Lecture 5 1920s’ Internationalism: Dollars, Movies, Tourists

Question 1

Wilson’s failure and defeat in spreading his liberal vision

Answer 1

• Domestic: (the US did not join League of Nations): sovereignty
• International: Peace with winners and losers (no “peace without victory”) + alternative internationalism in the USSR
• Structural: Geopolitical Fragility of “New Europe”, self determination v. nationalism.

Question 2

Republican era presidents (1920-1932):

Answer 2

✓ Warren Harding (Ohio), 1920-1923
✓ Calvin Coolidge (Mass.), 1923-1928
✓ Herbert Hoover (Calif.), 1928-1932

Question 3

Pax Americana

Answer 3

“…to establish a pax americana maintained not
by arms but by mutual respect and good will
and the tranquilizing processes of reason” - Charles Evans Hughes.

Question 4

Main Traits 1920s’ internationalism

Answer 4

✓ Faith in technocracy and mechanism of economic/financial interdependence.
✓ World War I as a parenthesis.
✓ US as indispensable, but unwilling to assume
full hegemonic responsibility.

Question 5

The three pillars of US internationalism in the 1920s

Answer 5

The three pillars of US internationalism in the 1920s

1. Strategy and disarmament
2. Economy: loans and trade
3. Culture: movies

Question 6

Main results of strategic internationalism

Answer 6

✓ Washington Conference (1921/22): Naval Treaty

✓ Briand-Kellog Pact (1928): war ‘outlawed’

Question 7

Economic Internationalism

Answer 7

✓ Return to normalcy: dollar diplomacy (US economic hegemony ↔ European stability)
✓ Commitment to European stability: centrality of trade and financial interdependence
✓ Reparations & War Credits
✓ Private/Public cooperation
✓ Beginning transition to a society of Mass Consumption

Question 8

The US in Latin America in the inter-war period

Answer 8

• Investments: 1.5 billion (1924) to 3.5 billion (1929)
• Loans with strings attached: gold
standard/supervision on finance
• Political and military efforts against instability/ «Bolshevik» infiltration: Mexico, Nicaragua

Question 9

The US in Europe in the inter-war period

Answer 9

✓ Dawes Plan 1924
✓ Return to Gold Standard
✓ Young Plan 1929

Question 10

Taylorism

Answer 10

Frederick Taylor, “Principles of Scientific Management” (1911) - means of detailing a division of labor in time- and-motion studies and a wage system based on performance. US mass production as an universal model.

Question 11

Cultural Internationalism

Answer 11

✓ Projection of American Model: high productivity/mass consumption/prosperity
✓ “Americanization”: America as a paradigm of modernity
✓ Pacifism as dominant ideology

Question 12

Leon Trotsky on Americanization (1926)

Answer 12

“If we Americanize our still frail socialist industry, then we can say with ten-fold confidence that the future is completely and decisively working in our favor. Americanized Bolschevism will crush and conquer imperial imperialist Americanism.”

Question 13

American cultural invasion of Europe

Answer 13

Tourists:                         
• 1921: 15.000
• 1929: 250.000
Movies:
• UK: more than 90%
• Fra/Ger: 60/70%

Question 14

US international commitment in the 1920s (three i’s)

Answer 14

✓ Indispensable
✓ Insufficient
✓ Incoherent