The Global Reach of Manifest Destiny a lecture by Harry Franqui-Rivera American Progress by John Gast.

The Global Reach of Manifest Destinya lecture by Harry Franqui-Rivera

American Progress by John Gast

Tenets of “Manifest Destiny”• The war with Mexico opened talks of “our right to our manifest destiny” to

overspread and posses the whole continent, which “providence has given us to spread liberty and federated self-government.” (The Morning Star Dec. 27, 1845) Jack O’Sullivan

• Manifest Destiny can be seen as a Nation-Building project with a peculiar form of social, economic and spatial openness.

Manifest Destiny would eventually become a combination of religious beliefs and a racial pseudo-scientific discourse that held that the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race was to deliver the world from obscurity.

U.S. Westward Expansion

The End of the Frontier?

• The U.S. Census Bureau announced the end of the frontier in 1890, followed by the worst recession ever experienced by the country (1893-97).

• In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner in The Significance of the Frontier in American History announced the end of a formative era and the beginning of a new age. It was time for the Anglo-Saxon reunion under American leadership.

The Manifest Destiny of the 1890s Extra Continental Expansion & Worldwide Mission

Religious Matrix to give it a Sense of Exceptional MissionReverend Josiah Strong’s Our Country, Its Possible Future and its Present Crisis

Pseudo-Scientific Racial DiscourseJohn Fiske Conquering civilization and retreating barbarism

John Burges Aryanism or Teutonism

Popular WritingTheodore Roosevelt’s The Winning of the West 1885-94

Economic Need for Expansion: Andrew Carnegie Peaceful Expansion and Industrial Competition

Military Bases to protect the Free-Access to Ultramarine MarketsCaptain Alfred T. Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History.

Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan• The impact of Mahan on the development

of U.S. foreign policy is infinite.

Theodore Roosevelt

Senators Henry Cabot Lodge

John Hay, Secretary of State under President William McKinley.

• In addition, in 1902, Mahan was elected President of the American Historical Association.

• Presided over the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis

Uplifting the World • Civilization• Freedom• Peace

Kindred Spirits• Industry• Wealth• Colonial Success• Invincibility

Uncle Sam and John Bull, Liberty and Victoria and the Anglo-Saxon reunion in the Pacific.

February 15, 1898 Havana Harbor

While a brutal war of independence rages in Cuba the U.S.S. Maine explodes in Havana Harbor and the U.S. goes to war with Spain.

Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898As a result of the war with Spain, the United States gained full control over Puerto Rico, Guam,Wake Island, and the Philippines, and limited control – by the Teller Amendment - over Cuba.

A Critique?

Bringing peace to the “Damsels in Distress”, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines

Uncle Sam and the New Territories

Note that the new territories are depicted as Black Infants, while Uncle Sam and the rest of the world are shown as white adults.

Disenchantment with the Racial Composition of the “New Territories”

Regarding the new colonies, Mahan argued that the U.S. should follow the “beneficial and parent-like approach of the British instead of the inhumanly oppressive Spanish model” for “alien subjects were still in race-childhood.”

• February 16, 1899: President McKinley accepted the “burden of the Philippines, to safeguard the happiness of their inhabitants,” as he proclaimed a campaign of benevolent assimilation.

• The occupation forces were entrusted with establishing a judicial and legal system, building sanitation projects, opening schools, and to setting up municipal and local governments.

This kind of “compassionate uplifting”, first proposed by Mahan, became one of the precepts of American intervention in the Caribbean and would become the basis for intervention worldwide.

The model for U.S. intervention and global colonization was set during the Cuban-Filipino-Spanish-American War of 1898

Uncle Sam sharing John Bull’s “White Man Burden” amid oppression, ignorance, vice and the overpopulation of the “uncivilized” territories under their tutelage

Puerto Ricans in the U.S. Military

• 1899 Battalion of Puerto Rican Volunteers

• 1900 Porto Rico United States Volunteers Regiment

• 1901Puerto Ricans replace all Continental Americans troops garrisoning the island

• March 11, 1901, Charles H. Allen, first appointed U.S. civil Governor of Puerto Rico, to U.S. Secretary of War, Elihu Root:

“It was advisable to make the Porto Rico Regiment of Volunteers a permanent outfit…” “…native troops, under the command of continental officers, would be adequate to garrison the island.

• Commenting on the troops loyalty Allen wrote: “They have been tried in almost every emergency except that of meeting in arms people of their own country.” “WHETER OR NOT THEY WOULD BE FOUND WANTING AT SUCH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT, SHOULD IT EVER ARISE, I DO NOT FEEL COMPETENT TO SAY”.

Allen continues: • “But it can be said that in many discussions on the subject with the officers that

they would be loyal to the sovereignty of the U.S. and implicitly obey the orders of their commanding officers. As an arm of safety their presence is therefore desirable.”

The question, whether they would fight against their fellow countrymen, would not have to be answered until 1950

The much anticipated confrontation between the Nationalists and the Puerto Rico National Guard took place in October 30-November 1, 1950.