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U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos
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U.S. History 1877-Present 5: American Imperialism 602 Views
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Description:
Today we'll learn about how the U.S. decided they were going to trade with other countries...or else. Oh and then we stole a bunch of the islands around us. But hey, we're still exceptional, so...there?
Transcript
- 00:03
The US was really feeling its oats at the turn of the 20th century [US grabs oats]
- 00:08
even though it was going through some growing pains during the changes of the
- 00:11
Progressive Era it also was starting to feel like a grown up nation no longer [US by a rollercoaster]
- 00:16
did America have to sit at the international kids table yeah it wanted
- 00:21
to be taken seriously as a world power but if it was going to do so it had to
Full Transcript
- 00:25
up its geopolitical game well back in the day this usually meant do an extra [US doing sit ups]
- 00:30
sit-ups push-ups and dabbling in just a little imperialism well until this point
- 00:34
the US had really only focused its expansion on area throughout North and
- 00:39
South America and the Caribbean at this time though European nations were [European nation grabs cookies]
- 00:43
snatching new territories all over the place in a wave of expansion called new
- 00:48
imperialism well there were European colonies popping up on every corner of [European ships appear]
- 00:52
the world kind of like Starbucks - Grande pumpkin spice lattes for example
- 00:57
in a hungry hungry hippo asked Scramble for Africa European powers managed to
- 01:02
gobble up about 90% of that continent it's pretty impressive if one happens to
- 01:07
be impressed by awful thing this giant land grab by Europe was basically the [Europe grabs Africa]
- 01:12
worst thing ever for Africa and it's still trying to recover from the whole
- 01:15
debacle because another story point is that the u.s. saw all this expansion
- 01:20
happening and decided it needed to get in on the imperialism gain another major
- 01:25
motivator was a massive boom of American manufacturing what's the main thing mass [Building explodes]
- 01:30
manufacturers need the masses making tons of stuff is pretty worthless unless
- 01:36
one has massive numbers of consumers to go along with it so you know you can
- 01:40
sell it to him the big wide world was a new market that American companies were [Woman outside world market store]
- 01:44
itching to exploit well this led to what was called the open door policy which
- 01:48
paved the way for trade with China ironically around about the same time
- 01:52
that the China exclusion act made things tough for Chinese immigrants here it
- 01:57
also led to an American naval officer named Matthew Perry no relation to
- 02:01
Chandler Bing steaming off to Japan where he held a gun to the Shogun's head
- 02:06
until Japan opened itself per trade isn't it fun when US history sounds like
- 02:11
a Quentin Tarantino movie one well another big motivator for [Man watching theater production]
- 02:14
American imperialism was expanding naval power at that time a big intimidating
- 02:18
Navy was crucial at the country wanted to be taken seriously as a world power [Navy officers appear on stage]
- 02:22
well to do this America needed more ports that would allow chips to restock
- 02:27
supplies and get the curl needed for steam power so the u.s. started eyeing
- 02:31
Pacific Islands strategically like Guam and the Philippines which were sure to [US using telescope on boat]
- 02:36
do the trick while also helping Imperial Americans to get some sweet suntan
- 02:41
America's imperialistic schemes were also motivated by some deep-seated
- 02:44
ideology America still had the residual tastes of the mid 1800s manifest destiny
- 02:49
in their mouth kind of like that extra anchovy garlic and banana pepper pizza [Man burps at another man]
- 02:54
that lingers the morning after yeah by late 1870s the theory of social
- 02:59
Darwinism had also started inspecting American thought lots of Americans were [Darwin sneezes on US]
- 03:03
pretty convinced that America deserved to take whatever it wanted law of the
- 03:08
jungle right well the social Darwin has figured that if a country didn't want to
- 03:12
be invaded by or force the trade with America well then it ought to just
- 03:17
toughen up there was also a fun concept floating around called American [American exceptionalism flying]
- 03:21
exceptionalism folks like Josiah strong and Senator Albert Beveridge named after
- 03:27
the drink believed Western cultures especially American culture were better
- 03:31
than any of those other dumb world cultures out there American number one
- 03:35
mix that attitude with social Darwinism and many Americans who felt it was their [Social darwinism blended]
- 03:40
moral duty to bring democracy industrialization and other supposedly
- 03:46
superior values to the supposedly uncivilized world well all this led to
- 03:51
shenanigans like the spanish-american war during which America snatched [Troops dead on the floor]
- 03:55
control of Puerto Rico Guam the Philippines and Cuba from Spain so
- 03:59
plenty of Americans weren't down with all this detractors thought that
- 04:03
meddling and taking over other territories would just lead to war and
- 04:06
major financial strength others like famous activist Jane Addams argued that [Man stretching dollar bill]
- 04:11
this was all just downright morally wrong so yeah not all Americans rank the
- 04:16
imperialist kool-aid which is good because that would have [Kool-Aid jug burst through wall]
- 04:20
left the kool-aid man feeling pretty empty inside oh yeah
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