the backing of President McKinley, cans have settled on the mainland,
Congress ratified an annexation to which they have free access and
treaty . In 1959 Hawaii would be- where they enjoy all the political and
come the 50th state .
civil rights of any other citizen of the
To some extent, in Hawaii espe- United States .
cially, economic interests had a role
in American expansion, but to influ-
THE CANAL AND THE
ential policy makers such as Roos-
AMERICAS
evelt, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge,
and Secretary of State John Hay, The war with Spain revived U .S .
and to influential strategists such interest in building a canal across
as Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the isthmus of Panama, uniting the
the main impetus was geostrategic . two great oceans . The usefulness of
For these people, the major dividend such a canal for sea trade had long
of acquiring Hawaii was Pearl Har- been recognized by the major com-
bor, which would become the major mercial nations of the world; the
U .S . naval base in the central Pacific . French had begun digging one in
The Philippines and Guam comple- the late 19th century but had been
mented other Pacific bases — Wake unable to overcome the engineering
Island, Midway, and American Sa- difficulties . Having become a power
moa . Puerto Rico was an important in both the Caribbean Sea and the
foothold in a Caribbean area that Pacific Ocean, the United States saw
was becoming increasingly impor- a canal as both economically benefi-
tant as the United States contemplat- cial and a way of providing speedier
ed a Central American canal .
transfer of warships from one ocean
U .S . colonial policy tended to- to the other .
ward democratic self-government .
At the turn of the century, what
As it had done with the Philippines, is now Panama was the rebellious
in 1917 the U .S . Congress granted northern province of Colombia .
Puerto Ricans the right to elect all When the Colombian legislature in
of their legislators . The same law 1903 refused to ratify a treaty giv-
also made the island officially a U .S . ing the United States the right to
territory and gave its people Ameri- build and manage a canal, a group
can citizenship . In 1950 Congress of impatient Panamanians, with the
granted Puerto Rico complete free- support of U .S . Marines, rose in re-
dom to decide its future . In 1952, bellion and declared Panamanian
the citizens voted to reject either independence . The breakaway coun-
statehood or total independence, try was immediately recognized by
and chose instead a commonwealth President Theodore Roosevelt . Un-
status that has endured despite the der the terms of a treaty signed that
efforts of a vocal separatist move- November, Panama granted the
ment . Large numbers of Puerto Ri- United States a perpetual lease to a
184
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
16-kilometer-wide strip of land (the ence the Mexican revolution and
Panama Canal Zone) between the stop raids into American territory,
Atlantic and the Pacific, in return President Woodrow Wilson sent
for $10 million and a yearly fee of 11,000 troops into the northern part
$250,000 . Colombia later received of the country in a futile effort to
$25 million as partial compensation . capture the elusive rebel and outlaw
Seventy-five years later, Panama and Francisco “Pancho” Villa .
the United States negotiated a new
Exercising its role as the most
treaty . It provided for Panamanian powerful — and most liberal — of
sovereignty in the Canal Zone and Western Hemisphere nations, the
transfer of the canal to Panama on United States also worked to estab-
December 31, 1999 .
lish an institutional basis for coop-
The completion of the Panama eration among the nations of the
Canal in 1914, directed by Colonel Americas . In 1889 Secretary of State
George W . Goethals, was a major James G . Blaine proposed that the 21
triumph of engineering . The simul- independent nations of the Western
taneous conquest of malaria and yel- Hemisphere join in an organization
low fever made it possible and was dedicated to the peaceful settlement
one of the 20th century’s great feats of disputes and to closer econom-
in preventive medicine .
ic bonds . The result was the Pan-
Elsewhere in Latin America, the American Union, founded in 1890
United States fell into a pattern of and known today as the Organiza-
fitful intervention . Between 1900 tion of American States (OAS) .
and 1920, the United States carried
The later administrations of
out sustained interventions in six Herbert Hoover (1929-33) and
Western Hemispheric nations — Franklin D . Roosevelt (1933-45) re-
most notably Haiti, the Dominican pudiated the right of U .S . interven-
Republic, and Nicaragua . Washing- tion in Latin America . In particular,
ton offered a variety of justifications Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy
for these interventions: to establish of the 1930s, while not ending all
political stability and democratic tensions between the United States
government, to provide a favorable and Latin America, helped dissipate
environment for U .S . investment much of the ill-will engendered by
(often called dollar diplomacy), to earlier U .S . intervention and unilat-
secure the sea lanes leading to the eral actions .
Panama Canal, and even to prevent
European countries from forcibly
UNITED STATES AND ASIA
collecting debts . The United States
had pressured the French into re- Newly established in the Philip-
moving troops from Mexico in 1867 . pines and firmly entrenched in Ha-
Half a century later, however, as part waii at the turn of the century, the
of an ill-starred campaign to influ- United States had high hopes for a
185