America's Road to Becoming a World Superpower
This paper explores how the United States pursued world superpower status in the early twentieth century through its colonization of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War. It analyzes the primary arguments in favor of expansionism — including security interests, the Monroe Doctrine, Protestant missionary duty, and economic opportunity — alongside opposing views rooted in constitutional objections, humanitarian concerns, and, ironically, competing forms of racial reasoning. The paper concludes that American imperialism was fundamentally driven by Anglo-Saxon supremacist ideology and paternalistic ethnocentrism, and that its implementation involved documented human rights abuses, undermining the very civilizational ideals used to justify colonial rule.
- Introduction: Overview of U.S. path to superpower status
- Arguments for American Colonialism: Security, religion, and economic justifications for expansion
- Arguments Against Colonization: Racial, legal, and humanitarian opposition to colonialism
- Documented Abuses and Constitutional Objections: Congressional testimony on torture and rights violations
- Conclusion: Thesis confirmed through irony and Mark Twain
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper presents a balanced dialectical structure, giving clear weight to both pro- and anti-expansionist voices before arriving at a supported conclusion.
- It draws on primary sources — congressional testimony, political speeches, and literary commentary — to ground its historical claims in period-specific voices.
- The irony that both pro- and anti-colonialist arguments were rooted in racial thinking is identified and used effectively to complicate a simplistic narrative.
- Mark Twain's closing quotation provides a rhetorically resonant final image that reinforces the paper's central thesis.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the use of counterargument and concession — a core academic writing technique. Rather than ignoring voices that oppose the thesis, the paper engages them directly, even noting that some objections share the same ideological flaws as the positions they critique. This strengthens rather than weakens the argument, showing analytical sophistication.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing introduction that states its thesis about racism and paternalism. Two body sections follow in dialectical form: one presents arguments for colonialism (security doctrine, religious duty, economic gain), and another presents arguments against (constitutional grounds, humanitarian concerns, labor interests). A separate section examines documented abuses. The conclusion synthesizes these threads and returns to the thesis, anchored by a Mark Twain quotation.
Introduction
This paper examines America's route to becoming a world superpower, as seen through the United States' acquisition of the Philippines as a colony in the early twentieth century. It explores the many reasons both for and against the colonization of the Philippines. Ultimately, this paper argues that the road to becoming a world power was paved with arguments rooted in racism and ethnocentrism, as well as a paternalistic attitude toward societies whose values differed from those of traditional Americans.
Arguments for American Colonialism
Enshrined in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine was originally intended to prevent intervention by European powers. However, in the late nineteenth century, that same doctrine was reinterpreted to justify aggressive intervention by the United States itself. This policy of expansionist colonialism represented a significant departure from previous foreign policies, which had been based on coastal defense. The new century brought a changing global vision of American security. Previously, the thought of an army and militia coming to the rescue was sufficient to make the American government feel secure. By the 1890s, however, the age of "big navies" meant that imperialist countries such as the United States could be threatened by conflicts occurring far from its shores — including the Philippine War for independence from Spanish colonizers.
Thus, after avoiding international conflict for its first hundred years of existence, the United States joined the race for world power status in a bid to acquire colonies in Asia. One significant result of this shift in foreign policy was the vicious war that the United States waged in the Philippines from 1899 to 1903.
Aside from justifying expansionism on the basis of perceived security threats, many Americans viewed colonialism as the natural duty of their nation. Josiah Strong, author of Our Country, expressed the conviction that as a superior, civilized people, Anglo-Saxons had a duty to ensure "that all men may be lifted up into the light of the highest Christian civilization." In this argument, the Protestant Christianity of the United States was cast as the epitome of civilization — in contrast to what was characterized as the backward religions practiced in the Philippines, including Catholicism in areas previously controlled by Spain and Islam in the south.
In addition to this sense of sovereign duty, the acquisition of colonies promised significant economic advantage. Republican Senator Albert Beveridge argued that beyond bringing the light of civilization to lesser cultures, the United States stood to benefit enormously from colonization. Having already acquired Hawaii and Puerto Rico, Beveridge reasoned that the Philippines represented "the gates to Asia," and that "coaling stations are to be ours at the very least." The opening of Asian markets, beginning with the Philippines, promised new outlets for domestic goods.
Arguments Against Colonization
While the American government pursued this expansionist policy, many citizens expressed concerns and dissent — for a variety of disparate reasons. Ironically, although expansionism was built on ideas of racial superiority, so too were many of the counter-arguments. Labor leader Samuel Gompers, for example, argued against the acquisition of colonies out of fear of being overwhelmed by "the Negritos, the Chinese, the Malays" and other "semi-savage races" entering the United States. Similar racist arguments were advanced by William Graham Sumner, a prominent Social Darwinist. While Sumner agreed that Anglo-Saxons constituted a superior race, he believed that colonization would interfere with the progress of lesser races and might even disrupt the development of Anglo-Saxon civilization itself.
However, many prominent Americans also opposed expansionism on legal and humanitarian grounds. Republican Senator George F. Hoar, for example, challenged the acquisition of the Philippines on constitutional grounds. Hoar began his argument by declaring that the Monroe Doctrine was no longer relevant given the declining dominance of Europe. He stated that governing a people against their will was "expressly forbidden by the Constitution." He was also sharply critical of the warmongers in Congress who proposed turning guns and cannons on another country simply because "we think that our notion of government is better than the notion you have got yourselves."
Conclusion
In summary, American colonization of the Philippines was built on ideas of Anglo-Saxon superiority and the ambition to strengthen the American market. As Senator Hoar pointed out, however, these justifications for expansion violated the principles specified in the United States Constitution. Furthermore, the expansion was carried out through vicious violations of human rights, resulting in great casualties among the Filipino people.
Perhaps the most eloquent argument against expansionism comes from Mark Twain, who noted the profound irony in the way Americans savaged the rights of the very people they claimed to be "lifting up" to civilization. The United States sent its army, in Twain's words, "ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch on their long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take their land away from them and keep it." The road to superpower status, this paper concludes, was paved not with benevolent idealism but with racial arrogance and imperial ambition.
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