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Purchase of Alaska
Russia had a keen interest in this region, which was rich in natural resources and lightly inhabited. As the United States expanded westward in the early 1800s, Americans soon found themselves in competition with Russian explorers and traders. Russia agreed to sell Alaska to the US believing the United States would off-set the designs of Russia’s greatest rival in the Pacific, Great Britain. Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. -
Purchase of Alaska
The purchase of Alaska marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America, and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region. -
Overthrow of Hawaii
In the 1800's the first American traders came to Hawaii to exploit the islands' sandalwood, which was much valued in China at the time.Hawaii was rich in fruit, sugar, and other products the US needed.Sugar exports to the United States expanded greatly and U.S. investors and American sugar planters on the islands broadened their domination over Hawaiian affairs. Liliuokalani, refused to recognize the constitution of 1887 and replacedit with a constitution increasing her personal authority. -
Overthrow of Hawaii
President William McKinley, negotiated a treaty with the Republic of Hawaii in 1897. Two years later, Hawaii was organized into a formal U.S. territory and in 1959 entered the United States as the 50th state. -
Yellow Journalism
Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that presents little legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers.The term originated in the competition over the New York City newspaper market between major newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst. In the 19th century it was one of many factors that helped push the US and Spain into war in Cuba and the Philippines, leading to the acquisition of overseas territory by the United States. -
Yellow Journalism
The rise of yellow journalism helped to create a climate conducive to the outbreak of international conflict and the expansion of U.S. influence overseas. The style contributed to creating public support for the Spanish-American War, a war that would ultimately expand the global reach of the United States. -
America Gets Involved with Panama, Venezuela, and Nicaragua
The Monroe Doctrine maintained the autonomy of Latin American nations, thereby allowing the United States to impose its economic policies at will. As part of its expansionism, the United States government caused the Mexican War and annexed the northern third of Mexic. -
America Gets Involved with Panama, Venezuela, and Nicaragua
Theodore Roosevelt, who became President of the United States in 1901, believed that a U.S.-controlled canal across Central America was a vital strategic interest to the United States. This idea gained wide impetus following the destruction of the battleship USS Maine, in Cuba, on February 15, 1898. -
Spanish American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict between Spain and the United States, the result of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. After the mysterious sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor, political pressures from the Democratic Party pushed the administration of Republican President William McKinley into a war he had wished to avoid. Although the main issue was Cuban independence, the ten-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. -
Spanish-American War
The result was the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the U.S., which allowed temporary American control of Cuba, ceded indefinite colonial authority over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine islands. The United States gained several island possessions. -
Guam, Puerto Rico, and Panama
Some modern observers have argued that if World War I had not lessened American enthusiasm for international activity these interventions might have led to the formation of an expanded U.S. colonial empire, with Central American states either annexed into Statehood like Hawaii or becoming American territories, like the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam -
Guam, Puerto Rico and Panama
As a result of the Spanish‐American War, the United States conquered and annexed the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippinesamerica. -
American Anti-imperialist League
The Anti-Imperialist League was defeated in the battle of public opinion by a new wave of politicians who successfully advocated the virtues of American territorial expansion in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and in the first years of the 20th Century. -
American Anti-Imperialist League
The American Anti-Imperialist League was an organization established to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area. The anti-imperialists opposed expansion they believed imperialism violated the fundamental principle that just republican government must derive from "consent of the governed." Rather than opposing American territorial expansion, the League argued that such activity would necessitate the abandonment of American ideals of self-government. -
Teddy Roosevelt & the Rough Riders
Before becoming President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He resigned in 1898 to organize the Rough Riders, the first voluntary cavalry in the Spanish-American War. The U.S. was fighting against Spain over Spain's colonial policies with Cuba. Roosevelt recruited a diverse group of cowboys, miners, law enforcement officials, and Native Americans to join the Rough Riders. -
Teddy Roosevelt & the Rough Riders
The Rough Riders are best remembered for their charge up San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898. During the war, they received the most publicity of any unit in the army. A few days after the Rough Riders' charge up San Juan Hill, the Spanish fleet fled Cuba. It was just a matter of weeks before the war had ended and the U.S. was victorious. -
Open Door Policy in China
China's modern day economic history the Open Door Policy refers to the new policy to open the door to foreign businesses that wanted to set up in China. Special Economic Zones such as Shenzhen were set up in 1980 in his belief that in order to modernize China's industry and boost its economy, it needed to welcome foreign direct investment. Chinese economic policy then shifted to encouraging and supporting foreign trade & investment. -
Open Door Policy in China
The Open Door Policy is a concept in foreign affairs, initially used to refer to the United States policy in late 19th century and early 20th century that would grant multiple international powers with equal access to China, with none of them in total control of that country. On paper, the policy was aimed to safeguard Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity from partition. -
Roosevelt's Big Stick Diplomacy
Big Stick diplomacy refers to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy: "speak softly, and carry a big stick." The idea supports negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the "big stick", or the military. -
Roosevelt's Big Stick Diplomacy
President Theodore Roosevelt’s interventionist foreign policy subverted the Constitution and helped transform America into the most powerful nation on Earth.This notion of spreading American values and ideals throughout the world helped make the U.S. a world power, but it also greatly weakened constitutional government by making the executive branch supreme in foreign policy. This set a precedent that still exists today. -
The Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion was a violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian movement which took place in China between 1899 and 1901. The uprising took place against a background of severe drought and the disruption caused by the growth of foreign spheres of influence. -
The Boxer Rebellion
The great powers stopped short of finally colonizing China. From the Boxer rebellions, they learned that the best way to deal with China was through the Chinese dynasty, instead of direct dealing with the Chinese people. The effect on China was a weakening of the dynasty as well as a weakened national defense. -
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero, a reformist writer and politician, against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz, and lasted for the better part of a decade until around 1920. When Díaz refused to allow clean elections, Madero's called for revolution. -
Mexican Revolution
This armed conflict is often categorized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century, which saw important experimentation and reformation in social organization -
America Claims Neutrality at the start of WWI
When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position favored by the vast majority of Americans. America had tried to keep out of World War One but unrestricted submarine warfare, was the primary issue that caused Woodrow Wilson to ask Congress to declare war on Germany on April 2nd. -
America Claims Neutrality at the start of WWI
On April 6, 1917, two days after the U.S. Senate votes 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the decision by a vote of 373 to 50, and the United States formally enters the First World War.
Four days later, America joined World War One on the side of the Allies. -
America Joins WWI
When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives. -
America Joins WWI
On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America's well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory -
Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points
The "Fourteen Points" was a statement by United States President Woodrow Wilson that the Great War was being fought for a moral cause and for postwar peace in Europe. Europeans generally welcomed Wilson's intervention, but his main Allied colleagues were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism.The speech was widely disseminated as an instrument of allied propaganda. -
Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points
Woodrow Wilson's 14 points relates to Rhetoric because its main point is to persuade. Wilson was the first national leader to address the world, including Western Europe, South America, and Asia through radio transmission. He hoped to persuade the governments and people of American and their new allies to support his vision, particularly a league of nations. Indeed, a note sent to Wilson by Prince Maximilian, the German chancellor, requested an immediate armistice and peace negotiations.
