Name: How America Became an Empire - Pacific War #0.4 DOCUMENTARY
Uploaded: 2022-06-27T11:20:34.000Z
Duration: 16 min 19 s
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So far in this series we've been mainly  covering the history of the Japanese Empire  

prior to the start of the Pacific War; but  what about the other major player of the war?  

What was the position of the United States  after the end of World War One? What were  

their interests and strategies in the Pacific?  And how did they feel about their future rival  

and its rise as a great power? Today, we  are going to answer all these questions and  

more as we cover the history of the United  States and its role in the Pacific theater.

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Since its inception, one of the primary objectives  of the United States has been to secure America's  

commercial interests in the world, without  hesitation to use force to preserve its trade  

and only bothering to intervene in  conflicts if they impede American profits.  

Yet expansionism wasn't rare either in the  early history of the US, albeit not by force  

of arms in most cases . Following independence,  the Manifest Destiny doctrine urged Americans to  

expand in a westward direction until getting to  the Pacific Ocean. With the Purchase of Alaska,  

westward expansion finally ended, but the Manifest  Destiny did not; as in the late 19th Century, it  

evolved to promote an overseas expansion directed  to the acquisition of Pacific island groups .  

Commercial interests in the Far East also helped  to fuel this extension of the Manifest Destiny,  

with the US participating in the forced  establishment of trade in China, Japan and Korea  

via the unequal treaties through the decades. And  back home, as the United States resisted getting  

itself entangled in Europe's perennial wars, a  sphere of influence was gradually created over  

its own continent and the US soon started to grow  as a world power . This sphere of influence then  

expanded into the Pacific, where the Americans  found great interests on the Hawaiian Archipelago,  

which would eventually cause the collapse of the  Kingdom of Hawaii and its subsequent annexation  

by the US, an event that coincided with the  outbreak of war with the Spanish Empire over Cuba. 

From this war, the United States also obtained  the Philippines and Guam in the Pacific,  

yet these territories were not to be new states;  instead, they were basically declared as colonies,  

not enjoying full constitutional  rights under American rule.  

The newly-born American Imperialism in the  Pacific would continue with the colonization  

of the eastern islands of Samoa and  the main islands surrounding Hawaii.  

In East Asia, the Americans opted to cede the  initiative to Europeans with the objective of  

securing the little presence they had in the  region, while at the same time helping important  

states like Japan or China to modernize and thus  become a counterweight to European encroachment.  

In result, relationships with the Qing Dynasty  and the early Meiji government were very amicable,  

with the US promising to intercede on their  behalf in the face of renewed European aggression.  

But when the Japanese Empire quickly began  to manifest its own imperial ambitions,  

the Americans had to act upon to prevent  war between Japan and China, consequently  

damaging American-Japanese relations. After  the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, however,  

the US helped to broker peace between them with  the Treaty of Shimonoseki and refused to join the  

Europeans during the Triple Intervention, again  becoming one of the friendliest powers to Japan. 

In 1899, after a scramble for concessions  in China, Secretary of State John Hay  

established a new American foreign policy aimed  towards East Asia. With the Open Door Policy,  

the US wanted to preserve Chinese  territorial and administrative integrity  

as a buffer against intensifying conflicts in  the region and to secure American commercial,  

rail and navigational access to Chinese markets.  This skilful articulation of US interests probably  

slowed imperial expansion within China during  and after the Boxer Rebellion, yet it wouldn't be  

enough to deter Russian and Japanese aggression,  leading to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War.  

Once again, the Americans would have to intervene  to end the war and maintain a favorable balance of  

power in the region during the negotiations at the  Treaty of Portsmouth. The very restrained peace  

terms negotiated by President Theodore Roosevelt  strongly damaged American-Japanese relations,  

as Roosevelt supported the defeated Russians in  their stance to concede little territory and to  

avoid war reparations. The Japanese expected  these reparations to help families recover  

from lost fathers and sons and to relieve  the burden of heavy taxation; without them,  

social unrest erupted in the country. Roosevelt  did this because he wanted the war to end  

with both Russia and Japan in a weak state; Russia  humiliated and militarily weak, and Japan bankrupt  

and with unrest. The Japanese, however, managed  to recover from the economic crisis and continued  

to modernize as we have already seen. Worried  about Japan's growing naval power after the war,  

the Roosevelt administration set out to improve  its defenses in the Pacific and to embark on  

a large naval buildup capable of defending  Pacific possessions from Japanese aggression. 

In the remainder of Roosevelt's presidency, an  effort was made to improve relations with the  

Japanese, but despite the successes that American  diplomats might have had, everything would change  

after the outbreak of the First World War. From  it, the United States emerged as a great power,  

playing a key part in the collapse of the  German Empire at the end of the war. But despite  

President Woodrow Wilson's goal of world peace  with the establishment of the League of Nations,  

his foreign policy in the Pacific would be poor  and inconsistent. It was during this time that  

American-Japanese relations reached a point of no  return, as the US condemned the Twenty-One Demands  

presented by the Japanese to China in an effort to  increase their sphere of influence in the region.  

The growing tensions between Japan and the US then  reached a climax at Versailles, forcing the Allied  

nations to strike a compromise during the peace  negotiations. In exchange for the German leases  

in China and their colonies in Micronesia, the  Racial Equality Proposal presented by the Japanese  

would be rejected, mainly due to the opposition  of the British and the US itself. This compromise  

was seen as a humiliation by both the Chinese, who  believed that the German leases should return to  

them, and the Japanese, who felt alienated by  the Western powers and in response suffered a  

rise of nationalism and anti-American sentiment. Overall, however, Wilson would maintain the Open  

Door policy towards China in a more friendly  way and would succeed at supporting democracy  

and self-determination in Asia and the Pacific,  even going so far as to propose the decolonization  

of the Philippines. But the devastation of  the Great War had an unforeseen consequence:  

it left only the US and the Japanese Empire as  the main players in the Pacific. To preserve the  

Open Door, the Americans would now have to balance  their own power in the region and that of Japan;  

and to increase the difficulty of their task, the  Republic of China would also fracture into several  

Warlord states, so the Open Door was detrimental  for the Chinese territorial integrity. Meanwhile,  

the American Navy had been preparing for war  with the Japanese Empire since the start of the  

century, developing and adapting their War Plan  Orange through the years. Their plan initially  

involved the defense of their Pacific possessions  from their base at Corregidor Island while waiting  

for reinforcements to arrive from the Atlantic,  as the US expected a sudden Japanese attack. Then,  

advancing up the Caroline and Marshall Islands in  preparation for a decisive counterattack against  

the Japanese Navy, the Americans would  take Japan's home islands under blockade  

and then end the war. Thus for the success of War  Plan Orange, continued parity with the IJN in the  

Pacific and the fortification of the US Pacific  possessions was of absolute importance. If the  

Americans neglected these endeavours, they would  then throw away an invaluable military advantage  

and risk prolongation of war, maximum  expenditure and uncertainty of outcome. 

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How America Became an Empire - Pacific War #0.4 DOCUMENTARY

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