The United States from 1877 to 1914

Frederick Jackson Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”

• The frontier gradually

turns Europeans

into American individualists

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The 5 stages of U.S. Indian policy, 1789-1900

• Sovereignty, 1789-1830• Expulsion, 1830-1850s• Reservation, 1832-• Military Confrontation,

1870s-1890s• “Reform” (privatization)

1887-

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Expulsion: Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes

• 1831: Andrew Jackson ignores

Cherokee Nation v. Georgia

• Allows the Five

Civilized Tribes to

be driven west

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Bishop Henry Whipple

•President Grant sets up board of Indian Commissioners

•Bureau of Indian Affairs reaches 4,000 employees

•Government bans Indian ways, including complex marriages, bride payments, and Indian funeral traditions

•Sets up court system to enforce these rules

“Friends of the Indian”

The United States from 1877 to 1914

“Reform:”The Dawes Act, 1887“Kill the Indian to save the man.”• Privatization of

reservation land1881 Indians

held 155,000,000 acres

1890 they held 104,000,000

1900 they held 77,000,000

The United States from 1877 to 1914

$tate department, 1898:We need new market$!

• “It seems to be conceded that every year we shall be confronted with an increasing surplus of manufactured goods for sale in foreign markets if American operatives and artisans are to be kept employed the year around. The enlargement of foreign consumption of the products of our mills and workshops has, therefore, become a serious problem of statesmanship as well as of commerce.”

The United States from 1877 to 1914Conant, “Economic

Basis of Imperialism,” 1898

• Too much production• U.S. must develop markets

abroad• U.S. industrial base will

help in this task

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Lenin’s 5 stages of imperialism:

• Concentrated capital produces monopolies• Merging of bank and industrial

capital produces national oligopolies• Corporations become trans-national• Push their host nations to conquer territory

on their behalf• Corporate controlled imperial states rule

the world

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Theodore Roosevelton “race suicide”

“No piled-up wealth, no splendor of material growth, no brilliance of artistic development, will permanently avail any people unless its home life is healthy, unless the average man possesses honesty, courage, common sense, and decency, unless he works hard and is willing at need to fight hard; and unless the average woman is a good wife, a good mother, able and willing to perform the first and greatest duty of womanhood, able and willing to bear, and to bring up as they should be brought up, healthy children, sound in body, mind, and character, and numerous enough so that the race shall increase and not decrease.”

The United States from 1877 to 1914

Queen Lydia Liliuokalani, last of the Hawaiian monarchs.

• Overturned by Anglo planters after she opposed an undemocratic constitution

• 1893: “Big Five” consortium of planters take over the Islands

The United States from 1877 to 1914

President William McKinley, 1898

• Most popular president since Lincoln

• First modern cabinet: administrators, not

politicians

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The Teller Amendment, 1898

“That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island [Cuba] except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when it is accomplished, to leave the government and control of the Island to its people.”

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The Anti-Imperialist League, 1898

• “We demand the immediate cessation of the war against liberty, begun by Spain and continued by us. We urge that Congress be promptly convened to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to concede to them the independence for which they have so long fought and which of right is theirs.”

--platform of the Anti-Imperialist League, 1899

The United States from 1877 to 1914

The Platt Amendment (1902)

• The U.S. had the right to intervene in Cuba to “protect” its independence

• Cuba’s debt would be monitored by the U.S.

• a fiscal cleanup plan to make Cuba more attractive to U.S. investors

• a 99 year lease on Guantanamo Bay base

The United States from 1877 to 1914John Hay’s

“open door” policy, 1899

• All nations have equal trading rights in China

• Chinese tariffs shall apply equally everywhere

• Only Chinese government will collect taxes and duties