The Academic Mind and the Rise of U.S. Imperialism: Historians and Economists as Publicists for Ideas of Colonial Expansion

Abstract

Abstract. The role of American learned societies in developing support for an American colonial foreign policy has been neglected. Evidence indicates that American learned societies, in the period following the Spanish‐American War from 1898 to 1901, were intellectually predisposed toward an imperial policy. The debates within the American Historical Association, the American Economic Association, and the American Academy of Political and Social Science are described and analyzed. Each learned society abandoned the ivory tower” and mixed in impassioned politics. The “imperial” interpretation led historians to endorse empire as salutary; economists endorsed the role of the State in building markets for domestic production; and prevailing Social Darwinistic views of political economy led the Academy of Political and Social Science to support an activist, acquisitive foreign policy as necessary to the national interest. Dissident, anti imperialist scholars as well as skeptical scholars could not turn the imperial mood of these societies.