Unit 7 Flashcards
Monroe Doctrine
Document formally warning European nations against involvement in the western hemisphere, specifically with colonization
Imperialism
When an empire extends its rule through acquisition of territories which usually leads to exploitation similarly to colonialism.
Alfred Thayer Mahan
“The most important American strategist of the nineteenth century” was a naval officer/historian. Started the use of the term “Middle East”
De Lome Letter
Letter by Spanish Ambassador to US, this criticized the actions of President McKinley and raised tensions leading to the Spanish-American War
USS Maine
American naval ship sunk during the Cuban revolt; the incident was blamed on Spain and lead to US involvement in Cuba and the Spanish-American War
Teller Amendment
Condition that if President Mcinley invaded Cuba, it must leave “control of the island to its people”
“Splendid Little War”
Another name for the Spanish American War in Cuba
Rough Riders
Volunteer Cavalry led by Teddy Roosevelt for the Spanish-American War in Cuba
Anti-Imperialist League
Organization against the American annexation of the Philippines
Platt Amendment
Amendment that formally ended the Spanish-American War
Spheres of Influence
China’s economic/military weakness led it to being susceptible to Western influence, however, unlike Europe, the US allowed all nations to have an equal ability to trade with China.
Boxer Rebellion
Rebellion in China against western influence. The slogan was “exterminate the foreigners”.
John Hay
He served as Secretary of State for President McKinley; he negotiated the Open Door Policy which required China to remain open to trade with all countries.
Open Door Policy
This policy was rooted in the desire of US businesses to trade with open markets, unlike imperialism businesses competed openly instead of militaries deciding who would be ruled
Big-Stick Policy
refers to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy: “speak softly, and carry a big stick.” The idea of negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the “big stick”, or the military, ties in heavily with the idea of Realpolitik, which implies a pursuit of political power that resembles Machiavellian ideals. It is comparable to gunboat diplomacy, as used in international politics by imperial powers
Panama Canal
an artificial 48-mile waterway built by the United States in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean.
Roosevelt Corollary
an addition from Roosevelt to the Monroe Doctrine that the United States will intervene in conflicts between European countries and Latin American countries to enforce legitimate claims of the European powers, rather than having the Europeans press their claims directly. Effectively, the US will act as policeman of the Western Hemisphere.
Great White Fleet
The popular nickname for the United States Navy battle fleet of 16 ships that completed a journey around the globe by order of United States President Theodore Roosevelt, to showcase American power.
Mexican Civil War
A series of disturbances that led to civil war in Mexico, and resulted in the US to invade to capture Pancho Villa for his raid on NM, led by US General John Pershing.
Muckrakers
The term was used in the Progressive Era to characterize reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt. They typically had large audiences in some popular magazines.
Standard Oil
Established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller as a corporation, it was the largest oil refinery in the world of its time. Its controversial history as one of the world’s first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly.
Jacob Riis
a social reformer, “muckraking” journalist and social documenting photographer. He is known for using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the impoverished in New York City and his most famous work is “How the Other Half Lives.”
16th Amendment
Legalized direct income tax; created Federal Reserve
17th Amendment
Direct election of Senators
18th Amendment
Prohibition
19th Amendment
Women can vote
Initiative
is a means by which a petition signed by a certain minimum number of registered voters can force a public vote
Recall
a procedure by which voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before their term has ended.
Referendum
a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to vote on a particular proposal.
Muller v Oregon
a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that was used to justify both sex discrimination and usage of labor laws. The case upheld Oregon state restrictions on the working hours of women as justified by the special state interest in protecting women’s health.
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and 23 men – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
Square Deal
President Theodore Roosevelt’s domestic program. His policies reflected three basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.
Trust Busting
Under President Theodore Roosevelt’s leadership, his Attorney General brought 44 suits against monopolists. Notably, J. P. Morgan’s Northern Securities Company, a huge railroad combination, was broken up. Bad trusts were those deemed to stem competition and hurt consumers, while others were left alone because they were deemed no danger to consumers.
Upton Sinclair
an American writer who acquired particular fame for his classic muckraking novel The Jungle, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
Pure Food and Drug Act
first of a series of significant consumer protection laws enacted by Congress in the 20th century and led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration to inspect food.
Meat Inspection Act
an American law that makes it a crime to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions.
Conservation of Public Lands
Of all Roosevelt’s achievements, he was proudest of his work in conservation of natural resources. He established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five National Parks, and also established bird reserves, four game preserves, and 150 National Forests.
Gifford Pinchot
the first Chief of the United States Forest Service from 1905 until his controversial firing in 1910. He worked closely with Roosevelt in conservation.
Progressive Party
an American third party formed by former President Theodore Roosevelt, after he lost the nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé, President William Howard Taft, who had since become his political adversary. The new party was known for taking advanced positions on progressive reforms, and attracting some leading reformers. Beset by factionalism and failure to win many offices, the party went into rapid decline by 1914 and virtually disappeared in 1916.
Federal Reserve Act
signed by President Wilson, it created and established the Federal Reserve System, a privately owned central banking system which has the authority to control the nation’s currency.
NAACP
a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an organization to advance legal justice for African Americans. Its most notable founder was W. E. B. Du Bois.
Great Migration
African Americans moving out of the south to mostly urban areas up north or out west for numerous reasons, notably jobs and avoiding racist discrimination. From 1910-1930 1 million moved out, 1940 and 1970 4 million made the move.
Lusitania
a British ocean liner that a German submarine sank in World War I, causing a major diplomatic uproar. The sinking caused a storm of protest in the United States as 128 American citizens were among the dead.
Jeannette Rankin
first woman in Congress, representing Montana. She took a brave stand of controversially being against both world wars, and fought and protested against wars up through the time of her death during the Vietnam War.
Zimmerman Telegraph
secret diplomatic communication (sent via Western Union?) that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico in the event of the United States’ entering World War I against Germany. Revelation of the contents enraged American public opinion.
Submarine Warfare
a type of naval warfare enacted by the Germans in which submarines sink vessels such as freighters and tankers without warning to bring hardships upon Britain.
Russian Revolution
revolution in Russia that took the Russians out of WWI in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union.
Espionage Act and Sedition Act
Acts passed to prevent opposition to the war effort, notably speech and the expression of opinions against the government or the war effort. It forbade the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the United States government. The constitutionality of the law, its relationship to free speech, and the meaning of its language have been contested in court ever since, and helped make Wilson unpopular.
Schenck v US
a controversial United States Supreme Court case concerning enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War I that permitted the government to censure free speech in the event that there is a clear and present danger.
John Pershing
General that commanded the AEF (American Expeditionary Force) of the United States Army during World War I.
Selective Service Act
authorized the federal government to raise a national army for the American entry into World War I through the compulsory enlistment (draft) of people.
Western Front
The main theatre of war during World War I in France where trench warfare was prominent. A combination of entrenchments, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire, and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties on the attackers and counter-attacking defenders.
Treaty of Versailles
the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Wilson’s 14 Points
outline of a policy of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination to form a New World Order after WWI. Other members of the Big Four were skeptical of Wilson’s idealism.
League of Nations
an intergovernmental organization founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace, but it failed- largely because the US did not enter after the Senate did not ratify the treaty that would have made the US a member. Forerunner to the UN.
1st Red Scare
xenophobia after WWI that shifted the emphasis of “anarchists” being the main fear of society, to Bolshevik inspired communists being the new terrorist oriented bad guys.
Palmer Raids
occurred in the larger context of the Red Scare. They were a series of raids conducted by the United States Department of Justice to capture, arrest and deport suspected radical leftists. The raids and arrests occurred under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and more than 500 foreign citizens were deported, although Palmer’s ambitions were largely frustrated by officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, which had authority for deportations, but objected to Palmer’s methods.
Warning Harding
Republican candidate that was chosen to run against the unpopular post WWI Democrats. He did not campaign very heavily, and was chosen as a compromise “safe” candidate, and became the president following Wilson.
Teapot Dome Scandal
a bribery incident that took place during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. The Secretary of the Interior had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming and two other locations in California to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding.
Calvin Coolidge
Republican Vice President that became president after President Harding died of a heart attack. He was pro-business and the economy enjoyed growth during his administration.
Herbert Hoover
Republican president that followed Calvin Coolidge. Although he too was pro-business like the former president, the economic bubble of growth that characterized the 1920’s burst during his presidency and he took much of the blame because it happened during his term in office.
Alfred Smith
Democratic nominee for president that ran against Hoover, but lost. He is memorable because he was the first Catholic to run for president at a time when bias- particularly in the South- was still strong enough to prevent that from happening.
Henry Ford assembly line
Ford revolutionized the efficiency of manufacturing by mechanically moving the semi-finished product from work station to work station, which made assembly faster, cheaper and with less labor.
Jazz Age
a period in the 1920s, ending with the Great Depression, in which jazz music and dance styles became popular, and characterized the wildness of the era.
Moral Revolution
during the roaring 20’s, this arose as more people questioned the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character that had previously been defined by social norms and religion. This was largely inspired by psychologist Sigmund Freud who provided a scientific explanation of people’s sexual urges, so that what was previously considered inappropriate and immoral, could now be countered as animal instincts that were futile to repress.
Lost Generation
the generation reaching maturity during and just after World War I, characterized by such authors as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose themes mostly pertained to the writers’ experiences, and reflected the era’s moral revolution. Some historians refer to this time period in the world as “The Age of Uncertainty.”
Harlem Renaissance
An African-American cultural movement of the 1920s and 1930s, centered in Harlem, that celebrated black traditions, the black voice, and black ways of life. Langston Hughes, American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri, is often remembered as one of the most famous artists of the movement.
Scopes Trial
commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial. John T. Scopes was accused of violating Tennessee’s law which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial drew intense national publicity when William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, and Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge.
Al Capone
The most famed mafia criminal of the 1920s that made his fortune off boot legging alcohol during prohibition.
21st Amendment
overturned prohibition
Sacco and Vanzetti case
Italian-born American immigrants who were convicted of murder from an armed robbery in Massachusetts without sufficient evidence. The verdict seems tainted by bias against them because both men adhered to an anarchy ideology against oppressive government, and the judge in the case told them that despite a lack of evidence, their ideas were crimes against America. They were executed in the electric chair
KKK Resurgence
Spurred by the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy and moral revolution, the Klan saw an upsurge in the 1920s. This was also inspired by the movie “Birth of a Nation” that reflected Klan sentiments, and won the admiration of President Wilson, who was from Virginia.
Black Tuesday
October 29, 1929. On this date, share prices on the New York Stock Exchange completely collapsed, becoming a pivotal factor in the emergence of the Great Depression
Federal Reserve and the Depression
It is widely believed by economists today (including former Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke) that the actions of the Fed- that were supposed to “stabilize” the economy- actually caused the depression and helped prolong it. While John Maynard Keynes said that an economies could be steered in the right direction through policy, this is a case that shows the danger of how central banks can also steer economies in the wrong direction.
Overproduction
Factories and farms were producing more goods than the people could afford to buy. As a result, prices fell, factories closed and workers were laid off.
Buying on Margin
Buying on margin is the practice of buying stock without paying the full price. A person who is buying on margin pays a small percentage of the price of the stock and borrows the money to pay for the rest. About 90% of stock purchases were being made this way.
The Bonus Army March
The Bonus Army, some 15,000 to 20,000 World War I veterans from across the country, marched on the Capitol in June 1932 to request early payment of cash bonuses due to them in 1945. Congress voted NOT to give them their bonuses, and the US Army, led by Douglas MacArthur, forcefully removed remaining protesters which was very disheartening to the American public.
New Deal
A group of government programs and policies established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s; the New Deal was designed to improve conditions for persons suffering in the Great Depression.
First 100 Days
During the first hundred days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, planned to put an end to the Great Depression that was allegedly caused by the policies of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, by getting 15 major pieces of New Deal legislation passed. Thereafter, the first hundred days of a first-term President are referenced to measure the successes and accomplishments of a president during the time that the president’s power and influence are at their greatest.
FDIC
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is the U.S. government insuring deposits in the United States against bank failure. The FDIC was created in 1933 to maintain public confidence and encourage stability in the financial system through the promotion of sound banking practices.
TVA
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression.
Schechter v US
The Supreme Court case that invalidated as unconstitutional a provision of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) that authorized the President to approve “codes of fair competition” for industries, in this case, the poultry industry.
SEC
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a U.S. government agency that oversees securities transactions, activities of financial professionals and mutual fund trading to prevent fraud and intentional deception.
Social Security
a federal insurance program funded by a direct tax on the income of Americans to provide benefits to retired people and those who are unemployed or disabled. It was monumental in the sense that the government took the step in taking direct responsibility for the financial welfare of its citizens.
WPA
Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of people
John Maynard Keynes
British economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. He overturned the then-prevailing idea that free markets naturally adjust themselves, and replaced it with an ideal that deficit government spending can bring balance. Considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century.
Supreme court reorganization plan
Roosevelt submitted the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, to allow Associate Justices to the Supreme Court to be appointed for every sitting member over the age of 70-and-one-half years of age, up to a maximum of six. Many attacked his idea as a plan to undermine checks and balances, and fight back against the conservative supreme court that had ruled many of his New deal programs as unconstitutional (such as the NIRA).
Dust Bowl
The name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America
Fascism
an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization exemplified by the Axis Powers.
Axis Powers
the group of countries that signed the Tripartite Act in 1940, consisting of Germany, Italy and Japan.
Allied Powers
The four nations that recurred as the main forces of the Allied Powers in both wars were France, Russia/USSR, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Appeasement
In an effort to avoid open conflict with Germany, the democracies adopted this policy, which allowed Hitler to get away with relatively small acts of
aggression and expansion. Neville Chamberlin was famous for saying he had achieved, “peace in our time,” but was heavily criticized by Winston Churchill.
Blitzkreig
The use of air power and fast moving tanks in warfare aka “lightning war.” Germany successfully used this tactic against Poland and France.
Nye Committee
Concluded in 1934 that the main reason for US participation in the world war was to serve the greed of bankers and arms manufacturers; established by Senator Gerald Nye.
Neutrality Acts
Passed in wake of the Nye Committee when the US was particularly anti-war. 1935: Authorized the president to prohibit all arms shipments to belligerent nations; 1936) Forbade the extension of loans and credits to belligerents; 1937) Forbade the shipment of arms to the opposing sides in the civil war in Spain.
Lend-Lease Act
An Act that replaced the Cash and Carry idea; it allowed Britain to obtain all the US arms it needed on credit.
Pearl Harbor
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed the US naval base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. This attack targeted the US Congress’ decision to declare war on Japan at the request of Roosevelt. Three days later, the other Axis powers declared war on the United States.
Manhattan Project
a top-secret project that employed over 100,000 people and spent $2 billion to develop a weapon whose power came from the splitting of the atom
Japanese Internment
the forced relocation and incarceration in camps in the interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast during WWII.
Harry Truman
Roosevelt’s replacement for too-radical VP Henry Wallace; A Missouri senator with a national reputation for having conducted a much-publicized investigation of war spending.
Eisenhower
The US General that led Operation Torch in November of 1942 in an effort to seize North Africa from Germany, and then Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe.
MacArthur
The general who commanded army units in the southern Pacific.
Nimitz
The leading US admiral who adopted the strategy of “island-hopping” to enable the Allied powers to get within fighting range of the Japanese islands.
Battle of Midway
One of two decisive battles against Japan that marked the turning point in the war; the interception and decoding of Japanese messages enabled US forces to destroy four Japanese carriers and 300 planes.
D-Day
June 6, 1944, the date the Allied drive to liberate France began, with the largest invasion by sea in history. On this day, British, Canadian, and US forces under the command of General Eisenhower secured several beachheads on the Normandy coast.
A-Bomb
A weapon whose power came from the splitting of the atom; it was successfully tested on July 15, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico and then used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Big Three
The leaders of the US, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain who arranged to confer secretly to coordinate their military strategies and to lay the foundation for peace terms.
UN
The peacekeeping organization that was conceived during WWII and put in place immediately after the war. Ratified on October 24, 1945.
