United States History · Chapter 23

23. Americans and the Great War, 1914-1919

The chapter discusses America's involvement in World War I, highlighting Woodrow Wilson's initial isolationist foreign policy, the challenges of maintaining neutrality, and the factors leading to the U.S. declaration of war, including economic interests and the Zimmermann telegram. It also covers the mobilization for war, the impact of the war on women and African Americans, and the subsequent societal changes, including the push for prohibition and women's suffrage. Finally, it examines the post-war peace process, Wilson's Fourteen Points, the Treaty of Versailles, and the difficulties faced during demobilization, including racial tensions and the flu epidemic.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

Explain Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy and the difficulties of maintaining American neutrality at the outset of World War I
Identify the key factors that led to the U.S. declaration of war on Germany in April 1917
Identify the steps taken by the U.S. government to secure enough men, money, food, and supplies to prosecute World War I
Explain how the U.S. government attempted to sway popular opinion in favor of the war effort
Explain how the status of organized labor changed during the First World War
Describe how the lives of women and African Americans changed as a result of American participation in World War I
Explain how America’s participation in World War I allowed for the passage of prohibition and women’s suffrage
Identify the role that the United States played at the end of World War I
Describe Woodrow Wilson’s vision for the postwar world
Explain why the United States never formally approved the Treaty of Versailles nor joined the League of Nations
Identify the challenges that the United States faced following the conclusion of World War I
Explain Warren G. Harding’s landslide victory in the 1920 presidential election

Introduction#

Figure 1.1 In Europe supported by Africa and America(1796), artist William Blake, who was an abolitionist, depicts the interdependence of the three continents in the Atlantic World; however, he places gold armbands on the Indian and African women, symbolizing their subjugation. The strand binding the three women may represent tobacco.

Globalization, the ever-increasing interconnectedness of the world, is not a new phenomenon, but it accelerated when western Europeans discovered the riches of the East. During the Crusades (1095–1291), Europeans developed an appetite for spices, silk, porcelain, sugar, and other luxury items from the East, for which they traded fur, timber, and Slavic people they captured and sold (hence the word slave). But when the Silk Road, the long overland trading route from China to the Mediterranean, became costlier and more dangerous to travel, Europeans searched for a more efficient and inexpensive trade route over water, initiating the development of what we now call the Atlantic World.

In pursuit of commerce in Asia, fifteenth-century traders unexpectedly encountered a “New World” populated by millions and home to sophisticated and numerous peoples. Mistakenly believing they had reached the East Indies, these early explorers called its inhabitants Indians. West Africa, a diverse and culturally rich area, soon entered the stage as other nations exploited its slave trade and brought its peoples to the New World in chains. Although Europeans would come to dominate the New World, they could not have done so without Africans and native peoples (Figure 1.1).