Week 7 America During the Great War, A 1914-1918
When the guns of August, 1914 announced war in Europe, the ‘war to end all wars,’ the United States held back from joining the fray. Announcing itself to be a neutral observer, America did not declare war on Germany for another two-and-a-half years, and thus only participated in WWI during the last eighteen months of its four year duration. The country’s neutral sentiments were inspired partly by the fear of division and disloyalty on the home front. Never before had so many Americans been of recent immigrant stock, and the complicated alliances of the European powers were expected to inspire complicated loyalties in the United States. Question arose, such as whether German-Americans would support an American war effort if Germany were the Enemy? Would Irish-Americans support a war effort if England (whom most Irish detested) were America’s ally? Would immigrants born in countries without democratic traditions understand and honor the voluntary nature of wartime service in a democracy such as America (no – apparently was the answer – since the U.S. government later instituted a compulsory draft!). The Great War, as it was then known, brought to the surface all the tensions of a nation awash in diversity, and spiked nativist fears that had long been a part of America’s anti-foreign mindset. Nativism, defined as the fear of all things foreign, influenced government policies and civilian actions alike, often with violent expression, and usually at the expense of civil liberties.
Introduction: Your 1-1W2 assignment is based on your reading of chapter 7, Outside the Charmed Circle, in Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire. Before attempting this assignment, please read the Homework Guidelines and Homework Scoring Guide that I have posted in this week 3 module on Canvas. When you are ready to upload your HW2 assignment to Canvas, be sure that you have kept it in either the Word file format (preferred), or as a pdf file. Directions: Your answers to the questions below should be based directly on your reading of this chapter 7. Please type your answers directly beneath each of the numbered questions, and do not delete the numbered questions or submit your homework file without them.
1. Before WWI, what seemed to be Pedro Albizu Campos’s greatest hope for Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States? Why, according to the author, did Albizu Campos have reason to harbor such faith?
2. How did America’s control over Cuba help to set a new path for American imperialism? Where else did the U.S. pursue a similar course? How did dollar diplomacy/gunboat diplomacy compare to the U.S. strategy of control with the Philippines?
3. Why did so many foreign nationalists, including Albizu Campos, pin their hopes for their nations’ independence on Woodrow Wilson? What had Wilson said or done to give them hope?
4. According to Immerwahr, what was it about Wilson’s background and outlook toward people of color that help explain his lack of support for colonial independence? What other factors probably explained America’s course during this time, including it’s purchase of the Danish West Indies?
5. How was the question of empire finally resolved at the Paris Peace Conference after the war? Did it satisfy foreign nationalist leaders like Pedro Albizu Campos?
1:1 ,,Lotayi
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