The Venezuelan controversy was an echo of the time-honored Monroe Doctrine and was without any deeper economic significance. There were not wanting, however, signs that the United States was prepared economically to accept that type of imperialism that had long been dominant in British politics and had sprung into prominence in Germany, France, and Italy during the generation following the Franco-Prussian War. This newer imperialism does not rest primarily upon a desire for more territory, but rather upon the necessity for markets in which to sell manufactured goods and for opportunities to invest surplus accumulations of capital. It begins in a search for trade, advances to intervention on behalf of the interests involved, thence to protectorates, and finally to annexation. By the inexorable necessity of the present economic system, markets and safe investment opportunities must be found for surplus products and accumulated capital. All the older countries being overstocked and also forced into this new form of international rivalry, the drift is inevitably in the direction of the economically backward countries: Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. Economic necessity thus overrides American isolation and drives the United States into world politics. Although the United States had not neglected the protection of its interests from the days when it thrashed the Barbary pirates, sent Caleb Cushing to demand an open door in China, and dispatched Commodore Perry to batter down Japanese exclusiveness, the relative importance of its world operations was slight until manufacturing and commerce gained their ascendancy over agriculture. The pressure of the newer interests on American foreign policy had already been felt when the demand for the war with Spain came. In 1889, the United States joined with Great Britain and Germany in a protectorate over the Samoan Islands, thus departing, according to Secretary Gresham, from our "traditional and well-established policy of avoiding entangling alliances with foreign powers in relation to objects remote from this hemisphere."[44] Preparations had been made under Harrison's administration for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, after a revolution, largely fomented by American interests there, had overthrown the established government; but this movement was blocked for the time being by President Cleveland, who learned through a special commissioner, sent to investigate the affair, that the upheaval had been due principally to American disgust for the weak and vacillating government of the Queen. It was not until the middle of the Spanish War that Congress, recognizing the importance of the Hawaiian Islands in view of the probable developments resulting from Admiral Dewey's victory in the Philippines, annexed them to the United States by joint resolution on July 6, 1898.[45] _The Spanish War_