“The necessities of our altered relationship to the Pacific Ocean [after the late 1840s] found expression in a comprehensive treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation with the sovereign Kingdom of Hawaii. . . . “[The line] from San Francisco to Honolulu [in Hawaii] marks the natural limit of the ocean belt within which our trade with [eastern Asia] must flow. . . . When we survey the stupendous progress made by the western coast during the thirty years of its national life as a part of our dominion, . . . it is not easy to set a limit to its commercial activity or foresee a check to its maritime supremacy in the waters of [eastern Asia], so long as those waters afford, as now, a free and neutral scope for our peaceful trade. . . .

“[The United States] firmly believes that the position of the Hawaiian Islands as the key to the dominion of the American Pacific demands their neutrality, to which end it will earnestly cooperate with the native government. And if, through any cause, the maintenance of such a position of neutrality should be found by Hawaii to be impracticable, this government would then unhesitatingly meet the altered situation by seeking an avowedly American solution for the grave issues presented.”

Secretary of State James G. Blaine, letter to James M. Comly, United States ambassador to Hawaii, 1881

The discussion of economic neutrality featured in the excerpt is best situated within which of the following historical contexts?

A) Continued restrictions on the organization of labor

B) Decreased industrial output following economic crises

C) Increasing demand to export southern cotton

D) Rising support for laissez-faire economic policies