What You Need to Know About the Crash Course US History Episode 28 Material
The Crash Course US History series has a forty-one episode run, and episode twenty-eight covers the period roughly from 1890 through the early 1900s when the United States started acting like a global power instead of staying focused on its own backyard. The video goes over the Spanish-American War, the annexation of Hawaii, the Open Door Policy, the Philippines insurgency, and the Roosevelt Corollary. If you are taking a course that uses these videos, you will likely get a worksheet or quiz attached to it. That is where the answer key comes in. I have graded enough of these worksheets to know what the questions usually look like and what the answers actually need to contain. Most instructors don't just want you to regurgitate facts from the video. They want you to connect the dots between economic motivation, racial ideology, and the actual military actions. A lot of students miss that distinction and lose points on what should be straightforward questions. The core topics in this episode break down into a few main chunks. First is the lead-up to the Spanish-American War. The video covers how yellow journalism in newspapers like Hearst's and Pulitzer's helped whip up public sentiment around the sinking of the Maine. It also touches on the actual causes, which were a mix of genuine humanitarian concern for Cuban independence and opportunistic expansionism. The answer key should reflect both angles. If a question asks why the US went to war with Spain in 1898, listing only the Maine explosion is incomplete. You need to mention the broader context of Cuban rebellion, American economic interests in Cuba, and the political pressure from expansionists like Theodore Roosevelt.
Then there is the annexation of Hawaii. This one trips people up because the timeline matters. The overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani happened in 1893, orchestrated by American businessmen with the tacit support of the US minister. President Cleveland actually called it an act of war and wanted the queen restored. It wasn't until McKinley took office and the strategic value of Hawaii became undeniable during the Spanish-American War that annexation went through in 1898. A complete answer needs that sequence. Just saying "the US took Hawaii" gets you partial credit at best. The Philippines is where things get complicated and where most answer keys show the most variation. The video covers the Treaty of Paris, the payment of twenty million dollars to the Philippines, and then the immediate outbreak of guerrilla warfare. John Hay's famous quote about the Philippines being "our little brown brother" comes up in most quizzes. Be ready to explain that phrase in context. It reveals the racial paternalism that justified imperial control. If a question asks about the Philippine-American War, note that it lasted three years, involved roughly one hundred thousand Filipino combat deaths and about four thousand American soldiers killed, and that tactics like reconcentration camps were used on both sides. These details show up on exams more often than you would expect. Another common question area is the Open Door Policy. The video explains how Secretary of State John Hay sent notes to European powers asking them to maintain equal trading access in China. The answer key should clarify that this was mostly diplomatic posturing. The US didn't have the naval strength to enforce it at the time. It was about keeping China open for American commerce rather than carving it up among the Europeans. Students sometimes confuse this with the Monroe Doctrine. They are different. The Monroe Doctrine was about keeping Europe out of the Americas. The Open Door Policy was about keeping European powers from locking Americans out of Asia.
The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine shows up frequently too. Teddy Roosevelt basically said that if Latin American countries kept messing up their finances or their governance, the US had the right to step in and manage things. This led to interventions in Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. A solid answer connects this policy to the construction of the Panama Canal and the justification for installing friendly governments along critical trade routes. I ran into a problem last semester where a student submitted an answer key that matched the official one word for word and still got dinged because the instructor had modified the questions slightly. The official worksheet from the Crash Course companion site has thirteen questions. Some professors rephrase them or add their own. I learned to cross-reference the video timestamps rather than memorizing exact answers. The video runs about twenty-nine minutes. The Spanish-American War section starts around the three-minute mark. Hawaii comes up near eight minutes. The Philippines insurgency is covered from roughly eleven to nineteen minutes. The Open Door Policy and Roosevelt Corollary occupy the final stretch. When questions don't match exactly, going back to the video with timestamps is faster than trying to reconstruct answers from memory. One counter-intuitive thing about this episode that many students overlook is how much the video itself critiques American imperialism. John Green doesn't present it as purely heroic. He discusses the contradiction between American democratic ideals and colonial domination. He talks about the violence in the Philippines and the uncomfortable parallel to the treatment of Native Americans. Answer keys that only list facts without acknowledging this critical perspective tend to miss the point of what the course is actually testing. The material wants you to understand that imperialism was controversial even at the time. Mark Twain formed the Anti-Imperialist League. Many prominent Americans opposed the annexation of the Philippines on principle. Including that opposition in your answers demonstrates that you actually watched the video rather than skimming a summary online.
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Here is another nuance that doesn't make it into most simplified answer guides. The video mentions the Plat Amendment, which came out of the Platt Amendments to the Cuban constitution. This effectively made Cuba a US protectorate despite its nominal independence. Questions about what happened to Cuba after the Spanish-American War often expect you to say "it became independent," but that is misleading. Cuba got independence with strings attached that gave the US the right to intervene militarily and control Cuban trade policies. The Guantánamo Bay lease still exists because of this arrangement. That detail alone can be the difference between a basic answer and a strong one. As for where to find the actual answer key, the Crash Course website at crashcourse.tv hosts the worksheets for free. Episode 28's worksheet is available there with all the questions. Some instructors also use Quizlet sets or course-specific PDFs. The key thing is to not treat any single answer key as gospel. Different professors emphasize different aspects. The worksheet from the official source is a good baseline, but always compare it against your syllabus and lecture notes. If your professor spent extra time on something that the worksheet barely mentions, that something is probably on the test. The main downside of relying on a pre-made answer key is that it flattens the complexity of the material. The episode deliberately presents American imperialism as morally ambiguous and politically messy. An answer key by necessity presents everything as clean bullet points. This creates a false sense of certainty about a period that was full of uncertainty. The workaround is to use the answer key as a starting point, not an endpoint. Look up each answer in the actual video. Check the sources John Green references. Read a paragraph or two from primary sources like the Anti-Imperialist League statements or the text of the Platt Amendments. That extra fifteen minutes of work will make a bigger difference on your grade than memorizing a ten-question key.
