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Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

Question 2

Imperialism is defined as a state policy, practice, or advocacy aimed at extending authority and domination, particularly through direct territorial acquisition or political and economic dominance over other areas and peoples. People who identify as anti-imperialists frequently claim that they reject colonialism, colonial empires, hegemony, imperialism, and a country’s territorial expansion beyond its existing limits. Anti-imperialist Grover Cleveland viewed annexation as an encroachment on a sovereign nation and attempted to restore the monarchy.

The Anti-imperialist League was founded on June 15, 1898, to oppose the United States’ annexation of the Philippines, alleging a range of grounds ranging from economic to legal to racial to moral. Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, William James, David Starr Jordan, and Samuel Gompers were among its members, while George S. Boutwell, former Secretary of the Treasury of Massachusetts, served as its president. The league began to dwindle after the signing of the Treaty of Paris and eventually vanished. The perspectives of those opposed to American imperialism were that the Atlantic Ocean provides a great deal of separation and protection from European powers. No European country will ever interfere in our affairs because of our isolation. Increasing the strength of our armed forces is risky. European citizens with a powerful military have fewer rights and liberties than American citizens. Our democracy is threatened by a large military. Over colonial territories, European countries are continually at odds with one another. Let us avoid such conflicts by refusing to take colonies. Within its borders, the United States boasts a wealth of resources. There is no need to travel internationally. It would be hypocritical for us to control other people if we believe in democracy and that it is appropriate for individuals to govern themselves. Colonialism is a morally reprehensible act that is akin to piracy.

Imperialist Vision, Many Americans wanted the United States to expand its military and economic influence overseas in the late 1800s. Americans were preoccupied with reconstruction, immigration, establishing the West, and industry, among other things. They slapped heavy levies on the rest of the industrial world. American imperialism refers to measures aiming at spreading the United States’ political, economic, and cultural power beyond its borders. Reconstruction, immigration, settling the West, and industry were all priorities for Americans. In the 1880s, as the world’s attention shifted to the United States, Americans began to want for the country to become a world power. Imperialism is defined as a powerful nation’s economic and political dominance over lesser nations.

The distinction between those who backed imperialism and those who supported American imperialism was that for example Europeans directly colonized the subject countries, whereas the United States generally changed regimes in the subject countries for the perceived benefit of the United States. Raw commodities from outside Europe were sought by European countries. Other industrial countries were subjected to heavy tariffs. They were also on the lookout for new opportunities. In other industries, particularly in Africa and Asia, we’re encouraged to invest. European nations began asserting authority over such lands to protect their investments, and these areas became colonies. The United Kingdom will soon have control over the vast majority of the globe! Other areas became protectorates, where the imperial power permitted local rulers to maintain control while protecting them against rebellions and invasion.

American imperialism refers to measures aiming at spreading the United States’ political, economic, and cultural power beyond its borders. Military conquest, gunboat diplomacy, unequal treaties, subsidization of chosen factions, economic penetration through private firms followed by intervention when those interests are challenged, or regime change are all possibilities, depending on the commentator. Imperialism is generally thought to have started in the late 1800s, while some argue that US territory expansion at the expense of Native Americans is similar enough to merit the same label. [3] Although the United States federal government has never referred to its territories as an empire, several analysts have, notably Max Boot, Arthur Schlesinger, and Niall Ferguson. The US has also been accused of neocolonialism, which is sometimes characterized as a modern kind of hegemony that leverages economic rather than military dominance in an informal empire and is frequently used interchangeably with contemporary imperialism. For the entirety of the country’s existence, the subject of whether the United States should intervene in the affairs of other countries has been argued in domestic politics. Opponents cited the country’s history as a former colony that revolted against an overlord, as well as American values of democracy, liberty, and independence. Supporters of imperial presidents such as James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft supported interventions or control of countries by stressing the necessity to enhance American economic interests (such as trade and repayment of debts).

People who opposed the government’s imperialist practices were not unpatriotic because they believed imperialism violated the fundamental concept that legitimate republican government must be founded on the “consent of the governed.” According to the League, such activities would involve the renunciation of the American ideals of self-government and non-intervention. Imperialists and anti-imperialists argued on how to approach Cuba’s foreign policy. Anti-imperialists claimed that the United States should serve as a model for free and self-governing nations and that Cuban independence should be respected of which made sense. The anti-imperialist movement, which began in 1898, protested imperialism for political grounds, according to historian Fred Harvey Harrington. Many of the anti-imperialist movement’s ideas sprang from the political principle that a republic like the United States should not have colonies. Anti-imperialists opposed colonial expansion, not for economic or humanitarian grounds, but because it contradicted the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, which both call for self-determination.

An “imperialistic democracy is an impossible hybrid,” as Henry Van Dyke noted in his Thanksgiving Sermon in 1898. Old World expansion was antithetical to American ideals, and it would tarnish America’s moral standing as a global beacon of liberty, democracy, and self-determination. Some historians, such as Harrington, dismiss race as a factor in the 1898 imperialist dispute. While proponents of Asian expansion invoked paternalistic reasons such as spreading civilization to the “dark corners of the world,” anti-imperialists utilized race to support their positions. Many politicians criticized imperialism because Filipinos, like African Americans, were intrinsically inferior to white people and hence could not be incorporated into American life, according to Marxist historian Christopher Lasch. The racial and political implications of imperialism were the emphasis of anti-imperialist arguments, not the economic gains that expansion into the Philippines would bring to American industry.

I also feel the anti-imperialist campaign failed because William Jennings Bryan was not elected to the presidency in 1900. However, the movement’s first stated goals were to rethink the concept of American foreign policy in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. The subsequent fight with Filipinos for control of the Philippine Islands was not opposed by anti-imperialists. Even though the Philippine-American War lasted longer, cost more money, and claimed more American lives than the Spanish-American War, the new anti-imperialist, not anti-war movement emerged. An assessment of the movement’s long-term repercussions demonstrates that, contrary to what Harrington and other historians have claimed, the anti-imperialists did not fail. In 1916, the Philippines were promised independence, and the movement produced a new kind of American Open Door Imperialism, focusing on commercial and moral progress rather than political entanglements, according to historian William A. Williams.

The need for American expansion at the close of the nineteenth century inspired this imperialist debate, which was sparked by Dewey’s invasion of the Philippines. “The existence of an area of free land, its continual recession, and the advance of American colonization westward, explain American development,” Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in an essay published in 1893. The development, acquisition, settlement, and growth of the territories west of the Appalachians to the Pacific Ocean had been the story of the United States up to this point. For the first time in its young history, the United States was no longer faced with the task of taming the frontier. Marxists and political organizations of a similar ideological bent who propose anti-capitalism, give a class analysis of society, and the like are the most common users of the term. Imperialism was a capitalistic geopolitical system of domination and repression to Latin American rebel Che Guevara, and it had to be understood as such to be The revolutionary Che Guevara remarked of imperialism’s nature and how to oppose and defeat it, “Imperialist is a world system, the last stage of capitalism, and it must be defeated in a world battle.” The eradication of imperialism should be the strategic goal of this battle. Our part, as exploited and underdeveloped peoples around the world, is to dismantle imperialism’s foundations: our oppressed nations, from which they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and from which they export new capital, instruments of dominance, arms, and all kinds of articles, thus enslaving us.

The argument against imperialism is that it is no longer relevant. Negri and Hardt argue in their book Empire that imperialism is no longer the practice or jurisdiction of any one nation or state. They argue that the “Empire” is made up of all states, nations, companies, media, popular and intellectual culture, and so on, and that old anti-imperialist tactics and strategies can no longer be used against them.

References

A.Smith, (2021) Settler Colonialism, and Limits of Liberal Anti-Imperialism OU Ince – The Journal of Politics.

P. J. Cain,(2018). “Capitalism, Aristocracy, and Empire: Some ‘Classical’ Theories of Imperialism Revisited”, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 35 Issue 1.

R. Koebner and H. Schmidt, (2017) Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word.