Was The USA Imperialist Power At The Beginning Of The Early 20th Century

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Why and to what extent was the U.S. an imperialist power at the beginning of the 20th century? The 19th century was commonly known as the ‘Age of Imperialism’, during this time period the United States and a number of other major world powers began rapidly expanding their territory and influence, throughout the world. Many Americans supported the concept of imperialism due to the economic, military, and political influence that came with the annexation of fertile territories. Although this ideology seemed to benefit thriving imperialist powers such as Britain and France, the United States was only an imperialist power to the extent that they extended the U.S. power, but were an empire unsuccessful in controlling the nations under their rule. …show more content…

The United States was precisely that in the early 20th century; it has conquered a number of nation-states in the western hemisphere in the last 30 years and even traveled over continents to take control of the Philippines. However, while the U.S struggled with an internal conflict of morality in conquering nation-states against their will, their incompetent ruling had caused trouble in the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Four American corporations privatized Puerto Rico’s best land and aimed to sell sugar. The result of that had “30 percent” of Puerto Ricans unemployed and “one-third” illiterate. The situation in the Philippines was even worse: the U.S elected a corrupt president who “closed congress”, “suspended the constitution”, and “canceled the forthcoming presidential election”, which had triggered many rebellions, massacres, and even the Philippine-American war, where “4200 Americans were killed”, nearly twice the amount of deaths in the Spanish-American war. U.S troops were ordered to kill all male Filipino “above the age of ten” who had not surrendered and to kill prisoners when an American soldier died. Unlike Britain or France, the U.S was oblivious to the aftermaths of their actions; even the president at the time, Teddy Roosevelt, justified the killings simply “because they (Filipinos) were killing

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