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Andrews UK - Tyrel Eskelson

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98 pages

English

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If the 19th Century belonged to Britain, the 20th Century was the age of American power and world dominance. The American Century charts the rise to global power of the USA and its journey from a regional hegemon to superpower status. It examines the development of an imperial power through the course of two world wars, the long nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union and the economic shocks and crises of the 20th Century. The American Century also examines life for the American people and the experience of living in a racially segregated and often volatile society, where notions of liberty and the American dream were interpreted, negotiated and sometimes rejected by many throughout a tumultuous century.

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Histoire

History of the Americas

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	01 juin 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785385254
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page
The American Century
Explaining History
Tyrel Eskelson

Publisher Information
The American Century
Published in 2016
by AUK Academic
an imprint of
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2016 Tyrel Eskelson
The right of Tyrel Eskelson to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of AUK Academic or Andrews UK Limited.

Introduction
The term American Century derives from Time publisher Henry Luce’s February 17, 1941 edition of Life magazine, in which he argued the United States had a special role to play in the world: “all of us are called, each to his own measure of capacity, and each in the widest horizon of his vision, to create the first great American Century.” Luce’s term was his way of promoting the United States as an empire that earned its position in the world through innovation and greatness. The term American Century has persisted to the present day as a term used to describe the American 20 th Century, and therefore needs first to be defined. It is a fact that the United States grew during the 20 th Century to become the world’s greatest economic and military power. What is often in dispute among historians is exactly how it achieved this. Is the United States a benign power intent on promoting peace and spreading democracy, or has it achieved its power through intervention, force, and opportunity? The two goals of this book will be first, to argue that it was much the latter allowing for American hegemony; and second, that by the end of this reading, the reader should consider what their definition of the American Century is.
The United States of America has become the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of civilisation, and has done it all while following the same 18 th century Constitution. [1] The American Constitution of 1789 bound together thirteen states into a republic that championed the idea of freedom, individualism, and democracy, but limited the full extent of these freedoms to white males. The Constitution grants all power and authority to govern American society, but has left room to debate its interpretation. While many executive leaders have strayed beyond the limits of the Constitution, its authority has successfully grounded these discretions back within the guidelines of its power. America’s emergence as a world power in the 20 th Century exemplifies the debate over how the Constitution guides foreign and domestic policy. The needs of an expanding economic and national security can at times run contrary to the Bill of Rights. This was tested early in the republic when President Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Act which the Jefferson Administration thankfully repealed. Throughout the 19 th Century, America mainly expanded across the continent, beginning in 1803 with the purchase of more than 800,000 square miles from France. [2]
The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, championed the virtues of an agrarian society and the “fundamental right to labour the earth,” but was also the first president to send the American navy across the world to fight for America’s merchant ships to have unfettered access to European markets from pirates of the Mediterranean. His decision to purchase the Louisiana Territories vastly changed America’s future on the continent as its most powerful presence. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed America as an agricultural society whose attachment was to land values, but this was in a slow process of change due largely to Jacksonian principles, as well as the eventual boom of industry. Andrew Jackson’s policies were built on nationalism and military leadership. They also decided the fate of Native Americans, who were forced off their land and continually uprooted as the American economy grew. After Jackson’s domestic reforms were accomplished, succeeding generations turned towards expansion, which before long, led to war with Mexico in 1846-48 and the acquisition of the South West American States. America continued to settle across the continent and eventually faced economic and moral decisions about slavery’s expansion in new states.
The founding fathers inclusion of slavery in the union left a flawed legacy and impending crisis which erupted in a civil war between an industrial North and agrarian slave holding South. The American Civil War claimed the lives of more than 600,000 American citizens, uprooted slavery, and determined that no state is permitted to leave the Union. The Civil War also decided America would be an industrial society rather than a plantation one. While the abolition of slavery occurred in 1865, it took one hundred years before African-Americans began to see measures of change towards equality. Understanding American culture and society today is impossible without the study of race relations, and the legacy of the Civil War. As America recovered during reconstruction it completely embraced the industrial revolution during a period known as the Gilded Age. [3]
In the final decades of the 19 th century, the industrial revolution expanded the nation’s size and wealth, and with this came questions to be settled on America’s role as an emerging world power. This book’s aim is to offer a brief account of how America emerged in the 1900’s as an international world power, and how it progressed and reformed domestically throughout the century. The first decade of the 20 th century dealt with precisely these issues, and is fundamental to understanding the rest of the century. By the end of the Second World War, America had reached a point of military and economic hegemony that surpassed all empires in the history of civilisation.
The one persistent theme that threads the American Century is the economic imperatives driving imperialism and empire. America developed the world’s largest economy, and one of the largest populations, through struggles and wars over the right to foreign trade and investment. The need for military involvement to secure free trade around the world can be seen as far back as Jefferson’s deployment of the navy to secure American merchant ships from pirate attacks on Mediterranean waters; and the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, warning Europeans with imperial ambitions that the Western Hemisphere belongs to the interests of American trade and commerce.
As the dawn of the 20 th century approached, America debated its role as a world power and faced an identity crisis over the idea of Manifest Destiny/American Exceptionalism, versus the strongly held American conviction that people should choose their own government. That very identity crisis will be the starting point, as the American Century begins with, and will continue to revisit, an island just 90 miles south of Florida: Cuba.

1 Since the adoption of the original ten amendments, seventeen additional amendments have been added.

2 The Jefferson Administration purchased this territory for an equivalent of 42 cents per acre in today’s currency.

3 See Sean Dennis Cashman’s America in the Gilded Age for an excellent account of the last half of the 19 th century.

Chapter One
In 1823, President James Monroe, and his internationally-minded Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, established a self-proclaimed right to intervene in any nation in the Western Hemisphere, for the purposes of protecting American business or security interests. Several times during the 19 th century, the United States government invoked the Monroe Doctrine, and intervened in Central and Southern America, for the purposes of protecting business interests. [1] For many decades of the 19 th century, the Spanish colony of Cuba had numerous uprisings and civil wars. Most Americans hated the Spanish presence as both a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and on moral grounds due to its ruthless oppression of a people who did not want Spanish rule. Between 1868 and 1878, Cubans had challenged Spanish control, in a Ten Years’ War which bankrupted sugar planters and provided an opportunity for Americans to buy plantations. By the mid 1890s, American investment in Cuba reached $50,000,000, but rebellion had again broken out in 1895, this time hurting American investments. [2]
Genuine sympathy for the Cuban people led members of America’s Congress, churches, and the press to form a movement supporting intervention. Cuba had also tempted American expansionists and business interests for many years. Citing one of numerous examples, in 1850, Senator James Bayard proclaimed “the future interests not only of this country, but of civilization and of human progress, are deeply involved in the acquisition of Cuba by the United States.” [3] The recurrent hostilities continued to hinder American business in Cuba, which eventually led President McKinley to instruct his minister to Spain, Stewart Woodford, to try and arbitrate a settlement because the civil war “injuriously affects the normal function of business, and tends to delay the condition of prosperity.” [4] Constant newspaper coverage on America’s property losses and the war’s terrible human losses, continued to upset the American public. As humanitarian and imperialist supporters mounted growing pressure, on January 24, 1898, President Mc