Throughout the nineteenth century, the nations of Europe were in a race to snatch up whatever foreign land they could for use in colonization. It had become increasingly important that the European nations colonize abroad as their respective lands were running dangerously low on natural resources. America, however, had never really looked beyond its borders in terms of expansion as it had had plenty of resources of its own and had always had more space on the continent that it could claim. This leads one to wonder why America, with all the resources it could have possibly needed sitting right on its own land, would wish to join the scramble for foreign land.
The motivations for American expansionism at the turn of the twentieth century are deeply rooted in its long history of territorial expansion and in its emerging prominence on the world stage. In the 19th century, the United States had expanded from the relatively small combination of thirteen colonies on the eastern seaboard to a country spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, gaining the largest portions through the Louisiana Purchase and the spoils of the Mexican-American War. After Americans had conquered all of this land, though, they were wont of more territory to acquire in their ongoing hunger for expansion. Naturally, they turned to international waters, and this is where the late 19th Century left the country as it entered the Spanish-American War. In addition to this hunger for land, though, Americans felt that to establish their prestige internationally, they would need to become an imperialist nation. This was in part because of Alfred T. Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History, which claimed that the nations with the greatest might on the seas would determine the future course of history. Buying into this feeling, many Americans felt that their country must undertake conquests on the high seas, and thus another motivation for imperialism arose.