Day 53

Alfred Thayer Mahan

A United States Navy officer, geostrategist, and educator. His ideas on the importance of sea power influenced navies around the world, and helped prompt naval buildups before World War I. Several ships were named USS Mahan, including the lead vessel of a class of destroyers. His research into naval History led to his most important work, The Influence of Seapower Upon History,1660-1783, published in 1890; In 1890 Mahan published his college lectures as The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. In this book he argued for the paramount importance of sea power in national historical supremacy. The book, which came at a time of great technological improvement in warships, won immediate recognition abroad. In his second book, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 (1892), Mahan stressed the interdependence of the military and commercial control of the sea and asserted that the control of seaborne commerce can determine the outcome of wars. Both books were avidly read in Great Britain and Germany, where they greatly influenced the buildup of naval forces in the years prior to World War I.

Queen Liliuokalani

A queen of Hawaii and the successor to King Kalakaua (who gave most control to the businessmen in Hawaii through a new constitution) that highly opposed control of Hawaii by the U.S. and wanted to keep the islands mainly native, reducing the power of merchants from foreign nations. Lydia Kamakaeha was of a high-ranking family. Her mother, Keohokalole, was an adviser of King Kamehameha III. Reared in the missionary tradition deemed appropriate for Hawaiian princesses, she received a thoroughly modern education, which was augmented by a tour of the Western world. After a time as a member of the court of Kamehameha IV, she was married in September 1862 to John Owen Dominis, son of a Boston sea captain and himself an official in the Hawaiian government. In 1874 her brother David Kalakaua was chosen king, and in 1877, on the death of a second brother, W.P. Leleiohoku, who was heir apparent, she was named heir presumptive. She was known from that time by her royal name, Liliuokalani. Over the next 14 years she established herself firmly in that role. She served as regent during King Kalakaua's world tour in 1881, and she was active in organizing schools for Hawaiian youth. During a world tour in 1887 she was received by U.S. President Grover Cleveland and by England's Queen Victoria. On the death of King Kalakaua in January 1891 Liliuokalani ascended the throne, becoming the first woman ever to occupy it. As head of the Oni pa'a ("Stand Firm") movement, whose motto was "Hawaii for the Hawaiians," Liliuokalani fought bitterly against annexation of the islands by the United States. Annexation nonetheless occurred in July 1898. In that year she published Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen and composed "Aloha Oe," a song ever afterward beloved in the islands. Thereafter she withdrew from public life, enjoying a government pension and the homage of islanders and visitors alike.

Yellow Journalism

A term for sensationalistic, irresponsible journalism. Reputedly, the term is an allusion to the cartoon "The Yellow Kid" in the old New York World, a newspaper especially noted for its sensationalism. the use of lurid features and sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to attract readers and increase circulation. The phrase was coined in the 1890s to describe the tactics employed in furious competition between two New York City newspapers, the World and the Journal. Joseph Pulitzer had purchased the New York World in 1883 and, using colourful, sensational reporting and crusades against political corruption and social injustice, had won the largest newspaper circulation in the country. His supremacy was challenged in 1895 when William Randolph Hearst, the son of a California mining tycoon, moved into New York City and bought the rival Journal. Hearst, who had already built the San Francisco Examiner into a hugely successful mass-circulation paper, soon made it plain that he intended to do the same in New York City by outdoing his competitors in sensationalism, crusades, and Sunday features. He brought in some of his staff from San Francisco and hired some away from Pulitzer's paper, including Richard F. Outcault, a cartoonist who had drawn an immensely popular comic picture series, The Yellow Kid, for the Sunday World. After Outcault's defection, the comic was drawn for the World by George B. Luks, and the two rival picture series excited so much attention that the competition between the two newspapers came to be described as "yellow journalism." This all-out rivalry and its accompanying promotion developed large circulations for both papers and affected American journalism in many cities. The era of yellow journalism may be said to have ended shortly after the turn of the century, with the World's gradual retirement from the competition in sensationalism. Some techniques of the yellow-journalism period, however, became more or less permanent and widespread, such as banner headlines, coloured comics, and copious illustration; in other media, most notably television and the Internet, many of the sensationalist practices of yellow journalism have become more commonplace.

Closing of the Frontier

Inspired Fredrick Jackson's The Significance of the Frontier in American History; frontier had too many settlers; frontier had been a symbol of opportunity so the "closing" brought economic and psychological problems-American Dream no longer a reality. By the end of the nineteenth century, the West was effectively settled. Railroads stretched across all parts of the region, from the Great Northern, which ran along the Canadian border, to the Southern Pacific that ran across Texas and the Arizona and New Mexico territories to link New Orleans and Los Angeles. The influx of homesteaders, ranchers, and miners swelled the census rolls and led to the admission of Nevada (1864), Colorado (1876), South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Washington (all four in 1889), and Idaho and Wyoming (1890) to the Union. New towns and cities created by the cattle or mining boom, such as Abilene, Denver, and San Francisco, dotted the trans‐Mississippi West. Frederick Jackson Turner and the frontier. A year after the Oklahoma Land Rush, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier was closed. The 1890 census had shown that a frontier line, a point beyond which the population density was less than two persons per square mile, no longer existed. The announcement impressed Frederick Jackson Turner, a young historian at the University of Wisconsin. In 1893, he presented a paper to the American Historical Association entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History." In it he argued that the experience of the frontier was what distinguished the United States from Europe; the frontier had shaped American history as well as produced the practicality, energy, and individualism of the American character. Turner's claims about the effects of the frontier on American life influenced generations of historians, particularly in their appreciation of the role of geography and the environment in helping to shape national development.

U.S.S. Maine

U.S. Battleship that exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898; Evidence suggests an internal explosion, however Spanish military was framed by Yellow Journalism; The incident was a catalyst for the Spanish American War; One of the first American battleships, the Maine weighed more than 6,000 tons and was built at a cost of more than $2 million. Ostensibly on a friendly visit, the Maine had been sent to Cuba to protect the interests of Americans there after a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Havana in January. An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly placing the blame on Spain. Much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little doubt that Spain was responsible and called for a declaration of war.Subsequent diplomatic failures to resolve the Maine matter, coupled with United States indignation over Spain's brutal suppression of the Cuban rebellion and continued losses to American investment, led to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April 1898. Within three months, the United States had decisively defeated Spanish forces on land and sea, and in August an armistice halted the fighting. On December 12, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed between the United States and Spain, officially ending the Spanish-American War and granting the United States its first overseas empire with the ceding of such former Spanish possessions as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. In 1976, a team of American naval investigators concluded that the Maine explosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.