Transcript America and the Collapse of the Old World Order

The United States and the
Collapse of the Old World
Order 1901-1920
Chapter 23
Main Points and Issues
Progressive Diplomacy
 Woodrow Wilson and Moral
Diplomacy
 The Road to War
 War and Society
 The Lost Peace

Progressive Diplomacy





Reflected progressive characteristics
or order, control, and organization
Remold and organize the economy of
the Western hemisphere to benefit US
Sense of American superiority,
obligation, burden
Spread “American” values and
institutions, uplift, and “help”
Economic expansion
U.S. and Latin America


“Big Stick”
Roosevelt Corollary





Police Power
Control debt and
economy
Regulate foreign affairs
20 interventions
Panama Canal


Columbia rejected U.S.
Coup and intervention
Theodore Roosevelt (TR)




Open door in China, “protect” the
Philippines, and defend against the
Russians and Japanese
Roosevelt calmed Japanese aggression
in Russia, Nobel Peace Prize
Japanese in US protested TR, and
criticized segregation in CA
TR ended segregation, but also made
Japan restrict immigration to the US, in
the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” of 1907
Dollar Diplomacy

William H. Taft





Economic influence & financial
dependence
Half of all US international investments
were in Latin America
Influence politics
Intervention to protect “U.S. Interests”
from anything “threatening” profits,
including the domestic reform efforts of
countries U.S. has invested in.
Alliances with conservative and military
forces to “maintain law and order”
Wilson & “Moral Diplomacy”



US as “beacon” of freedom, the
chosen people to lead the poor out
of darkness & into light & salvation
Assumption of superiority made it
easy to think that their way was
the only way, the right way, and
thus impose their institutions on
others because they think it was
best for them.
Wilson-style democracy, capitalism,
morality through force
Wilson’s Diplomacy



Commercial self-interest
masked as moral idealism
Influence in Nicaragua 1910s
Marines in Haiti and Dominican
Republic
U.S.-Mexico Relations






Fluid Border
Mexican Revolution
100,000’s crossed
Fled upheaval
1915 Plan de San
Diego
Texas Rangers,
Anglos kill nearly
5,000 along border
Border Disputes





Revolution and
impact on El Paso &
Juárez
Pancho Villa
Weapons & support
Villa into Columbus,
Mexico
1917 closed down
border to immigrants
Mexican Interventions



U.S. troops to
Veracruz to stop
German
weapons, twice
General Pershing
Chased Pancho
Villa into Mexico
U.S. & Mexico
almost went to
war
The Road To War
Main Points
 Long
term & Short term
Origins
 Debates over War
 Main Events
 Casualties of War
 Nativism and xenophobia
 Legacies
Long-Term Origins
European & Russian expansion
 Geopolitical competition
 Scramble for Africa, control
over Middle East
 Age of empire and Imperialism
 “Entangling alliances”
 American economic interests
 Alliance with Britain

Short term Causes




Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of
Austria-Hungary (Central) killed by
Serbian nationalist (Allied), which
wanted independence from A-H
A-H attacked Serbia, and France
defended it
British had to back French, and
Germans backed A-H, and Russia
joined BR & FR
Europe fell into war due to empire
and alliances
War Begins…

Triple Entente


Britain, France,
Russia
Serbia
Triple Alliance
(Central)


Germany, A-H
Ottoman Empire
(Turkey)
Modern Warfare





Industrial Warfare
Poison, tanks,
machine guns,
bombs
Trench Warfare
10 million battle
dead
20 million hunger
and disease
End of U.S. Neutrality




Anti-German &
Hungarian views
Pro-British views,
cultural and racial
ties
American loans
Industrial &
economic ties
with FR & BR
Entering the War






U.S. assisted Britain
German U-Boats
Lusitania 1915
Zimmerman
Telegram, 1917
April 2, 1917 War
Declaration
“Make the World
Safe for
Democracy”
War is Good for Business

William J. Bryan, Secretary of State
1914:




“opened the doors of all the weaker
countries to an invasion of American
capital & enterprise”
J.P. Morgan: millions of $ in loans to
Britain
U.S. Steel made $348 million in
profits selling to Britain
$100s of millions in U.S. supplies,
weapons, ships, tanks, etc to allies
Peace Responses


W. E. B. DuBois: the war is for “the gold
and diamonds of South Africa, the cocoa of
Angola and Nigeria, the rubber and ivory of
the Congo, the palm oil of the West
Coast…”
Eugene Debs: “They tell us that we live in a
great free republic, that our institutions are
democratic; that we are a free and selfgoverning people. That is too much, even
for a joke…Wars throughout history have
been waged for conquest and plunder. The
master class has always declared the wars;
the poor subjects have fought the battles.”
Continued…



Many Americans doubted the ties between
their security or interests and what they
believed were the rivalries, treaties,
agreements between European powers
75,000 Americans volunteered within the
first three months after declaration
Sen. Thomas Hardwick (GA): “There was
undoubtedly general, widespread
opposition on the part of most people…to
the enactment of the draft law. Numerous,
largely attended mass meetings held in
every part of the U.S. protested against it.”
Women & Protest



Jeannette Rankin, the first
woman elected to the U.S.
House: “I want to stand by
my country, but I cannot
vote for war. I vote NO.”
Kate Richards O’Hare, “the
women of the U.S. were
nothing more or less than
brood sows, to raise children
to get into the army & made
into fertilizer.”
Women’s Peace Party
War Mobilization




Federal control over economy
Selective Service Act: draft
War Industries Board controlled
military production and ensured
control over profits, distribution,
and manufacture
War Labor Board broke strikes and
enforced labor support for the war
Manufacturing Support



Tell American that
their actions would
make the world safe
for democracy
Self-Determination
Committee on Public
Information




Propaganda
Racist images
Patriotism
Fear and force
Continued…




Nationalism/patriotism to unite people to
believe that their security depends on
following capitalists and politicians who tell
them to sacrifice for a “way of life.”
Convince them that their problem are NOT
associated with internal class warfare or
racism, but international dangers
Convince them that they are good righteous
people, and that their actions will spread
democracy and bring liberty to others.
It’s American: fight if you want to be accepted
and have a part of the American dream
(En)forcing “Patriotism”





George Creel (CPI)
Banned German
language
Sauerkraut = Liberty
cabbage
Frankfurters = hot
dogs
Immigration
restrictions against
Germans
Be A MAN and go to war…REAL MEN fight…
Support the war, or are you Un-American?
The first casualty of war…

Espionage Act of 1917


Sedition Act of 1918


Criminalized public gathering and
organizing against the war
Criminalized written material
criticizing the war
Schenk v. U.S. (1919) rejected
free speech
America during the War




Charles Schenk arrested for distributing
anti-war leaflets, sentenced to prison
under the Espionage Act
1000’s arrested, w/o trial, under the Act
NYT, 1917, “More than 100 men enrolled
yesterday in the American Vigilante Patrol
at the offices of the American Defense
Society…the Patrol was formed to put an
end to seditious street oratory.”
El Paso, TX: Closed down the border, fears
of revolutionaries, anti-Mexican hysteria,
Tom Lea
Continued…





Nearly 350,000 evaded the draft
65,000 claimed conscientious
objector status
Soldiers based in Ft. Riley, KS,
refusing to fight were tortured
University professors fired for vocal
opposition
50,000 American soldiers dead by
end of war in November 1918
The War Ends…

Bolshevik Revolution, Oct. 1917



Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Jan. 1918






Lenin and others pulled Russia out of war
Treaty gave eastern Russia to Germany
(Poland, etc)
National self-determination
Open Diplomacy
Free commerce and travel
League of Nations
Germany accepted defeat
Treaty of Versailles, June 1919
After the War
Competing Visions
 Socialism & Capitalism
 Creating nations



Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary,
Czech, Yugoslavia, Romania
“The German Question”


Punishment
$, Guilt, Army
The Red Scare In the US








Bolsheviks=socialists & communists
Free speech vs. national security
Anti-communist hysteria
Labor strikes and protest
Conservatives said reformers were
socialists and wanted revolution
Simplified political differences
Used negative labels to stereotype,
scare, and bully
Squashed political dissent
Propaganda
Anti-Immigrant Propaganda







Anti-radical sentiments merged with
Anti-immigrant beliefs
Distortion of political views
Manufacture a threat, increase fear,
focus that fear on a particular group
Blame problems on immigrants
Associate patriotism and Americanism
with opposition to immigrants
Oppression masked in national security
Invasion, end of civilization
The Brown Scare…
Attacks on Civil Rights





U.S. AG Mitchell Palmer
arrested thousands w/o
charges or trial
1919-22: Hoover deported
@ 5,000 foreigners
Invaded homes
Albert Burlson, U.S. Mail
Opened “seditious” mail &
refused to mail suspect
periodicals
“Free speech vs. Security”


The Washington Post "There is no
time to waste on hairsplitting over
infringement of liberty."
New York Times referred to the
injuries to a group of suspects as
"souvenirs of the new attitude of
aggressiveness which had been
assumed by the Federal agents
against Reds and suspected Reds.”
Continued…

Twelve prominent lawyers that included
future Supreme Court Justice Felix
Frankfurter published "A Report on the
Illegal Practices of The United States
Department of Justice," citing violations of
the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth
Amendments to the Constitution and
accusing Palmer of "illegal acts" and
"wanton violence." Palmer then issued a
series of warnings that a revolutionary plot
to overthrow the government was to be
launched on May 1, 1920. Nothing
happened.
Conclusions







American economic interests and
global politics
War profit and support for Britain
Manufacturing support for War
War in a Democracy
Xenophobia and the Red Scare
Origins of modern anti-immigrant
hysteria
Many people questioned the
alleged “progress” that had been
made during the “modern era”