This lecture covers American expansion and foreign policy from the Civil War through the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s book titled The Influence of Sea Power offered a new way of thinking about America’s place in the world. The nation acquired a naval base in Samoa, and powerful American planters intervened in domestic Hawaiian affairs that ultimately resulted in the annexation of the islands. The lecture places a particular emphasis on Spanish-American War and the tensions in Cuba that led to that war. The war against Spain caused the United States to take control of the Philippines and then fight a war with Filipino nationalists to maintain a presence there. Efforts to promote conditions favorable to U.S. trade included Secretary Hay’s Open Door policy for China, President Theodore Roosevelt’s “big stick” diplomacy, the occupation of the Panama Canal Zone, and the mediation between Russia and Japan. The lecture concludes with a discussion of President Wilson’s intervention in Mexico, which would be overtaken by the threat of the First World War taking shape in Europe
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