American Anti-Imperialist League

Examples of American Anti-Imperialist League in the following topics:

• The Philippine-American War

  • The Philippine-American War was an armed conflict that resulted in American colonial rule of the Philippines until 1946.
  • However, some Philippine groups led by veterans of the Katipunan continued to battle the American forces.
  • Some Americans, notably William Jennings Bryan, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Ernest Crosby, and other members of the American Anti-Imperialist League, strongly objected to the annexation of the Philippines.
  • Anti-imperialist movements claimed that the United States had become a colonial power by replacing Spain as the colonial power in the Philippines.
  • Other anti-imperialists opposed annexation on racist grounds.

• The Debate over American Imperialism

  • There is also a conservative, anti-interventionist view as expressed by American journalist John T.
  • A strong vocal minority, the American Anti-Imperialist League, was an organization established in the United States on June 15, 1898, to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area.
  • The League also argued that the Spanish-American War was a war of imperialism camouflaged as a war of liberation.
  • The party quickly collapsed, however, when Caffery dropped out, leaving Bryan as the only anti-imperialist candidate.
  • The Anti-Imperialist League disbanded in 1921.

• American Imperialism

  • Pinpointing the actual beginning of American imperialism is difficult.
  • The American Anti-Imperialist League was an organization established in the United States on June 15, 1898, to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area.
  • The League also argued that the Spanish-American War was a war of imperialism camouflaged as a war of liberation.
  • The anti-imperialists opposed the expansion because they believed imperialism violated the credo of republicanism, especially the need for "consent of the governed."
  • The Anti-Imperialist League represented an older generation and was rooted in an earlier era; they were defeated in terms of public opinion, the 1900 election, and the actions of Congress and the president because most younger Progressives who were just coming to power supported imperialism.

• The League of Nations

  • The league was the brainchild of U.S.
  • Anti-war sentiment rose across the world following the First World War, which was described as "the war to end all wars."
  • Representation at the league was often a problem.
  • Among the American public, Irish-Catholics and German-Americans were intensely opposed to the treaty, claiming it favored the British.
  • Harding, continued American opposition to the League of Nations.

• Blue Water Imperialism

  • The dominant 17th- and 18th-century British imperialist ideology was founded on a liberal conception of freedom and commerce—however, this freedom was only conceptualized in terms of white Anglo-Saxon men.
  • Theoretically, British imperialists envisioned a "blue water empire," in that the British empire stretching across the Atlantic was "Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free."
  • Broadly, blue water imperialists aimed to use the power of the metropole to enforce the proper conditions that would allow for commercial and maritime expansion.
  • British liberals considered this framework of blue water empire to be anti-despotic—the government sought trade markets abroad in order to extend imperial influence commercially, without arbitrary territorial expansion.
  • The American language of liberty is a concept deeply rooted in the Anglo-American colonial experience as well as the American Revolution.

• The Anti-Federalists

  • Anti-Federalists were those opposed to ratification of the US Constitution following the Revolutionary War.
  • During the American Revolutionary War and its immediate aftermath, the term "federal" was applied to anyone who supported the colonial union and the government formed under the Articles of Confederation.
  • These so-called Anti-Federalists rejected the term, arguing that they were the true federalists.
  • Anti-Federalists represented diverse, though similar, opinions.
  • A common complaint of Anti-Federalists was that the Constitution provided for a centralized, rather than federal, government, and that a truly federal form of government was a leaguing of states, as under the Articles of Confederation.

• Isolationism

  • The first significant foreign intervention by the United States was the Spanish-American War, which saw the United States occupy and control the Philipines.
  • Congress refused to endorse the Treaty of Versailles or the League of Nations.
  • Many Americans felt that they did not need the rest of the world, and that they were fine making decisions concerning peace on their own.
  • Even though "anti-League" was the policy of the nation, private citizens and lower diplomats either supported or observed the League of Nations.
  • In August 1928, 15 nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, brainchild of American Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristride Briand.

• The Anti-Federalists

  • During the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath, the term "federal" was applied to any person who supported the colonial union and the government formed under the Articles of Confederation.
  • The Anti-Federalists rejected the term, arguing that they were the true Federalists.
  • Another complaint of the Anti-Federalists was that the Constitution provided for a centralized rather than federal form of government (in The Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote that the new Constitution has characteristics of both) and that a truly federal form of government was a leaguing of states as under the Articles of Confederation.
  • The Anti-Federalists played upon these feelings in the ratification convention in Massachusetts.
  • Anti-Federalists are thus credited with pressuring Federalists to concede the U.S.

• The Iranian Crisis

  • The Iranian hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.
  • Mossadegh had sought greater Iranian control over the nation’s oil wealth, which was claimed by British imperialist companies.
  • The women and African Americans were soon released, leaving 53 men as hostages.
  • However, the crisis strengthened both anti-Iranian (and more broadly, anti-Islamic) sentiment in the U.S. and anti-American sentiment in Iran.
  • The fifty-two American hostages return from Iran in January 1981.

• The Defense Buildup and the "Evil Empire"

  • Reagan initiated a large build-up of the American military with the intention of defeating the Soviet Union in an arms race.
  • Critics label Reagan's policies as aggressive, imperialistic, and "warmongering"; however, these policies were supported by leading American conservatives who argued they were necessary to protect U.S. security interests.
  • Eager to cure the United States of “Vietnam Syndrome,” he increased the American stockpile of weapons and aided anti-Communist groups in the Caribbean and Central America.
  • Under a policy that came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine, Reagan and his administration provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist resistance movements in an effort to manipulate governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America away from communism and toward capitalism.
  • Reagan, the first American president ever to address the British Parliament, predicted Marxism-Leninism would be left on the "ash-heap of history."