19th Century American Imperialism

The time period from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century is known as the Age of Imperialism. During this era, countries began to carve empires for themselves and compete against each other to create their own respective territories. The influence on history of what the nineteenth century came to call ‘imperialism’ was known to be the positive advocacy of particular forms of their supremacy (Roberts, p. 83). Imperialism is when a nation or empire extends their culture and political system through overseas control of conquered lands. Different colonial regimes all have their own special impacts, contributing to the world’s cultural landscape. Even though they had different forms of imperialism, the United States and England both

The United States had its part in expansion throughout history. U.S. imperialism differed in economic importance and size from British imperialism. The Americans have always been skeptical when it came to acquiring territory (Roberts, p. 103). Americans had not been recognized for their imperial activities when packaged as a ‘Manifest Destiny’ (Roberts, p. 103). The U.S.-controlled territories contributed greatly to the U.S. economy; such is the case with Hawaiian businessmen who were heavily involved in the annexation of Hawaii because Hawaii’s profitable sugarcane business and growing climate. In 1898, Hawaii became annexed by the United States, a political move that created new trades and economic playing fields for the ‘mother’ country. Elsewhere in the Pacific, Guam had gone to the United States peacefully, while in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico became American territory and Cuba obtained independence on terms that its domination by the United States was certain. American claimed to enter the

Unlike the U.S. empire, the British empire was mammoth in size, spanning continents. European nations like Great Britain were in constant struggle not to let other empire nations from becoming more powerful through imperialism and domination of resources and land. “In 1906 a colonial conference in London decided that the name ‘Dominion’ should in future be used for the British self-governing dependencies, which meant, in effect, the colonies of white settlement” (Roberts, 94). The growth of humanitarian and missionaries in England and the Colonial Office tradition of distrust of settler demands made it difficult to oversee the native populations of the British colonies than it had been for the nineteenth-century Americans who flooded into the unorganized west and the lands acquired from Mexico after the Louisiana Purchase (Roberts, p. 94). Much of the British expansion in India in the nineteenth century was spent by soldiers and statesmen in search of viable frontiers by overthrowing overawing, or patronizing native rulers (Roberts, p. 87). The same trend of British acquisition reflected a growing British preoccupation with sea routes to Asia and a spreading involvement in India. The Raj was already the centerpiece of the British Empire and transportations with it gave the Near East new importance (Roberts, p. 88). The British had begun taking over Egypt in 1879 without formally contesting the