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| Southern Democratic term for the end of Reconstruction and the return of white southern Democratic rule to the South. This restoration of "home rule" occurred gradually, state-by-state between 1870 and 1877 when Reconstruction ended. |
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| Constitutional amendment ratified in 1868 which repaired one of the major deficiencies of the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments) and thereby expanded the definition of liberty in the US. Prior to the 14th Amendment, individual rights and liberties were protected from abridgment by the national government but not by the states. The 14th Amendment set limits on state powers with three clauses. The citizenship clause establishes dual citizenship and indicates that national citizenship takes precedence over state citizenship. The due process clause stipulates that no state can deny any person the rights to life, liberty, or property without due process of law (i.e., a fair trial). The equal protection clause says that no state can deny any person equal protection of the law within its jurisdiction. |
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| Agreement between Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans which brought an end to Reconstruction by allowing the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes as President in return for the withdrawal of the remaining troops from the South, appointment of a former Confederate general to the Hayes cabinet, federal aid to bolster economic and railroad development in the South, and a free hand for Southerners in regard to race relations. This represents the new alliance between northern business-oriented Republicans and well-to-do Southern whites at the expense of Blacks and the ideal of equality for all. |
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| The notion that the farmer and farm life symbolized the essence of America, that farmers were independent, self-sufficient, and non-materialistic, and that farm life was pleasant, peaceful, and satisfying. Also known as agrarian myth. |
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| Legislation passed in 1887 intended to end the problems of the Native Americans and assimilate them into the majority culture (thereby making wars, reservations, and social conflict unnecessary) by giving land and citizenship to individual Native Americans thereby destroying tribal bonds and their communal culture. Each Native American, after renouncing tribal allegiance, received an allotment from the tribal reservation which would be held in trust for twenty-five years at the end of which time he would receive full title and full rights of citizenship. Designed by well-intentioned reformers, the act reflected the racism and ethnocentrism of the late 19th century and rather than protecting Native Americans, undermined their position by giving whites an opportunity to redistribute to whites (through land runs) tribal lands remaining after allotment. |
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| The use of future crops to guarantee loans farmers contracted from merchants so they could plant crops and support their families until harvest time. This system contributed to peonage or perpetual indebtedness even among farmers in the South who owned their own land. |
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| A tax which had to be paid each year to retain the right to vote which was used to disenfranchise poor blacks in the South. |
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| The first of the "Granger cases" in which the Supreme Court (in 1877) upheld state laws regulating railroads and grain elevators within their boundaries on the basis of the social contract theory that when individuals became members of society, they give up some freedom for security and therefore businesses affected with "a public interest" cannot act in simply in their own self-interest but must consider the public well-being. The Court found the Granger laws to be a legitimate expression of the state police power to protect that public well-being. The Court reversed this decision in the Wabash case of 1886 by distinguishing between interstate and intrastate commerce and by arguing that property rights are a natural right (and therefore anterior to government) rather than societal rights. |
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| A discriminatory practice of the railroads which favored shippers with large loads, regular shipments, and terminal-to-terminal destinations over shippers with small loads sent irregularly from small towns. The rebate was a secret refund of a portion of the rate charged for transportation and allowed shippers to avoid lowering prices generally and to circumvent agreements with other shippers (made to reduce competition) and attract the best customers for themselves. They led to the adoption of railroad pools and then to the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Elkins Act of 1903 which made unpublished rates illegal. |
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| Combinations of businesses in the same field in an effort to monopolize one stage of production in an industry. One of the best and most successful examples of this was John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company which dominated the oil refining industry by the 1870s. |
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| Labor organization founded in 1869 by Uriah S. Stephens which organized all workers on a geographic basis, proposed a cooperative system of production be established alongside the existing competitive system, and worked for a wide variety of other labor, political, and social reforms. Because it emphasized political change and because it included all workers, it had difficulty organizing strikes. It began to decline in influence in 1886 when two strikes failed, when the skilled workers began to leave and form the American Federation of Labor, and when the Knights became associated in the public mind with the Haymarket Riot of 1886 which led to accusations of political radicalism. |
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| Practice of politicians rewarding political supporters with office. Also known as the spoils system (as in "to the victor belong the spoils") which beginning with Andrew Jackson in 1829 became the primary method of appointing people to governmental positions in the 19th century. See Civil Service Reform. |
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| Andrew Carnegie's article (1887) and argument that individuals should have the freedom to become wealthy and amass fortunes but that the wealthy then had an obligation to use their fortunes for the benefit of society. This argument reflects the paternalistic, class-oriented, laissez faire, social Darwinist thinking of the late 19th century which accepts the idea that the world is a predatory place in which the ablest take what they can and then, because they know best, can help the poor indirectly (through public libraries, for example) when they would not help the poor directly (through higher wages). |
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| Government in the cities by political machines (beginning with Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall in NYC in the 1860s) which dispensed political jobs and favors (for rich and poor) in return for votes and contributions. These governments are representative of the corruption in government, business, and society in the Gilded Age and after. They reflect the wide-spread belief in social Darwinism and laissez faire economics according to which people should be free to act in their own self-interest. The bosses did offer help to the immigrants and the poor but at a cost to democracy by buying their vote and by wasting public monies through corrupt bargains with unscrupulous individuals and businesses. |
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| One of the most successful third party movements in U.S. history, it was composed of farmers, westerners, workers, and small businessmen who organized as a political party in 1891 and called for reforms which would have made the national government more responsible for the well-being of the society as a whole. The movement died after the Populists joined the Democrats in nominating William Jennings Bryan for president partly because their political opponents discredited them as radicals and fools because of their demand for "Free Silver" which the industrialists claimed would ruin the economy. That economic argument tended to overshadow the Populists' other reform proposals many of which the other parties did adopt during the Progressive Era, including methods of direct democracy at the state level (initiative, referendum, and recall), a graduated income tax (16th Amendment), and the direct election of U.S. senators (17th Amendment). |
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| A U.S. policy statement issued by President Monroe in 1823 which declared that Latin America was no longer open to European colonization. This doctrine was used by the U.S. at different times to support both policies of isolationism and policies of active mission. In 1823, the doctrine was primarily isolationist in tone and effect; in the 1840s and in the 1890s and early 1900s, it became a justification for aggressive, interventionist policies by the U.S. as in the Mexican War of the 1840s and the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904. The U.S. also came to insist that the doctrine was the equivalent of international law and therefore should be recognized by all nations, a position which tended to make the Western Hemisphere a U.S. sphere of influence. |
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| U.S. battleship which exploded in Havana harbor at 9:40pm on February 15, 1898, killing 260 officers and men. Although subsequent investigations indicate that the explosion was the result of an internal problem on the ship, the "yellow press" of the day (inclined to print sensationalist accounts to increase readership) accused Spain of being responsible, a sentiment which accorded with U.S. public opinon. The U.S. public expressed outrage, and while McKinley resisted war for another two months, the incident helped to bring the Spanish-American War of 1898. "Remember the Maine" became one of the slogans of the war in the U.S. |
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| Laws passed by Southern states under Johnsonian Reconstruction in 1865 which limited the rights of blacks and attempted to control the actions of freedmen socially, politically, and economically. These controls included the denial of the right to vote, vagrancy laws, harsh penal codes and generally threatened blacks with second-class citizenship so that slavery could be restored in all but name. Such actions convinced many in the North that Southerners were not repentant and not prepared to live up to the principles of liberty and equality for all, leading to more support for the Radical Republicans and a refusal by Congress in December 1865 to readmit the new southern state governments, thereby extending Reconstruction. |
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| constitutional amendment, ratified in 1870, which forbade states to deny the vote to any male because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Republicans advocated this because they feared that without the black vote, Republicans could not win national elections, and therefore the Democrats (once the South was restored to the Union) would be the majority party, gain control of the national government, and put Southerners in a position to control national policy. The negative wording of the 15th Amendment made it possible for Southerners to disfranchise blacks and gain control of policy, as shown by Plessy v. Ferguson and segregation. |
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| A perpetual indebtedness tying the debtor to the land which resulted from tenant farmers buying supplies on credit based on future crops. Such indebtedness produced social subordination and provided an economic basis for segregation and second class citizenship for blacks in the South. |
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| Act passed in 1862 which granted 160 acres of government land to any adult who lived on a claim for five years or who paid $1.25 an acre after six months of residence. This act was intended to increase opportunities for the common man and promote the interests of free men and a democratic society. Many benefited, but many failed as 160 acres proved to be an inadequate amount of land on the Great Plains and as land speculators and railroads often acquired the best land. |
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| State laws in the South which segregated blacks from whites first in public facilities and ultimately in all aspects of life. The South passed these laws beginning about 1890 and primarily ending by 1915, but by 1915 southerners treated segregation as if it were a folkway which had always existed and, as an extension of nature, must always exist. Hence, these laws became a support for discrimination and prejudice and the argument that laws (such as federal civil rights measures) were useless folly because legal measures could never affect folkways, the way people naturally felt and acted. |
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| A test which required citizens to read and interpret a part of the state constitution in order to register to vote which was used in the South to disenfranchise blacks. |
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| The case of Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific RR Co. v. Illinois decided by the Supreme Court in 1886, a decision which reversed Munn v. Illinois (1877) and declared unconstitutional state laws regulating the railroads (Granger Laws). Using a narrow interpretation of the Constitution, the court drew a distinction between interstate and intrastate commerce and noted that only the federal government could control interstate commerce in which railroads are engaged. This tended to create an area of ambiguity in the law, allowing the railroads to operate more freely. The decision also reflected the conservative view that property rights are a kind of natural right which precede government as opposed to the view that property is a construct of society and can be regulated if the property involves a public interest (as Munn v. Illinois says). In 1887 Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first federal agency designed to regulate economic activity in the public interest and prevent fraudulent, exploitive activity by business. The case is also significant as one of several Supreme Court decisions in the mid-1880s benefiting business and reflecting conservative interpretations of the Constitution, a trend which lasted until 1937. |
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| Town owned by the company where management controlled all aspects of workers' lives. These were designed to meet all the workers' needs and prevent union organization and strikes. One of the most famous in the late 19th century was Pullman, Illinois. These towns reveal the powerlessness of the workers and their lack of choices and independence. |
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| Informal agreements among competitors in the 1860s and 70s to set uniform rates, divide markets, and share profits thereby eliminating competition and establishing monopolistic conditions. Railroad pools were the most famous but the whiskey, coal, and tobacco industries also created pools. The Interstate Commerce Act outlawed railroad pools in 1887, but after 1881 trusts had begun to replace pools as the preferred means of eliminating competition. |
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| Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who were primarily Jewish and Catholic in religion who came to the United States in large numbers after 1880. The U.S. became much more diversified causing a rise in social tensions in the cities, greater suspicion of unskilled workers and labor unions, and a rise in nativist sentiment (fear and hatred of foreigners) including calls for limits on immigration based on arguments of racial deterioration and national ruin. |
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| American Federation of Labor |
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| Federation of craft unions founded in 1881 by Samuel Gompers which broke with the Knights of Labor in 1886 and which organized skilled workers only and avoided political reforms while emphasizing immediate, realizable "bread and butter" goals such as higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. This left the vast majority of workers, who were unskilled, without effective organization until the 1930s. |
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| Tax on imported goods designed to protect American businessmen, wage earners, and farmers from the competition and products of foreign labor. This policy became an important sign of the power of big business in the late 19th century and one of the primary ways which government served business interests, contrary to the theory of laissez faire. Beginning with the Morrill Tariff of 1861, the tariff was high and, with a few exceptions such as the Underwood Tariff of 1913, generally moved higher until 1934. |
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| Herbert Spencer's adaptation of Charles Darwin's biological concepts of natural selection and "survival of the fittest" to human society. This is a determinist theory; it says nature has ordained a kind of inevitable progress based on competition and struggle and that those who succeed are the fittest. Any government action or interference in this struggle would prevent progress. Hence, any behavior in the market place is justified, no matter how unscrupulous; predatory capitalism is good. Moreover, the fittest in human terms soon came to mean that some people, some countries, some races are superior to others. Social Darwinism therefore promoted racism by giving it a pseudo-scientific basis. In addition, those ideas of superiority made war, conquest, and imperialism not merely justified but a duty, allowing people in more powerful countries (including the U.S.) to claim that they should take care of and enlighten supposedly inferior people--hence, colonies and protectorates abroad and segregation at home. |
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| Measure passed in 1890 which made combinations and conspiracies in restraint of trade illegal. The first of several acts designed to prevent monopolistic practices and restore competition (which under the theory of classical or pure capitalism is supposed to happen automatically as the result of market forces), this act proved ineffective. It did not clearly define terms such as "conspiracy," no strong regulatory body existed to enforce it, and the Supreme Court took a pro-business position and ruled that it did not apply to manufacturing monopolies (U.S. v. E.C. Knight Co., 1895) and "reasonable" monopolies (American Tobacco and Standard Oil Cases in 1911 laid down the "Rule of Reason" principle). The Court did apply it, however, to labor unions and strikes which were then suppressed. |
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| Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy calling for active, aggressive U.S. action to keep international order, thereby promoting US interests including peace, international trade, and (in Roosevelt's view) civilization among lesser cultures, especially in the Western Hemisphere. His big stick was the US navy with its new steel-plated battleships. |
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| The concept, first popular in the 1840s, that the United States had the God-given right and duty to expand across the North American continent. |
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| Newspapers which sensationalized the news in order to increase their circulation and manipulate public opinion. The name was derived from the first color cartoon, "The Yellow Kid," which accompanied and came to represent the debased editorial policy of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. To gain readers and influence over public policy, Hearst (after buying the Journal in 1895) engaged in a circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. By exaggerating incidents, using scare headlines, printing lurid details of private lives, emphasizing scandals, and especially by using the developments in Cuba prior to the Spanish-American War, these two papers increased their circulation and aroused public feeling against Spain. Long-term consequences included the increased importance of public opinion on foreign policy (and the question of whether diplomacy and democracy are compatible) and the phenomenon of superpatriotism or what Hearst called "Americanism," suggesting that the failure to defend U.S. interests with immediate, military action was unpatriotic. |
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| Theodore Roosevelt's reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine to justify U.S. intervention in Latin America and the creation of U.S. protectorates in Cuba, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Haiti between 1903 and 1916. Issued in December 1904 as part of the State of the Union address, the Corollary argues that if other countries in the Americas fail to uphold order and the standards of civilization, then the U.S.'s adherence to the Monroe Doctrine may force the U.S. to intervene in those countries. Roosevelt wanted to prevent the European powers from having any excuse for intervening in Latin America because that would threaten U.S. interests and security. The implication of the policy was that the U.S., as another republic of the Americas, would act, unlike the European states, in the best interests of Latin America. This is an example of the not uncommon claim by the U.S. to be acting for moral purposes when that action also serves U.S. self-interest and may seem immoral or at least uncaring, self-righteous, and aggressive to other countries, leading to the oft-made accusation that the U.S. is hypocritical and to anti-American sentiment. That anti-American feeling continues in Latin America (and elsewhere) partly as a result of U.S. intervention under the Roosevelt Corollary. |
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| Congregationalist minister who in his book, Our Country (1885), combined ideas about Christianity with social Darwinism and the theory of evolution to provide religious and racist justifications for U.S. expansion. "God with infinite wisdom and skill is training the Anglo-Saxon race for. . . the final competition of races." Soon, Strong says, U.S. civilization, as the center of the Anglo-Saxon race and with aggressive traits provided by Christianity, would move out over all of Latin America, "out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond." "Can anyone doubt," Strong asks, "that the result of this . . . will be the survival of the fittest?" Strong is significant as a representative of the widespread conviction in the late 19th century and early 20th century that race and racial differences are scientific (actually only pseudo-scientific because studies of genetics by the late 20th century indicate that all people are 99.9% alike and therefore racial differences are false except for superficial differences such as the pigmentation in the skin), that racial differences are one of the keys to history and society, that some races are superior to others, and that the superior races have a duty to spread their civilization to others. He is also indicative of how religious beliefs are shaped by the culture and times in which they exist. Hence, Strong's argument, in a time of imperialism, that it is God's intention that the U.S. should expand and spread its civilization around the world because of its religious and racial superiority. |
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| Constitutional amendment, ratified in December 1865, which made slavery unconstitutional in the United States. This is significant because it shows that the objectives of the Civil War changed as the war proceeded so that by the end its goal was not simply to preserve the Union but to promote the nation's professed, but previously denied, ideals of liberty and equality for all. Many in the U.S. thought that once the people who had been enslaved were free and the 13th Amendment ratified, that was all that would be necessary for liberty and equality for all to be a reality. Such automatic results proved illusory. Government action was needed, and that invigorated a debate between what Isaiah Berlin calls the philosophies of positive liberty (some liberty requires government action) and negative liberty (freedom is best obtained by being free from government). |
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| Northerners who moved South after the Civil War for idealistic and materialistic purposes and who were so named by Southerners to discredit them as scoundrels and thieves. As Republicans, they came into control of some southern state and municipal governments during Reconstruction. They were accused of corruption partly because there was corruption but more often because their policies of rebuilding the South (including railroads and public schools) were unpopular and even more because these governments included blacks. They are representative of the mix of idealism and materialism of the time. |
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| A phrase made famous by Henry Grady of the Atlanta Constitution in 1884 which represented a vision of the South as modern, progressive, and self-sufficient by those who urged the South to abandon its dependence on cotton and industrialize and economically diversify. The South did diversify economically and grew industrially but such a relatively slow pace compared to the North in the late 19th century that it actually became more dependent on cotton. The New South also came to represent policies of small government which translated into few state prisons and no public schools and policies of racial segregation and disfranchisement. |
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| Supreme Court decision of 1895 which paved the way for legal segregation by declaring that "separate but equal" facilities for blacks (as called for by Jim Crow Laws) did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. |
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| Speech delivered by Booker T. Washington at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895 in which he laid out a policy of accommodation suggesting that blacks should focus first on self-development and the economic development of the South but not on immediate access to the vote, civil rights, and social equality with whites all of which would come later almost automatically. This position supported, if only inadvertently, the whites' policy of segregation. It also represents one of two main strains of thought within the black community, one calling for complete equality and full participation now (as expressed by W.E.B. DuBois) and one calling for black pride and self-development and even separation from the majority culture. |
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| Interstate Commerce Commission |
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| Regulatory commission established by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 which had the power to investigate and prosecute railroad corporations that charged unfair rates or engaged in illegal practices. Congress passed this in response to public pressure after the Supreme Court in Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific RR v. Illinois (1886) ruled that the Granger Laws (upheld earlier in Munn v. Illinois in 1877) were unconstitutional because they were state laws regulating interstate commerce whereas the latter can be regulated only by the national government. |
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| Southern Farmers Alliance |
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| Agricultural reform organization of the 1880s which called for measures to improve the quality of rural life, regulation of monopolies in the interests of farmers, and inflation of the currency. See Farmers' Alliance. |
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| Adding operations before or after the production process to gain control of all phases of an industry. This was one of two major methods (the other is horizontal integration) used in the late 19th century to gain control of an industry. Complete vertical integration involved controlling all aspects of a business from the extraction of raw materials to marketing. It acquired a more positive reputation than horizontal integration because gaining control of distribution or service seemed to be the result of the needs of the product and of the customer rather than simply the desire to control price and increase profits. One of the first and most successful practitioners of vertical integration was Andrew Carnegie in the steel industry. It is significant because it shows how many of the great entrepreneurs of the late 19th century were organizers rather than technically expert in their product and how in the process of seeking to improve efficiency, increase sales, and insure profits, they built bigger and bigger operations which eliminated competition and, in effect, showed that the theory of pure or classical capitalism was flawed. |
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| Author of 119 novels which were based on the rags-to-riches myth. Among Alger's books are The Cash Boy, Driven From Home, The Errand Boy, A Fancy of Hers, Street Life in New York (or Ragged Dick), and Winning Out by Pluck, all available on line in case you would like to sample a style of books that appealed to and inspired youth a hundred years ago. These stories represent the ideal that hard work and good character will lead to financial success (suggesting that the poor simply lack virtue), but in most of the stories, luck or fate played a major role in allowing an individual to escape from poverty. |
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| Labor issues such as higher wages, shorter hours, industrial safety, benefits, and the right to organize and bargain collectively. This was the focus of the American Federation of Labor under Samuel Gompers, and under this program, the AFL abandoned political reform, cooperated with big business, left out the vast majority of unskilled workers, and made labor unions in the US supporters of the existing political and economic system. Hence, the US has no labor or workers or socialist political party. |
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| Socio-religious movement led by Protestants, beginning in the 1880s, to tie salvation to the improvement of society and to make Christianity relevant to industrial and urban problems. Suffering by inner city slum dwellers plus the decline in attendance at inner city churches moved Protestant ministers such as Washington Gladden (Applied Christianity, 1886), D. P. Bliss (The Dawn, 1890s), and Walter Rauschenbusch (Christianity and the Social Crisis, 1907) to move away from the reigning Evangelical Protestant theology of Antinomianism and salvation by grace which was in accord with the Protestant Ethic, Social Darwinism, and laissez faire capitalism and which said the poor were responsible for their own poverty; if faithful, their reward would come in heaven. Advocates of the Social Gospel argued for a more Arminian theology and salvation by good works, saying that Christianity called for people to live their faith everyday not by simply ministering to people's souls but by helping them with everyday needs such as housing, jobs, wages, working conditions. Hence, the churches should take action in the community, and government should regulate factories and utilities. Some such as Bliss said Christianity was more in tune with socialism than capitalism. |
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| Supreme Court decision of 1895 which ruled that the American Sugar Refining Company (which controlled 98% of the U.S. output of sugar) was not in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890) because the Sherman Act applied only to commerce, not manufacturing. The Sherman Act banned "conspiracies in restraint of trade," but the court put a narrow interpretation on this phrase, ruling that the federal government only controlled interstate commerce, so manufacturing was not covered unless the assembly process crossed a state line. This ruling virtually nullified the Sherman Act in all manufacturing cases and allowed consolidation of industries and the formation of trusts to continue. The decision is exemplary of how in the late 19th century, business influenced government and the government (in this instance the Supreme Court) sided with big business and aided business while the businessmen, in apparent contradiction, declared their belief in laissez faire economics. |
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| Unlimited coinage of silver to inflate the currency which was demanded by the Populists and the Democrats (and their candidate William Jennings Bryan) in the election of 1896. This represents the attraction which a panacea offered to farmers and others suffering from deflation and the depression following the Panic of 1893. It allowed business leaders and the Republicans to paint the Populists as irresponsible and therefore bury and ignore the Populists' general demand that the government should be more democratic and more responsible for the well being of the society at large. The campaign convinced the middle class that the Populists were irrational and dangerous because Free Silver would ruin the economy. In effect, big business and the middle class' hope of achieving wealth for themselves won the election of 1896. |
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| Naval officer, strategist and historian who argued, in books such The Influence of Sea Power on History (1890), that national power depended on naval supremacy, colonies, and foreign markets. He called for the US to have a two-ocean navy, strategically placed coaling stations around the world, a canal in central America, and control over the access routes to that canal in the Caribbean and the Pacific. His ideas became the basis for the Republican foreign policy platform in 1896 and for Roosevelt's policies in the early 1900s. |
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| Letter from the Spanish minister to the United States to a colleague in Cuba, printed by the Hearst press in February 1898, which criticized President McKinley. The publication of this letter outraged American public opinion and helped create conditions leading to the Spanish-American War which began at the end of April 1898. (Follow link for text of letter) |
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| Rudyard Kipling's phrase representing the idea that westerners (especially Anglo-Saxons) have a duty and destiny to spread their civilizations and give the inferior peoples of the world the benefit of their government, economy, religion, culture, everything. Written in 1899 in honor of the U.S.'s acquisition of the Philippines, Kipling's poem on the white man's burden is representative of the late 19th century's belief in racism, social Darwinism, determinism, and the necessity and goodness of empire. According to this outlook, people need to prove their virility by wars and conquest, and superior civilizations are morally remiss if they do not take colonies. These ideas were crucial justifications for imperialism in the late 19th century, and they contributed to the suspicion, militarism, and ethnic nationalism which brought World War I. |
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| U.S. China policy calling for equal trading rights for all nations in China and the territorial and administrative integrity of China as drafted by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and distributed to the other major powers in the form of two sets of diplomatic notes, one for equal trading rights in 1899 and one for the integrity of China in 1900. The latter expansion of the policy was adopted after the Chinese Boxer Rebellion of 1900 (an effort of Chinese nationalists to end European spheres of interest in China) stimulated five powers plus the U.S. to send an international army into China to rescue their diplomatic delegations and restore order. Hay feared that the army could be used to divide China into colonies. This remained the basis for U.S. policy toward China until World War II and put the U.S. in the position of protecting China from other powers such as Russia and Japan both of which began to test the policy by seeking greater control over parts of China. U.S. resistance in 1941 brought the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and World War II. |
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