BECOMING A WORLD POWER ★^683that the United States could neither return the Philippines to Spain nor grant
them independence, for which he believed the inhabitants unprepared. In an
interview with a group of Methodist ministers, the president spoke of receiv-
ing a divine revelation that Americans had a duty to “uplift and civilize” the
Filipino people and to train them for self- government. In the treaty with Spain
that ended the war, the United States acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and
the Pacific island of Guam. As for Cuba, before recognizing its independence,
McKinley forced the island’s new government to approve the Platt Amend-
ment to the new Cuban constitution (drafted by Senator Orville H. Platt of Con-
necticut), which authorized the United States to intervene militarily whenever
it saw fit. The United States also acquired a permanent lease on naval stations
in Cuba, including what is now the facility at Guantánamo Bay.
The Platt Amendment passed the Cuban Congress by a single vote. Cuban
patriots were terribly disappointed. José Martí had fomented revolution in Cuba
from exile in the United States and then traveled to the island to take part in the
uprising, only to be killed in a battle with Spanish soldiers in 1895. “To change
masters is not to be free,” Martí had written. And the memory of the betrayal of
1898 would help to inspire another Cuban revolution half a century later.
American interest in its new possessions had more to do with trade than
gaining wealth from natural resources or large- scale American settlement.
Puerto Rico and Cuba were gateways to Latin America, strategic outposts from
which American naval and commercial power could be projected through-
out the hemisphere. The Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii lay astride shipping
routes to the markets of Japan and China. In 1899, soon after the end of the
Spanish- American War, Secretary of State John Hay announced the Open Door
Policy, demanding that European powers that had recently divided China into
commercial spheres of influence grant equal access to American exports. The
Open Door referred to the free movement of goods and money, not people. Even
as the United States banned the immigration of Chinese into this country, it
insisted on access to the markets and investment opportunities of Asia.
The Philippine War
Many Cubans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans had welcomed American interven-
tion as a way of breaking Spain’s long hold on these colonies. Large planters
looked forward to greater access to American markets, and local elites hoped
that the American presence would fend off radical changes proposed by rebel-
lious nationalist movements. Nationalists and labor leaders admired America’s
democratic ideals and believed that American participation in the destruction
of Spanish rule would lead to social reform and political self- government.
But the American determination to exercise continued control, direct or
indirect, led to a rapid change in local opinion, nowhere more so than in the
How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s?