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Europeans were not the only powers to scramble for new opportunities in the rest of the world at the end of the 19th century

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e.g. in Africa

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Americans had joined this project as well

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although it held back from formal colonization

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as in the type Europe was engaging in

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Hawaii

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in one sense a colony before they became a state

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Puerto Rico

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avoided formal colonization

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tried to rely on market forces to incorporate an American order into their areas

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instead of formally annexed territories to the American inland, relied on informal mechanisms

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by 1914 the United States exported capital to the rest of the world

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80% direct foreign investment to its neighbors

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companies played this role

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The United Fruit company

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producer of bananas

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from Central America and from Colombia

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to American consumers through the ports of New Orleans and New York

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the forerunner of Chiquita Bananas

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known in Central America as "el pulpo", or the octopus

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because of its tentacular presence

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produced a recipe book in order to market the consumption of this new tropical commodity

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a harbinger of things to come

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invariably drew the United States into formal entanglements with political neighbors

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1898 Spanish-American War

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first time United States went to war with a European power since 1812

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Europe's oldest empire running up against Neoeurope's first empire

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a collision of models

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Spain had a few remaining colonies

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the Philippines

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Puerto Rico

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Cuba

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Cuba and the Philippines

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increasing agitation for independence from Spain

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the United States imagined itself as a savior to rescue those who were struggling to free themselves from this old empire

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the U.S. press painted Spain as a venal and corrupt Old World empire

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showed Uncle Sam rescuing Cuba, represented as a child, from a crocodile

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the press played a role in showing how the United States could move into foreign markets as an ethical model

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this was unlike what the Europeans were deploying in Africa

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the United States could portray itself as ethically committed to freeing the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spanish tyranny

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many of the insurgents of these countries were beginning to win their struggle against Spain

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the U.S. feared that the instability would pose a threat to the United States

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particularly in Cuba

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therefore the 1898 war

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a very quick defeat of the Spanish

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the Treaty of Paris

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led to the freedom of Spain's last colonies

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these possessions would pass to informal U.S. control

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as in Berlin with the Africa conference, there was no Cuban, Puerto Rican or Filipino present

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the U.S. had to consider what to do in these places

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embroiled in local guerilla warfare

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much debate whether the United States was becoming an empire just like Europe

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Woodrow Wilson

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Empire could lead to a corrosion of the American constitution

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news of violence and carnage being released in the warfare of these far away places

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Philippines

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American troops and Filipino insurgents

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press core getting pictures back to the American population

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consternation as to what to do

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forced American to rethink the purpose of their empire and their power over these countries

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Rudyard Kipling

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witnessed the American anxieties about empire in newly independent areas of the world

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McClure's Magazine: "The White Man's Burden"

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Subtitle: The United States and the Philippines

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you're sacrificing yourself for others

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"fill forth the mouth of famine"

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watch heathen folly

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evoking the relationship between empire and race

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the moral purpose of expansion and this new language of uplift

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this colonial rhetoric fueled Cuban and Philippine nationalism

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a war of the poets

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