BECOMING A WORLD POWER ★^679ownership of “Seward’s icebox.” Seward, however, was mostly interested in the
Aleutian Islands, a part of Alaska that stretched much of the way to Asia (see
the map on p. 685) and that, he believed, could be the site of coaling stations for
merchant ships plying the Pacific.
Most Americans who looked overseas were interested in expanded trade,
not territorial possessions. The country’s agricultural and industrial produc-
tion could no longer be entirely absorbed at home. By 1890, companies like
Singer Sewing Machines and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company
aggressively marketed their products abroad. Especially during economic
downturns, business leaders insisted on the necessity of greater access to for-
eign customers. Middle- class American women, moreover, were becoming
more and more desirous of clothing and food from abroad, and their demand
for consumer goods such as “Oriental” fashions and exotic spices for cooking
spurred the economic penetration of the Far East.
The Lure of Empire
One group of Americans who spread the nation’s influence overseas were reli-
gious missionaries, thousands of whom ventured abroad in the late nineteenth
century to spread Christianity, prepare the world for the second coming of
Christ, and uplift the poor. Inspired by Dwight Moody, a Methodist evangelist,
the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions sent more than 8,000
missionaries to “bring light to heathen worlds” across the globe. Missionary
work offered employment to those with few opportunities at home, including
blacks and women, who made up a majority of the total.
A small group of late- nineteenth- century thinkers actively promoted Amer-
ican expansionism, warning that the country must not allow itself to be shut out
of the scramble for empire. In Our Country (1885), Josiah Strong, a prominent
Congregationalist clergyman, sought to update the idea of manifest destiny.
Having demonstrated their special aptitude for liberty and self- government on
the North American continent, Strong announced, Anglo- Saxons should now
spread their institutions and values to “inferior races” throughout the world.
The economy would benefit, he insisted, since one means of civilizing “sav-
ages” was to turn them into consumers of American goods.
Naval officer Alfred T. Mahan, in The Influence of Sea Power upon History
(1890), argued that no nation could prosper without a large fleet of ships
engaged in international trade, protected by a powerful navy operating from
overseas bases. Mahan published his book in the same year that the cen-
sus bureau announced that there was no longer a clear line separating set-
tled from unsettled land. Thus, the frontier no longer existed. “Americans,”
wrote Mahan, “must now begin to look outward.” His arguments influenced
How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s?