. 6:44have such trade and business relations; when the lives and liberty of our citizens are
126. 6:49in constant danger and their property destroyed and themselves ruined; where our trading vessels
127. 6:54are liable to seizure and are seized at our very door by warships of a foreign nation,
128. 6:59the expeditions of filibustering that we are powerless to prevent altogether -- all these
129. 7:03and others that I need not mention, with the resulting strained relations, are a constant
130. 7:08menace to our peace, and compel us to keep on a semiwar footing with a nation with which
131. 7:13we are at peace.
132. 7:14Thank you, Stan.
133. 7:15This is obviously President William McKinley’s war message to Congress.
134. 7:18You can tell it’s a war message because it includes the word “peace” more than
135. 7:21the word “war.”
136. 7:22By the way, it’s commonly thought that the President McKinley asked Congress for a declaration
137. 7:25of war, he didn’t; he let Congress take the lead.
138. 7:27That’s the only time that’s ever happened in all of American history, which would be
139. 7:31more impressive if we had declared war more than 5 times.
140. 7:33So, the document shows us that, at least according to McKinley, we officially went to war for
141. 7:38American peace of mind and to end economic uncertainty.
142. 7:41It was not to gain territory, at least not in Cuba.
143. 7:44How do we know?
144. 7:45Because Congress also passed the Teller Amendment, which forswore any U.S. annexation of Cuba,
145. 7:50perhaps because representatives of the U.S. sugar industry like Colorado’s Senator Henry
146. 7:54Teller feared competition from sugar produced in an American Cuba.
147. 7:57Or maybe not.
148. 7:58But probably so.
149. 7:59Also not the cause of the war was the sinking of the USS Maine.
150. 8:02The battleship which had been in Havana’s harbor to protect American interests sank
151. 8:06after an explosion on February 15, 1898 killing 266 sailors.
152. 8:10Now, most historians chalk up the sinking to an internal explosion and not to Spanish
153. 8:15sabotage, but that didn’t stop Americans from blaming the Spanish with their memorable
154. 8:19meme: “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain.”
155. 8:22Let’s go to the Thoughtbubble.
156. 8:24The actual war was one of the most successful in U.S. history, especially if you measure
157. 8:28success by brevity and relative paucity of deaths.
158. 8:31Secretary of State John Hay called it a “splendid little war” and in many ways it was.
159. 8:36Fighting lasted about 4 months and fewer than 400 Americans were killed in combat, although
160. 8:405,000 died of, wait for it, disease.
161. 8:43Stupid disease, always ruining everything.
162. 8:45There weren’t a ton of battles but those that happened got an inordinate amount of
163. 8:48press coverage, like the July attack on San Juan Hill at the Cuban city of Santiago, led
164. 8:53by future president Theodore Roosevelt.
165. 8:55While it was a successful battle, the real significance is that it furthered Roosevelt’s
166. 8:59career.
167. 9:00He returned a hero, promptly became Governor of New York and by 1900 was McKinley’s vice
168. 9:04president.
169. 9:05Which was a good job to have because McKinley would eventually be assassinated.
170. 9:08A more important battle was that of Manila Bay in which commodore George Dewey destroyed
171. 9:12a tiny Spanish fleet and took the Philippines.
172. 9:14This battle took place in May of 1898, well before the attack on Cuba, which strongly
173. 9:19suggests that a war that was supposedly about supporting Cuban independence was really about
174. 9:24something else.
175. 9:26And what was that something else?
176. 9:27Oh right.
177. 9:28A territorial empire.
178. 9:29As a result of the war, the U.S. got a bunch of new territories, notably the Philippines,
179. 9:33Puerto Rico and Guam.
180. 9:35We also used the war as an opportunity to annex Hawaii to protect our ships that would
181. 9:39be steaming toward the Philippines.
182. 9:40We didn’t annex Cuba, but we didn’t let it become completely independent, either.
183. 9:44The Platt Amendment in the Cuban Constitution authorized American military intervention
184. 9:48whenever it saw fit and gave us a permanent lease for a naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
185. 9:53Thanks Thoughtbubble.
186. 9:54So, Cuba and Puerto Rico were gateways to Latin American markets.
187. 9:57Puerto Rico was particularly useful as a naval station.
188. 9:59Hawaii, Guam, and especially the Philippines opened up access to China.
189. 10:03American presence in China was bolstered by our contribution of about 3,000 troops to
190. 10:07the multinational force that helped put down the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
191. 10:11But in the Philippines, where Americans had initially been welcome, opinion soon changed
192. 10:15after it became clear that Americans were there to stay and exercise control.
193. 10:20Emiliano Aguinaldo, leader of the Filipino rebellion against Spain, quickly turned against
194. 10:24the U.S. because his real goal was independence and it appeared the U.S. would not provide
195. 10:28it.
196. 10:29The resulting Philippine War lasted 4 years, from 1899-1903.
197. 10:32And 4,200 Americans were killed as well as over 100,000 Filipinos.
198. 10:35The Americans committed atrocities, including putting Filipinos in concentration camps,
199. 10:41torturing prisoners, rape, and executing civilians.
200. 10:43And much of this was racially motivated and news of these atrocities helped to spur anti-imperialist
201. 10:48sentiment at home, with Mark Twain being one of the most outspoken critics.
202. 10:52Now, there was some investment in modernization in the Philippines, in railroads, schools,
203. 10:56and public health, but the interests of the local people were usually subordinated to
204. 10:59those of the wealthy.
205. 11:01So, American imperialism in short looked like most other imperialism.
206. 11:05So Constitution nerds will remember that the U.S. Constitution has no provision for colonies,
207. 11:10only territory that will eventually be incorporated as states.
208. 11:13Congress attempted to deal with this issue by passing the Foraker Act in 1900.
209. 11:17This law declared that Puerto Rico would be an insular territory; its inhabitants would
210. 11:21be citizens of Puerto Rico, not the United States and there would be no path to statehood.
211. 11:25But this wasn’t terribly constitutional.
212. 11:27Congress did extend U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917.
213. 11:31Now it’s a commonwealth with its own government that has no voice in U.S. Congress or presidential
214. 11:35elections and no control over its own defense or environmental policy.
215. 11:39The Philippines were treated similarly to Puerto Rico, in a series of cases between
216. 11:421901 and 1904 collectively called the Insular Cases.
217. 11:45But Hawaii was treated differently.
218. 11:47Because it had a sizeable population of American settlers who happened to be white.
219. 11:51Ergo, it became a traditional territory with a path to statehood because white people and
220. 11:55also pineapples.
221. 11:56Now let’s briefly talk about anti-imperialism.
222. 11:58There were lots of people who objected to imperialism on racial grounds, arguing that
223. 12:02it might lead to, like, diversity.
224. 12:04But there were also non-racist anti-imperialists who argued that empire itself with its political
225. 12:09domination of conquered people was incompatible with democracy, which, to be fair, it is.
226. 12:13The Democratic Party, which had supported intervention in Cuba, in 1900 opposed the
227. 12:17Philippine War in its platform.
228. 12:19Some Progressives opposed imperialism too because they believed that America should
229. 12:22focus on its domestic problems.
230. 12:24Yet those who supported imperialism were just as forceful.
231. 12:27Among the most vocal was Indiana Senator Albert Beveridge who argued that imperialism was
232. 12:32benevolent and would bring “a new day of freedom.”
233. 12:35But, make no mistake, underneath it all, imperialism was all about trade.
234. 12:39According to Beveridge, America’s commerce “must be with Asia.
235. 12:42The Pacific is our ocean … Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus?
236. 12:47Geography answers the question.
237. 12:50China is our natural customer.”
238. 12:52In the end, imperialism was really driven by economic necessity.
239. 12:55In 1902, Brooks Adams predicted in his book The New Empire that the U.S. would soon “outweigh
240. 13:00any single empire, if not all empires combined.”
241. 13:04Within 20 years America would be the world’s leading economic power.
242. 13:08We didn’t have the most overseas territory, but ultimately that didn’t matter.
243. 13:12Now, the reasons for imperialism, above all the quest for markets for American goods,
244. 13:16would persist long after imperialism became recognized as antithetical to freedom and
245. 13:21democracy.
246. 13:22And we would continue to struggle to reconcile our imperialistic urges with our ideals about
247. 13:26democracy until...now.
248. 13:29Thanks for watching.
249. 13:30I’ll see you next week.
250. 13:31Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller.
251. 13:33Our script supervisor is Meredith Danko.
252. 13:35The associate producer is Danica Johnson.
253. 13:36The show is written by my high school history teacher, Raoul Meyer, Rosianna Rojas, and
254. 13:40myself.
255. 13:41And our graphics team is Thought Café.
256. 13:43Every week there’s a new caption for the libertage.
257. 13:44You can suggest captions in comments where you can also ask questions about today’s
258. 13:47video that will be answered by our team of historians.
259. 13:50Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.
260. 13:53This is the part where Stan gets nervous, like, is he gonna go this way or this way
261. 13:56or this way?
262. 13:57I’m going this way.
263. 13:58Imperialism -