Age of Empire
AN AGE OF EMPIRE At the brink of the twentieth century, HawaiiĄŻs sugar plantations were producing at all-time highs ¨D yet the McKinley Tariff had driven white planters to the wall. ... For reasons of legality, historical precedents, and a dearth of acceptable reasoning promoting imperialism, this code of empire-building in the earliest days of the nineteenth century was both improper and illegitimate. ... As agreed in the treaty of Paris in 1898, the United States acquired the Philippine Islands from SpainĄŻs crumbling empire. ... The United States was born from a desire to escape an unwelcome empire; colonists petitioned the British crown, asked for rights, fought for independence. ... In every preceding case, the United States sought only to halt the spread of foreign empires, rather than to create an empire of its own. ... " When McKinley made his fateful decisions to enter the path of empire, he ignored all of these precedents. ... Imperialism, by all standards legal and historical, as well as a total lack of adequate reasoning supporting an empire, was absolutely wrong.