Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization

4. U.S. Domestic Developments and Social Imperialism, 1850s–1890s

CHAPTER 4 , u.s. Domestic Developments and Social Imperialism 1850s-1890s -..;::{ Two developments marked the U.S. political economy during the late nineteenth century. The steady incorporation ofthe west and the rapid growth ofa technologically and industrially based economy shaped modern America. These urban, industrial centers demanded ever more labor, so immigrants (and domestic migrants) helped form an urban society. Although slavery was eliminated in the south, the nation remained racist toward blacks and Hispanics and added powerful ethnic prejudices toward the new Catholic, Orthodox , and Jewish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe (and Asians). The continuous tension within late-nineteenth-century U.S. society encouraged expansion as a response to the recurring domestic problems ofrecession, social discontent, labor wars, widespread poverty, and political corruption. During the Civil War, the Republican government had adopted many liberal, free-market changes to facilitate economic growth. These changes replaced older mercantilistic forms. With much of the population shifting from rural to urban areas, wealth and power were concentrated in a few, largely urban dwellers, while the bulk of the U.S. population lagged behind. The tensions in U.S. society erupted into mounting violence, crime, and disorder. Increasingly, the leaders of the U.S. political economy presumed that social imperialism would alleviate domestic disorder and facilitate even more rapid accumulation for the few. The secession crisis and the Civil War signaled the changing of the guard, or in this case the creation and distribution of wealth and power. In the 1840s and 1850s, demographic and material growth in the north threatened the southern way of life economically (a liberal economic order) and politically (a liberal social and political order). Some southerners sought 54 Uncle Sam's War of 1898 to ameliorate domestic tensions through the social imperialism response of filibustering, or military adventuring. Many southern leaders suspected that slavery would be rejected in the newly opened land in the west, so they urged either separation or expansion to the south- Mexico, the Caribbean islands (especially Cuba), or Central America. The Civil War resolved the struggle over whether slavery would extend into the west. After the conflict, the GulfCaribbean remained a target, but new types of expansionists-railroad magnates , agrarian businessmen, canal enthusiasts, merchant capitalists -demanded easier access to the fabled wealth of the Gulf-Caribbean and Asia. Parts of U.S. society considered social imperialism the proper tool to pursue U.S. objectives in the Gulf-Caribbean area. Social imperialism defined a link between metropole and periphery in which the preservation of wellbeing and security in the metropole rested on its ability to ameliorate domestic social woes through ties to the periphery. Obviously migration and labor supply, cheap food and raw materials, factors ofscale, and markets for production , capital, and technology impacted social relations in the political economy. For example, one could control disorder from low wages and unemployment with cheap food and raw materials because these factors lowered the cost of living for the poorly paid workers without wage increases. Commonly in the last halfofthe nineteenth century, intellectual or political leaders argued that the alleviation of domestic problems needed foreign activity.l The highly respected scientist and onetime Confederate naval officer Matthew Fontaine Maury prescribed a course ofempire that Columbus knew and southern leaders should have heeded. Maury envisioned transit to the Pacific as vital: "I regard the Pacific railroad and a commercial thoroughfare across the Isthmus as . . . parts of the great whole which . . . is to effect a revolution in the course of trade.... Those two works ... are not only necessary fully to develop the immense resources of the Mississippi valley ... but ... their completion would place the United States on the summit level of commerce." The isthmus region was, in his view, the "barrier that separates us from the markets ofsix hundred millions ofpeople- three fourths ofthe population ofthe earth.... and this country is placed midway between Europe and Asia; this [circum-Caribbean region1becomes the centre ofthe world and the focus of the world's commerce."2 Maury's geopolitics touched visionaries and money-grubbers alike across the United States. Liberal ideology and technological innovations offered new ways to realize Maury's prophesy. This perspective illuminates why the Gulf-Caribbean attracted such intense international competition in the Civil War. The Civil u.s. Domestic Developments ss War and Reconstruction era separates much ofthe New World from much of the Old in the international conflict between liberalism and conservatism. Liberalism, expressed...