The Socialist Challenge
from Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"
12: Imperialism/World War I
The Empire and the People
from Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States"
United States Becomes a World Power: Digital History
This chapter examines the reasons why the United States adopted a more aggressive foreign policy at the end of the 19th century; the causes, military history, and consequences of the Spanish American War; and early 20th century U.S. involvement in China, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
The Progressive Era: Digital History
This chapter examines the sources of the progressive movement; progressivism at the municipal, state, and national levels, and the influence of progressive ideas on foreign policy.
Yellow Journalism - WJC
A companion site for a book, this is "a resource-rich site devoted to enhancing popular and scholarly understanding of yellow journalism. Pictures, articles and proof that there is much more to the term than we thought.
Map of Europe 1914 - 2014
This is a simple set of two European maps that allows the viewer to slide one over the other and compare the map of Europe in 1914 (before World War I) and the map of Europe today.
World War I Centenary: 100 Legacies of the Great War
Just like the title says, this compendium of legacies of the Great War are well organized and sortable for easy review. This could easily serve as the basis for a hierarchy analysis - how would students rank these? Why?
To Conquer or Redeem? The Spanish-Cuban-American War
This lesson's message to students is...You are going to look at the history of this war from the perspective of an American citizen who lived through it and make up your own mind about American imperialism. You will follow daily events and respond to them as they happen. You will be paying attention not only to what happened, but also to how different Americans thought differently about the war and the various peoples involved in it.
Kipling Society provides background on White Man's Burden
"White Man's Burden" holds a monolithic places in the curricular canon, yet the background of the poem is absent from most lessons. In addition to shepherding students through an interpretation of the poem, teachers should make sure to place it in context so students know how much Kipling supported American efforts in the Spanish American war. There's no better authority than the Kipling Society to provide this background information.
Topic: Empire, The Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870-1912, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center
Topic Framing Questions • How was the West incorporated into the nation? • How did Americans respond to the nation's changing role in world affairs at this time? • How did issues and concerns at home shape American policies and actions abroad? • How did America project its power beyond its own borders?
Diplomacy – Might, Money, and Morals - Primary Source Lesson
This lesson will enhance student skills on analyzing primary source documents, and addressing the shift of American Diplomacy from Roosevelt’s Big Stick Diplomacy to Taft’s Dollar Diplomacy and finally Wilson’s Moral Diplomacy.
To Conquer or Redeem? The Spanish-Cuban-American War
Innovative lesson in that students assume the role of an American living through this period. That alone does not sound innovative - but students are led through the person's day, step by step.
Philippine-American War - Wikiquote
Teachers looking for DBQ quotes or quotes to write on the board to frame a lesson can look to this source - be sure to check the footnotes for validity!
School Begins, Political Cartoon, Puck Magazine 1899
Cartoon showing Uncle Sam as schoolmaster and Cuba, Puerto Rico as students. Many more details in the image and can be used for DBQs, or "Do Now' conversation starter. Be sure to read description for more details that may be missed.
The cost of war and warfare, from 1898 to 1904, - Edward Atkinson
This scan of original 94 page in opposition to the Spanish American War can be used in its entirety of as a source of excerpts for document analysis
Introduction - The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War (Hispanic Division, Library of Congress)
Students could compare the description of the Spanish American War offered by the Library of Congress and that offered by Howard Zinn in People's History of the United States (http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnempire12.html)
"The Real White Man's Burden" by Ernest Howard Crosby
US History teachers can put this alongside Rudyard Kipling's poem and have students explore the publication, distribution and public reaction to both poems.
US War Crimes in the Phillipines
This description of the war in the Philippines includes quotes from many primary documents. Students can be put in the put in the position of historians vetting another's work - is this essay and its conclusions valid? Who is the World Future Fund? Is this important?
ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE, "In Support of an American Empire"
Senator Beveridge's racism in this speech in support of the war in the Philippines is unabashed and obvious
<p>But, senators, it would be better to abandon this combined garden and Gibraltar of the
Pacific, and count our blood and treasure already spent a profitable loss than to apply
any academic arrangement of self-government to these children. They are not capable of
self-government. How could they be? They are not of a self-governing race. They are
Orientals, Malays, instructed by Spaniards in the latter's worst estate. </p>
<p>They know nothing of practical government except as they have witnessed the weak,
corrupt, cruel, and capricious rule of Spain. What magic will anyone employ to dissolve in
their minds and characters those impressions of governors and governed which three
centuries of misrule has created? What alchemy will change the Oriental quality of their
blood and set the self-governing currents of the American pouring through their Malay
veins? How shall they, in the twinkling of an eye, be exalted to the heights of
self-governing peoples which required a thousand years for us to reach, Anglo-Saxon though
we are? </p>
<p>Let men beware how they employ the term "self-government." It is a sacred
term. It is the watchword at the door of the inner temple of liberty, for liberty does not
always mean self-government. Self-government is a method of liberty - the highest,
simplest, best - and it is acquired only after centuries of study and struggle and
experiment and instruction and all the elements of the progress of man. Self-government is
no base and common thing to be bestowed on the merely audacious. It is the degree which
crowns the graduate of liberty, not the name of liberty's infant class, who have not yet
mastered the alphabet of freedom. Savage blood, Oriental blood, Malay blood, Spanish
example - are these the elements of self-government?</p>
"You Furnish the Pictures, I'll furnish the war" - Not strong evidence that this was ever said
Hundreds of history teacher presentation slides have this quote in notes about the Spanish American war - how many of those teachers ever questioned the veracity of the quote. This article shows a deep dive into the evidence comes up empty
Yellow Journalism: The “Fake News” of the 19th Century – The Public Domain Review
Examples and short explanations offered to explain the "yellow" label
MIT Visualizing Cultures - Civilization and Barbarism, Cartoon Commentary and the White Man's Burden
"Western expansionism and the narrative of bringing “civilization” to the “barbarians” was a popular subject in political cartoons in the late-19th century. Fueled by trade and economic incentives, the civilizing mission was carried out in brief, bloody wars that were, the graphics show, deeply controversial. The sources for this unit are political cartoons (1898 to 1902) from illustrated magazines published in New York City—including Judge, Puck, Harper’s Weekly, and Life—and French and German cartoons."
Yellow Journalism: The "Fake News" of the 19th Century – The Public Domain Review
Text 7 Reading, Topic: Empire, The Gilded and the Gritty: America, 1870-1912, Primary Resources in U.S. History and Literature, Toolbox Library, National Humanities Center
Teachers who insist on using the White Man's Burden should place it in the context of other voices at the time - this is a curated collection, each reduced to a readable 1 page a piece
Puerto Rico: A U.S. Territory in Crisis | Council on Foreign Relations
Student reading to end the Imperialsm unit - what do American have to know about the past to make sense of their present?
Spain lost the war and ceded Puerto Rico to the United States, along with other territories, including Guam and the Philippines.
1900 Foraker Act reestablished a civilian government and specified Puerto Rico’s territory status.
By 1917, Congress had granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, as the newly created Panama Canal increased the island’s strategic value. That spurred a wave of migration, with more than one million Puerto Ricans moving to the mainland by the mid-1960s.
1946, President Harry S. Truman installed the territory’s first native-born governor.
1952, it approved a constitution that recast the island as a U.S. commonwealth capable of independently conducting its own affairs, including choosing its own leaders.
Article 4, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution, known as the territorial clause, <a href="https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/article-iv-section-3/" title="gives Congress broad authority" target="_blank">gives Congress broad authority</a> to govern U.S. territories. Puerto Rico is the most populous U.S. territory
Peurto Rico has more people than 17 US states
Like <a href="https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-portal/" title="most U.S. states" target="_blank">most U.S. states</a>, the island receives billions of dollars more in federal spending, including on Medicare and Social Security, than its residents pay in taxes. In addition, the U.S. government has earmarked nearly <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-264" title="$24 billion in disaster-recovery funding" target="_blank">$24 billion in disaster-recovery funding</a> for the island since 2017.
The White Man’s Burden – The Kipling Society
The Kipliing Society should be considered an authority on the writer's work - and even they refer to his poem as "one of the most often quoted and most regularly misunderstood poems in the canon" - Yet teachers keep using it and students keep getting confused - it is taught because it has been taught - no other reason