Comparison Of Manifest Destiny And Jane Addams

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From the traditional masculine point of view, Manifest Destiny provided a strong argument for American imperialism. As “the great nation of futurity,” the United States for many imperialists had a fundamental duty to help heathen countries reach “the star-studded heavens,” and if expansionism also resulted in increased trade and market penetration, all the better. The bloody conflicts peppered throughout this path to heaven – the Spanish-American war, the Philippine-American war, the Boxer Rebellion – were but small hiccups to this fundamental goal, setbacks created by racial inferiors not yet aware of democracy’s beauty.

Yet to progressive reformers such as Jane Addams, Manifest Destiny meant something different. Coming from a more feminine …show more content…

On one hand, Addams’s use of the word not explicitly indicated that foreign countries had the potential to come up with new systems of good governance – systems of governance that could be just as successful as American democracy. Yet on the other hand, the word even, while more nebulous in meaning, could have very well signified a subtle reluctance on Addams’s part to accept this fact. Of course, I concede that Addams may have used the word even innocuously in an attempt to remind provincial American listeners that non-Anglo-Saxon forms of governance did, in fact, even exist. But other phrases in her speech support my original interpretation. In fact, given her steadfast belief in democracy and her repeated pleas for listeners to “do our work [with natives] on the highest plane,” Addams likely saw American democracy as an institution so exceptional that it had an obligation to reach a higher moral plane by transcending the narrow-mindedness of rival European countries. In other words, while Addams may have viewed some features of other civilizations as worth emulating, I argue that she saw …show more content…

Through her work with immigrants, Addams began to believe quite strongly in the power of these newcomers to contribute to American democracy, and this realization that a variety of foreign ideas could prove healthy for democracy became especially evident in her comments concerning the “great value” of certain non-Anglo-Saxon goods and ideas. Yet Addams’s past as a progressive female reformer did not merely affect her views on imperialism. It also lent her a unique idea of America’s Manifest Destiny. In fact, I argue in the next paragraph that Addams envisioned America’s Manifest Destiny not as the seeking of new markets or lands but rather as the development of a moral and ideological frontier – a moral frontier grounded in the very underpinnings of American

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