Revolution and Recognition: A British Perspective On Isthmian Affairs During the 1920s

1992 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-349
Author(s):  
Richard V. Salisbury
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Caribbean Region ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Short Run ◽  
British Perspective

With the end of the First World War, American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere appeared to be an unquestioned fact of international life. The defeat of Germany, in combination with the wartime weakening of Great Britain and France, had created a situation whereby the major economic and political competitors of the United States were unable, at least in the short-run, to exercise the degree of influence they had enjoyed in the years before 1914. Given the strategic considerations involving the isthmian canal route, the circum-Caribbean region was the area within the Western Hemisphere where the influence of the United States was especially strong, a point born out by the existence of virtual American protectorates in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Nicaragua. Accordingly, when viewed from an immediate post-World War I perspective, one might have anticipated that the United States would have had relatively little difficulty in maintaining a regional Pax Americana.

Woodrow Wilson and World War I: A Reappraisal

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
American President ◽  
The First World War

Woodrow Wilson was the first American President to leave the Western Hemisphere during his period of office, and, as befitted him, the circumstances in which he did so were neither casual nor frivolous. He went to Europe in late 1918 to take part in the peace conference following a war that the United States had played a crucial part in bringing to a decisive end. His aim was to secure a peace that accorded with the proposals he had set out in his Fourteen Points address of January 1918 and in other speeches — a peace that would be based upon justice and thus secure consent, that would embody liberal principles(the self-determination of peoples as far as practicable, the prohibition of discriminatory trade barriers), and that would be maintained by a new international organization in which the United States, breaking its tradition of isolation, would take part — a league of nations that would provide a general guarantee of “political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”The symbolism of this dramatic moment, with the American prophet coming to bring redemption to the Old World, imprinted on the minds of contemporaries an image of Wilson which has affected most subsequent historiography. Viewing events from Vienna, that special victim of the First World War, Sigmund Freud found “the figure of the American President, as it rose above the horizon of Europeans, from the first unsympathetic, and… this aversion increased in the course of years the more I learned about him and the more severely we suffered from the consequences of his intrusion into our destiny.”

International Aviation Rivalry in Latin America, 1919-1927

1965 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Phillips Newton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
World War I ◽  
Transportation Problem ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Panama Canal ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Form ◽  
Pan American

In Latin America, international rivalry over aviation followed World War I. In its early form, it consisted of a commercial scramble among several Western European nations and the United States to sell airplanes and aviation products and to establish airlines in Latin America. Somewhat later, expanding European aviation activities posed an implicit threat to the Panama Canal.Before World War I, certain aerophiles had sought to advance the airplane as the panacea for the transportation problem in Latin America. The aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont of Brazil and the Aero Club of America, an influential private United States association, were in the van. In 1916, efforts by these enthusiasts led to the formation of the Pan American Aviation Federation, which they envisioned as the means of promoting and publicizing aviation throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Britain and American Railway Development

1951 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leland H. Jenks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Real Income ◽  
First World War ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Technological Improvements ◽  
First World

Our task here is to inquire into the relations between two familiar sets of phenomena—the economic development of the Western Hemisphere and the involvement of British investors, financiers, engineers, contractors, and financial groups in railways in that area. As a matter of convenience we shall look chiefly at the United States and Argentina, and at the time span of three quarters of a century preceding the First World War. It is no secret that during that period both countries underwent rapid development, whose contours included such matters as the effective occupation of new areas of vast extent; the growth of population, partly fed by immigration; the effective application of technological improvements to the exploitation of natural resources; an increasing complexity of the division of labor; and a rise in productivity and real income per capita, participated in by large segments of the population. During the same period, the Western Hemisphere was normally the outlet for from 40 to 60 per cent of British foreign investment, the United States and the Argentine being two of the countries chiefly affected. We are familiar with estimates that British investments in the United States, on the eve of the First World War, amounted to over 4 billion dollars, approximately 3 billion of which were in railway securities, and that something like half as much was invested in Argentina, with a somewhat smaller percentage directly in rails.

World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States

1981 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 165
Author(s):  
Arthur S. Link ◽  
Paul L. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War
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