ANC - Key Concepts Lesson
Key Concepts
Before you begin...
Notes are given here as well as in the Readings Document from Boundless that is available to download below. There are four presentation to view over the next few pages (questions and answers may be drawn from these as well). This key concepts lesson is very important as it covers the main areas of the Advanced Placement frameworks and the Georgia Performance Standards. Many of the test questions will relate to items found here.
Download the key concepts questions that are found below and answer these as you read and view the information. The answers are found in the text on this and the following pages, the Readings Document, and in the 1 presentation. After you have done this you will use these answers to take the assignment check quiz for this module. Again, it is very important that you answer the questions carefully before taking the assignment check.
Spanish-American War
In the last decades of the 19th century, some Americans were eager to spread democracy into Latin America and other world regions. Other Americans argued that American expansion was not the best way to spread America's democratic traditions.
In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain after the Spanish refused to grant independence to rebels fighting a revolutionary war in Cuba, a Spanish colony. Supporters of American expansion were eager to gain U.S. territory in Latin America, leading to a "war fever" that also encouraged the U.S. government to seek a military solution to the Cuban war for independence. The war lasted less than four months. The Spanish were driven out of Cuba, which became an independent country, and out of Puerto Rico, which became an American territory.
Philippine-American War
The first battles of the Spanish-American War took place in the Philippines, another Spanish colony in which Spain refused to grant independence to rebels fighting a revolutionary war. The U.S. Navy quickly defeated the Spanish navy, and Americans debated whether the United States should expand its territory to include the Philippines or respect Filipino independence. When the U.S. military was ordered to keep the Philippines as an American territory, the Philippine-American War broke out in 1899. The war lasted about three years. In the end, the Philippines were a U.S. territory until 1946.
U.S. Actions in Latin America
The Caribbean region and Latin America remained unstable. Many of the area's countries owed large amounts of money to European countries because they had borrowed it to build modern energy plants and transportation systems. President Theodore Roosevelt feared European countries would take advantage of this instability to gain power and influence in the region. He announced to the world that the United States had the right to intervene in Latin American countries in economic crisis, whether or not a European power planned to intervene. This policy is called the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In contrast, President James Monroe's original doctrine had been to get involved in other American countries' affairs only when needed to end the intervention of a European power.
America now controlled territory in the Atlantic and in the Pacific Oceans. Seeking a faster sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific than the voyage around the tip of South America, the U.S. government built a shipping canal across the narrow Central American country of Panama. The Panama Canal was the biggest engineering project of the era. When the Panama Canal opened in 1914, a voyage from San Francisco to New York was cut from 14,000 miles to 6,000 miles. Check out this chart on American Imperialism Links to an external site.. Then, view the presentation on America becoming a world power below.
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