What Motivated American Imperialism

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One of the main reasons that encouraged America to pursue imperialism was competition. Many other nations such as France and Italy had already stabilized their bases in outside countries. Alfred Thayan, naval captain, was the one who persuaded Theodore Roosevelt into acquiring a wide variety of products and services that would help make the U.S. naval power even stronger. After much of his insisting the U.S. “had built eleven battleships, making its navy the third most powerful in the world…” (pg. 901). Manifest destiny, a belief that America was destined to enlarge its territory, was also a strong motivator. However this spiritual calling did have hints of racism, because the reasoning behind expanding became that because the white people were superior to all other races, they had the duty to duplicate their innate gifts in other places as well. Even universities were giving their approval on this supposedly researched “fact”. The spreading of religion (evangelism) motivated many of the church officials to also readily support this idea. …show more content…

They were advancing technology fast and thus they required more resources to not only be able to sustain the whole operation, but to make it spur faster as well. International trade was also necessary because it contributed to not only industrialization, but also to farming as they were provided a wide variety of crops and goods outside of those found just in America. Darwanism or “survival of the fittest” was also used as reasoning, with prominent scholars believing that Anglo-Saxon would be the most prevalent race in the future. In other words, the main justification for America having conquered other areas was mainly that they were superior and that they deserved it. Other countries simply had the resources that America required, and that was as good enough of a reason as any to make a

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