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.33A key aspect of Social Darwinism also became a permanent part ofthe American creed and dovetailed with earlier religious conceptionsof poverty as evidence that the individual was not among the elect.The domestic social hierarchy was also taken for granted.Thosewho failed to prosper and rise in the social order had no one toblame but themselves.They were by definition unfit for anythingother than the place they held.Thus Social Darwinism also servedto rationalize and justify the exploitation of the many by the few.Inevitably, as had been the case since the first colonization of theAmericas, religion would also become an element in the rationale forthe new American empire.Ironically, religious advocates were alsoquick to adopt Social Darwinism to their causes.Among the mostinfl uential advocates of Anglo-Saxon Christianity or Christianimperialism was Josiah Strong.Born on the frontier, he becamesecretary of the Home Missionary Society, and was among two orthree of the most influential religious figures of the late nineteenthcentury.His book, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its PresentCrisis, sold over 175,000 copies, an enormous figure for that time.Though he decried the ills of industrial capitalism and the idolatryof money and capital, he also claimed that The world is to beChristianized and civilized& commerce follows the missionary& A 94 WAR AND EMPIREChristian civilization performs the miracle of the loaves and fishesand feeds its thousands in a desert. For Strong the salvation ofAmerica lay in the fulfillment of the Anglo-Saxon mission to reshapethe world.Hearkening all the way back to the Puritans he claimedthat we are the chosen people who nevertheless could not remainimprisoned on the North American continent:The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soonbe taken.The time is coming when the pressure of populationon the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt inEurope and Asia.Then will the world enter upon a new stage ofits history the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled& Then this race of unequaled energy,with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behindit the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, thepurest Christianity, the highest civilization having developedpeculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutionsupon mankind, will spread itself over the earth.If I read notamiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, downupon Central and South America, out upon the islands of thesea, over upon Africa and beyond.And can any one doubt thatthe results of this competition of races will be the survival ofthe fittest ?34Among the nation s decision-makers these ideas flowed into oneanother and became virtually a seamless explanation of social realitywhile also pointing toward action.For Theodore Roosevelt theseviews were luring the nation toward a glorious future.Of all the European powers that the US had wished expelled fromthe western hemisphere, Spain with its continued control of Cubaand Puerto Rico rankled most.A great measure of prejudice derivedfrom Spain s Catholicism which fed longstanding attitudes aboutthat nation s backwardness.Spanish rule in Cuba was especiallycruel because of constant uprisings by Cuban independentistas,and the misery of the Cuban population was a constant themein the American press.But these issues were useful camouflageand propaganda for the deeper desire on the part of elites to seizethe islands, establish control over their economies, build navalinstallations and consolidate control of the Caribbean; thenceto take up the issue of a canal through the isthmus of CentralAmerica. FROM ASHES TO EMPIRE 95President McKinley was very much an economic nationalist.As heput it himself his greatest ambition was to round out his career bygaining American superiority in world markets.35 McKinley is oftencharacterized as a man consumed with anguish over the necessityof war with Spain
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