ABSTRACT
The expansionists and some of the public came to see an aggressive and outward-looking stance as the only way to compete with the "powers" and thereby to preserve American virtue and pride. In Nicaragua, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan approved a treaty which made it a U. S. protectorate and which was conceived by American bankers and the Diaz regime as the means to keep an unpopular government in power. As Frank Ninkovich observes, "for both presidents, America's future as a world power lay in cooperation with other powers who behaved in a 'civilized' manner." Although some of the changes he wrought were dramatic and radical, others marked the invigoration and regeneration of traditional American principles. The simultaneity of America's emergence as a world power and of America's perception of the need to recast its identity is very important for understanding not only its imperialism, but also the advent of Wilsonian internationalism.
