Big Picture

Questions

1. What did visitors to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition find?
2. Who is Frederick Jackson Turner?
3. Name the key people who advocated American expansionism and explain why.
4. How long had Cubans been struggling for independence from Spain before U.S. intervention?
5. What did the Teller Amendment say about American goals in the war with Spain?
6. What was America’s role in Cuba once the Spanish-American War came to an end?
7. When did Filipinos gain full independence?
8. What did anti-expansionists dislike about U.S. policies in the Philippines?

Answers

1. A display of world culture, with scale-model replicas of classic architecture, exhibits of American history, notable speakers, new inventions including a Ferris Wheel, and new foods such as hamburgers and Cracker Jacks.
2. A historian who was picked to speak at the Chicago World’s Fair and who chose to assure his audience that despite the fact that the western frontier had been explored and settled, American expansion would continue beyond its continental borders.
3. Clergyman Josiah Strong promised that missionary work abroad would benefit the U.S. economy by transforming “savages” into consumers of American goods; naval officer Thayer Mahan wrote that as the western frontier closed, Americans should look “outward”; both Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt said that America deserved its own colonies and could serve “savage” people by installing American institutions and values.
4. For thirty years; the first war for independence began in 1868 and lasted ten years, and the movement for independence resumed in 1895. 
5. It stressed the U.S. government’s humanitarian interests in Cuba, that is, that it did not plan to annex the island.
6. The U.S. remained in Cuba and, under the Platt Amendment, established conditions under which Cubans would be permitted to govern themselves. The U.S. claimed the right to intervene in Cuban affairs, required Cuba to lease military bases in the U.S., and limited Cuban authority to negotiate treaties with other nations.
7. The U.S. granted the Philippines self-government in 1915, and promised to gradually return the islands to the Filipino people.  U.S. military troops did not leave until 1992, when the Philippines finally became independent.
8. Some worried that the U.S. risked getting too entangled in crises abroad, would spend too much money abroad, and might damage its international reputation. Others worried that the U.S. government was more intent on killing Filipinos than it was on “civilizing” them. Still others argued that it was a waste of time because Filipinos were an inferior race, incapable of absorbing American values.