Comparison Of Manifest Destiny And Jane Addams

From the traditional masculine point of view, Manifest Destiny provided a strong argument for American imperialism. As “the great nation of futurity,” the United States for many imperialists had a fundamental duty to help heathen countries reach “the star-studded heavens,” and if expansionism also resulted in increased trade and market penetration, all the better. The bloody conflicts peppered throughout this path to heaven – the Spanish-American war, the Philippine-American war, the Boxer Rebellion – were but small hiccups to this fundamental goal, setbacks created by racial inferiors not yet aware of democracy’s beauty.

Yet to progressive reformers such as Jane Addams, Manifest Destiny meant something different. Coming from a more feminine

viewpoint, Addams provided pacifists with an alternative ideology to American imperialism. While she still subscribed to the philosophy of American exceptionalism, Addams used Manifest Destiny to advocate for a groundbreaking shift in U.S. policy – not for a complete end to American imperialism, per se, but rather for a more hands-off expansionism focused on then-nascent ideals of self-determination. In a sense, Addams still wanted the U.S. to push what she considered the frontier of development – but a moral and ideological frontier, not the economic one her male peers so often desired. Indeed, unlike her contemporaries, Addams believed that America not only could absorb foreign viewpoints without losing its fundamental identity but also had a moral obligation to do so.

No discussion of Addams’s foreign viewpoints on imperialism would be complete without a quick examination of her work at home, however. A prominent social reformer, Addams was perhaps best known for founding Hull House, a Chicagoan settlement house located in the midst of an immigrant slum. For Addams, while settlement houses offered immigrants a better future through instruction and discipline, these houses were not mere endeavors created out of pity. Rather, through their educational development of immigrant children, Addams reasoned that settlement houses ensured the very well-being of democracy itself. Addams, after all, did not see immigrants as detracting from the country’s fundamental character. Instead, unlike her compatriots, Addams viewed her relationship with immigrants as a mutually beneficial one, with her giving a sense of moral responsibility to her charges and her charges in turn gifting the United States with a unique diversity. Innovative for her time, Addams’s early behavior towards immigrants would noticeably shape her future views on imperialism, as this essay will later demonstrate.

Speaking of imperialism, Addams was not necessarily opposed to the idea of American overseas influence itself, despite her membership in the Anti-Imperialist League. In fact, in her speech critiquing America’s “civilizing mission,” fittingly made during the Universal Peace Congress in 1904, she stated, “Perhaps we [as Americans] shall be able, through our very confidence, to nourish [people of a different color] into another type of government, not Anglo-Saxon even.” A close reading of this sentence alone yields numerous telling conclusions about Addams’s foreign policy views. As thus, the analysis of this one sentence will form the remaining backbone of this essay. Addams’s choice of the word nourish, for instance, hinted at her lofty vision of America – a vision of America as a country that would assist colored races in their development, much as a gentle mother might raise a budding child. Yet note that the pacifist Addams, while still supportive of subtle U.S. overseas influence, did not act like her militaristic male contemporaries, who often proposed to fight “splendid little war[s]” first and civilize foreign races second. After all, going into foreign nations with guns blazing and pocketbooks flashing must have created thorny moral issues of self-interest for an Addams enveloped by a male-dominated society. Addams, however, shied away from advocating isolationism to solve this moral conundrum. Instead, she suggested, somewhat implicitly, that by allowing other nations to develop their own forms of government with only subtle guidance, the United States would encounter fewer moral dilemmas. Ahead of her time, Addams essentially codified an early version of self-determination in this speech, an idea that Wilson would champion (at least for Europe) more than a decade later.

Analyzing Addams’s quote further to tease out even more nuanced ideas involving self-determination, I now point to the last three words of her quote, in which she said, “[Americans may nourish others into another type of government], not Anglo-Saxon even.” In this phrase, Addams’s words not and even convey two very different meanings, both key to understanding her views on expansionism.

On one hand, Addams’s use of the word not explicitly indicated that foreign countries had the potential to come up with new systems of good governance – systems of governance that could be just as successful as American democracy. Yet on the other hand, the word even, while more nebulous in meaning, could have very well signified a subtle reluctance on Addams’s part to accept this fact. Of course, I concede that Addams may have used the word even innocuously in an attempt to remind provincial American listeners that non-Anglo-Saxon forms of governance did, in fact, even exist. But other phrases in her speech support my original interpretation. In fact, given her steadfast belief in democracy and her repeated pleas for listeners to “do our work [with natives] on the highest plane,” Addams likely saw American democracy as an institution so exceptional that it had an obligation to reach a higher moral plane by transcending the narrow-mindedness of rival European countries. In other words, while Addams may have viewed some features of other civilizations as worth emulating, I argue that she saw

the “exceptional” America as the pinnacle of human development, hence explaining her use of the adverb even.

Nevertheless, Addams’s viewpoint that foreign cultures had valuable ideas to contribute to America, a viewpoint reiterated multiple times throughout her speech, had noticeable influences from the reformer’s past as a settlement house administrator.

Through her work with immigrants, Addams began to believe quite strongly in the power of these newcomers to contribute to American democracy, and this realization that a variety of foreign ideas could prove healthy for democracy became especially evident in her comments concerning the “great value” of certain non-Anglo-Saxon goods and ideas. Yet Addams’s past as a progressive female reformer did not merely affect her views on imperialism. It also lent her a unique idea of America’s Manifest Destiny. In fact, I argue in the next paragraph that Addams envisioned America’s Manifest Destiny not as the seeking of new markets or lands but rather as the development of a moral and ideological frontier – a moral frontier grounded in the very underpinnings of American

thought.

To use Addams’s quote about nourishment as a springboard once again, this idea of America as an ideological frontier appeared, however slightly, through Addams’s choice of the word confidence. In this quote, in which she stated, “perhaps we shall be able, through our very confidence, to [accept other races choosing alternative forms of government],” Addams twisted the ordinary hypermasculine metaphors of Manifest Destiny to portray self-assurance, and more generally intellectual confidence, as a form of bravery. Only Americans comfortable with their identity, after all, would have the self-assurance that the United States could take on characteristics from other cultures without losing its fundamental greatness. This confidence-based interpretation of Manifest Destiny took a subtle jab at both the imperialist and anti-imperialist skeptics who regarded foreign races as unfit for self-governance. To Addams, these narrow-minded skeptics were cowards unfaithful to the fundamental ideas of bravery and discovery espoused by Manifest Destiny – cowards both willing to subjugate vastly overpowered populations and yet too scared to open their minds and partake in “moral adventure.” Indeed, by using Manifest Destiny’s original allusions to “adventure,” “bravery,” and “experiment” to describe her desire for Americans to take intellectual risks and broaden their worldviews, Addams argued that America’s Manifest Destiny was not that of the male executives who hid behind the U.S. military in their quests for markets. Rather, Addams proposed that America’s true Manifest Destiny was a more moralistic one that twisted traditional hypermasculine ideals of physical bravery and conquest into slightly more feminine ones of ideological courage, exploration, and acceptance. Addams’s ideological frontier, in other words, was one where Americans had enough self-security and confidence to accept and even integrate foreign ideas into their worldviews – a frontier traversed by few other nations in history.

Like her imperialist contemporaries, Addams too saw America as exceptional. For Addams, though, exceptionalism did not involve America following in the footsteps of “almost every state in Europe, [which] has established forts in Africa or Asia or some other place.” Rather, as a female social reformer in a patriarchal world, Addams viewed America’s Manifest Destiny as a calling unique and exceptional in its own right – not a trite, militaristic one of global domination and imperialism, but rather a groundbreaking, ideological one of open-mindedness, diversity, and acceptance.