{"id":35118,"date":"2018-06-15T06:19:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T11:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35118"},"modified":"2018-06-15T06:19:18","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T11:19:18","slug":"the-day-the-us-became-an-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=35118","title":{"rendered":"The Day the US Became an Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Day the US Became an Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

For half a century, the United Kingdom celebrated May 24, the birthday of the late Queen Victoria, as \u201cEmpire Day.\u201d\u00a0 The US ought to have its own Empire Day and it should be on June 15.\u00a0 It was on June 15, 1898 that the US became an empire.\u00a0 On that day, the US House of Representatives voted 209 to 91 to annex Hawaii.\u00a0 (The US Senate followed on July 6, voting 42 to 21 in favor of annexation.)<\/p>\n

One could argue that the US has always been an empire.\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson called the US an empire, but an \u201cempire of liberty\u201d dedicated to spreading freedom around the globe.\u00a0 Tell that to the Native Americans killed and dispossessed by White Settlers.\u00a0 Tell that to the Mexicans.\u00a0 The US seized a third of their country through war.\u00a0Still, it wasn\u2019t until 1898 that the US acquired its first overseas colony.<\/p>\n

Hawaii had been an independent nation.\u00a0 In 1887, American planters in the islands had forced a change to the Hawaiian constitution which largely disenfranchised ethnic Hawaiians to the benefit of wealthy Whites.\u00a0 By 1893, with US support, American and European businessmen on the islands had staged a coup d\u2019\u00eatat, overthrowing the monarchy,[1]<\/a> and establishing a Republic of Hawai\u2019i; from there, they maneuvered for Hawaii\u2019s annexation in 1898.\u00a0 That same year, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam would be gathered into the fledgling American Empire, fruits of the US victory in the Spanish-American War.<\/p>\n

Why Imperialism?<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the 1896 presidential campaign, Republican William McKinley, who went on to win in November, was asked how the US could avoid a replay of the catastrophic 1893 depression.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 McKinley answered that \u201cWe want a foreign market for our surplus products.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Day the US Became an Empire For half a century, the United Kingdom celebrated May 24, the birthday of the late Queen Victoria, as \u201cEmpire Day.\u201d\u00a0 The US ought to have its own Empire Day and it should be on June 15.\u00a0 It was on June 15, 1898 that the US became an empire.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18874,5493,259,8838,3520,1881,3142],"class_list":["post-35118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-charles-pierson","tag-counterpunch","tag-empire","tag-hawaii","tag-imperialism","tag-thomas-jefferson","tag-us-empire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35119,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35118\/revisions\/35119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}