Sources of U. S. Imperialism

This book is concerned with explaining America’s sudden turn to overt imperial expansion in 1898-99 through the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines. One might immediately ask why this is a historical problem since there can be no doubt that one of the dominant themes of earlier American history had been that of territorial expansion across the North American continent. By and large, however, Americans tended to perceive this early expansion as the conquest of land and not of people. The early vision of America’s manifest destiny involved free white people moving out into a fertile empty space which God had ordained as the home of a unique, liberal, individualistic society.

The problem was, however, that people did already exist on this supposedly virgin land— the American Indians. Little if any sustained effort was made by Americans to absorb the Indians or their land into the United States. Of course, the fact that the American Indians had a tribal cu...