Chapter 19 Key Terms Flashcards
imperialism
The use of diplomatic or military force to extend a nation’s power and enhance its economic interests, often by acquiring territory or colonies and justifying such behavior with assumptions of race superiority.
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783
Historical work in which Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that a nation’s greatness and prosperity come from the power of its navy; the book helped bolster imperialist in the United States in the late nineteenth century.
yellow journalism
A type of news reporting, epitomized in the 1890s by the newspaper empires of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, that intentionally manipulates public opinion through sensational headlines, illustrations, and articles about real and invented events
U.S. battleship Maine
American warship that exploded in the Cuban port of Havana on February 15, 1898; though later discovered to be the result of an accident, the destruction of the Maine was initially attributed by war-hungry Americans to Spain, contributing to the onset of the Spanish-American War.
de Lome letter (1898)
Private correspondence written by the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Depuy de Lome, that described President McKinley as “weak’; the letter was stolen by Cuban revolutionaries and published in the New York Journal in 1898, deepening American sentiment of Spain and moving the two countries closer to war in Cuba.
Teller Amendment
Addition to the congressional war resolution of April 20, 1898, which marked the U.S. entry into the war with Spain; the amendment declared that the United States’ goal in entering the war was to ensure Cuba’s independence, not to annex Cuba as a territory
Rough Riders
The First Volunteer Calvary, led in the Spanish-American War by Theodore Roosevelt; victorious in their only engagement, the Battle of San Juan Hill
American Anti-Imperialist League
Coalition of anti-imperialist groups united in 1899 to protest American territorial expansion, especially in the Philippine Islands; its membership included prominent politicians, industrialists, labor leaders, and social reformers.
Open Door policy
Official U.S. assertion that Chinese trade would be open to all nations; Secretary of State John Hay unilaterally announced the policy in 1899 in hopes of protecting the Chinese market for U.S. exports
Roosevelt Corollary
President Roosevelt’s revision (1904) of the Monroe Doctrine (1823) in which he argued that the United States could use military force in Central and South America to prevent European nations from intervening in the Western Hemisphere.
dollar diplomacy
Practice advocated by President Theodore Roosevelt in which the U.S. government fostered American investments in less developed nations and the used U.S. military force to protect those investments.
