Access the Success of American Imperialism at the End of the 19th Century

Question: Access the success of American Imperialism at the end of the 19th century.

American Imperialism has been a part of United States history ever since the American Revolution. Imperialism is practice by which powerful nations or people seek to expand and maintain control or influence over weaker nations or peoples. Throughout the years there have been many instances where the Americans have taken over other countries. The Americas first taste of imperialism came about five hundred years ago when Columbus came to America. We fought the pleasant inhabitants and then took over their land making them slaves. Americans over the years have been known to become almost selfish, no matter how much we have we will never be happy until we control the free world.

"The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 defined United States foreign policy in the Americas for the rest of the 19th century and beyond. It declared that the United States had an interest in the Western Hemisphere and the European powers must not meddle in the affairs of any developing nations there. The United States was a young nation in 1823 and did not really have to powers to back up the Monroe Doctrine. However, the policy was used to justify the sending of the U.S. troops into Mexico in 1866 and the purchased of Alaska in 1867". Another case of Imperialism was the United States industrial economy was growing so fast that they were producing more goods than they could consume. The over abundance of industrial goods led the United States to look for new markets. Next the Spanish-American War, which started with the Americans not liking the way that the Spaniards were treating the Cubans. After this an U.S. battleship, the Maine, was docked outside of Havana and all of a sudden exploded from under the sea. At the time no one actually knew the real reason why the ship exploded but many Americans thought that it was the Spaniards. 266 officers and men were lost in the explosion. William McKinley went to congress and asked for permission to send troops to help stop the fighting in Cuba. After a couple of days he was given