This essay will examine, from a historiographical perspective, the role, intentions, and motivations of President William McKinley in the expansionist practices and policies of the United States government at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The essay will consider specifically whether McKinley was an opportunist of a representative of the vanguard of American liberty. While McKinley's motivations and intentions may have been mixed, the consensus of the sources consulted for this essay is that McKinley was an opportunist taking advantage of the popular view that the United States had the right, if not the duty, to exercise its power in other nations to impose its will for economic and strategic purposes rather than save foreign peoples in the name of liberty and/or democracy.
Historiography is concerned with the perspectives taken by historians as they observe and analyze history. In the current case, this involves specifically an analysis of why and how McKinley pressed the policy of expansionism. Was he acting out of a genuine desire of the American people to do good in foreign lands? If so, was he pursuing expansionism to do such good, or was he seeking to advance the economic and strategic needs of the United States and its corporate and political self-interests?
In other words, there are many different ways to determine how history was created in the era under study. Historiography does not see this era or any other as a series of events that "just happened.? Even if there were powerful historical forces in the United States pressing for expansionism, the actual creation of history depends on human beings making choices for discernible reasons, from the perspective of historiography. McKinley, as the man at the helm of the country in this era, was a powerful character whose decisions clearly initiated another chapter in American expansionism, a foreign branch of Manifest Destin...