Two Cases About Empire
Four imperialist arguments
- Imperialists cited economic opportunities, racial theories, competition with European empires, and the perception in the 1890s that the western frontier was "closed" to argue that Americans were destined to expand their culture and institutions to peoples around the globe.
- Four grounds: economic, racial, competitive, and the closed frontier — the last is a claim about running out of somewhere to go.
- Destined echoes 5.2's Manifest Destiny, now aimed overseas rather than at the Pacific coast.
Select all four imperialist grounds the CED names.
'Destined' echoes 5.2's Manifest Destiny, aimed overseas.
Three anti-imperialist arguments
- Anti-imperialists cited principles of self-determination and invoked both racial theories and the U.S. foreign policy tradition of isolationism to argue that the United States should not extend its territory overseas.
- Three grounds: self-determination, racial theories, and isolationism.
- The middle one is the crucial detail — racial theories appear on both sides, which means race did not determine the position.
Select all three anti-imperialist grounds.
The middle one appears on both sides.
Similarities and differences
- The objective asks for similarities and differences in attitudes about the nation's proper role in the world.
- Similarity: both sides invoked racial theories, and both argued from American principles rather than from foreign models.
- Difference: one read those principles as a mandate to extend institutions; the other as a bar to ruling people without consent.
Imperialist, anti-imperialist, or shared?
Sort each argument by the side that made it.
Racial theories were invoked by both sides.
So race did not determine the position.
Racial theories appear on both sides of the CED's argument. Imperialists cited them, and anti-imperialists invoked both racial theories and the U.S. foreign policy tradition of isolationism — so race did not determine the position, and an answer that assumes it did has misread the sentence.
Self-determination makes overseas rule a founding problem because 3.4 grounded government in...
So anti-imperialists could argue from patriotism.
Self-determination against the founding
- 3.4's Declaration grounded government in consent, so ruling a people who did not consent is a founding problem, not merely a preference.
- That is why anti-imperialists could argue from patriotism rather than against it.
- And 7.3 will name the suppression of a nationalist movement in the Philippines, which is exactly the case they anticipated.
Put the structure of a two-sided comparison in order.
7.11 asks the same objective again — learn the structure once.
Writing a two-sided comparison
- Give one argument from each side, then the shared premise, then the point where they diverge.
- The shared premise is what makes the comparison sharp, and here it is unusually clear: both used racial theories.
- 7.11 asks the same objective again for the interwar years, so this structure is worth learning once and reusing.
Two people can start from the same doubtful premise and reach opposite policies: one concludes that a difference justifies rule, the other that it makes rule unworkable. The premise is shared; only the inference differs.
Imperialists cited economic opportunities, racial theories, competition with European empires, and the perception in the 1890s that the western frontier was "closed" to argue that Americans were destined to expand their culture and institutions to peoples around the globe. Anti-imperialists cited principles of self-determination and invoked both racial theories and the U.S. foreign policy tradition of isolationism to argue that the United States should not extend its territory overseas.