1. Chapter 19 Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I, 1916–1920
The Spanish-American War made the United States an international empire, but compared to Europe’s colonial empires, its overseas possessions were small. America’s empire was not territorial so much as it was economic and cultural. At the start of the twentieth century, the world’s economy was already highly globalized, and although Britain still dominated world finance and its currency dominated world trade, the United States was the leading industrial power. By 1914, the year World War I began, the United States made more than a third of the world’s manufactured goods, and its steel, oil, agricultural equipment and consumer goods inundated European markets. Along with American goods moving to Europe were Americans, especially those from national and ethnic groups interested in the lands of their origins, such as Irish-Americans supporting independence from England, American Jews opposed to religious persecution in Russia, and black Americans hoping to uplift Africa.
America’s increasing economic and cultural connections with the world led to elevated American military and political involvement. Between 1900 and 1920, many of the principles that guided American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth century were formed, such as the “open door” policy that American trade, investment, information, and culture should flow freely to other nations and markets. Americans discussed their foreign policy in terms of freedom. Rhetorically, this was expressed in a widespread belief that America spread its power and influence in the world not out of narrow economic or strategic interests, but to promote universal ideals of liberty and democracy. Woodrow Wilson and his policy of “liberal internationalism” best represented this tendency, as Wilson believed that political freedoms would follow wherever American trade and investment flowed. World War I became the test for Wilson’s ideas and the Progressives who supported him and sought to make the war an opportunity to reform America and the world.

2. Please answer the following question:
Warm Up
Please answer the following question:
If you had to guess, how many times did the U.S. intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries since 1900?

3. Map 19.3 Colonial Possessions, 1900
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © W.W. Norton & Company

4. An Era of Intervention Mostly in the Western Hemisphere Panama Canal
“I Took the Canal Zone”
Teddy Roosevelt
Progressive Presidents expanded government power abroad, too
Mostly in the Western Hemisphere
Monroe Doctrine
Panama Canal
Helped Panama separate from Colombia
U.S. received right to construct and operate canal in the “canal zone”
complete in 1914
Progressive-Era presidents who expanded government power at home did so abroad as well. Initially, their interventions occurred in the Western Hemisphere, which the United States had made its sphere to oversee in the Monroe Doctrine of Between 1901 and 1920, U.S. Marines landed in Caribbean countries more than twenty times, usually to secure a better economic environment for American companies that wanted safe access to raw materials or bankers who wanted to ensure that loans were repaid.
Roosevelt divided the world into “civilized” and “uncivilized” nations, and he believed the former were obliged to establish order in a chaotic world. Roosevelt was far more engaged in international diplomacy than his predecessors, and while he disclaimed any American interest in acquiring overseas territory, he ordered multiple interventions in Central America. His first major action was engineering the separation of Panama from Colombia in order to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In 1903, when Colombia refused to cede land for the canal, Roosevelt helped to launch an uprising in Panama, and he deployed American gunboats to prevent the Colombian army from suppressing it. Having secured Panamanian independence and a treaty giving the United States the right to construct and operate a canal and sovereignty over the Canal Zone, Roosevelt launched one of the greatest construction and engineering projects in history. “I took the Canal Zone,” he later exclaimed. The project, finished in 1914, facilitated American and world trade by drastically cutting shipping times.

5. Map 19.1 The United States in The Caribbean, 1898-1934
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © W.W. Norton & Company

6. Map 19.2 The Panama Canal Lone
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © W.W. Norton & Company

7. An Era of Intervention The Roosevelt Corollary
Add- on to Monroe Doctrine
U.S. right to exercise “int’l police power” in the Western Hemisphere.
Not just to prevent European interference, but forcibly intervene whenever it deemed necessary
Roosevelt
Taft
Invaded D.R. (1904)
Sent troops to Cuba (1909)
Sent Marines to Nicaragua (1912)
Dollar Diplomacy in Honduras, D.R., and even Liberia
Roosevelt’s interventionist foreign policy came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This policy expressed the right of the United States to exercise “an international police power” in the Western Hemisphere, allowing the it, not just to prevent European intervention in the Americas, as the Monroe Doctrine specified, but also forcibly to intervene whenever it deemed it necessary. Roosevelt feared that financial instability in the Americas simply invited European powers to intervene whenever they felt their investments were threatened. In 1904, Roosevelt invaded the Dominican Republic to ensure that its customs houses repaid debts to European and American investors. In 1906, he sent troops to Cuba to ensure stability after a disputed election; they stayed until 1909.
President Taft sent Marines to Nicaragua to protect a government friendly to American economic interests, but he emphasized economic investment and loans from banks, rather than direct military intervention, as the best means to spread American influence. This policy, known as Dollar Diplomacy, took shape in Taft’s efforts to shape the economies of Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and even Liberia.

8. An Era of Intervention Moral Imperialism Wilson and Mexico
Woodrow Wilson
Believed that U.S. had a duty to instruct other nations in democracy
Right to trade freely with foreign markets
Sent Marines to Haiti (1915) and D.R. in 1916
Stayed in latter until 1934 & the former until 1924
Wilson and Mexico
1911 revolution
Francisco Madero
Overthrew longstanding dictatorship
W/o Wilson’s knowledge, the U.S. supported the assassination Madero
Minor war broke out and Wilson eventually sent troops into northern Mexico to quell hostilities.
The highly moralistic Woodrow Wilson brought a missionary zeal and sense of his own and America’s righteousness to foreign policy. He made William Jennings Bryan, an anti-imperialist, his secretary of state, and he repudiated Dollar Diplomacy and promised to respect Latin American independence and free it from economic domination. Bu Wilson believed the United States had a duty to instruct other nations in democracy and that American exports and investments spread American political ideals. For Wilson, American economic influence served a purpose higher than profit, and his “moral imperialism” made for more military interventions than any president before or since. He sent Marines to Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916 to protect American financial interests; they stayed in the latter country until 1924, and in the former, until 1934.
Wilson was most involved in Mexico, where a 1911 revolution led by Francisco Madero overthrew Porfirio Diaz’s longstanding dictatorship. In 1913, without Wilson’s knowledge but with the support of the U.S. ambassador and America companies controlling Mexico’s oil and mines, military commander Victoriano Huerta assassinated Madero and seized power. Wilson was outraged, would not extend recognition, and vowed to “teach” Latin Americans “to elect good men.” When civil war erupted and Wilson sent troops to Vera Cruz to prevent arms shipments, they were met as invaders and attacked by Mexican troops. In 1916, after Mexican troops led by Pancho Villa killed Americans in a New Mexico town close to the border, Wilson ordered 10,000 American troops to invade northern Mexico to apprehend Villa.