Wanderlust World Wanderlust World The Spanish-American War of 1898 left the United States in control of former Spanish colonies—but many Americans vigorously opposed this new imperial role. Their objections sprang from multiple, sometimes contradictory, sources.
Labor unions and working-class Americans feared that annexing tropical territories would flood markets with cheap goods produced by low-wage labor, undercutting domestic wages and jobs. The prospect of competing with plantation economies reliant on exploited labor struck at core economic self-interest.
Paradoxically, some opposition came from white supremacist viewpoints. These Americans argued that incorporating "racially inferior" peoples into the American polity would dilute the nation's Anglo-Saxon character. They opposed empire not from anti-imperial principle, but from racial exclusionism.
For anti-imperialists like Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and William Jennings Bryan, the occupation violated the Declaration of Independence's core promise: governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." Ruling foreign peoples without their consent seemed a repudiation of the American Revolution itself.
Traditional non-interventionists warned that colonial possessions would drag the United States into Asian and Caribbean power struggles, undermining the hemisphere-focused Monroe Doctrine and the founders' counsel against "entangling alliances."
No clear framework existed for governing these territories. Would they become states? Remain colonies indefinitely? The Constitution offered no roadmap for empire, creating legal and political uncertainty that fueled opposition.
Though the Philippines gained independence in 1946, and Cuba in 1902 (with heavy U.S. influence), Puerto Rico remains a territory today—living testimony to debates that began over a century ago about whether a republic can also be an empire.