Although the United States had not neglected the protection of its interests from the days when it thrashed the Barbary pirates, sent Caleb Cushing to demand an open door in China, and dispatched Commodore Perry to batter down Japanese exclusiveness, the relative importance of its world operations was slight until manufacturing and commerce gained their ascendancy over agriculture.
The pressure of the newer interests on American foreign policy had already been felt when the demand for the war with Spain came. In 1889, the United States joined with Great Britain and Germany in a protectorate over the Samoan Islands, thus departing, according to Secretary Gresham, from our "traditional and well-established policy of avoiding entangling alliances with foreign powers in relation to objects remote from this hemisphere."[44] Preparations had been made under Harrison's administration for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, after a revolution, largely fomented by American interests there, had overthrown the established government; but this movement was blocked for the time being by President Cleveland, who learned through a special commissioner, sent to investigate the affair, that the upheaval had been due principally to American disgust for the weak and vacillating government of the Queen. It was not until the middle of the Spanish War that Congress, recognizing the importance of the Hawaiian Islands in view of the probable developments resulting from Admiral Dewey's victory in the Philippines, annexed them to the United States by joint resolution on July 6, 1898.[45]
It required, however, the Spanish War and the acquisition of the insular dependencies to bring imperialism directly into politics as an overshadowing issue and to secure the frank acknowledgment of the new emphasis on world policy which economic interests demanded. It is true that Cuba had long been an object of solicitude on the part of the United States. Before the Civil War, the slave power was anxious to secure its annexation as a state to help offset the growing predominance of the North; and during the ten years' insurrection from 1868 to 1878, when a cruel guerilla warfare made all life and property in Cuba unsafe, intervention was again suggested. But it was not until the renewal of the insurrection in 1895 that American economic interests in Cuba were strong enough to induce interference. Slavery was gone, but capital, still more dominant, had taken its place.