Theodore
Roosevelt in an autombile ona trip to Chicago, 1914
Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0003451. Courtesy of the Chicago
Historical Society.
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Questions to
consider
1. Why was American intervention in Cuba and the Philipines so
controversial?
2. What was Theodore Rosevelt's conception of American nationalism
and how did this relate to his foreign policy?
3. What was the role of race and racial ideology in the creation
of both foreign policy and American nationalism in this period?
4. To what extent should American "progressivism" be seen
as part of a trans-Atlantic political culture?
5. Why did the US intervene in the Great War and what were the
consequences for American politics, society, identity and culture?
Primary
sources
The
New York Times reports the battleship Maine explosion, 1898
E.
L. Godkin, "The Absurdity of War", Century Magazine, Jan
1897
"Exit Anti-Imperialism", The
Independent 55 (Sept. 24, 1903)
Cartoon: What the United States has fought for (1914)
Cartoon: 1912 Election
Cartoon: American response to the
outbreak of war in 1914
Introductory
reading
Leon Fink, ed., Major Problems in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, pp. 273-286
Paul
A. Kramer, "Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons: Race and Rule
between the British and United States Empires, 18801910" Journal
of American History, March 2002 (Vol. 88, No. 4) pp. 1315-1353
John
A.Thompson, "Responding to the war in Europe, 1914-1917: the
initial stance" in Woodrow Wilson (2002), pp. 96-140
Further reading
The Spanish-American War
Richard Hofstadter, “Cuba, the Philippines and Manifest Destiny”,
in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and other Essays (1966)
Ernest
May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great
Power (1961)
John L.Offner, An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States
and Spain over Cuba, 1895-1898 (1991)
Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion,
1860-1898 (1963)
The Politics of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism
Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (1985)
Michael H. Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy (1987)
William Appleman Williams, The TRagedy of American Diplomacy (1959)
Goran Rystad, Ambiguous Imperialsm: American Foreign Policy and Domestic
Politics at teh Turn of the Century (1975)
Progressivism
Daniel
Rogers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (2000)
Peter
Filene, "An Obituary for 'the Progressive Movement", American
Quarterly 22: 1( 1970): 20-34
The Great War
David
M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1982)
John Thompson, Woodrow Wilson (2001)
Lloyd Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition (1987)
John Cooper, The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World
War,1914-17(1969)
Websites
PBS:
historians discuss the Spanish-American war
New
York Public Library Exhibition
Library
of Congress Spanish-American war motion picture site
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