By the turn of the twentieth century, these factors all combined to create a United States that was emerging as a prominent and crucial player in international politics.
The influence of industry on United States expansion is vital to its sudden desire to expand overseas. The United States at the turn of the century was quickly rising to become the world's strongest producer of industrial goods and agricultural yield, and though export was strong to European and European-held countries, industrialists called on the government to find new markets that would be able to consume these excesses. To these influential individuals, the best way to find new markets was to conquer and occupy underdeveloped countries. Therefore, with or without the government's agreement, industrialists would undertake to bring as much of the world as they could under U.S. control. In Hawaii, American industrialists (who were already overtaking the small island nation with their products) overthrew the queen in a violent revolution, which placed the U.S. government in a difficult position. Whether or not to annex the nations became a major issue, and in 1898 Hawaii was approved for annexation (which occurred in 1900) in Congress. The influence of industrialists was strong in the United States, and their desire for free and open markets for their goods drove most, if not all, of the imperialist efforts of the United States.
As the nation moved into the twentieth century, its stage for expansion shifted from the continent to overseas and the government's policies reflected this more imperialist outlook. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century, examples of American imperialism were few and never resulted in colonies. In fact, it could be argued that the boldest move the United States had ever made against the sovereignty of another nation was the use of "gun-barrel diplomacy" to force open the border of Japan to trade in the 1860s.
