 Today, we're going to focus on why the United States suddenly became interested in acquiring overseas territories at the end of the 19th century. We're going to begin by focusing on America's changing perspective from a continental nation to in a ways an intercontinental nation, a nation that wanted to acquire control over this vast territory stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. We're going to begin by focusing on changing policy concerns from continental concerns to intercontinental concerns. We're also going to look at growing American concerns about competition with European nations. And finally, we're going to focus on why and how the United States, it begins to expand from the continent of North America into the Caribbean and Central and South America, as well as into the Pacific in East Asia in the closing decades of the 19th century. American foreign policy prior to the 1890s had been focused primarily on dealing with affairs within boundaries of the United States itself. In many ways, this focus was on defending against foreign invasions, resolving conflicts with our immediate neighbors, British Canada, Spain, and then later independent Mexico, and ultimately sort of ensuring that the United States would be a strong and united nation as Americans gradually expanded westward across the Mississippi River and ultimately began to fill in the boundaries of the United States itself. And really sort of a final focus during this period was enforcing the Monroe Doctrine. And the Monroe Doctrine was a policy that influenced American foreign affairs during the 19th century that essentially argued that the United States would vigorously defend against any efforts by European nations to establish new colonies in North America or South America. And that we felt that the age of colonization had come to an end. And those were really the factors that influenced American policy during much of the 19th century. But beginning in the late 1880s and 1890s, the United States begins to grow more interested in issues growing on in the Atlantic, in the Pacific Ocean, and elsewhere in the world, especially within the Caribbean itself, the issues that were going on in the islands and countries of the Caribbean. And we begin to see a renewed focus in expansion from westward expansion, growing west across the continent, to international expansion, expansion into the Caribbean, to the Atlantic, to the Pacific Oceans, particularly for a number of reasons. One of these was simply economic, that American businesses and business leaders were very concerned that American businesses would be cut off from expanding into countries in the western hemisphere if we allowed European nations to gain a foothold in these nations. So as a result, American economic leaders pushed the political leaders in the United States very hard to increase American political interaction with nations of the Caribbean, Central and South America, East Asia, for instance, during this time period. The American Navy was also very concerned with expansion. American Navy was growing significantly during this period. And the American Navy wanted to gain control over a forward operating basis once again in the Caribbean, once again in the Pacific Ocean, as a way of using the Navy to support America's commerce with Central and South America, with East Asia, and so forth. And finally, there was a growing emphasis on a much more sort of militaristic enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. Now, throughout the 19th century, the US government used politics and policies as a way of sort of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, but we began to grow more interested in using military force as a way of preventing European nations from either trying to establish new colonies in the western hemisphere or interfering with newly independent nations of the western hemisphere as well. And so it's really within this broader foreign policy context that we begin to see growing conflicts between the United States and European nations at the end of the 19th century. And the most violent of these foreign conflicts is the Spanish-American War, just a brief context about the war itself. The war ultimately has to do with Spain's collapsing empires. Spain had lost control of Mexico, had lost control of Central and South America during most of the 19th century and only retained a handful of possessions, the island of Cuba, island of Puerto Rico, and the island of the Philippines and Guam in the western Pacific. And the United States was very interested in these territories, especially Cubans, being just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Well, Spain had lost all these territories as a result of independence movements during this time period, and these countries had broken away and gained their independence. And only Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines and Guam had managed to remain part of the Spanish Empire. But over the course of the 19th century, increasingly Cuba wanted to break away, and there were a number of attempts at revolutions in Cuba. By the 1890s, another revolutionary attempt had begun, and Spain responded to this by sending over harsh Spanish officers who used all sorts of violent measures to try to crush this guerrilla war and this rebellion and restore civilian rule within the area. And for Americans, they looked at this efforts by the Spanish and they saw it as misrule. They saw it as horrible attempts to kill the population in order to reestablish control of the nation. And Americans were growing increasingly frustrated with Spanish efforts to regain control of the population in Cuba, including such things as concentration camps and killing people in some ways indiscriminately. And as a result, the United States was growing increasingly interested in doing something about this struggle. And Cuban revolutionaries were certainly depicting Spain as this evil nation, somewhat like Great Britain had been before the American Revolution, who didn't respect the United States. And we're trying to get Americans interested in supporting these brave freedom fighters in Cuba in their struggle for independence against this sort of evil Spanish government. At least this is how the Spanish and the Cubans depicted it. This was how many American journalists depicted this struggle. America's president at the time, William McKinley, attempted to mediate the conflict in order to satisfy both sides, but it proved to be fairly unsuccessful. Well, America had managed to stay out of this conflict until the year 1898. And it's in 1898 that we have a series of crises that ultimately pull the United States into the war. And they began in February of 1898 as a result of a letter written by Enrique de Puede de Lom, who was a Spanish minister in Cuba. And he wrote a letter to his government. You know, we have pictured on the right here in which he called President William McKinley, America's president at the time. He called him a weak president and basically said he was really sort of an unfit leader and not particularly interested in actually mediating this conflict. Here we have McKinley depicted. And as a result, this letter became public at least. Journalists got ahold of it and they were infuriated. Here we have the Spanish government insulting American American president and basically calling him weak and not somebody who was an effective leader for the United States. And this just infuriates Americans. And then just a few days later, another incident really seals the fate of the relationship between the United States and Spain. The battleship main, this beautiful battleship that the United States had just completed is destroyed in a violent explosion in Havana, Harvard on February 15th. The U.S. suspected Spanish sabotage or they suspected an attack of some sort. And they put a huge amount of pressure on McKinley and a huge amount of pressure on Congress to respond to this attack. And McKinley is sort of forced to go to Congress in April of 1898 and ask for a declaration of war between the United States and Spain. Spanish attacks and Spanish efforts to attack the United States in the form of the battleship main had convinced Americans that the time was right to deal with Spain. Well, America began to prepare for this attack. And of course, the United States had never fought an overseas war before. The last major war we had fought had been the Civil War. And as a result, American military was not particularly prepared for this conflict. And the early preparation, the first month or so of preparation, largely amounted to simply trying to get enough troops to Florida in order to prepare for the invasion. And we have some photographs taken from Tampa, Florida that show the camps that were set up and the efforts to load weapons and guns and supplies onto American ships and figure out a way to transport all these supplies to Cuba. Again, we'd never invaded an unoverseased territory before. And American military was really not prepared to take action against Spain. Well, eventually, military forces were organized. And in early June and during the month of June and July, American forces set sail around the island of Cuba and eventually landed forces near Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with the assistance of Cuban guerrillas. Probably wouldn't have been a successful landing without the Cuban guerrillas really paving the way for the invasion. And in a series of short battles that take place after the landing, including the Battle of San Juan Hill that we depicted here, the American forces achieve a pretty profound victory over the Spanish forces. It's a tight battle, but thanks to the efforts of a number of organizations, including Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders, which was a group that was organized by Roosevelt, who later goes on to be president. Here he is depicted in this black mic photo. And, of course, along with the Rough Riders, he's ably assisted by a number of regular army troops, including African American soldiers of the 9th and 10th U.S. cavalry and 24th and 25th U.S. infantry regiments who really did the bulk of the fighting, suffered the bulk of the casualties and really helped Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders achieve kind of the ultimate victory. And of course, in many ways, Roosevelt and his Rough Riders become the famous fighters of the battle and we largely forget about the African American troops of the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavs and the 24th and 25th infantry regiments. Well, ultimately, despite the poor organization, despite poor leadership in many ways, despite poor food, poor equipment, in spite of all these obstacles, the U.S. manages to win the war in the Philippines. And we occupy the Philippines by July of 1898, excuse me, the war in Cuba. Now, the Philippines, the other side of the conflict, in the Philippines, the U.S. Navy had been dispatched to the very beginning of the war by Theodore Roosevelt. He had been the assistant secretary of the Navy before he resigned to become a Rough Rider and he had dispatched a Maudui in the American fleet to the Philippines to destroy the Spanish fleet and take over the Philippines. And Dewey does so in a very important battle in May of 1898. Utterly devastates the Spanish fleet. Americans barely suffer a scratch. And as a result with the battles in the Philippines, the battles that take place in Cuba, a landing in Puerto Rico, as well, by the summer of 1898, the United States has acquired control over Puerto Rico. We've liberated Cuba from Spanish rule. We'd acquired the Philippines in Guam, and we had begun to stretch America's overseas empire all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. And in a very short time period, it was this dramatic, dramatic outcome. The Spanish eventually, formerly, surrendered these territories in December 18 of 1898 in the Treaty of Paris. And the U.S. gains permanent possession of the Philippines in Guam. We gain permanent possession of Puerto Rico. And we gain an influence over Cuba as a result of an important amendment to the Cuban Constitution called the PLAT Amendment, which gives the United States the authority to intervene in Cuban affairs anytime we wish for any reason necessary. And the end result of this conflict is that the U.S. acquires economic, political, military influence in the Atlantic and the Pacific, especially in the Caribbean. We gain new base for naval operations in Cuba, at Guantanamo Bay. We gain bases for naval operations in the Philippines and Guam as well. And we use these bases to support American commerce in Central and South America, support American commerce in East Asia, Japan. And as a result, we gain the United States gains a tremendous advantage in this very short war in that we expand American influence nearly halfway across the globe. And so for the first time, the United States has to begin considering itself an imperial nation, a nation that controls overseas territories. But for the United States, they wanted to distinguish themselves from European imperial nations. Americans argued that American imperialism brought about freedom, brought about democracy and was ultimately a benevolent form of imperialism. The reality was American imperialism was very little different than European imperialism, especially in the Philippines, where Filipino independence fighters fight against Americans for independence of the Philippines for nearly four years. And as a result of this conflict, probably about 100,000 Filipinos are killed in this war and about 4,200 Americans are killed in this war. So the reality is, while Americans might have claimed that this was benevolent imperialism and it was imperialism that was for the benefit of the people who were started to put under American rule. The reality was it was a violent, violent struggle, ultimately for the benefit of American political and economic figures and really not for the benefit of those who were colonized by the United States as a result of the war between the United States and Spain in 1898.