Period 7 (1890-1945)
contextualization During this period, Americans experienced the continuation of immigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and the worst depression through the Progressive Era and the Modern Era. This period starts with the Spanish-American War, and ends with World War II in 1945. Many people did not agree with Jingoism, which is an intense form of nationalism that calls for an aggressive foreign policy, and this discontent sparked the Spanish-American War. In the press, yellow journalism made the war seem more traumatic than it was by reporting every crime, disaster, and scandal, and sometimes even false stories of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. The Spanish insulted the U.S. president, McKinley, in the De Lome Letter of 1898. Right after this letter was sent, the U.S. battleship Maine was sunk in Cuba and 260 americans were killed. Yellow journalism accused Spain of sinking the ship on purpose, when it was probably an accident. McKinley’s war message stated all of the reasons that the U.S. should intervene in war with Cuba, and war was authorized by the Teller Amendment , which also stated that once there was peace the Cubans would control their own government. There was an outbreak of war in the Philippines after the first shot of the Spanish-American War in Manila and a few months later in the same area, in which the Americans won. This gave Theodore Roosevelt a lot of confidence to annex the islands that were under Spanish control , such as annexing Hawaii which became part of the United States. After the war, U.S. troops remained in CUba from 1898 to 1901. The Platt Amendment was later established and said that Cuba could never sign a treaty with foreign power that impaired its independence, and that the U.S. could intervene in Cuba’s affairs to ensure its independence, and also that the U.S. could maintain naval bases such as Guantanamo Bay.
Because of this victory, the United States had more power, but there were spheres of influence on China, and an open-door policy. John Hay asked the spheres of influence, such as Russia, France, Germany, and Great Britain, to accept an open-door policy to keep the United States’ involvement in China’s trade. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion happened because there was xenophobia in China, which is a fear of foreigners. The boxers, or Chinese nationalists, attacked Christian missionaries, and were later forced to pay a huge sum of money for what they did. Theodore Roosevelt had a big-stick policy where he always stated that you needed to “speak softly and carry a big stick”. He used this motto to try to make the United States into a world power. He passed two laws that strengthened the regulatory powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, or the ICC. He also helped in the construction of the Panama Canal in 1914 to connect Atlantic and Pacific Oceans since American acquired new territory in the Caribbean and the Philippines. After Roosevelt, Taft had a dollar diplomacy where he supported American enterprises which promoted U.S. trade, but Wilson opposed Taft’s and Roosevelt’s policies. Wilson had a moral diplomacy where he supported the spread of democracy and opposed self-interest imperialism. In 1914, Wilson angered American Nationalists because he got Congress to repeal an act that granted U.S. ships an exemption from paying the standard canal tolls that charged other nations. Wilson also passed the Jones Act of 1916 where the Philippines gained their independence. During this time, also known as the Progressive Era, reformers seeked reform in public utilities, such as water systems, gas lines, electric power plants, and urban transportation systems. These systems conserved water and land, which lowered tariffs, reformed banking systems, and created a federal income tax. In 1917, Wilson declared war on Germany, with the unrestricted submarine warfare, the Zimmerman Telegram, and the Russian Revolution as the start of World War I. Germany offered, in the ZImmerman Telegram, to help Mexico regain Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona if it would join Germany against the United States. Because of this, Wilson had to abandon the United States’ neutrality to make the world safe for a democracy. HIspanics crossed the border into the U.S. because jobs was a sufficient amount of jobs available in mining and agriculture, and factory jobs. Wilson’s Fourteen Points that secured peace influenced Germany to return to Alsace and Lorraine and to evacuate Belgium, in the west and Serbia in the east. With these guidelines for peace, Wilson established the League of Nations. In 1919, the Red Scare was an anti-communist hysteria and xenophobia in America. World War I ended in 1918, and so did farm prosperity, which put a heavy debt on farmers, and productivity only increased their debts because the growing surpluses produced falling prices since there was not a scarcity. This weak farm economy was one of the many causes of the stock market crash of 1929, and also an uneven distribution of income, too much credit being used instead of money, and global economic problems. This depression caused many farmers and World War I veterans to be angered. The farmers formed the Farm Holiday Association to try to stop farmers from being evicted from their homes, and the veterans demanded fast payment of promised bonus payments after the war through the Bonus Marches. The First New Deal helped to create the AAA, where it helped boost farm prices, the CWA which helped create more jobs, the FHA where bank loans were insured for building new homes which helped the construction industry, and financial and reform programs such as the Glass-Steagall Act which limited banks’ involvements in customers’ money. Though these reform programs helped the farmers, there was an intense drought in the Great Plains, which ruined crops. This was known as the Dust Bowl, which John Steinbeck wrote the Grapes of Wrath in 1939 that explained the lives during this tough time. On December 7, 1941, World War II started with the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. had a victory at the Battle at Midway Island, and used a tactic called “island hopping” to try to get closer to the Japanese islands. Through the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer made an atomic bomb system that was used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the bombs, Japan finally surrendered on September 2, 1945. After the war at the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed that GErmany would be divided into occupation zones, there would be free elections in the liberated countries of Eastern Europe, and the Soviets would control the southern half of Sakhalin and Kurile Islands in the Pacific with special concessions in Manchuria, and finally a new world peace organization, which was the United Nations. |