Americas in the world — US expansionism (History (2028+) HL)

In 1880, the USA barely looked beyond its own coastline. By 1914, it had colonies in the Pacific and the Caribbean, and it was telling Latin American governments how to run their finances.

That is a huge shift. Historians group the reasons into four buckets: political, economic, social, and ideology. A good Paper 3 essay uses all four — and argues about which mattered most.

The concept lens: cause and consequence: This whole micro is a cause-and-consequence story. Multiple causes combined (they didn't act alone), and each cause had knock-on consequences — a war, a doctrine, a diplomatic style. Always ask: which cause is doing the real work here, and which is just background noise?

One writer shaped this thinking more than almost anyone: naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan. His argument was simple but powerful — a nation cannot be a great power without a strong navy, and a strong navy needs overseas coaling stations and bases to operate far from home.

Mahan's ideas directly influenced the buildup of the US battleship fleet in the 1890s, and the drive to acquire Hawaii, Samoa, and eventually the Philippines.

Debate: which factor was decisive?: Some historians stress economics — overproduction genuinely worried business leaders, and expansion followed the money (Cuba, Central America, Asian markets). Others stress ideology and political prestige — the US did not need the Philippines economically, but taking it satisfied a hunger for status as a world power. For your essay: argue that the factors were mutually reinforcing rather than picking just one 'winner'.

Cuba had been fighting for independence from Spain since 1895. Spain's response was brutal — hundreds of thousands of Cuban civilians died in reconcentration camps meant to cut off support to rebels.

American newspapers, especially those owned by Pulitzer and Hearst, exaggerated Spanish cruelty to sell papers — a style nicknamed 'yellow journalism'. It whipped up American public sympathy for Cuba and hostility to Spain.

That last step is where the real controversy lives. Cuba's 1901 constitution had to include the Platt Amendment, a US-written condition letting Washington intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it judged Cuban independence 'threatened', and giving the US a naval base at Guantánamo Bay.

So Cuba was independent on paper, but a protectorate in practice.

Use both sides: A strong 'to what extent' essay on 1898 should never say the war was purely humanitarian OR purely imperialist. The Teller Amendment shows real anti-colonial sentiment; the Platt Amendment and the Philippines annexation show that sentiment did not survive contact with strategic interest.

After 1898, three different presidents tried three different styles of controlling the Americas without formally colonizing them. Same broad goal — US dominance in the hemisphere — but very different methods.

Theodore Roosevelt: big stick diplomacy (1901–09)

Roosevelt's motto was 'speak softly and carry a big stick' — negotiate, but always with a credible threat of military force behind you. In 1904, after European powers threatened to use force to collect debts from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, Roosevelt announced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

It claimed the US itself had the right to intervene in Latin American states' affairs — to act as a hemispheric 'police power' — specifically to head off European intervention.

Panama, 1903: Roosevelt's style is clearest in Panama. When Colombia refused a canal treaty, the US backed a Panamanian independence revolt, then quickly signed a canal treaty with the new Panamanian government on terms Colombia had rejected. The Panama Canal (completed 1914) became a symbol of US power — and of how far 'big stick' methods could go.

William Taft: dollar diplomacy (1909–13)

Taft argued that using money, not marines, could achieve the same goal more cheaply. Dollar diplomacy meant encouraging US banks to lend to Latin American and Asian governments, tying those countries' finances (and therefore their politics) to Washington.

In practice, this was not peaceful at all — the US still sent troops to Nicaragua in 1912 to protect American financial interests when a loan-backed government was threatened.

Woodrow Wilson: moral diplomacy (from 1913)

Wilson rejected both approaches on principle, promising to support only governments that were legitimate and democratic — not ones just useful to US business. This was moral diplomacy.

But Wilson's actions often contradicted his words: he sent US troops into Mexico (1914, 1916), Haiti (1915), and the Dominican Republic (1916) — arguably more military interventions in Latin America than either Roosevelt or Taft.

The core debate to weigh: All three presidents used different language, but arguably the same underlying goal: keep Latin America inside a US sphere of influence and out of European hands. A strong essay asks whether these were three genuinely different policies, or one continuous policy wearing three different labels.