Even America once engaged in anxious expansion. In the 1880s, the long post–Civil War economic surge ended, and the 1890s saw a brutal financial panic and a prolonged depression. National unemployment averaged nearly 12 percent from 1894 to 1898. Strikes, lockouts, and other labor battles became frequent and bloody.14 Beset by domestic strife, American officials also worried that the country was vulnerable to European mega-empires that were eating up the globe. Africa and Asia had already been devoured; the Western Hemisphere might be next.
