IB History Reasons for US Expansionist Foreign Policy Key Definitions

The use of trade, investment, tariffs, diplomatic pressure, naval protection, and territorial control to extend United States commercial influence abroad.

A set of beliefs that presented the extension of United States power as natural, progressive, morally justified, or necessary for national greatness.

The use of state power, diplomacy, military force, annexation, and intervention to extend United States influence beyond its continental borders.

The beliefs, identities, media narratives, religious arguments, racial hierarchies, and domestic pressures that encouraged public support for extending United States power abroad.

Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 argument that the American character, democratic, individualistic, and pragmatic, had been forged by the experience of continuous westward expansion. With the Census Bureau declaring the frontier closed in 1890, Turner worried that without new outlets, American democratic vitality would stagnate. Policymakers applied this argument to justify overseas expansion as the natural successor to continental settlement.

A policy of extending American political, military, and economic influence beyond the continental United States, especially across the Caribbean, the Pacific, and East Asia.