DP Guide Topic Outline
This section focuses on the impact of modernization in the region on foreign policy, including an exploration of the involvement of the region in the First World War. Modernization shaped the new nations, and its effects created the basis for a major shift in the foreign policies of the region. By the end of the 19th century, for example, the United States played a more active role in world affairs and in the affairs of Latin America in particular, thus transforming inter-American relations. When the First World War ended, its impact was felt in the economic, social and foreign policies of the participating countries.
• United States’ expansionist foreign policies: political, economic, social and ideological reasons
• Spanish–American War (1898): causes and effects
• Impact of United States’ foreign policies: the Big Stick; Dollar Diplomacy; moral diplomacy
• United States and the First World War: from neutrality to involvement; reasons for US entry into the First World War; Wilson’s peace ideals and the struggle for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles in the United States; significance of the war for the United States’ hemispheric status
• Involvement of either Canada or one Latin American country in the First World War: nature of, and reasons for, involvement
• Impact of the First World War on any two countries of the Americas: economic, political, social and foreign policies
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This cartoon is a humorous and witty depiction of American imperialism in the late 19th century. In the cartoon, Uncle Sam – a symbol of American democracy – is being served at a restaurant, in which the menu lists specific countries as food options. The waiter is President William McKinley (1897 – 1901), who is primarily associated with America’s era of imperialism in the early 1900s. The bill of fare consists of nations targeted by the United States during this era as prospective territories within which it would spread American democratic ideology as a remedy for the political and social strife that plundered these nations at the time.
This cartoon shows the attitude of the United States toward the Cuban rebellion, before the Spanish-American War. While Columbia (representing the American people) reaches out to help a chained Cuban child, Uncle Sam (representing the US government) is blindfolded. From Judge Magazine, February 6, 1897 issue
Hit him hard! President McKinley
"Mosquitoes seem to be worse here in the Philippines than they were in Cuba"
(Judge: Grant Hamilton February 4, 1899)
The Minneapolis Tribune prints this cartoon which at the bottom states “The Senate Philippine Bill offers great inducements to the bad Filipino.” The picture shows the “savage” Filipino as bad and at the bottom of the pit. He is surrounded by reptiles and other animals that are labeled hunger, disease, the water torture, and all kinds of trouble. While the “civilized” Filipino is labeled good on the other side of the wall next to a flag that reads peace, lands for the people, public improvements, public education, prosperity. Everything with the “bad Filipino” are negative connotations of words, while the “good Filipino” who followed the Americans is labeled with positive connotation words.
As part of the terms that ended the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States gained control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba. While many Americans decried imperial expansion, many others welcomed it. One of the debates that emerged about American imperial expansion was what to do with the newly acquired territories. Reflecting the racial attitudes of the time, some worried that the natives in areas where America was expanding could not handle self-government and would require some degree of long term American control. In this cartoon, Uncle Sam is using a switch to separate unruly children in a classroom labeled a “Cuban Ex-patriot” and a “Guerilla.” One of Cuba’s revolutionary figures, Jose Miguel Gomez sits to the side, while Filipino Insurrectionist Emilio Aguinaldo stands in the corner wearing a dunce cap. Sitting together on the right are two well-behaved little girls, Puerto Rico and Hawaii, which became a US territory in July 1898, the culmination of several years of debate independent from the Spanish-American conflict.