Imperialism, Progressivism, and Moral Diplomacy.

Essay by erik69311College, UndergraduateA-, June 2003

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Imperialism, Progressivism, and Moral Diplomacy

Unit III essay

Imperialism in the dictionary means; "The policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations." The U.S. was trying to set "an example to the world". For example, in 1898 the Spanish-American War. We were being imperialists by trying to expand our country down including Texas and New Mexico. In addition to that territory when we won we got Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

Progressivism basically means you would rather have a progress in government or anything else rather than better conditions. Between 1898 and 1914 instead of trying to perfect the programs we had we added quite a few new programs including the federal reserve act, the federal trade commission, the pure food and drug act and the meat inspection act. These are all good programs but instead of working with what we had we let the previous programs stay the way they were and went on to other things.

We were trying to make "an example to the world," with all of the new programs and acts. But in my personal opinion I think we should have perfected what we had before we went on and added all these new things, it might have made things a lot easier down the road.

The United States practices moral diplomacy all the time. We try to make ourselves "an example to the world." We would rather almost make them feel guilty about doing something wrong than to go to war over it. In 1917 Woodrow Wilson said, "There is such a thing as being so right that you don't have to go to war to prove it." That's in one sentence basically gives the definition of moral diplomacy.