The United States had undergone many changes by the late ninteenth century and early twentieth century. As the nation evolved into a world power, they began expanding as a result of different motives and for different reasons than before, such as the desire to imperialize non- adjoining lands while not falling behind other imperial powers and a new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. However, they still retained a noticable portion of their previous expansion characteristics, such as their “mandate from God” and their tendency to mistreat conquered peoples. These differences and similarities indicate that late U.S. expansionism was as much a departure as it was a continuance of its past expansionism.
The industrial revolution had created economic, political, militaristic, humanitarian, and social forces among more powerful nations, and this combined with an increase in technology and confidence drove them to conquer the less developed nations of the world. (Doc. A) Americans may have seen this new imperialism as a threat to their prestige as a country and their naval dominance (Doc C.), and thus they strove to form protectorates in areas such as Latin America and China. Never before had America expanded as a result of competitition, thus this was a departure from their previous reasons for expansion. Moreoever, America was targeting lands which did not border them during the turn of the 20th century, as opposed to what is now Western United States in ealier times.
Perhaps the most drastic departure from early U.S. imperialism was the Roosevelt Corollary, a “redefinition” of the Monroe Doctrine. In earlier times, the Monroe Doctrine had simply been used as a warning to ward of European nations from further colonization of the Western Hemisphere, without any intervention in the affairs of Western nations themselves. But, in the late 19th and early20th centuries, president Theodore Roosevelt added his own interpretation to the Doctrine, and through...