Mexico and the Outside World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich E. Schuler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
World War ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
Global War

Mexican elites emerging out of the political civil wars of the 19th century threw their support behind French positivism and its theory that a nation could thrive through economic, industrial, and foreign-financed development. The strategy’s very success created the profound economic dislocations that triggered regional revolutions in Mexico’s center and north. Foreign observers misread these events as small rebellions and acted accordingly. In this environment Francisco Madero became Mexico’s first democratic president. Even though he leaned toward the United States, he pleased no foreign and domestic faction and was deposed and murdered by a domestic-foreign element. Emerging dictator Victoriano Huerta perplexed all foreign observers. As US president Woodrow Wilson made fighting against Huerta’s tenure a symbol of an idealistic new policy, Canadian, European, and Latin American governments picked Venustiano Carranza at the Conference of Niagara Falls to be his successor. The new context of World War I interrupted all of Mexico’s bilateral economic relations. The country’s national revolutions became side theaters of the global war. By 1918 the collapse of empires had changed all politicians’ outlooks. The 1920s were dominated by strife with the Vatican and US laissez-faire policy but also pragmatic US-Mexican border relations steered by President Abelardo Rodriguez. During the Great Depression, Mexico attempted to avoid importing food. US artists, tourists, and Europeans were inspired by Mexico’s murals and social justice movements for peasants. After 1934 Lazaro Cardenas steered these policies to the left; in 1938 he expropriated US, British, and Dutch-owned oil companies as well as US agrarian property. After 1940 government technocrats under Ávila Camacho turned the country toward exploiting the Allies’ economic war needs. World War II found Mexico on the side of the Allies, as expressed in unprecedented security, economic, and military cooperation. The Mexican air force flew missions in the Philippines. This US-Mexican rapprochement and its architects were replaced after 1943, and the rise of the Cold War changed international linkages once again.

Latin America in World War I

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich E. Schuler
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
World War ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Military Advisors

The English-speaking world awaits its first detailed study examining Latin America during World War I. Many historical events of the era remain little-known, as does much of the region’s military history during this period. While key chronologies, personalities, groups, and historical avenues remain unidentified, researchers must draw knowledge from existing texts. The authors cited in this article for further study cover only a small fraction of the myriad topics presented by the war. World War I set in motion a unique power readjustment in Latin America, the likes of which had not been experienced in the region since the 1820s. Most significantly, the temporary suspension of economic ties with Europe disrupted everyday processes that elites and commoners had previously taken for granted. Changes in economy and finance triggered a struggle between indigenous Americans, peasants, workers, elites, and immigrants, setting the stage for the social and political changes of the 1920s. Amidst the upheaval of World War I, non-elite Latin American groups successfully focused national politics on regional and ethnic issues, while elite Latin Americans weighed the potential advantages of ties with Spanish and Italian authoritarianism. World War I ended European financial dominance over the region, and the destruction of Europe reduced export markets to a point where Latin America’s economic relations with the United States gained new significance. U.S. military advisors took their places alongside European trainers, and many different “U.S.” actors emerged on Latin American soil, acting out rivaling understandings of appropriate U.S. activity in Latin America. The war heralded the end of Belgian influence and of significant French power in the region, British acceptance of U.S. financial preeminence, and questions as to how Prussian military expertise could be leveraged to Latin America’s benefit in the future. The creation of the League of Nations, a development alien to Latin American political culture, caught the region off guard. And yet it laid the foundation for global Latin American diplomacy in the 1930s and after World War II. In the end, the search for a new understanding of a Latin American nation’s place on the changing world stage led to the elevation of the institution of the national army as a social and political arbiter. The myth of the army as embodiment of national essence would last until the 1980s.

Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvyn P Leffler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
National Security Policy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Global War

This book gathers together decades of writing by the author, to address important questions about U.S. national security policy from the end of World War I to the global war on terror. Why did the United States withdraw strategically from Europe after World War I and not after World War II? How did World War II reshape Americans' understanding of their vital interests? What caused the United States to achieve victory in the long Cold War? To what extent did 9/11 transform U.S. national security policy? Is budgetary austerity a fundamental threat to U.S. national interests? The wide-ranging chapters explain how foreign policy evolved into national security policy. The book stresses the competing priorities that forced policymakers to make agonizing trade-offs and illuminates the travails of the policymaking process itself. While assessing the course of U.S. national security policy, the author also interrogates the evolution of his own scholarship. Over time, slowly and almost unconsciously, the author's work has married elements of revisionism with realism to form a unique synthesis that uses threat perception as a lens to understand how and why policymakers reconcile the pressures emanating from external dangers and internal priorities.

Morality for the “Democracy of God”: George Albert Coe and the Liberal Protestant Critique of American Character Education, 1917–1940

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Setran
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Character Education ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
World War ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
American Character

AbstractIn the years between World War I and World War II in the United States, public and religious educators engaged in an extended struggle to define the appropriate nature of character education for American youth. Within a post-war culture agonizing over the sanctions of moral living in the wake of mass violence and vanishing certitudes, a group of conservative educators sought to shore up traditional values through the construction of morality codes defining the characteristics of the “good American.” At the same time, a group of liberal progressive educators set forth a vigorous critique of these popular character education programs. This article analyzes the nature of this liberal critique by looking at one leading liberal spokesperson, George Albert Coe. Coe taught at Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, and used his platform in these institutions to forge a model of character education derived from the combined influences of liberal Protestantism and Deweyan progressive education. Coe posited a two-pronged vision for American moral education rooted in the need for both procedural democracy (collaborative moral decision making) and a democratic social order. Utilizing this vision of the “democracy of God,” Coe demonstrated the inadequacies of code-based models, pointing in particular to the anachronism of traditional virtues in a world of social interdependence, the misguided individualism of the virtues, and the indoctrinatory nature of conservative programs. He proposed that youth be allowed to participate in moral experimentation, adopting ideals through scientific testing rather than unthinking allegiance to authoritative commands. Expanding the meaning of morality to include social as well as personal righteousness, he also made character education a vehicle of social justice. In the end, I contend that Coe's democratic model of character education, because of its scientific epistemological hegemony and devaluing of tradition, actually failed to promote a truly democratic character.

Loathsome Deutschtum?

2021 ◽  
pp. 239-264
Author(s):  
Julie Hubbert
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Automobile Industry ◽  
Symphony Orchestra ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
World War ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
The Will

Much has been said about the Nazi appropriation of Wagner’s music in the 1930s and 1940s. As early as 1933, Hitler transformed the Bayreuth Festival into a celebration of National Socialist ideology and propagated miniature Wagner festivals to celebrate his own birthday. Wagner’s music also resounded throughout the culture and media at large. What has been less understood and examined, however, is how this same music was also used in nonnarrative films, newsreels, government documentaries, and industrial and advertising films of the period. Here the appropriation of Wagner is more complex and problematic. Master Hands (1936), the critically acclaimed, feature-length industrial film sponsored by the American car company Chevrolet, is an excellent example. As several film scholars have observed, the film is an artistic advertisement for the American automobile industry that borrows heavily from Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. But the film’s score, a compilation full of Wagner excerpts, arranged by composer Samuel Benavie and performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, about which almost nothing has been said, is equally propagandistic. By examining the music for this industrial advertisement for Chevrolet, this chapter not only re-examines the reception of Wagner in the United States between the World War I and World War II but also examines the integral role his music played in the creation of American films of persuasion. It explores the use U.S. industrial filmmakers made of Wagner’s music as an audible signifier not for German fascism but to advertise for American democracy, industry, and capitalism.

scholarly journals The UK-US Game and UK's Return to Gold Standard

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 324
Author(s):  
Zheming Zhang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
The Uk

<p>With the continuous development and evolution of the United States, especially the economic center shift after World War II, the United States become the economic hegemon instead of the UK and thus it seized the economic initiative of the world. After the World War I, the European countries gradually withdraw from the gold standard. In order to stabilize the world economy development and the international economic order, the United States prepared to build the economic system related with its own interests so as to force the UK to return to the gold standard. The game between the United States and the UK shows the significance of economic initiative. Among them, the outcome of the two countries in the fight of the financial system also demonstrates a significant change in the world economic system.</p>

scholarly journals Constitutional law and international law at the turn of the century

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
JA Frowein
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Law ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
World War ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
Constitution Making

Constitutional law and international law operate in simultaneous conjunction and reciprocal tension. Both fields seem to have overcome the great challenges of destruction and neglect in the course of the 20th century. Both after World War I and World War II the world experienced new waves of constitution making. In both cases the current German constitutions (the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and the Grundgesetz of 1949) were influential. Characteristic of constitution-making in this century, is the final victory of liberal constitutions based on the rule of law, the Rechtsstaat, fundamental rights, meaningful control of public powers and the establishment of constitutional courts. Following the destruction of World War II, the notion of the Sozialstaat emerged strongly in Germany. In contrast to the Constitution of the United States of America, the principle of the responsibility of the state for social justice has emerged in almost all new constitutions, including Russia, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Where courts are given the mandate to interpret bills of rights, fundamental rights have been developed into foundation stones of the legal system. The presence in a Bill of Rights of restrictive clauses, is important for its analysis. Generally restrictive clauses in new constitutions try to limit the possibilities of restriction. The importance of constitutional rules establishing and legitimizing the political organs, must not be overlooked. Of particular importance is the degree of control over the head of state, a positive attitude among political actors towards the constitution and the protection of the interests of minorities in a democratic system. In the field of Public International Law much of Kant's ideal of an international confederation of peace has been realized. Since 1990 the United Nation's Security Council has shown the potential of becoming a directorate for the community ofnations. International law has also been instrumental in the worldwide recognition of human rights. Especially in Europe, Convention Law has had a strong impact. Furthermore, global and regional systems of regulation have tended to alter the legal attitude towards state sovereignty. It may be that the South African constitutional approach in terms of which international law is subject to constitutional and other national law, is not in line with international tendencies.

War and the Next Lesson

Money ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Great Depression

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.

The Japanese Invasion

Jazz in China ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Eugene Marlow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Pearl Harbor ◽  
World War ◽  
Prisoner Of War ◽  
Internment Camps

During World War II, the Japanese constructed prisoner of war camps in fifteen countries, including China. These camps numbered approximately 240. The Japanese—whose attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 brought the United States into World War II— saw their global role as manifest destiny, particularly with respect to China. Militarist Japan's attempt to conquer China began by seizing Manchuria in 1931 and became a full-fledged invasion from 1937 [when they attacked Shanghai] to 1945. This chapters shows that American jazz musicians—all of whom were playing in Shanghai—were not immune to the Japanese invasion and occupation. Some landed in internment camps in China and the Philippines.

The Politically Weak

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-119
Author(s):  
Martin Crotty ◽  
Neil J. Diamant ◽  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Long Period ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Democratic Systems

This chapter investigates the cases of victory and defeat and explains what politically influential veterans were able to produce to secure benefits and rights. It focuses on China after its long period of war and civil war that ended in 1949, the United Kingdom after both world wars, the United States after World War I, and the USSR after World War II. It analyses the cases wherein veterans had little or limited success in securing meaningful social and political status. The chapter identifies factors that determine the veterans' status, where it is victory or defeat, or authoritarian versus democratic systems of government. It discusses the political process and the attempts to convert claims into entitlements in order to explain the negative outcomes for the veterans of victorious armies.

Henry Cowell and the West Coast Dance Scene

Artful Noise ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 42-63
Author(s):  
Thomas Siwe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arnold Schoenberg ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Twelve Tone ◽  
Henry Cowell

Modern dance and music for percussion are linked through the works of musicians who studied with the iconoclastic composer Henry Cowell. This chapter highlights the work of numerous artists who were involved in the dance and music scene along the West Coast of the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Cowell’s early publishing venture New Music helped launch the careers of composers Johanna Beyer, William Russell, Lou Harrison, John Cage, and others. The latter two composers, Harrison and Cage, also studied with the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg whose use of the twelve-tone technique became central to the music of the twentieth century. The chapter ends with a summary of percussion music’s development from the decades before World War I to the compositional hiatus caused by World War II.

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