essay on imperialism in america

American Imperialism Essay

Introduction, criticism of imperialism, outcome of the policy in the twentieth century, reference list.

Imperialism is the establishment of political and economic dominance over other nations. Many nations took part in colonial empires including the U.S. during the nineteenth century. America, on its own, is not supposed to be an empire. It was a rebel colony initially being the first system to dispose British rule.

Imperialism was first practiced in Samoa which motivated the rest of the America. The United States had positive motives when they got involved in the task. Their reason for participation was to control economy and compete with other industrialized nations as well as to maintain their reputation in other countries. Another motive was to obtain a constant market for gainful investments. There was also the religious motivation with the desire to introduce Christianity to foreign and traditional cultures (Streich, 2009, p.1).

Americans viewed imperialism as a way of uplifting the uncivilized people in the world in a moral way. Production was very high and America needed to protect its expanding foreign markets. Hawaii had been dominated by Americans way before the war. America had already started investing in Cuba’s natural resources while Hawaii’s best ports, already under America’s control, was used to access China for efficient trading. The state’s secretary pressured Europeans to stop blocking America’s participation in China’s trade.

America had a war with Spain in 1898 which after its conclusion, America was given the ownership of Cuba, Philippines and Puerto Rico which were previous possessions of Spain. America wanted an efficient and easier access of its navy to the Pacific and the Caribbean oceans.

A negotiation between American officials and Britain confirmed the America’s domination and regulation over the canal. A French canal company official gave Americans a central section of Panama to build the canal. He also gave America rights to take more land or use troops on Panama when necessary.

The Panamanians were to be given their independence only if they accepted the treaty, but they refused to sign it so the Americans took ownership of the canal region (Bella, 2003, p.1). The United States therefore destroyed all European empires after taking over Cuba and Philippines from Spain.

They built a navy ready for European in case they became troublesome or destabilized. In 1939 to 1945, the then American president, Roosevelt, extracted British colonies including the Caribbean and West Africa and in exchange He offered assistance to Britain during war. After years after the World War II, America was already exercising authority and power in Belgian Congo which was previously dominated by Britain, and French Indochina (Selfa, 1999, p.1).

Despite the fact that many Americans believed in overseas expansion, many other Americans opposed the move. They formed the American anti-imperialism league in 1899. However, their campaigns were not successful. The league argued that the imperialism policy was intimidating to personal liberty.

They argued that all human races no matter the color have the right to live and pursue happiness at all times. The group maintained that the government should obtain their rightful powers from the citizen’s consent. They insisted that forced control is criminal assault and lack of devotion to government principles.

The league firmly condemned the national administration in the Philippines and demanded an immediate stop to the discrimination against human liberty. They required Spain to initiate the process since it was one of the first countries to practice imperialism. They had the aim of forming a congress that would officially inform the Philippines of America’s intentions to grant them their rightful independence.

The group also disapproved strongly the American soldiers for being involved in an unjust war. Their arguments were based on the fact that the United States had always detested international laws which allowed forceful control o f the weak by the strong party. The obligation of nation’s citizens to support its government during hazardous moments did not fit applicably for this situation of imperialism (Halsall, 1997, p.1).

An obvious outcome is America now stretches from Atlanta the Pacific. With this entire region where there are no import and export tax barriers, it has been quite easy for America to increase its per capita. However, America was left with the heritage of oppression which is no different from slavery.

However, some positive effects have been felt especially through the Panama Canal that was constructed then which has helped improve the region’s economy. Transportation and communication services were extensively improved. Uncivilized areas got the opportunity of adopting higher livelihood values. The countries that were colonized were affected negatively as well especially in the economic sector where most of the key and productive elements are up to date owned or controlled by foreign economic agencies.

Imperialism can never be a good practice no matter the circumstances. It does not matter whether the imperialistic country has good intentions or not. If any nation at all feels the need to offer help to another country, it should do so in a better way and certainly not by controlling the other depriving them of their freedom and rights. Assistance can be offered as ideas and policies that the country should implement on its own depending on what suits the situation it is faced with.

Bella, R. (2003). Imperialism, American style . Web.

Halsall, P. (1997). American Anti-Imperialist League . Web.

Selfa, L. (1999). U.S. Imperialism: A Century of Slaughter . Web.

Streich, M. (2009). American Imperialism in the 1890s. Web.

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Us imperialism, 1898–1914.

• Robert McGreevey Robert McGreevey Department of History, The College of New Jersey
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.83
• Published online: 27 February 2017

U.S. imperialism took a variety of forms in the early 20th century, ranging from colonies in Puerto Rico and the Philippines to protectorates in Cuba, Panama, and other countries in Latin America, and open door policies such as that in China. Formal colonies would be ruled with U.S.-appointed colonial governors and supported by U.S. troops. Protectorates and open door policies promoted business expansion overseas through American oversight of foreign governments and, in the case of threats to economic and strategic interests, the deployment of U.S. marines. In all of these imperial forms, U.S. empire-building both reflected and shaped complex social, cultural, and political histories with ramifications for both foreign nations and America itself.

• United States
• imperialism
• colonialism
• Puerto Rico
• the Philippines
• Panama Canal

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19.4: Theodore Roosevelt and American Imperialism

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Under the leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States emerged from the nineteenth century with ambitious designs on global power through military might, territorial expansion, and economic influence. Though the Spanish-American War had begun under the administration of William McKinley, Roosevelt—the hero of San Juan Hill, assistant secretary of the navy, vice president, and president—was arguably the most visible and influential proponent of American imperialism at the turn of the century. Roosevelt’s emphasis on developing the American navy, and on Latin America as a key strategic area of U.S. foreign policy, would have long-term consequences.

In return for Roosevelt’s support of the Republican nominee, William McKinley, in the 1896 presidential election, McKinley appointed Roosevelt as assistant secretary of the navy. The head of the department, John Long, had a competent but lackadaisical managerial style that allowed Roosevelt a great deal of freedom that Roosevelt used to network with such luminaries as military theorists Alfred Thayer Mahan and naval officer George Dewey and politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge and William Howard Taft. During his tenure he oversaw the construction of new battleships and the implementation of new technology and laid the groundwork for new shipyards, all with the goal of projecting America’s power across the oceans. Roosevelt wanted to expand American influence. For instance, he advocated for the annexation of Hawaii for several reasons: it was within the American sphere of influence, it would deny Japanese expansion and limit potential threats to the West Coast, it had an excellent port for battleships at Pearl Harbor, and it would act as a fueling station on the way to pivotal markets in Asia. 16

Roosevelt, after winning headlines in the war, ran as vice president under McKinley and rose to the presidency after McKinley’s assassination by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901. Among his many interventions in American life, Roosevelt acted with vigor to expand the military, bolstering naval power especially, to protect and promote American interests abroad. This included the construction of eleven battleships between 1904 and 1907. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s naval theories, described in his The Influence of Sea Power upon History , influenced Roosevelt a great deal. In contrast to theories that advocated for commerce raiding, coastal defense, and small “brown water” ships, the imperative to control the sea required battleships and a “blue water” navy that could engage and win decisive battles with rival fleets. As president, Roosevelt continued the policies he established as assistant secretary of the navy and expanded the U.S. fleet. The mission of the Great White Fleet, sixteen all-white battleships that sailed around the world between 1907 and 1909, exemplified America’s new power. 17

Roosevelt insisted that the “big stick” and the persuasive power of the U.S. military could ensure U.S. hegemony over strategically important regions in the Western Hemisphere. The United States used military intervention in various circumstances to further its objectives, but it did not have the ability or the inclination to militarily impose its will on the entirety of South and Central America. The United States therefore more often used informal methods of empire, such as so-called dollar diplomacy, to assert dominance over the hemisphere.

The United States actively intervened again and again in Latin America. Throughout his time in office, Roosevelt exerted U.S. control over Cuba (even after it gained formal independence in 1902) and Puerto Rico, and he deployed naval forces to ensure Panama’s independence from Colombia in 1901 in order to acquire a U.S. Canal Zone. Furthermore, Roosevelt pronounced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, proclaiming U.S. police power in the Caribbean. As articulated by President James Monroe in his annual address to Congress in 1823, the United States would treat any military intervention in Latin America by a European power as a threat to American security. Roosevelt reaffirmed the Monroe Doctrine and expanded it by declaring that the United States had the right to preemptive action through intervention in any Latin American nation in order to correct administrative and fiscal deficiencies. 18

Roosevelt’s policy justified numerous and repeated police actions in “dysfunctional” Caribbean and Latin American countries by U.S. Marines and naval forces and enabled the founding of the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This approach is sometimes referred to as gunboat diplomacy, wherein naval forces and Marines land in a national capital to protect American and Western personnel, temporarily seize control of the government, and dictate policies friendly to American business, such as the repayment of foreign loans. For example, in 1905 Roosevelt sent the Marines to occupy the Dominican Republic and established financial supervision over the Dominican government. Imperialists often framed such actions as almost humanitarian. They celebrated white Anglo-Saxon societies such as those found in the United States and the British Empire as advanced practitioners of nation-building and civilization, helping to uplift debtor nations in Latin America that lacked the manly qualities of discipline and self-control. Roosevelt, for instance, preached that it was the “manly duty” of the United States to exercise an international police power in the Caribbean and to spread the benefits of Anglo-Saxon civilization to inferior states populated by inferior peoples. The president’s language, for instance, contrasted debtor nations’ “impotence” with the United States’ civilizing influence, belying new ideas that associated self-restraint and social stability with Anglo-Saxon manliness. 19

Dollar diplomacy offered a less costly method of empire and avoided the troubles of military occupation. Washington worked with bankers to provide loans to Latin American nations in exchange for some level of control over their national fiscal affairs. Roosevelt first implemented dollar diplomacy on a vast scale, while Presidents Taft and Wilson continued the practice in various forms during their own administrations. All confronted instability in Latin America. Rising debts to European and American bankers allowed for the inroads of modern life but destabilized much of the region. Bankers, beginning with financial houses in London and New York, saw Latin America as an opportunity for investment. Lenders took advantage of the region’s newly formed governments’ need for cash and exacted punishing interest rates on massive loans, which were then sold off in pieces on the secondary bond market. American economic interests were now closely aligned with the region but also further undermined by the chronic instability of the region’s newly formed governments, which were often plagued by mismanagement, civil wars, and military coups in the decades following their independence. Turnover in regimes interfered with the repayment of loans, as new governments often repudiated the national debt or forced a renegotiation with suddenly powerless lenders. 20

Creditors could not force settlements of loans until they successfully lobbied their own governments to get involved and forcibly collect debts. The Roosevelt administration did not want to deny the Europeans’ rightful demands of repayment of debt, but it also did not want to encourage European policies of conquest in the hemisphere as part of that debt collection. U.S. policy makers and military strategists within the Roosevelt administration determined that this European practice of military intervention posed a serious threat to American interests in the region. Roosevelt reasoned that the United States must create and maintain fiscal and political stability within strategically important nations in Latin America, particularly those affecting routes to and from the proposed Panama Canal. As a result, U.S. policy makers considered intervention in places like Cuba and the Dominican Republic a necessity to ensure security around the region. 21

The Monroe Doctrine provided the Roosevelt administration with a diplomatic and international legal tradition through which it could assert a U.S. right and obligation to intervene in the hemisphere. The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserted that the United States wished to promote stable, prosperous states in Latin America that could live up to their political and financial obligations. Roosevelt declared that “wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may finally require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty.” 22 President Monroe declared what Europeans could not do in the Western Hemisphere; Roosevelt inverted his doctrine to legitimize direct U.S. intervention in the region. 23

Though aggressive and bellicose, Roosevelt did not necessarily advocate expansion by military force. In fact, the president insisted that in dealings with the Latin American nations, he did not seek national glory or expansion of territory and believed that war or intervention should be a last resort when resolving conflicts with problematic governments. According to Roosevelt, such actions were necessary to maintain “order and civilization.” 24 Then again, Roosevelt certainly believed in using military power to protect national interests and spheres of influence when absolutely necessary. He also believed that the American sphere included not only Hawaii and the Caribbean but also much of the Pacific. When Japanese victories over Russia threatened the regional balance of power, he sponsored peace talks between Russian and Japanese leaders, earning him a Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.

In Defense of Empire

It can ensure stability and protect minorities better than any other form of order. The case for a tempered American imperialism.

In June 1941, during the festival of Shavuot, a mob of Arab soldiers and tribesmen led a pogrom in the Jewish quarter of Baghdad, murdering well over 180 men, women, and children. The pogrom, known locally as the Farhud (“looting”), was documented by the late Baghdadi Jew and Middle East specialist Elie Kedourie in his 1970 book The Chatham House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies . Kedourie blamed British authorities for failing to protect the Jews, despite having taken over responsibility for Mesopotamia from the Ottoman Empire more than two decades earlier. He explained that the Jews could “cheerfully acknowledge” the “right of conquest,” whether exercised by the Ottomans or by the British, because “their history had taught them that there lay safety.” But the British failure to enforce the law and provide imperial order was the kind of transgression that ethnic and religious minorities could ill afford: traditionally, imperialism itself, most notably that of the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans, had protected minorities from the tyranny of the majority. It wasn’t imperialism per se that Kedourie railed against, but weak, ineffectual imperialism.

To be sure, the British had their hands full in Mesopotamia in 1941: given the tendency of the Arab masses toward anti-Western and anti-Zionist ideologies (a tendency that was itself at least in part a reaction to British dominance), colonial authorities were desperate to keep Nazi influence out of the Middle East. As a result, the British ambassador opted for a lighter hand when at a certain point he ought to have used a heavier one. Be that as it may, what is not at issue, as Kedourie correctly stated, is the responsibility that conquest historically carried with it.

Throughout history, governance and relative safety have most often been provided by empires, Western or Eastern. Anarchy reigned in the interregnums. To wit, the British may have failed in Baghdad, Palestine, and elsewhere, but the larger history of the British Empire is one of providing a vast armature of stability, fostered by sea and rail communications, where before there had been demonstrably less stability. In fact, as the Harvard historian Niall Ferguson has argued, the British Empire enabled a late-19th- and early-20th-century form of globalization, tragically interrupted by a worldwide depression, two world wars, and a cold war. After that, a new form of globalization took root, made possible by an American naval and air presence across large swaths of the Earth, a presence of undeniably imperial dimensions. Globalization depends upon secure sea lines of communication for trade and energy transfers: without the U.S. Navy, there’d be no globalization, no Davos, period.

But imperialism is now seen by global elites as altogether evil, despite empires’ having offered the most benign form of order for thousands of years, keeping the anarchy of ethnic, tribal, and sectarian war bands to a reasonable minimum. Compared with imperialism, democracy is a new and uncertain phenomenon. Even the two most estimable democracies in modern history, the United States and Great Britain, were empires for long periods. “As both a dream and a fact the American Empire was born before the United States,” writes the mid-20th-century historian of westward expansion Bernard DeVoto. Following their initial settlement, and before their incorporation as states, the western territories were nothing less than imperial possessions of Washington, D.C. No surprise there: imperialism confers a loose and accepted form of sovereignty, occupying a middle ground between anarchy and full state control.

Ancient empires such as Rome, Achaemenid Persia, Mauryan India, and Han China may have been cruel beyond measure, but they were less cruel and delivered more predictability for the average person than did anything beyond their borders. Who says imperialism is necessarily reactionary? Athens, Rome, Venice, and Great Britain were the most enlightened regimes of their day. True, imperialism has often been driven by the pursuit of riches, but that pursuit has in many cases resulted in a hard-earned cosmopolitanism. The early modern empires of Hapsburg Austria and Ottoman Turkey were well known for their relative tolerance and protection of minorities, including the Jews. Precisely because the Hapsburg imperialists governed a mélange of ethnic and religious groups stretching from the edge of the Swiss Alps to central Romania, and from the Polish Carpathians to the Adriatic Sea, they abjured ethnic nationalism and sought a universalism almost postmodern in its design. What followed the Hapsburgs were mono-ethnic states and quasi-democracies that persecuted minorities and helped ease the path of Nazism.

All of these empires delivered more peace and stability than the United Nations ever has or probably ever could. Consider, too, the American example. The humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the absence of such interventions in Rwanda and Syria, show American imperialism in action, and in abeyance.

This interpretation of empire is hardly novel; indeed, it is captured in Rudyard Kipling’s famous 1899 poem, “The White Man’s Burden,” which is not, as is commonly assumed, a declaration of racist aggression, but of the need for America to take up the cause of humanitarianism and good government in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century. From Rome’s widespread offer of citizenship to its subject peoples, to France’s offer of a measure of equality to fluent Francophone Africans, to Britain’s arrangement of truces among the Yemeni tribes, to the epic array of agricultural and educational services provided by the Europeans throughout their tropical domains—Britain’s Indian Civil Service stands out—imperialism and enlightenment (albeit self-interested) have often been inextricable.

However patronizing this may sound, the European imperialists could be eminently practical men, becoming proficient at the native languages and enhancing area expertise. Nazis and Communists, by contrast, were imperialists only secondarily; they were primarily radical utopians who sought racial and ideological submission. Thus, the critique that imperialism constitutes evil and nothing more is, broadly speaking, lazy and ahistorical, dependent as it often is on the very worst examples, such as the Belgians in the 19th-century Congo and the Russians throughout modern history in Eurasia.

Nevertheless, the critique that imperialism constitutes bad American foreign policy has serious merit: the real problem with imperialism is not that it is evil, but rather that it is too expensive and therefore a problematic grand strategy for a country like the United States. Many an empire has collapsed because of the burden of conquest. It is one thing to acknowledge the positive attributes of Rome or Hapsburg Austria; it is quite another to justify every military intervention that is considered by elites in Washington.

Thus, the debate Americans should be having is the following: Is an imperial-like foreign policy sustainable? I use the term imperial-like because, while the United States has no colonies, its global responsibilities, particularly in the military sphere, burden it with the expenses and frustrations of empires of old. Caution: those who say such a foreign policy is unsustainable are not necessarily isolationists. Alas, isolationism is increasingly used as a slur against those who might only be recommending restraint in certain circumstances.

Once that caution is acknowledged, the debate gets really interesting. To repeat, the critique of imperialism as expensive and unsustainable is not easily dismissed. As for the critique that imperialism merely constitutes evil: while that line of thinking is not serious, it does get at a crucial logic regarding the American Experience. That logic goes like this: America is unique in history. The United States may have strayed into empire during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the resultant war in the Philippines. And it may have become an imperial Leviathan of sorts in the wake of World War II. At root, however, the United States was never meant to be an empire, but rather that proverbial city on a hill, offering an example to the rest of the world rather than sending its military in search of dragons to slay.

This, as it happens, is more or less the position of the Obama administration. The first post-imperial American presidency since World War II telegraphs nothing so much as exhaustion with world affairs. Obama essentially wants regional powers (such as Japan in Asia, and Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East) to rely less on the United States in maintaining local power balances. And he wants to keep America’s enemies at bay through the use of inexpensive drones rather than the deployment of ground forces.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s energetic diplomacy vis-à-vis Iran and Israel-Palestine might seem like a brave effort to set the Middle East’s house in order, thereby facilitating the so-called American pivot to Asia. And yet, Kerry appears to be neglecting Asia in the meantime, and no one believes that Iran, Israel, or Palestine will suffer negative consequences from the U.S. if negotiations fail. Once lifted, the toughest sanctions on Iran will not be reinstated. Israel can always depend on its legions of support in Congress, and the Palestinians have nothing to fear from Obama. The dread of imperial-like retribution that accompanied Henry Kissinger’s 1970s shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East is nowhere apparent. Kerry, unlike Kissinger, has articulated no grand strategy or even a basic strategic conception.

Rather than Obama’s post-imperialism, in which the secretary of state appears like a lonely and wayward operator encumbered by an apathetic White House, I maintain that a tempered imperialism is now preferable.

No other power or constellation of powers is able to provide even a fraction of the global order provided by the United States. U.S. air and sea dominance preserves the peace, such as it exists, in Asia and the Greater Middle East. American military force, reasonably deployed, is what ultimately protects democracies as diverse as Poland, Israel, and Taiwan from being overrun by enemies. If America sharply retrenched its air and sea forces, while starving its land forces of adequate supplies and training, the world would be a far more anarchic place, with adverse repercussions for the American homeland.

Rome, Parthia, and Hapsburg Austria were great precisely because they gave significant parts of the world a modicum of imperial order that they would not otherwise have enjoyed. America must presently do likewise, particularly in East Asia, the geographic heartland of the world economy and the home of American treaty allies.

This by no means obliges the American military to repair complex and populous Islamic countries that lack critical components of civil society. America must roam the world with its ships and planes, but be very wary of where it gets involved on the ground. And it must initiate military hostilities only when an overwhelming national interest is threatened. Otherwise, it should limit its involvement to economic inducements and robust diplomacy—diplomacy that exerts every possible pressure in order to prevent widespread atrocities in parts of the world, such as central Africa, that are not, in the orthodox sense, strategic.

That, I submit, would be a policy direction that internalizes both the drawbacks and the benefits of imperialism, not as it has been conventionally thought of, but as it has actually been practiced throughout history.

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Global production, politics and superstructure, the impact of covid-19, the impact of technology, imperialism and contemporary transnational capitalism.

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Gerald Harris; Imperialism and Contemporary Transnational Capitalism. Global Perspectives 31 January 2024; 5 (1): 94656. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2024.94656

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Imperialism was closely studied by Marxists in the early twentieth century. Lenin’s work had the greatest impact, but while some elements remain, important changes have occurred. The specific national character of finance capital has transformed to integrated global capital, as has production. These changes were structured by reengineering the state and rewriting the rules for trade and cross-border capital flows, while at the same time deconstructing the Keynesian social contract. The economic and political changes were led by the emergence of a transnational capitalist class. The resulting social upheavals caused by greater inequality have been accelerated by the crisis of COVID-19, which created new contradictions between and within China and the United States. Technological changes have only added to the problems of global capitalism. Massive speculation was made possible by the speed and reach of the new information and communication technologies, resulting in repeated economic crises. A planetary Green New Deal may offer the best hope to rebuild the economy around productive capital and lay the basis for greater social justice.

Globalization brought about important changes to global capitalism, many still not fully reflected in Left analysis and thinking. Capitalism has gone through a number of eras, from mercantilism, colonialism, and imperialism to globalization. Throughout this history, the fundamental logic of the system has remained, but the ways in which it unfolds and is expressed do change. And with those changes, the character of the capitalist class and the working class and the relations of production take on new aspects. This paper will focus on the development of imperialism from the period of Lenin to contemporary features of transnational capitalism, with a focus on the latter.

Commodity production for surplus value under conditions of competition and the exploitation of labor and nature for accumulation are unchanging characteristics. Furthermore, Marx and Engels (1848) described capitalism as a worldwide system of production and exchange. But in the early years of the twentieth century, significant new analysis was developed by Rudolf Hilferding (1981) , Karl Kautsky (1914) , Lenin (1973) , Rosa Luxemburg (1951) , and Nikolai Bukharin (1929) , as well as others. While different viewpoints were presented, defining imperialism as a new stage of capitalist development was common.

Lenin’s work had the most profound and lasting impact. Most importantly, he analyzed the development of monopoly; the close alliance between banking and industrial capital; the dominance of finance capital and its export, international debt; and the territorial division of the world among the most advanced capitalist countries. Imperialism was a competitive nation-centric world system, with national industrial champions promoted and protected by their states. Competition in the Global South was over resources and territorial control that shut out other national monopolies. Finance capital was also nationally based, and banks gathered together an alliance of specific national industrial giants. For example, J. P. Morgan Bank had controlling interests in Aetna, General Electric, Harvester, International Mercantile Marine, Pullman, US Steel, Western Union, and twenty-one railroads. Mellon Bank founded and managed Alcoa, Gulf Oil (now ChevronTexaco), Westinghouse, Rockwell, Heinz, General Motors, and Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil).

Opposition to imperialism led Lenin and the Bolsheviks to be the first political party to establish the right to national self-determination—a policy they put into practice by recognizing the independence of Finland in 1917. Finland came under Russian rule in 1812, but a century later, with the overthrow of the czar, political forces in Finland demanded independence. The call for independence was met by opposition from the Cadet Party, the bourgeois party that briefly headed the Russian government. But leading the new Soviet government, Lenin affirmed “the right of Finland, as of all the other underprivileged nations, to secede from Russia… If we are really against annexations, we should say: give Finland the right of secession!” ( Lenin 1964, 24:335–38 ; emphasis in the original). When Finland’s parliament declared independence on December 6, 1917, the Bolshevik Party ratified Finland’s freedom. The highest Soviet body, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, endorsed the Finish declaration, which read:

The people of Finland have by this step taken their fate in their own hands; a step both justified and demanded by present conditions. The people of Finland feel deeply that they cannot fulfill their national and international duty without complete sovereignty. The century-old desire for freedom awaits fulfillment now; Finland’s people step forward as a free nation among the other nations in the world (ARCEC 1917) .

Other nations that had come under czarist colonial rule were brought into the Soviet Union under a policy of regional autonomy, including Ukraine. Russia’s relationship with its former colonial territories under Soviet rule had both positive and negative consequences. But the Bolshevik stance on self-determination became the policy of the Comintern and was adopted by communist parties throughout the world. Established as a socialist principle, support for independence and self-determination for colonized nations became the counterweight to Western imperialism. As direct colonial control was overthrown by the tide of revolutions that swept the world after World War II, support for national liberation became a key dividing line between the socialist bloc and the West.

Considering Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s expressed contempt for Lenin, an inspection of Lenin’s view on Ukraine is important to review. Writing in Pravda in 1917, he stated:

No democrat, let alone a socialist, will venture to deny the complete legitimacy of Ukraine’s demands. And no democrat can deny the Ukraine’s right to freely secede from Russia. Only unqualified recognition of this right makes it possible to advocate a free union of Ukrainians and the Great Russians, a voluntary association of the two peoples in one. Only unqualified recognition of this right can actually break completely and irrevocably with the accursed tsarist past… Russia’s revolutionary democrats, if they want to be truly revolutionary and truly democratic, must break with that past, must regain for themselves, for the workers and peasants of Russia, the brotherly trust of the Ukrainian workers and peasants. This cannot be done without the full recognition of the Ukraine’s rights, including the right to free secession. ( Lenin 1917 ; italics in the original)

For communists, this position on independence and self-determination was key to uniting oppressed colonial people with the Western working class. As young revolutionaries in Paris, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Ho Chi Minh became attracted to the communist cause in large part because of the Soviet position on colonial countries. As Ho wrote in his 1924 report to the Comintern, “According to Lenin, the victory of the revolution in Western Europe depended on its close contact with the liberation movement against imperialism in enslaved colonies and with the national question, both of which form a part of the common problem of the proletarian revolution…” (Ho Chi Minh 1924) . At this meeting, Ho urged Western communist parties to fully endorse and support liberation movements in the Global South. Thirty years later, the struggle for independence in Vietnam would ignite a vast and militant anti-imperialist movement in Europe and the United States. The lesson should not be lost as Ukraine battles for its national survival.

The Left still adheres to most aspects of Lenin’s analysis, with the exception of territorial control. Colonial governments were swept out by the tidal wave of post-1945 independence struggles, spanning Indonesia in 1945, India in 1947, China in 1949, the hard-won victories in Algeria, Vietnam, and Cuba, and many others. But imperialism soon adjusted using debt (already noted by Lenin) and the control of global commodity prices to enforce economic dominance. There were some efforts in the Global South to develop an independent industrial base, but most countries served as a source of cheap labor and resources, politically ruled by a comprador class of elites beholden to imperialism.

Globalization is still a system of monopoly capitalism and finance. But there have been key transformations in the organization and character of both. The most important changes have been the undermining of the specific national character of capital and the transnationalization of monopolies and financial institutions (Sklair 2001; Robinson 2004; Harris 2016) . Finance capital is still key, but the composition of capital has altered. In Lenin’s time, capital had a specific national identity, whether British, French, German, or US. I don’t mean money, where the dollar still holds sway, but a more fundamental sense of assets and investment capital. Transnational financial institutions, no matter where headquartered, represent and serve the transnational capitalist class (TCC), not a specific national bourgeoisie.

Institutions such as BlackRock, Barclays, J. P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, the Commercial and Industrial Bank of China, State Street, Vanguard, and others function as organizational centers for transnational capital. They create thousands of different investment vehicles. These are different ways to organize and invest capital, attracting capitalists the world over. As transnational capital is centralized into various funds, it goes out to countries on every continent. It goes into stocks, bonds, equities, futures, real estate, money markets, venture capital (the list goes on), making profits off the labor of working people, as well as purely speculative activities. The surplus value is recentralized into these financial firms, then distributed back to TCC investors, until it’s recirculated once again.

The level of transnational centralization was investigated in a study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich that traced ownership of transnational corporations. Examining a database of 37 million companies and investors, the study looked at shareholding networks, focusing on a core group of 147 predominantly financial institutions that control the most important sectors of the entire network. Situated in these financial institutions were 47,819 individual and institutional shareholders from 190 countries holding principal positions within the world’s largest transnational corporations. In other words, members of the TCC, living in countries around the globe, invest their wealth through world-spanning financial firms that hold positions of power in the world’s 15,500 biggest companies (Vitali, Glattfelder, and Battiston 2011) .

The world’s largest asset holder, US-headquartered BlackRock, recently announced that the majority of its new investors are foreign. That should be no surprise because foreign investors own about 40 percent of US corporate equities. Retirement accounts, consisting mostly of middle-class US households, own about 30 percent, and 5 percent are held by NGOs, leaving wealthy US investors with 25 percent. In terms of decision-making power, we need to discount the millions of small households. So, while US capitalists have the largest holdings based on singular national identity, foreign transnational capitalists collectively hold the greatest amount of capital stock (Rosenthal and Burke 2020) . In June 2021 foreign holdings of all US securities (debt, bonds, and derivatives, as well as equities) totaled \$27 trillion, adding about \$14 trillion to their investments in equities (US Treasury Department 2022) .

In terms of BlackRock, among its top ten investors are the sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, Mizuho Financial group from Japan, the Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings, and Wellington from Boston, which has 2,200 clients from over sixty countries.

Of course, US capitalists themselves have vast amounts of foreign investments. The United States still records the largest amounts of foreign direct investments (FDI), with China as number two. But this data points to the deep integration of transnational capital, not simply the power of US capitalism. When we examine US FDI, we’re not looking simply at US capital, but also at investments from majority-owned US corporations that also have foreign investors. Majority ownership simply means 10 percent or more. A similar viewing of equity holdings is necessary. The 40 percent owned by foreign TCC members mixes with the 25 percent owned by US-based transnational capitalists. Although the datasets are reported in individual silos, in reality they operate as integrated capital.

Another way to understand the transnational economy is to examine manufacturing. Most people still think in terms of national industrial champions. The old GM slogan “What’s good for GM is good for America” is a perfect representation of this thinking. When GM used that marketing device, it had the majority of its sales, production, and employment in the United States. But that’s no longer true. As of 2006, GM’s assets in the United States were \$40.5 billion compared to \$91 billion abroad; home sales were \$73.5 billion compared to \$149 billion abroad (UNCTAD 2009) . Employment figures in 2022 were 53,000 US workers and a foreign workforce of 104,000 (Shepardson 2022) . By 2021 GM’s overall foreign profile had been reduced, but Toyota and VW had increased. Toyota’s foreign assets were \$319 billion, with \$203 billion at home; sales abroad were \$206 billion, but only \$73 billion in Japan, and foreign employment 219,000 compared to 147,000 in country. VW assets in Germany were \$336 billion, with foreign holdings of \$263 billion; foreign sales hit \$243 billion, with \$53 billion home sales, and foreign employment was 373,000 compared to 294,000 in Germany (UNCTAD 2022) .

So, what exactly do we mean when we think of a corporation as uniquely American, or Japanese, or German? Are we talking about corporations committed to maintaining a large base of well-paying national jobs? GM and the rest of the auto industry instituted a two-tier wage system years ago that will permanently lower their salary structure. Do we mean an industry pledging allegiance to protect and build the national economy first and foremost before their global interests? GM’s largest and fastest-growing market is China, and those vehicles are built in China, not exported from the United States. The same is true for German auto companies. Does the definition simply mean nationally located headquarters linked to an assumption of national economic loyalty? But as we all know, loyalty is first and foremost to major stockholders, many of whom are foreign.

Some may argue that by national champions, we mean corporations that are promoted and defended by their own states. Some aspects of this may be true, but the bottom line is that many of the major investors in corporations (whether US, German, Chinese, or Russian) are foreign capitalists. Therefore, states mainly defend and promote the TCC, not their “own” capitalists. Moreover, when we use the term “national,” we speak to the interests of all citizens of a nation-state, not just the ruling class. The bargain of the social contract is citizenship and economic well-being in return for national loyalty. It’s the breaking of this relationship that is causing today’s political instability.

Apple is another good example of the transnational/national conflict, particularly because their massive supply chain spans the world. Apple has about 80,000 workers inside the United States, but another 84,000 abroad, and about 700,000 working as subcontractors among 4,000 global suppliers (Macrotrends 2022) . Manufactured parts from this global assembly line go to China, where they are assembled into phones and then sent to the United States and elsewhere. This movement of parts is considered exports from a nation-centric viewpoint. But they are really an intra-firm trade of Apple importing and exporting to itself. Politicians and media playing to working-class fears and anger point their xenophobic finger at China for “unfair” trade practices, neatly avoiding any discussion of Apple’s transnational character. When the Left operates from a similar nationalist viewpoint, it loses sight of the true character of global capitalism and misaligns our fight with the integrated nature of the contemporary imperialist system.

By taking an overview of the transnational economy, we can see that it’s built around specific practices that are clearly different from the previous international system. A brief description would include the following: foreign direct investment; cross-border mergers and acquisitions; foreign affiliates; global assembly lines; cross-border financial flows; transnationalization of corporate boards and networked relationships; foreign investment activity by sovereign wealth funds; the vast network of national subcontractors tied to transnational corporations; the transnational character of stock ownership; the role and function of global cities; the ratio of foreign-owned assets, employment, and sales to similar national figures; the percent of foreign revenues and profits; and tax havens for both corporate and private accounts. Some of these characteristics existed in Lenin’s time but have qualitatively expanded in depth and scope (Phillips 2018) .

All this needs to be structured, rules need to be written, laws need to be passed. As governments got down to the job of creating this new superstructure, they were captured by transnational elites through the involvement of political parties, industrial associations, lobby groups, and strategic policy institutes (Robinson and Harris 2000) . The emergence of a new transnational capitalist class was based in the above economic and political activities, but also on a sociological level through networks such as exclusive clubs, fraternities, private schools, the boards of arts and charitable institutions, elite communities, and so on (Carroll 2010). Hegemonic blocs of transnational forces came to dominate governments and corporations, implementing neoliberalism as their platform to reengineer the relations of production. The debate over whether governments became less powerful avoids the real questions of whom governments serve and what fraction of capital is hegemonic.

While the above activities are directed toward the common goal of constructing a unified system for global capitalism, a common project does not mean a common policy. There continue to be major differences over how the new world system should be run, and each country adopts according to their own history, culture, and economic needs. Emerging powers like China and Brazil, both very much part of the global economy, may clash with the United States or Europe over regional trade pacts, the control of global institutions, or state-directed economic policy. It’s not that these countries are antiglobal, but that they want a larger say and more influence over the rules of the game. Consequently, major transnational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, and G20 take on greater importance as political arenas where global political and economic policies are fought over and decided.

Neither do national traditions and identities just fade away. In fact, the exact opposite occurs. A battle goes on between those who benefit from old national arrangements and those who advocate and fight for the new global order. These battles result from the changing character of the relations of production. The postwar social contract between labor and capital has been largely undermined. The working class faces a vast expansion of precarity, part-time work, self-employment, the stagnation of wages, greater insecurity when facing the social costs of health and education, and the creation of a global proletariat in linked cross-border assembly lines. The Keynesian arrangements that came out of the Great Depression and World War II have been replaced by the policies of neoliberalism. The result is a loss of governmental legitimacy and growing anger, which finds both Left and Right expressions. In fact, right-wing nationalism is the offspring of the excesses of globalization.

The crisis of legitimacy has created strains between state elites and the TCC. Charged with maintaining social stability and political support for capitalism to ensure the smooth functioning of the market, government elites oversee and regulate the relations of production from positions in the state apparatus and security institutions. As Nicos Poulantzas pointed out, the state is a condensation of class relationships and works to maintain class hegemony (Poulantzas 2014) . But this means acting within an unstable equilibrium of compromises by the necessity of responding to political struggles and a changing balance of class forces, not only between the capitalist class and the working class, but between factions of capital, as well as social movements both Left and Right. With intensifying social contradictions and environmental crises caused by globalization, state elites have reacted with trade wars, military maneuvers, and rhetorical attacks against foreign countries, as well as new state-centric industrial policies. Such acts disrupt the free flow of cross-border capital and the coordination and expansion of global production. This is why the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other major corporate lobby groups have consistently opposed tariffs and trade wars.

Some of the greatest tension has been between the United States and China, although their mutual economic relationship has been at the core of globalization. But for all the hot rhetoric, US investments in China, as well as aggregate transnational investments, have continued to climb. There are about one million transnational corporations operating in China, and it is still the number one destination for global FDI (Huiyao 2021) . US investors held \$831 billion worth of mainland stocks and bonds at the beginning of 2020, and investments from Japan and the United Kingdom are much larger. As for new listings on US stock markets, the value of Chinese companies rose 204 percent in 2021, blowing away the 49.6 percent gains for US listings and 31 percent gains for European corporations. Overall, US-China economic interpenetration totals \$3.3 trillion (Tran and Biyani 2020) .

Richard Haass is former chair of Washington’s most elite foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. As Haass has recently stated, “The United States, China, and the rest of the globe cannot fully uncouple when national economies, financial markets, and supply chains are irreversibly tethered together. A great-power steering group is the best option for managing an integrated world no longer overseen by a hegemon” (Haass and Kupchan 2021) .

COVID-19 intensified all the existing problems present in global capitalism, falling most heavily on the world’s working class. The burdens of unemployment, an increase in poverty, lack of medical care, the exposure of essential workers forced to labor without safety precautions, and the hoarding of vaccines by Western countries all reflect the power relations and hierarchy that rule global society. The burdens impacted women most deeply because globally they are 70 percent of health-care workers and provide 75 percent of unpaid care for children, the elderly, and the sick.

The pandemic was also the greatest disruption to economic globalization since the crisis of 2008. Millions were either laid off or working from home as companies reduced production or closed. As online shopping exploded, global supply chains faltered, ports backed up, and the price of containers increased by 246 percent, resulting in a forty-fold jump in shipping profits. This became a major factor in driving up inflation. Governments responded with massive bailouts, most going to corporations. The United States and the European Union provided \$8 trillion to private business in just the initial two months of the pandemic, and the wealth of billionaires skyrocketed 27 percent within four months of the pandemic onset.

Trump’s hostile response to health science encouraged millions to reject wearing masks and contributed to the United States having the highest death toll in the world. The socioeconomic fallout was a major reason for his defeat in the 2020 presidential race. But Trump’s rhetoric fed into right-wing cultural and social identity. The individualization of freedom without social responsibility has been on display every day during the COVID-19 pandemic. Widespread refusals to wear masks were symbolized as a rebellion against the “deep state.” This went beyond an assertion of individualism to loud and ugly protests in mass rallies, with threats against hospital workers and teachers. The refusal to accept common responsibility for public health encouraged the rejection of social solidarity, boosting an ideological pillar of the right wing. Republican governors even cut off federal COVID-19 aid for the unemployed, insisting that it let people avoid work—this even as unemployment rates were coming down.

China’s response was the opposite of Trump’s moronic antiscientific pronouncements. The Chinese government mobilized millions in a “no COVID-19” policy after a stumbling denial in the first weeks of the pandemic. Blaming China for COVID-19 fed into a growing anti-China campaign in the United States and also resulted in violent attacks on Asian Americans. Largely successful at first, China’s policy came under greater strain as variations of COVID-19 continued to appear. The government response was to shut down major cities for weeks, close down roads and ports, restrict people to their homes, and close factories. All this created major disruptions to the economy, even as the pandemic made the world more dependent on Chinese production. Out of China’s 40 million small companies, about 4.37 million closed. The overall interruptions became a major concern for transnational corporations, curtailing their production, exports, and profits. As one executive reported to the Epoch Times , “It is crucial that the current draconian COVID policies in China cannot be normalized” (Corr 2022) . Additionally, the lockdowns hit the consumer sector hard, undercutting the government’s “dual circulation” policy. The government was caught in a difficult position. China’s cities are densely populated, it has a large older population, and its health-care system cannot handle massive widespread infections. As with countries everywhere, COVID-19 put social, economic, and political strains on the government.

As cited by Bill Robinson, a Bank of America internal report noted, “Coronavirus is the political, economic, and psychological event of our lifetimes that will drive disruption and transformation for years to come. It will bring a radical transformation of the kind that occurs only once in a generation” (Robinson 2022) . This transformation is a major factor in weakening global integration, rather than uniting the world in a common response.

Lastly, we need to consider the qualitative changes brought about by technology. Without the revolution in information and communication technologies, the real-time command and control of global capitalism and the organization of data that makes it work would be impossible. (Castells 1996) . The SWIFT system of computer payments transfers that recently got attention for limiting its use by Russian banks is just one part of the system in which trillions of dollars cross borders every day. A trillion doesn’t mean much to the average person. But to understand the amount of currency rocketing through the digital world, compare one million seconds, which runs just twelve and a half days, to one trillion seconds, which spans thirty-six thousand years .

Let’s examine just one market out of many, the foreign exchange market for cross-border currencies that trades \$6.6 trillion each day. This market doesn’t invest in building anything; it just trades one currency for another. Computers are programmed to look for arbitrage between currencies, or the small differences in the price of money in different parts of the world at the same moment in time. Algorithms operating in tens of thousands of computers are reading each other’s information. J. P. Morgan’s computer may see that euros are being sold for one-tenth of a penny less in Tokyo than in London. Within milliseconds the computer will buy hundreds of millions of euros in Japan and offload them in the United Kingdom, thus profiting by several million dollars. That speed is made possible by fiber optic cables that transmit data at about a billion feet per second—speed enough to circumnavigate the earth 7.6 times a second. Some 90 percent of all money moving between countries is for financial products, with financial assets reaching \$600 trillion by 2010, or ten times the value of the global output of all goods and services. Such is the system built by the TCC, and its use of technology to expand financial markets (Harris 2015) .

This mix of technology and globalization means that profits are acquired on the power and speed of an algorithm, written by skilled programmers, often in teams of one hundred to two hundred. Never in history could the work of so few produce a technology that continues without constant human oversight and produces billions in profits. This type of technology is a difference in kind, working at speeds no person can ever match, and without real-time human control and direction. Marx wrote about the shrinking of time and space with the development of world markets. For Marx this was the time it took sailing ships to bring American cotton to the mills in Manchester, and later the increased speed of rail (Marx [1939] 1973) . But neither he nor Lenin could ever imagine that capital could leap from one side of the planet to another in milliseconds.

This aspect of globalization, particularly when acting in purely speculative markets, undercuts the value of labor for capital. The results are clear. When the point of production is inside a computer and work is carried out by an algorithm, the need for a well-financed social contract is no longer necessary. Wealth can be accumulated in ever greater quantities with less reliance on living labor. A perfect recipe for neoliberalism, but one that creates greater social crises and an ever more unstable capitalism. The entire cryptocurrency market, which is a creation of algorithms based in fictitious speculative capital, is but one example.

Marx noted in volume II of Capital the desire of the capitalist class to make profits without the time and trouble of production. “To the possessor of money capital, the process of production appears merely as an unavoidable intermediate link, as a necessary evil for the sake of money-making. All nations with a capitalist mode of production are therefore seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the intervention of the process of production” (Marx [1893] 1971) . Given this observation, Marx would not be surprised by the wild speculative activity that marks financialization today. But his statement serves to remind us that speculative markets are not a neoliberal aberration but are rooted in the very nature of the system.

The Left must have an understanding of both the transnational and the national in order to have a viable analysis of global capitalism. If we view the world only through the lens of nation-centric politics and economics, we miss fundamental realities that shape our times. The central contradiction is between national and transnational forces. Each exists side by side and in the same institutions. The struggle between these linked socioeconomic systems is determined by the balance of class forces and ebbs and flows with the political struggle. The world is neither fully national nor transnational but is in the midst of a historic dialectic in which the synthesis is still unfolding.

Can the Left affect the struggle in a way that determines the character of the synthesis? Globalism created its dialectical opposite, reactionary nationalism. The appeal of “Make America Great Again” is not only to white supremacy but also to Americans who benefited from a nation-centric political economy. It is why Trump has a large political base among the small- and middle-size business class, which numbers thirty million and employed 48 percent of all workers before the pandemic. As globalists and reactionary nationalists fight over political power, how does the Left create an independent strategy? How do we oppose both wings of the capitalist class while recognizing that the main danger is white supremacy and authoritarian capitalism?

Part of the answer may lie in the Green New Deal as a program for jobs, as well as social and environmental justice (Harris 2019) . This may mean tactical unity with sections of capital that want to build the ecological modernization of the means of production, engage in social justice reforms, and oppose neofascism. After all, it’s not the Left that’s financing and building solar panel and wind turbine factories, and the planet can’t wait for the ecosocialist revolution to start this transformation. It also means that the Left must avoid jingoism in our demands to rebuild the US economy and must stress international solidarity. Part of the Republican and the Democratic strategies to win political support is to attack the most convenient foreign enemy, China—while ignoring that US corporations sent production and investments to China as a cornerstone in constructing globalization, which both parties supported. All workers, whether in China, Mexico, or the United States, deserve well-paying jobs with good labor conditions. The call from Marx for workers of the world to unite is more relevant today than ever before. Developing ways to organize and express this unity is an urgent task. Rebuilding our economy with the Green New Deal should not be sold as competition against China but as a road toward social and environmental justice that needs global cooperation and coordination.

We should support the development of an environmental proletariat in the United States and China. Our target is to expand green manufacturing and make it a unionized industry, addressing environmental racism at home and abroad. We need a strategic path that rejects both neoliberal globalization and authoritarian capitalism—a path that engages in the struggle to transform our economy, builds Left independence, and leads toward an ecosocialist future.

Competing Interests

There are no competing interests to disclose.

Author Biography

Jerry Harris is national secretary of the Global Studies Association of North America and on the international board of the Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism. His latest book is Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy (Clarity Press). He has published over 150 journal and newspaper articles. His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Slovak, and Czech. He is one of the originators of transnational capitalist class theory.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Imperialism — Reasons for American Shift to Imperialism: An Explanation

Reasons for American Shift to Imperialism: an Explanation

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Essay on American Imperialism

Students are often asked to write an essay on American Imperialism in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on American Imperialism

Introduction to american imperialism.

American Imperialism refers to the economic, military, and cultural influence of the United States on other countries. It started in the late 19th century and was driven by the desire for economic gain, territorial expansion, and the spreading of American values.

Reasons for American Imperialism

There were several reasons for American Imperialism. The United States wanted to expand its influence, gain access to resources, and open new markets for its goods. The idea of Manifest Destiny, a belief that America had a divine right to expand, also played a role.

Examples of American Imperialism

Examples of American Imperialism include the acquisition of territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. The United States also exerted its influence in Latin America through the Monroe Doctrine, which discouraged European intervention.

Impact of American Imperialism

American Imperialism had significant impacts. It led to the United States becoming a world power. However, it also led to conflicts and resistance in the countries affected. This created a complex legacy that continues to shape international relations today.

Conclusion on American Imperialism

In conclusion, American Imperialism was a key part of U.S. history. It had both positive and negative impacts. It helped America become a global power, but also led to conflicts and resistance in many areas around the world.

250 Words Essay on American Imperialism

What is american imperialism.

American Imperialism is a term that explains how the United States expanded its power and influence around the world. This happened from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The U.S. used different methods like war, diplomacy, and business agreements to gain control over other territories.

The main reasons for American Imperialism were economic, political, and military. The U.S. wanted to find new markets for their goods, spread their political ideas, and show their military power. They also wanted to compete with other powerful nations like Britain and France.

Examples of American Imperialism include the annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines. The U.S. took control of these places to get more resources and to have military bases in the Pacific. This helped the U.S. become a major world power.

American Imperialism had a big impact on the world. It helped the U.S. grow economically and politically. But, it also caused conflicts and problems in the places they took over. Some people did not want to be controlled by the U.S. and fought for their freedom.

In conclusion, American Imperialism was a key part of U.S. history. It helped shape the country’s role in the world. But, it also led to many debates about power and fairness.

500 Words Essay on American Imperialism

American Imperialism is a term that refers to the economic, military, and cultural influence of the United States on other countries. This influence began in the late 1800s and continues to this day. The United States became more involved in international affairs, expanding its power and reach across the globe.

The Beginning of American Imperialism

The start of American Imperialism is often linked to the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. The United States won the war and took control of former Spanish colonies like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. This was the first time the United States had gained control over territories outside North America.

There were several reasons for American Imperialism. One of the main reasons was economic. The United States wanted new markets for its goods. By controlling other territories, it could sell its products more easily.

Another reason was strategic. The United States wanted to have military bases in different parts of the world. This would help protect American interests and make the country more powerful.

Finally, there was a belief in cultural superiority. Some Americans thought it was their duty to spread their way of life to other parts of the world.

Effects of American Imperialism

American Imperialism had both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, the United States helped to modernize many of the territories it controlled. It built schools, hospitals, and infrastructure, improving the lives of many people.

On the negative side, many people in these territories did not want to be controlled by the United States. They felt that their culture and way of life were being ignored or destroyed. This led to conflicts and resistance against American rule.

Modern American Imperialism

Today, American Imperialism is less about controlling territories and more about economic and cultural influence. The United States has strong trade relationships with many countries. American companies operate all over the world. American culture, including music, movies, and fashion, is popular globally.

American Imperialism has played a significant role in shaping the world. It has led to the spread of American culture and influence, but it has also caused conflicts and resistance. Understanding American Imperialism helps us understand the complex relationship between the United States and the rest of the world.

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Jane Addams Papers Project

Reconsidering Jane Addams: A Portrait of Anti-Imperialism?

Last July marked another passing of the Association for Documentary Editing’s yearly conference, this time taking place in Washington, D.C. Our nation’s capital has endless museums, attractions, and performances to explore, but there was only one woman I wanted to meet: Jane Addams, of course. The National Portrait Gallery houses the only known full-color image of Addams, painted by George de Forest Brush in 1906 , the process of which was detailed in many letters that can be found within the digital edition. It took some work getting to her – the front desk claimed Addams’s portrait was not currently on display even though I had pulled up a location on the Gallery’s website. Not one to be told “no,” I scoured the nooks and crannies of the museum, looking for Jane nestled among peace activists, child or immigrant welfare reformers, or suffrage protesters. Instead, I found her with what I believed to be a sort of motley crew in a section titled “Republic or Empire?” that detailed America’s thoughts on Spain’s involvement in the destruction of the USS Maine . Her fellow portrait sitters included Samuel Clemens , W.E.B. Du Bois , Benjamin Tillman, Moorfield Storey , Queen Lili’uokalani , and Theophilus Gould Steward, gathered together under the roof of “anti-imperialism.” Since visiting the Gallery, I’ve been wondering: Does Jane Addams truly belong among these figures, or would she be better represented elsewhere?

Imperialism was a weighted topic during the early Progressive Era. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85 was convened specifically to regulate European colonization and trade in Africa, and to which the United States sent three diplomats to represent the American colonial empire. In 1887, the US renewed the Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, further increasing American economic influence in Hawaii. This renewal set the stage for the overthrowing of Queen Lili’uokalani, the last reigning sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in 1893. In the 1890s, the “Scramble for Africa” continued, with Egypt overtaken by the British in 1882, and Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda subjugated in the 90’s and early 20th century. These global events culminate in the Gallery section’s primary focus, the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine , then stationed in Havana Harbor, Cuba to protect American interests during the Cuban War of Independence.

Admittedly, I am not an expert in Progressive Era imperialism, but I like to think I know Jane Addams quite well. During the events discussed above, Addams was dutifully creating and strengthening Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago modeled after Toynbee Hall of London. While she would go on to become active in global circles like peace and disarmament, Addams began her reform work locally, ensuring that marginalized citizens of the Nineteenth Ward were given uplifting amenities and a space to gather and learn. By our records, in the 1890s Addams wrote speeches and articles primarily about Hull-House, working women, and labor strikes – issues that stopped at the state level. Her interest in international affairs wouldn’t manifest fully until the onset of the first World War. Yet, despite all of this, Addams joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1899.

It was in this same year that Addams gave her first signs of anti-imperial sentiments, with an article for the Central Anti-Imperialist League titled “Democracy or Militarism.” In it, she shows contempt toward countries with “an increased standing army, the soldiers of which are non-producers and must be fed by the workers.” She goes on to scorn the idea of “protecting the weak” as the excuse of a ruler to invade and subjugate outside nations, and shows disapproval toward the recent Spanish-American War. Even so, the last three paragraphs relate the then current state of Spain to events going on in Chicago rather than referencing any national affairs. After this, Addams didn’t discuss imperialism, anti or pro, much, if at all. The next time it was brought up in any meaningful way was a letter from Erving Winslow , Secretary of the Anti-Imperialist League, dated August 12, 1912 in which he chided Addams for supporting Theodore Roosevelt, a known imperialist, in the 1912 Presidential election.

The men Addams was grouped with were, from all accounts, more entrenched in the anti-imperialist scene than Addams ever was. Samuel Clemens was shown to be in favor of imperialism until about 1900. From then until his death in 1910, Clemens spoke and wrote often about his thoughts on the Treaty of Paris and the burgeoning Philippine-American War, and he was vocally critical of foreign countries’ imperialism as well. Du Bois extensively advocated for anti-imperialism, especially in Africa where, he argued, the Scramble for Africa was the foundation for World War I. Tillman was a staunch anti-imperialist, though his sentiments stemmed from the belief that white American lives were being wasted in the pursuit of militaristically subduing Filipino natives after the Spanish-American War. Moorfield Story was the Anti-Imperialist League’s second and last president from 1905-1920, and believed in a connection between America’s imperialistic endeavors and the country’s persecution of minority races. Queen Lili’uokalani had the most direct impact of the Age of Imperialism, deposed in 1893 by a group of sugar and pineapple businessmen. If Lili’uokalani was the most directly impacted, Steward was the least involved. Theophilus Gould Steward was primarily a clergyman, author, and educator, serving as a chaplain in the 25th Infantry Regiment, a racially segregated regiment, from 1891-1907, including serving in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, and later in the Philippines. Steward wrote about the experience of the African American soldier, which did touch on their struggle for freedom and citizenship, but he did not directly compare their strife to Filipinos resisting American colonial rule.

If not here, then where would Jane Addams belong? The National Portrait Gallery holds over 20,000 pieces in their various collections – certainly some of those could fit better with Addams’s narrative. To represent women building Chicago, they own a portrait of Frances Perkins , the first woman to serve on a cabinet of a US President and a Hull-House volunteer, Alice Hamilton , a Chicago doctor and Hull-House volunteer, or Nettie Fowler McCormick , a Chicago philanthropist. In a wider perspective, outside her Chicago colleagues, there is Woodrow Wilson , 28th President of the United States, Martha Carey Thomas , second president of Bryn Mawr College, and Julius Rosenwald , co-owner of Sears, Roebuck, and Co. and philanthropist.

At the end of the day, Jane Addams’s portrait is no longer on display. Neither Clemens’s, Du Bois’s, Tillman’s, Storey’s, Lili’uokalani’s, or Steward’s portraits are currently available to view in person. I suppose that is the nature of a large collection of works with limited space to display them. Even so, this also means that Addams could be displayed along with any number of her peers at any point in time, perhaps to help tell an entirely different story about America’s elaborate history.

Victoria Sciancalepore

Assistant Editor

Other Sources: “Berlin West Africa Conference.” Encyclopædia Britannica, February 19, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/event/Berlin-West-Africa-Conference ; Hixson, William B. Moorfield Storey and the Abolitionist Tradition . New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972; Jane Addams. “Democracy or Militarism.” Liberty Tracts , no. 1 (1899): 35–39; “Joint Resolution to Provide for Annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States (1898).” National Archives and Records Administration, February 8, 2022. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/joint-resolution-for-annexing-the-hawaiian-islands ; Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois . New York: H. Holt, 1993; “Maine Blown Up at Havana.” New York Tribune . February 16, 1898; Steward, Theophilus Gould. The Colored Regulars . Philadelphia, PA: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1904; Tillman, Benjamin. “Policy Regarding the Philippine Islands.” Congressional Record 32, no. 2 (February 21, 1899): 1529–33; Twain, Mark. “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” The North American Review 172, no. 531 (February 1901): 161–76.

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Friday essay: ‘mourning cannot be an endpoint’ – James Bradley on living in an Age of Emergency

Honorary Associate, Sydney Environment Centre, The University of Sydney., University of Sydney

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One morning in September 2023 I leave my home and drive to the beach. Although it is early, the day is already unseasonably warm, the sky hazy with smoke from hazard-reduction burns to the south and north of the city.

Despite the weather the beach is quiet. Walking to the water’s edge I wade out and dive, then stroke outwards until my breath gives out and I surface with a gasp. Although I have not swum all that far, I am already out past the break, so instead of heading on I turn back towards the beach and tread water slowly. Closer in, a few people are waiting for the waves that roll in now and then, behind me three or four swimmers are stroking their way across the bay, but otherwise I am alone.

There is something very particular about looking back towards the shore from deeper water. When I was younger, and my friends and I would slip away from work in the late afternoons to surf, I always loved drifting out beyond the break as evening approached – the way the colour would bleed out of the world, until it was just you and the movement of the swell. Today, though, it seems enough to just float here.

I suppose that in some part of myself I am taking stock. The past few years have had many challenges, not just the disruptions of the pandemic and its effects on my children, but also other losses, in the form of family illness and death, all of which have left me older, less confident, more aware of the constant proximity of disaster.

The world has also been transformed. Amid the convulsions of COVID, a hastening wave of calamity has made it clear that the first stages of climate breakdown are upon us. After three years in which floods, heatwaves, fires and storms devastated communities and ecosystems around the world, July and August 2023 were the hottest months ever recorded . In Asia, Europe, North America and North Africa, records have been shattered over and over again .

Sanbao in China hit 52.2°C; near the Arctic Circle in Canada temperatures reached almost 38°C; and in Phoenix in the United States, where temperatures exceeded 43°C for 30 days straight, hospitals were crowded with people who had suffered burns from falling onto the pavement .

Fires consumed tens of millions of hectares of forest in Canada, Russia, Greece, Spain, Algeria and even Hawaii, while floods and storms have devastated communities across Asia, Europe and North Africa. Meanwhile, ocean temperatures have also moved into uncharted territory , rising half a degree above previous records in the North Atlantic and reaching more than 38°C off Florida , with catastrophic implications for corals and other marine organisms in the region.

Some have taken to calling this wave of rolling disaster the new normal. But what the world has experienced over the past months and years is not a new normal – it is just the beginning. Combined with the legacies of centuries of colonial violence and extractive processes, the reckless burning of fossil fuels has pushed the planet into a dangerously unstable new state. We now live in an Age of Emergency that will not end in my lifetime.

Read more: Burning fossil fuels is responsible for most sea-level rise since 1970

The brutal reality is that the world has already heated 1.2°C, and in 2023 at least, has already temporarily exceeded 1.5°C of heating, increasing the possibility we may crash through the 1.5°C guardrail within a decade . Even if implemented in full, the emission-reduction targets announced to date by nations around the world will not prevent this; instead they place the planet on a path to 2°C of heating. The level of real-world action falls even further short of what is needed, committing the world to a temperature increase of 2.5–3°C by the end of the century.

A temperature rise of just 2°C will have catastrophic effects on the planet and human life. Heatwaves and extreme weather events will increase significantly. More than half the world’s population will be affected by water scarcity. Food production will decline markedly, especially in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America. The distribution and incidence of tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever will increase significantly.

The impacts on the non-human world will be even more drastic. Extinction rates will soar. Collapses in insect populations will accelerate, severely disrupting ecosystems and food production. Coral reefs will all but disappear. Warming and acidifying waters will severely impact the fisheries that provide one-third of the world with their principal source of protein.

Worse yet, with each fraction of a degree of heating, the likelihood of sudden and non-linear change increases. In 2008 scientists identified nine global tipping points, boundaries beyond which the process of change becomes self-perpetuating, leading to rapid and irreversible breakdown. In 2022 a new study added seven more regional tipping points , and produced evidence suggesting we may have already pushed the planet past the threshold of five of them.

The effects of this process are already transforming the world. More than half of the 60 million internally displaced people who were forced to flee their homes in 2022 did so as a result of natural disasters such as cyclones, flooding and drought . In the words of United Nations secretary-general António Guterres, without rapid action to curb emissions and reshape the world economy we face “a mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale”, and “ ever-fiercer competition for freshwater, land and other resources”.

This crisis is so immense, so complex and so seemingly intractable, that it sometimes seems impossible to make sense of. But the ocean provides a way of thinking about these questions, of seeing the currents and tidal forces that have borne us here, the way the waves of migration and encounter and exploitation flow across continents and timescales. Attempting to comprehend its immensity and fluid multiplicity alters us, making it possible to glimpse new continuities and connections.

Simultaneously, though, the ocean reveals that the roots of the crisis we inhabit lie deep in the patterns of violent exploitation and extraction that have shaped the modern world.

For those like myself who are the beneficiaries of these historical processes, acknowledging the truth of this violence and its legacies can be confronting, but it is necessary. As the late Sven Lindqvist observes in his interrogation of the racist and genocidal foundations of European imperialism , “It is not knowledge we lack. It is the courage to understand what we know and draw conclusions.”

In other words, the path through involves more than just a shift in energy sources. It begins in a reckoning with the past, and demands a far more fundamental reorganisation of the global economy, a shift to a model that operates within planetary boundaries and shares resources for the benefit of all. The technological and economic tools necessary to achieve this already exist; what is needed is for those solutions to be put in place.

Such a shift is not impossible. The body of economic and social theory outlining how such a world might operate is extensive. Social experiments exploring sustainable systems are underway in cities and communities around the world. Treaties and agreements to control the spread of plastics, and to address problems such as overfishing and pollution, the burning of fossil fuels and other destructive activities, are gradually being brought into being.

Read more: We now have a treaty governing the high seas. Can it protect the Wild West of the oceans?

There is also increasing recognition of the need for adaptation and support for poorer nations . These reforms have not come from nowhere: they are the result of decades of sacrifice by activists, scientists and local and Indigenous communities.

These victories are only a beginning. The influence of fossil fuel companies and other corporations over governments continues, as the increasing use of state power to curtail protest makes clear . The wealth of the richest continues to grow, as does the rate at which industrialised society is burning through the planet’s reserves. But while these forces can seem overwhelming, unstoppable, they are not.

Read more: ‘Draconian and undemocratic’: why criminalising climate protesters in Australia doesn't actually work

Only a few years ago, the world was on track for temperature rises of 4°C or more. The fact the temperature increases currently predicted are only slightly more than half that is partly the result of a dizzyingly fast uptake of green technologies.

But it is also a testament to the environmental movement’s tireless efforts to force governments and corporations to alter course, and a reminder that the transformation that is needed will come to pass only through campaigns of mass engagement and civil disobedience.

Beauty and astonishment

So much is being lost, and so fast, it is difficult not to feel deranged by it. How do we make sense of the disappearance of coral reefs, of dying kelp and collapsing ecosystems? How do we imagine a world in which the massing life that once inhabited not just the oceans but the earth and the sky is largely gone?

One solution is to simply turn away. The cognitive dissonance of this choice is all around us, as visible in the insistence of politicians that it is possible to keep burning fossil fuels as in the increasingly frantic displays of wealth by the powerful. At a more practical level it is also simply delaying the inevitable: if the past few years have taught us anything, it is that nobody is safe. But it is also to do a kind of violence, for by denying the reality of what is going on we do violence to ourselves, by cauterising our capacity for empathy and grief.

The other alternative, to try to accommodate what is happening, is a far more confronting prospect. The anthropologist and philosopher Deborah Bird Rose, who died in 2018, wrote of the impossibility of bridging the gap between our limited ability to affect what is taking place around ourselves and the cost of facing it.

Yet she also recognised that to turn our backs to it was also to turn our backs on ourselves. “To face others is to become a witness, and to experience our incapacity in this position.” It is also an ethical imperative, a way to “remain true to the lives within which ours are entangled, whether or not we can effect great change”.

To bear witness in this way is to make ourselves vulnerable, to open ourselves up to loss and sadness. Nonetheless, as the philosopher Thom van Dooren has observed , it is also an act of hope, a refusal to ignore the bonds of care that connect us to the world around us. And, perhaps no less importantly, it embodies a preparedness to absorb the lessons of history and to recognise the reality of the past.

More than that, however, the act of openness creates the possibility of love and joy and – improbably – wonder.

However much has been lost, the world still hums with beauty and astonishment. We share the planet with whales that sing across oceans and navigate by watching the stars, with fish that pass ways of knowing across generations, in webs of culture spreading back millions of years, with turtles that follow invisible patterns of magnetism back to the beaches where they were born.

Read more: Space tracking reveals turtles' record-breaking ocean swim

To contemplate the strangeness and wonder of these other ways of being is to begin to understand our place in the world very differently, to be reminded that we are not separate, or different, but part of a much larger system of impossible magnificence and complexity.

No less importantly, it is to recognise that despair is also a form of turning away. A few months ago I spoke to a scientist in Tasmania who is working to regenerate the giant kelp that has been almost wiped out by rising temperatures by selectively breeding specimens that have demonstrated higher thermal tolerance.

While we were talking, he grew emotional as he conceded it was possible the seemingly unstoppable upward arc of ocean temperatures will wipe out even these more thermally tolerant species. Yet, like the scientists working to save coral reefs, he said he did not know what else he could do.

The hope he described is a fragile thing but it is also an investment in the future, a refusal to give up. It offers a reminder that mourning cannot be an endpoint. Instead, grief must be part of a larger recognition that there is no longer any way back, that the only route now is forward. That we must find ways to live in a world on fire. And ways to fight that will ensure the survival of all.

The storm that is upon us will leave nobody untouched. Surviving it demands we build a world that treats everybody – human and non-human – as worthy of life and possibility.

I have times when I think it is possible to see that world taking shape in the distance. Times when it is possible to convince myself we will get there because we have no choice. Because however much is lost, there is still more to save.

I turn to look out to the horizon, its fading margin between sea and sky a space of grief, but also possibility. Around me the water extends outwards, its embrace holding me, its fluidity connecting me to the planet’s systems, to myriad other lives – past, present and future. And putting my face down I start to swim, outwards, towards the unknown.

This is an edited extract from Deep Water: the world in the ocean by James Bradley (Hamish Hamilton).

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Wanted in South Korea: Imperialism-Free Cherry Blossoms

Activists want to replace a variety of cherry tree associated with the Japanese colonial era with one they say is Korean. The science is messy.

Cherry trees on the verge of blooming in Gyeongju, South Korea, last week. Credit... By Chang W. Lee/the New York Times

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By John Yoon ,  Mike Ives and Hisako Ueno

Photographs and Video by Chang W. Lee

John Yoon and Chang W. Lee reported from Gyeongju, South Korea. Mike Ives reported from Seoul, and Hisako Ueno from Tokyo.

• March 29, 2024

Shin Joon Hwan, an ecologist, walked along a road lined with cherry trees on the verge of blooming last week, examining the fine hairs around their dark red buds.

The flowers in Gyeongju, South Korea, an ancient capital, belong to a common Japanese variety called the Yoshino, or Tokyo cherry. Mr. Shin’s advocacy group wants to replace those trees with a kind that it insists is native to South Korea, called the king cherry.

“These are Japanese trees that are growing here, in the land of our ancestors,” said Mr. Shin, 67, a former director of South Korea’s national arboretum.

Mr. Shin’s nascent project, with a few dozen members, is the latest wrinkle in a complex debate over the origins of South Korea’s cherry trees. The science has been entangled with more than a century of nationalist propaganda and genetic evolution.

Cherry blossoms, celebrated by poets as symbols of impermanence, occupy a major place in Japanese culture . In medieval times they were associated with elite warriors, the “flower among flowers,” said Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, an anthropologist who has written about the cherry tree.

During the Edo period, which began in the 17th century, the blossoms were nationalized as a symbol of Japanese identity, she said. And propagandists in Japan’s 20th-century military government compared killed soldiers to falling cherry petals, saying they had died after a “brief but beautiful life.”

During Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula, from 1910 to 1945, Yoshinos were planted as part of an effort to instill “cultural refinement” in colonial subjects, said David Fedman, the author of “ Seeds of Control, ” a 2020 book about Japanese forestry in colonial Korea.

Yoshinos have been intertwined with the thorny politics of colonialism ever since. South Koreans have occasionally cut them down in protest. And some argue that Yoshinos, which Japanese officials also sent to the United States in the early 1900s, should be replaced with king cherries — distinguishable by the lack of hair on their buds — claiming the latter are more Korean.

The politics of cherry trees have ebbed and flowed along with Japanese-Korean relations, and nationalist claims about them have mostly crowded out scientific nuances, said Professor Fedman, who teaches history at the University of California, Irvine.

“Even the genetics look complicated, and don’t give us the easy answers that we’re looking for,” he said.

Mr. Shin’s project is a reaction to decisions made by the Japanese authorities more than a century ago.

In the early 1900s, Japanese scientists described king cherries, found on Jeju Island, south of the Korean Peninsula, as the parent of the Yoshino. The claim that Yoshinos originated on Jeju then motivated South Koreans to spread them throughout the country in the 1960s.

Scientists have since debunked that theory. But another — that king cherries are Korean — lives on.

The theory has its own critics.

Wybe Kuitert, a retired professor of environmental studies at Seoul National University, said that “king cherry” refers to a set of hybrids, not a species with a geographically defined habitat. He characterized efforts by Korean scientists to pinpoint a “correct,” or original, king cherry species as misguided.

“In such a mess of hybrids, which is the correct one?” he said. “You don’t know. You can’t decide it by genomic sequences or DNA sampling.”

But Seung-Chul Kim, an American plant taxonomist at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, whose cherry research has been funded partly by the government, said the initiative to replace Yoshinos was worthwhile. Even if the evolutionary trajectory of king cherries is unclear, he said, they evolved independently on Jeju.

Only about 200 king cherries grow naturally in South Korea, Mr. Shin said. His group aspires to replace all of the country’s Yoshinos by 2050, when they near the end of their roughly 60-year life span.

“Ultimately, I’d like to see Yoshino cherries go away,” said Jin-Oh Hyun, the group’s secretary general, a botanist who propagates king cherries in the central city of Jecheon. “But we need to replace them in stages, starting in areas that are the most meaningful.”

In 2022, the group surveyed the cherry trees lining a promenade near the National Assembly in Seoul that is thronged with visitors every cherry blossom season. And last year, it studied cherries in the southeastern port district of Jinhae, where a festival celebrating Yi Sun-shin , a Korean admiral who helped repel a 16th-century Japanese invasion, is held every spring.

The trees in both places were predominantly Yoshinos, the group found.

When Mr. Shin surveyed cherry trees in Gyeongju last week, the landscape included pines, bamboos, pansies, plums and a 400-year-old zelkova tree. But the cherries, which had not yet bloomed, consumed him.

“It would be great if people around the world could enjoy both the Korean and the Japanese trees,” he said, adding that the distinction was not widely known. “But things are one-sided now.”

Two arborists in Japan said that they respected South Korean efforts to replace Yoshinos.

“Cherry trees alone have no meaning,” said one, Nobuyuki Asada, the secretary general of the Japan Cherry Blossom Association. “That depends on how people choose to see and manage them.”

John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news. More about John Yoon

Mike Ives is a reporter for The Times based in Seoul, covering breaking news around the world. More about Mike Ives

Hisako Ueno has been reporting on Japanese politics, business, gender, labor and culture for The Times since 2012. She previously worked for the Tokyo bureau of The Los Angeles Times from 1999 to 2009. More about Hisako Ueno

Chang W. Lee has been a photographer for The Times for 30 years, covering events throughout the world. He is currently based in Seoul. Follow him on Instagram @nytchangster . More about Chang W. Lee

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