Final answer:
American expansionism in the 1890s was influenced by economic, racial, and strategic factors including overproduction, Social Darwinism, and the need for overseas military bases. Of these, Social Darwinism had the least impact. The need for overseas military bases was mainly due to protect and project American commercial interests. Manifest Destiny supported the idea of American exceptionalism.
Step-by-step explanation:
During the 1890s, American expansionism was influenced by various economic, racial and strategic ideas. The concept of overproduction was linked to the economic motivation behind the expansion. Businesses were producing more goods than the domestic market could absorb, so they looked overseas for new markets. Social Darwinism and its variants provided racial justification for expansionism — superior races dominating the supposedly weaker ones. The perceived need for overseas military bases was a strategic idea, largely driven by the desire to protect American commercial interests globally and engage in power projection.
a) Among these ideas, Social Darwinism arguably had the least impact on American expansionism; economic and strategic rationales seemed to predominate in actual policy decisions. b) The primary motivation behind overseas bases lay in their potential to protect the nation's growing overseas commercial activities and project national power. c) The ideology that supported the idea of American exceptionalism was Manifest Destiny, the belief that Americans were destined by God, and therefore justified, to expand across the continent and later, globally.
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