Name: __________________________________________         Date: __________________        Period: ________________

Source A

“Alfred Thayer Mahan was a prominent naval officer who wrote The Influence of Sea Power upon History in 1890, which argued that no nation could prosper without a large fleet of ships engaged in international trade, protected by a powerful navy operating from overseas bases. Mahan published his book the same year that the census bureau announced that there was no longer a clear line separating settled from unsettled land. Thus, the frontier no longer existed.” – Foner, Eric Give Me Liberty! An American History, Volume 2.

“The United States Looking Outward”

Alfred Thayer Mahan. The Atlantic Monthly, 1890. Retrieved from: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1890/12/the-united-states-looking-outward/306348/

Adapted by Mr. Reed, February 21, 2016

1. Our self-imposed isolation in the matter of markets, and the decline of our shipping interest in the last thirty years, have coincided singularly with an actual remoteness of this continent from the life of the rest of the world.

[…]

2. To protect and develop its own, each nation will seek points of support and means of influence in a quarter where the United States has always been jealously sensitive to the intrusion of European powers. The precise value of the Monroe doctrine is very loosely understood by most Americans, but the effect of the familiar phrase has been to develop a national sensitiveness, which is a more frequent cause of war than material interests…

[…]

3. They look to the near future. Among the islands and on the mainland there are many positions of great importance, held now by weak or unstable states. Is the United States willing to see them sold to a powerful rival? But what right will she invoke against the transfer? She can allege but one, that of her reasonable policy supported by her might.

[…]

4. Whether they will or no, Americans must now begin to look outward. The growing production of the country demands it. An increasing volume of public sentiment demands it. The position of the United States, between the two Old Worlds and the two great oceans, makes the same claim, which will soon be strengthened by the creation of the new link joining the Atlantic and Pacific. The tendency will be maintained and increased by the growth of the European colonies in the Pacific, by the advancing civilization of Japan, and by the rapid peopling of our Pacific States with men who have all the aggressive spirit of the advanced line of national progress.

[…]

5. The military needs of the Pacific States…requires underlying military readiness, like the proverbial iron hand under the velvet glove. To provide this, three things are needful: First, protection of the chief harbors by fortifications and coast-defense ships, which gives defensive strength, provides security to the community within, and supplies the bases necessary to all military operations. Secondly, naval force, the arm of offensive power, which alone enables a country to extend its influence outward. Thirdly, it should be an inviolable resolution of our national policy that no European state should henceforth acquire a coaling position within three thousand miles of San Francisco,—a distance which includes the Sandwich and Galapagos islands and the coast of Central America. For fuel is the life of modern naval war; it is the food of the ship; without it the modern monsters of the deep die of inaction.

Source B

“The Congregational minister Josiah Strong promoted both the Social Gospel – a desire, grounded in religious belief, to solve the nation’s social problems – and an updated version of manifest destiny and American expansionism strongly connected to ideas of racial superiority and a Christian missionary impulse.” - Foner, Eric Give Me Liberty! An American History, Volume 2.

“Our Country”

Josiah Strong, 1885. Retrieved from: http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~ppennock/doc-JStrong.htm

1. “It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world's future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet to-day on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken.
2. The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history-the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it-the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization-having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can any one doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the "survival of the fittest?
3. Some of the stronger races, doubtless, may be able to preserve their integrity; but, in order to compete with the Anglo-Saxon, they will probably be forced to adopt his methods an instruments, his civilization and his religion.”

Source C

“The depression that began in 1893 heightened the belief that a more aggressive foreign policy was necessary to stimulate American exports. Fears of economic and ethnic disunity fueled an assertive nationalism. In the face of social conflict and the new immigration, government and private organizations in the 1890’s promoted a unifying patriotism. These were the years when rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance and the practice for the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” came into existence. Communities began to honor “Flag Day,” which ultimately became an official holiday in 1916.”

Pledge of Allegiance

George Balch, 1887

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Pledge of Allegiance

Changed, 1892-1923

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Source D

The White Man’s Burden refers to a poem written by British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book). His poem urged the United States to take up the “burden” of empire by becoming involved in international affairs.

“The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling).” Victor Gillam, Judge, April 1, 1899.

Source: The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

Source E

White Man’s Burden

“The first step towards lightening The White Man’s Burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness.

Pear’s Soap is a potent factor in brightening the dark corners of the earth as civilization advances, while among the cultured of all nations it holds the highest place – it is the ideal toilet soap.”