In 1867 Secretary of State William Seward bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million.
Missing Word
Alaska
Alaska covered nearly 600,000 square miles. Russia sold it partly because it feared losing the distant colony to Britain, and critics at home ridiculed the purchase.
Category: Roots of Empire
Question 2
In 1867 the United States annexed the Midway Islands, an uninhabited Pacific stop on the route to Asian markets.
Missing Word
Midway
The Midway Islands lie in the central Pacific and later served as a coaling station and naval base. Their annexation was an early sign of American interest in Pacific trade routes.
Category: Roots of Empire
Question 3
British writer Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem The White Man's Burden, which urged white nations to take up the supposed duty of ruling other peoples.
Missing Word
Kipling
Kipling's 1899 poem was addressed to Americans debating whether to keep the Philippines. Its phrase became shorthand for the racial paternalism used to justify empire.
Category: Roots of Empire
Question 4
American planters in Hawaii built their fortunes on sugar, harvested from cane and shipped duty-free to the United States under reciprocity treaties.
Missing Word
sugar
Sugar dominated Hawaii's economy, and by 1890 nearly all of it went to the American market tariff-free. The planters' power helped lead to the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.
Category: Hawaii and the Pacific
Question 5
Publisher William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal competed with Joseph Pulitzer's paper in printing sensational stories that fed war fever against Spain.
Missing Word
Hearst
William Randolph Hearst used lurid coverage of Spanish cruelty in Cuba to build circulation. His rivalry with Pulitzer made the press a powerful force for war in 1898.
Category: Spanish-American War
Question 6
The explosion that sank the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898 inflamed public calls for war with Spain.
Missing Word
Maine
More than 250 sailors died when the Maine blew up. The press blamed Spain and spread the cry Remember the Maine, though the cause of the blast has never been proven.
Category: Spanish-American War
Question 7
Under the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded Puerto Rico and the Pacific island of Guam to the United States.
Missing Word
Guam
Guam, in the western Pacific, became a U.S. possession in 1898 and remained under navy control. It gave the United States a strategic stop between Hawaii and the Philippines.
Category: Empire After 1898
Question 8
The novelist Mark Twain was among the prominent members of the Anti-Imperialist League.
Missing Word
Twain
Mark Twain criticized the war in the Philippines as a betrayal of American ideals. The league also included Jane Addams, Andrew Carnegie, Samuel Gompers and Grover Cleveland.
Category: Empire After 1898
Question 9
Emilio Aguinaldo led Filipino forces against American rule in the Philippine-American War that began in 1899.
Missing Word
Aguinaldo
Emilio Aguinaldo had fought Spain and expected independence, but the United States annexed the islands instead. He was captured in 1901 and swore loyalty to the United States.
Category: Empire After 1898
Question 10
Roosevelt helped end the Russo-Japanese War at a 1905 peace conference held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Missing Word
Portsmouth
The conference at Portsmouth produced a treaty in which Japan gained control of Korea and other territory. Roosevelt sought a balance of power in East Asia that would protect American access to China.
Category: East Asia
Question 11
Roosevelt's Great White Fleet cruise of 1907 to 1909 was widely seen as a show of naval power aimed at Japan.
Missing Word
Japan
After its victory over Russia, Japan was the rising power in East Asia and tensions had risen over trade in Manchuria and Japanese immigration to the United States. The fleet's voyage, billed as a goodwill tour, displayed American strength.
Category: East Asia
Question 12
In 1903 the United States quickly recognized the independence of Panama, which then granted a zone for building a canal.
Missing Word
Panama
Panama had been part of Colombia until a revolt backed by American warships. The new nation signed a treaty giving the United States control of a canal zone across the isthmus.
Category: Big Stick Diplomacy
Question 13
In 1900 and 1901, Army doctor Walter Reed led experiments in Cuba confirming that mosquitoes spread yellow fever, knowledge that later helped protect canal workers.
Missing Word
Reed
Walter Reed's commission showed that yellow fever is carried by mosquitoes rather than by contact with the sick or their belongings. Fumigation, mosquito nets and the draining of standing water based on that finding sharply cut deaths among canal workers.
Category: Big Stick Diplomacy
Question 14
The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 expanded the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 policy warning European powers against new colonization in the Americas.
Missing Word
Monroe
President James Monroe's doctrine told Europe to stay out of the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt's corollary turned it into a claim that the United States itself could intervene in Latin America.
Category: Big Stick Diplomacy
Question 15
President William Howard Taft promised to substitute dollars for bullets by using American investment to extend U.S. influence abroad.
Missing Word
Taft
Taft's dollar diplomacy relied on loans and business ties more than military threats. It focused on Latin America and East Asia, though Taft still used force in places such as Nicaragua.
Category: Dollar Diplomacy