Into the World — A Step Toward Empire and the First World War

As we saw last time, by the end of the nineteenth century America had grown into the world’s largest industrial power. Its land was bound together by railroads, and its factories poured out goods without pause. But that power would soon no longer fit within the country alone. Its overflowing productive force sought new markets, and the now-mighty nation began to grow aware of its role in the wider world. A country that since its founding had kept its distance from Europe’s quarrels was now, for the first time, about to step out beyond the seas.

From the Explosion of the Maine to Empire

The trigger was a small island in the Caribbean. Cuba was then a Spanish colony, where a rebellion seeking independence continued. America had invested heavily in the island’s sugar and tobacco industries, and public opinion gradually leaned toward intervention against Spain.

In February 1898, the American battleship Maine, anchored in Havana Harbor, suddenly exploded, and more than two hundred and sixty crew members lost their lives. The cause is said to remain unclear even now, but the American newspapers of the time loudly blamed the accident on Spain, and the warlike mood of public opinion swelled all at once. In April of the same year, America declared war on Spain. This was the Spanish-American War.

The war ended in a matter of months, with America victorious. In the Treaty of Paris at the end of that year, Cuba was recognized as independent from Spain, and America gained the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Far from the land of its founding, American territory spread across the Pacific and the Caribbean.

Mending the Nation Within — The Progressive Movement

While expanding outward, America also began to face its own internal distortions. The monopolies, inequality, corruption, and wretched working conditions left behind by the Gilded Age we saw last time — a movement of reform seeking to correct these spread from the end of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth. It was the current known as the Progressive movement.

In this era, journalists who investigated and exposed the dark corners of society (the muckrakers, those who rake up the muck) came to prominence. They made known to the world the misconduct of big business, unsanitary food factories, and political corruption, stirring up public opinion that demanded reform. Politics responded in turn. President Theodore Roosevelt is said to have challenged the monopolies of giant corporations and pressed forward with ‘trust-busting.’ Under his successor, President Woodrow Wilson, the Federal Reserve System — equivalent to a central bank — and the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees businesses, were established, and laws to curb monopoly were put in place.

The wave of reform extended to people’s rights as well. Women’s suffrage, for which a movement had long continued, bore fruit in 1920 as the Nineteenth Amendment, and women’s right to vote was recognized. The Progressive movement was an attempt to ease the distortions of rapid growth through the power of the state. Not merely leaving the market free, but having government strike a balance in society — this way of thinking began to put down roots at this time. That said, its limits have also been pointed out, such as that this reform did little to resolve discrimination against Black Americans.

Entering the World War, and the Fate of an Ideal

In 1914, the First World War began in Europe. At first, America kept to neutrality, resolved not to involve itself in this war on a distant continent. The tradition of isolationism — the stance, held since the founding, of avoiding entanglement in Europe’s quarrels — was still alive.

Yet maintaining neutrality grew steadily harder. Indiscriminate attacks by German submarines claimed civilian lives, Americans among them, in incident after incident. Economically, too, America grew deeply bound to the Allied side through trade and loans. And in April 1917, Wilson, raising the ideal of making ‘the world safe for democracy,’ at last asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

The troops and supplies sent by the rising industrial nation gave decisive backing to the Allies, worn down by more than three years of fighting. American soldiers numbering some two million crossed the sea and stood on the front lines, and the following November, in 1918, the war at last came to an end. For the first time, America had become a presence that could sway the outcome of a European war. It was the moment when a country that had gathered its strength in a corner of the world since its founding leapt forward to become one of the world’s centers.

When the war ended, America again leaned toward keeping its distance from the world. A mood spread of not delving deep into Europe’s problems, of devoting itself to its own prosperity. Having once stood on the world stage, it turned back without taking the next step — in this period, America wavered between the urge to expand and a strong wariness of being drawn in. To become a superpower that would lead the world, it still needed time.

The world war ended, and America, as a victor, gained unprecedented wealth and confidence. As Europe lay exhausted, this country alone reveled in prosperity without great injury. In time the streets overflowed with automobiles, jazz rang out, and people grew intoxicated with a giddy boom. Yet in the very midst of that frenzy, invisible cracks were quietly spreading underfoot. Next time is the story of how a dazzling prosperity collapsed in a single night, and America came to question the very shape of the nation itself.