Expansionism Dbq Essay

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During the late 19th and early 20th century, US expansionism used the same basic principle but was different from earlier expansionism in the way of geography, economics, and politics. They continued to believe that they had a God-given right to branch out. However, they expanded this Manifest Destiny so that, instead of looking just to expand and conquer the West, they were looking to conquer the entire world. Earlier, the United States had gained more land in the same vicinity and wanted to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After completing this task, rather than settling down, they continued to try and gain more land, this time into different places including Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines. Another thing that came off of the early expansionism was the economic reasoning. A multitude of people were interested in settling in the West to help promote ranching and agriculture. A large reason became competition with European imperialist powers. The US was in a position where it had to preserve trade with foreign countries, especially China, and gain some territory before it was all conquered by other countries. The United States was not capable of keeping any sort of productive market for their goods. Another change from the initial expansionism was in the category of politics, in the justification for expansion. Before, they believed in Manifest Destiny, the right that god gave them to conquer foreign land, few had been against this. Now, they expanded on that notion to encompass the world, saying that it was their "duty" to help lower nations. There was opposition in the form of Anti-Imperialists and they rose to this. In this way, expansionism was mainly a departure, only keeping a single idea, in terms of geography, economics, and politics. In their new expansion, the US decided to move from North America to land elsewhere in the
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