Building Support for Imperialism (ME) Jill Mingus

            After the Civil war, most Americans didn’t want to expand their territory. They focused on fixing up the south and advancing the nations industries. Around the early 1880s other nations are trying to influence the United States to become a world power.

             Imperialism by definition is the economic and political control of a strong nation over weaker ones. Europeans expanded their power overseas. No one country has all the resources needed by the government, each country has to have goods shipped in. There’s a need for a new market but most countries have tariffs against one another to protect industries, which helped reduce trade from industrialization countries. With the tariff, the development opportunities in Western Europe had slowed.  Europe began looking overseas in places to invest in their capital. 

           Americans had to be convinced to expand overseas. Many supported Social Darwinism which argued that nations competed with each other, and only the strongest would survive. They argued English speaking nations had superior characteristics, ideas, and a better system of government. It took a lot of persuasion to expand overseas.