The Treaty of Paris, 1898
By the terms of the peace treaty, signed in Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain relinquished Cuba and ceded sovereignty of Puerto Rico, and the island of Guam, to the United States, while the Philippines were bought by the United States for the sum of $20,000,000. The war signaled the emergence of the United States as a world power with colonies overseas and a role in European politics.
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising against Western commercial and political influence in China in 1900. This uprising was carried by secret organisations. They were called “boxers” as they used clenched frist as their symbol. The United States particiapted in an internation expedition to compress the rebelion. This was majorly because they feared that other major powers might divide China permanently and U.S. would suffer a loss of trade with China.
Theodore Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs
The Spanish-American War made Roosevelt a nationally known figure. He had little to do as vice-president, but his inactivity ended with McKinley's assassination in September 1901, when Roosevelt became the youngest president in US history.
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (1901-1909), the first president to exploit the public dimensions of his office in an age of mass communications, a reform leader at home and a skilled diplomat abroad.
Roosevelt pursued an activist foreign policy from the beginning of his presidency. Roosevelt sometimes cited an old African proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far.”
In the Western hemisphere, Roosevelt dealt with potential European intervention in Venezuela (1902) and the Dominican Republic (1904), and employed heavy-handed tactics in securing rights to construct a canal in Panama (1903). He also proclaimed that the United States had “police power” over Latin America in the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904).
Although U.S. capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were relatively small, these colonies were strategic outposts for expanding trade with Asia, particularly China and Latin America.
He used both public and private channels in his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Both sides, however, desired peace. Russia was not only losing militarily, but was also experiencing a revolution at home. Japan found that its success came at the price of near bankruptcy. Theodore Roosevelt offered mediation, summoning representatives of the warring parties to Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the summer of 1905. Peace was concluded in September by the Treaty of Portsmouth. This also won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
McKinley’s effort at military reform and modernization continued under Roosevelt. In 1907, he dispatched the Great White Fleet on an around-the-world cruise intended to showcase American naval might.
William H. Taft
Roosevelt's popularity was at its peak as the campaign of 1908 neared, but he was unwilling to break the tradition by which no president had held office for more than two terms. Instead, he supported William Howard Taft, who won the election and sought to continue his predecessor's programs of reform. Taft, a former judge, colonial governor of the U.S-held Philippines and administrator of the Panama Canal, made some progress.
He continued the prosecution of trusts, further strengthened the Interstate Commerce Commission, established a postal savings bank and a parcel post system, expanded the civil service and sponsored the enactment of two amendments to the Constitution. The 16th Amendment authorized a federal income tax; the 17th Amendment, ratified in 1913, mandated the direct election of senators by the people, replacing the system whereby they were selected by state legislatures.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States (1913-21). In domestic affairs he enacted significant reform legislation and set the course of 20th-century liberalism. In foreign affairs he led the United States to victory in World War I, contributing to the movement towards greater US involvement in world affairs, and he played a major role in founding the League of Nations.
Foreign affairs demanded Wilson's attention early in his administration, when the Mexican revolution became a civil war in 1913. Wilson's efforts to influence it led to the US occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and an expedition against the Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa in 1916.
The World War
World War I, military conflict, from 1914 to 1918, that began as a local European war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia on July 28, 1914; was transformed into a general European struggle by Germany's declaration of war against Russia on August 1, 1914; and eventually became a global war involving 32 nations. Twenty-eight of these nations, known as the Allies and the Associated Powers, and including Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and the United States, opposed the coalition known as the Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The immediate cause of the war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia was the assassination on June 28, 1914, at Sarajevo in Bosnia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; now in Bosnia and Herzegovina), of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir-presumptive to the Austrian and Hungarian thrones, by a Serb nationalist. The fundamental causes of the conflict, however, were rooted deeply in the European history of the previous century, particularly in the political and economic policies that prevailed on the Continent after 1871, the year that marked the emergence of Germany as a great world power.
The underlying causes of World War I were the spirit of intense nationalism that permeated Europe throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, the political and economic rivalry among the nations, and the establishment and maintenance in Europe after 1871 of large armaments and of two hostile military alliances.
Negotiation Attempts In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, at that time a neutral nation, attempted to bring about negotiations between the belligerent groups of powers that would in his own words bring “peace without victory”. As a result of his efforts, and particularly of the conferences held in Europe during the year by Wilson's confidential adviser, Colonel Edward M. House, with leading European statesmen, some progress was at first apparently made towards bringing an end to the war. In December the German government informed the United States that the Central Powers were prepared to undertake peace negotiations. When the United States informed the Allies, Great Britain rejected the German advances for two reasons: Germany had not laid down any specific terms for peace; and the military situation at the time (Romania had just been conquered by the Central Powers) was so favourable to the Central Powers that no acceptable terms could reasonably be expected from them. Wilson continued his mediatory efforts, calling on the belligerents to specify the terms on which they would make peace. He finally succeeded in eliciting concrete terms from each group, but they proved irreconcilable.
Immediate Causes for U.S. to enter the War
The war was a continual problem for the United States, as the British blockade interrupted trade and German submarines threatened ships and lives.
The sinking of the British liner Lusitania in May 1915, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, created a crisis while critics such as Theodore Roosevelt denounced Wilson for not being tougher. Wilson eventually convinced the Germans to moderate submarine warfare in April 1916, and tensions relaxed for a time.
The German government tried to provoke a war between the United States and Mexico. On January 19, 1917, the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, sent an encoded telegram to his diplomatic representatives in Mexico, asking them to propose a secret alliance with the Mexican government. British intelligence officers intercepted and quickly decoded the message, sending it on to United States President Woodrow Wilson. A huge public outcry ultimately resulted in an American declaration of war against Germany. The United States had a very powerful economy at that time. They had enough resources to support them in the war. Wilson asked Congress to declare war on April 2. The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917.
WAR AIMS AND THE PEACE
Wilson diplomatically worked to liberalize Allied war aims, and in January 1918 he outlined his peace programme in the Fourteen Points, which called for national self-determination, an end to colonialism, and a League of Nations to maintain peace. The Fourteen Points not only raised the hopes of liberals around the world but also helped shorten the war by furnishing the conditions under which Germany sued for the armistice that ended the fighting in November 1918.
At the war's end Wilson journeyed to Europe, first for a triumphal tour of the Allied capitals and then for six months of grueling negotiations for a peace settlement in Paris that led to the The Treaty of Versailles. Wilson was the dominant figure of the peace conference, but he had to agree to impose harsher terms than he would have liked on Germany in order to get the Allies to cooperate in establishing the League of Nations, which he regarded as indispensable to world peace.
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