How the US became America
4/14/202616 min
In the late 1890s, the United States fought wars and backed independence movements around the world. By the time the fighting was over, the US emerged as a new global power —and with it, a new identity. This week: how the U.S. became an empire, and why it started calling itself America.
To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline.
To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
This message comes from IDTech. Ready for summer? IDTech camps offer Camp Crunch Labs IRL, BattleBots, and more for kids ages seven to seventeen. Visit IDTech.com and use code IDTech to save one hundred fifty dollars.
Rund Abdelfatah· Host0:15
[music] This is America in Pursuit, a limited-run series from Throughline and NPR. I'm Rund Abdelfatah. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the US that began two hundred fifty years ago when the country's founders penned its breakup letter with the King of England and launched a revolution founded on the principles of democracy. For years after that, the US was seen as a shining beacon of what democracy could look like, an inspiration to other colonized countries looking to shake off their shackles. And then in eighteen ninety-eight, the US made the crucial decision to go to war with Spain in support of Cuban and Puerto Rican rebels fighting for independence from Spain. But that wasn't the only place the US military got involved. The next year, the US got involved in another rebellion in another Spanish territory, this time in a nation on the other side of the world, the Philippines.
Daniel Immerwahr· Guest1:21
Suddenly, very confusingly, the United States takes the Philippines from Spain.