62 ChaPter 2
war dragged on, Americans saw an opening and investors from the U.S. began
to buy lands that were being damaged in the fighting, and by the 1880s had
significant holdings, as well as over $50 million invested in the sugar and min-
ing industries. President William McKinley tried to force Spain to cede, or
give up, Cuba to the United States but the Spanish continued to refuse.
Ultimately McKinley sent in troops to remove Spain’s control in 1898, in what
future President Teddy Roosevelt called a “splendid little war.” Rather than
give Cuba independence, however, he put Americans in charge of that coun-
try, motivating many Cubans to continue fighting for real independence. They
were no match for the powerful United States, however, and in 1900 McKinley
and other American officials forced Cuba to accept the Platt Amendment into
its constitution, thereby giving the U.S. officials the right to intervene in Cuba
whenever they believed their interests were threatened. With over $200 mil-
lion invested in Cuba by then, Americans were not going to trust Cubans to
create their own democracy. As many Cubans saw it, they had traded Spanish
control for U.S. domination, and would continue to fight for their indepen-
dence until Fidel Castro’s revolution of the 1950s.
Then, on the heels of taking over Cuba, the United States sent warships
to the Philippines, the other Spanish colony left, and took control there too.
A nationalist movement led by Emilio Aguinaldo and praised by Mark Twain
fought the American marines for ten years, killing 10,000 U.S. troops and los-
ing over 200,000 of their own, but within a decade, the United States had
established colonial control there. Around this same time, the U.S. Secretary
of State, John Hay, wrote the Open Door Notes, and they would serve as the
basis of American international policy from that time forward. The notes Hay
wrote, to various European governments, had no real power behind them, but
were statements that the United States would pursue economic interests all
over, especially China, and that other countries should not have exclusive
rights, or a “closed” door, to trade anywhere. So the Open Door was just an
idea, and a fairly simple one at that. Since the U.S. did not have a sizable
army or navy yet, it could not take colonies like the Europeans had been for
centuries, so it wanted to use its economic power, which was stronger than its
rivals, to establish “free trade imperialism” and gain economic and political
control of other lands. In both Cuba and the Philippines, for example, U.S.
Military Governors Leonard Wood and William Howard Taft took charge of
the islands. The United States was now a global power, with the goal of using