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Back
to History 1378 Syllabus
Spring 2006
Themes
for History 1378
Gilded
Age America |
Mark
Twain called the late nineteenth century the "Gilded Age."
By this, he meant that the period was glittering on the surface
but corrupt underneath. In the popular view, the late nineteenth
century was a period of greed and guile: of rapacious Robber Barons,
unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers, of shady business
practices, scandal-plagued politics, and vulgar display. It was
a time not unlike our own. |
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At
the time that the United States celebrated its centennial, Reconstruction
came to a formal end, the country experienced a bitterly disputed
presidential election, General George Armstrong and his men were
wiped out at the battle of the Little Big Horn, federal troops suppressed
a nation-wide railroad strike, and 20 members of a mine workers
organization, the Molly Maguires, were executed for terrorism. |
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The
late 19th century bears striking parallels with our time. It was
a period of sweeping technological innovation and wrenching economic
change. Along with efforts to reduce the scale of government, it
had a drug crisis and attempts to uplift morality and solve social
problems ranging from domestic violence to unwed pregnancy. In the
19th century, however, these efforts were more forceful than those
today. States enacted “Blue Laws,” prohibiting most
businesses from operating on Sunday. Lotteries, widely used by government
in the early 19th century to raise revenue, were outlawed, by 1890,
in 43 of the 44 states. A number of states forbade horse racing,
boxing, and the manufacture of cigarettes. The earliest attempts
to suppress narcotics were made. In 1872, Congress enacted the Comstock
Act, which banned obscene literature from the mails. The law was
interpreted broadly and was used to prevent the distribution of
birth control information and contraceptive devices through the
mails. The largest movement to enforce morality was the movement
to prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol. |
- The
“Winning” of the West
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The
western frontier was bitterly contested space. Romanticized in countless
western movies, the true story of the winning of the West is a story
of struggles for dominance over labor, language, water, and land,
as Anglos sought dominance over Native Americans, Mexican Americans,
and Chinese Americans. |
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The
late 19th century saw the creation of a modern industrial economy.
Unlike the pre-Civil War economy, this new one was dependent on raw
materials from around the world and it sold goods in global markets.
Business organization expanded in size and scale. There was an unparalleled
increase in factory production, mechanization, and business consolidation.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the major sectors of the
nation's economy--banking, manufacturing, meat packing, oil refining,
railroads, and steel--were dominated by a small number of giant corporations. |
The 1890s as a Turning Point |
The
1890s brought crucial changes to American society. The 1890s witnessed
the rise of the first instruments of mass communication—the
tabloid, the mass-market magazine, the best-selling novel, million
dollar advertising campaigns, and moving pictures. New forms of
commercial entertainment proliferated, including the amusement park,
urban nightclub, the dance hall, the nickelodeon, and the vaudeville
stage. Competitive team sports, including basketball, bicycling,
football, as well as golf and wrestling, were introduced to the
United States. The New Music and Tin Pan Ally, and the New Woman
also appeared.
The
1890s also witnessed the consolidation of a system of racial discrimination
based on law and custom that was called "Jim Crow" after
a mid-nineteenth century blackfaced minstrel act, and it was reinforced
through violence, including thousands of lynchings. Diplomatically,
the 1890s saw the United States emerge as a world power. |
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The
most momentous political conflict of the late 19th century was the
farmers’ revolt. Drought, plagues of grasshoppers, boll weevils,
rising costs, falling prices, and high interest rates made it increasingly
difficult to make a living as a farmer. Many farmers blamed railroad
owners, grain elevator operators, land monopolists, commodity futures
dealers, mortgage companies, merchants, bankers, and manufacturers
of farm equipment for their plight. Farmers responded by organizing
Granges, Farmers’ Alliances, and the Populist party. In the
election of 1896, the Populists and the Democrats nominated William
Jennings Bryan for president. Bryan’s decisive defeat inaugurated
a period of Republican ascendancy, in which Republicans controlled
the presidency for 24 of the next 32 years. |
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In 1900,
inequality was the rule. Class inequities were pronounced; 939 of
every 1000 Americans died without any property to their name. Gender
and racial inequalities were also marked. About 90 percent of African
Americans lived in the South, 75 percent on farms, mostly as sharecroppers.
4,500 black men and women were lynched, more than a hundred a year.
Indians were driven from the Great Plains and confined on reservations.
Their numbers dropped to fewer than 200,000. For the first time there
were concerted efforts to restrict foreign immigration. The first
group to be excluded were Chinese immigrants in 1882. At no time in
American history was diversity—in income, living standards,
day-to-day experience, education, and rights—greater than at
the end of the 19th century. |
- The
United States Becomes a Global Power
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At the
turn of the 20th century, the United States became a world power.
In 1898 and 1899, the United States annexed Hawaii and acquired the
Philippines, Puerto Rico, parts of the Samoan islands, and other Pacific
islands. The Spanish American War and the acquisition of the Philippines
represented both an extension of earlier expansionist impulses and
a sharp departure from assumptions that had guided American foreign
policy in the past. For the first time, the United States made a major
strategic commitment in the Far East, acquired territory never intended
for statehood, and committed itself to police actions and intervention
in the Caribbean and Central America. |
Progressive
America |
|
The
turn of the century brought a wave of immigration without parallel
in American history. Coming primarily from southern and eastern Europe,
the new immigrants congregated in the nation’s cities. Mass
immigration prompted a debate over the meaning of America and Americanism:
whether the United States was a melting pot, a pluralistic society,
or a society essentially Anglo-Saxon in character. |
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Progressivism
is an umbrella label for a wide range of economic, political, social,
and moral reforms. These included efforts to outlaw the sale of
alcohol; regulate child labor and sweatshops; scientifically manage
natural resources; insure pure and wholesome water and milk; Americanize
immigrants or restrict immigration altogether; and bust or regulate
trusts. Drawing support from the urban, college-educated middle
class, Progressive reformers sought to eliminate corruption in government,
regulate business practices, address health hazards, improve working
conditions, and give the public more direct control over government
through direct primaries to nominate candidates for public office,
direct election of Senators, the initiative, referendum, and recall,
and women's suffrage.
By
the beginning of the twentieth century, muckraking journalists were
calling attention to the exploitation of child labor, corruption
in city governments, the horror of lynching, and the ruthless business
practices employed by businessmen like John D. Rockefeller. At the
local level, many Progressives sought to suppress red-light districts,
expand high schools, construct playgrounds, and replace corrupt
urban political machines with more efficient system of municipal
government. At the state level, Progressives enacted minimum wage
laws for women workers, instituted industrial accident insurance,
restricted child labor, and improved factory regulation.
At
the national level, Congress passed laws establishing federal regulation
of the meat-packing, drug, and railroad industries, and strengthened
anti-trust laws. It also lowered the tariff, established federal
control over the banking system, and enacted legislation to improve
working condition. Four constitutional amendments were adopted during
the Progressive era, which authorized an income tax, provided for
the direct election of senators, extended the vote to women, and
prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. |
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A profound
shift took place in the visual and performing arts around the turn
of the century. There was the “new music”—ragtime,
blues, jazz, and the songs of Tin Pan Alley. There was the introduction
of modern art into the United States. And there was the emergence
of the most popular and influential new art form of all, the movies. |
The
Meaning of World War I |
- The
War to End War and Make the World Safe for Democracy
|
The
AP ranked WWI as the 8th most important event of the 20th century.
In fact, almost everything that subsequently happened occurred because
of World War I: the Great Depression, World War II, the Holocaust,
the Cold War, the collapse of empires all trace back to World War
I. No event better underscores the utter unpredictability of the future.
Europe hadn’t fought a major war for 100 years. At any point
in the 5 weeks leading up to the fighting, the madness might have
been averted. The war was a product of miscalculation, misunderstanding,
and miscommunication. No one expected a war of such magnitude. No
one wanted one. A continent at the height of its success descended
into senseless slaughter. WWI destroyed four empires—German,
Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Romanov—and it touched off colonial
revolts in the Middle East and Vietnam. World War I shattered Americans’
faith in reform and moral crusades. |
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World
War I carried far-reaching consequences for the homefront. These included
prohibition, women’s suffrage, and a bitter debate over civil
liberties. |
The
1920s |
We
tend to think of the 1920s as a cynical, hedonistic interlude between
the Great War and the Great Depression, a decade of dissipation,
of jazz bands, bootleggers, raccoon coats, bathtub gin, flappers,
flagpole sitters, bootleggers, and marathon dancers, when the younger
generation rebelled against traditional taboos while their elders
engaged in an orgy of speculation. The 1920s did witness a revolution
in manners and morals. The younger generation rebelled against traditional
taboos and popularized versions of the ideas of Sigmund Freud were
widely disseminated. The trivial took the place of the consequential.
Aided by a sensationalistic media, the public was fascinated by
spectator sports, flagpole sitters, and marathon dancers.
But
the 1920s was also a decade of bitter cultural conflicts, pitting
religious liberals against fundamentalists, nativists against immigrants,
and rural provincials against urban cosmopolitans. Prohibition,
women’s roles, race, and the Ku Klux Klan became bitter points
of contention. |
Depression
America |
- The
Causes of the Great Depression
|
There
have been three seminal events in American history: the Revolution,
which instilled a commitment to liberty and equality into American
culture as well as deep a suspicion of government authority; the
Civil War, which ended slavery and removed the major obstacle to
the growth of a industrial society; and the Great Depression, which
vastly expanded the scope and scale of the federal government and
created the modern welfare state.
The
Depression was the watershed event of 20th century American history.
It gave rise to a philosophy now under attack: that government had
a duty to intervene to improve the quality of American life; that
it should provide a safety net for the elderly, the jobless, the
disabled, and the poor; and that the federal government was responsible
for ensuring the health of the nation's economy and the welfare
of its citizens. |
- The
Depression in Comparative Perspective
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Depression
unemployment was higher in the United States and lasted longer than
in any other industrialized nation. And yet the depression did not
produce the radical or reactionary responses that one finds in countries
like Germany, Italy, Japan, or Argentina. For a decade, unemployment
in the United States averaged 20 percent. In three years, the value
of U.S. corporations fell 89 percent. Nations responded to the depression
in several ways: with totalitarian communism, fascist dictatorship,
socialism, and welfare capitalism. |
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- The
Great Depression and American Culture
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The
Depression challenged certain basic precepts of American culture,
especially the faith in individual self-help, business, the inevitability
of progress, and limited government. The Depression encouraged a search
for the real America. There was a new interest in “the people,”
in regional cultures, and in folk traditions. The movies played a
crucial role in sustaining American ideals in a time of social upheaval
across Europe. Films projected images of a world in which financial
success was possible and of a society in which class barriers could
be overcome. |
FIRST
EXAMINATION |
World
War II |
World
War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more
money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people
served in the armed forces during the war and 17 million combatants
died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet
civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost
their lives during the war.
World
War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the
conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia,
and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated,
as soldiers, war workers, or victims of occupation and mass murder.
World
War II cost the United States a million casualities and nearly 400,000
deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were
far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married
women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives
of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's
presence in American life. |
Spring Break |
The Cold War |
During
the early 1970s, films like American Graffiti and television shows
like Happy Days began to portray the 1950s as a carefree era before
the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and Watergate--a
decade of tail-finned Cadillacs, collegians stuffing themselves
in phone booths, and innocent tranquility and static charm. In truth,
the post-World War II period was an era of momentous changes.
Across
the globe, the United States clashed with the Soviet Union over
such issues as the Soviet dominance over eastern Europe, control
of atomic weapons, and the Soviet blockade of Berlin. The establishment
of a Communist government in China in 1949 and the North Korean
invasion of South Korea in 1950 helped transform the Cold War into
a global conflict, in which United States would confront Communism
in Iran, Guatemala, Lebanon, and elsewhere. In an atmosphere charged
with paranoia and anxiety, there was deep fear at home about “enemies
within” sabotaging U.S. foreign policy and passing atomic
secrets to the Soviets.
Not
only a period of anxiety, the postwar period was also a time of
dynamic, creative change. During the 1950s, African Americans quickened
the pace of the struggle for equality, by challenging segregation
in court. A new youth culture emerged, with its own form of music,
rock ‘n’ roll. Maverick sociologists, social critics,
poets, and writers--conservatives as well as liberals--authored
influential critiques of American society. |
The Tumultuous 1960s |
The
1960s was a decade when hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans
gave new life to the nation’s democratic ideals. African Americans
used sit-ins, freedom rides, and protest marches to fight segregation,
poverty, and unemployment. Feminists demanded equal job opportunities
and an end to sexual discrimination. Mexican Americans protested
discrimination in voting, education, and jobs. Native Americans
demanded that the government recognize their land claims and the
right of tribes to govern themselves. Environmentalists demanded
legislation to control the amount of pollution released into the
environment.
Early
in the decade, African American college students, impatient with
the slow pace of legal change, staged sit-ins, freedom rides, and
protest marches to challenge segregation in the South. Their efforts
led the federal government to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
prohibiting discrimination in public facilities and employment,
and the 24th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing
voting rights.
The
example of the civil rights movement inspired other groups to press
for equal rights. The women’s movement fought equal educational
and employment opportunities and a transformation of traditional
views about women’s place in society. Mexican Americans battled
for bilingual education programs in schools, unionization of farm
workers, improved job opportunities, and increased political power.
Native Americans pressed for control over their lands and resources,
the preservation of native cultures, and tribal self-government.
Gays and lesbians organized to end legal discrimination based on
sexual orientation.
In
a far-reaching effort to reduce poverty, alleviate malnutrition,
extend medical care, provide adequate housing, and enhance the employability
of the poor, President Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society
Program in 1964. But the Vietnam War, ghetto rioting, and the rise
of a militant antiwar movement and the counterculture, contributed
to a political backlash that would lead the Republican party to
control the presidency for ten of the next fourteen years. |
The Vietnam War |
Between
1945 and 1954, the Vietnamese waged an anti-colonial war against
France, which received $2.6 billion in financial support from the
United States. The French defeat at the Dien Bien Phu was followed
by a peace conference in Geneva, in which Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam
received their independence and Vietnam was temporarily divided
between an anti-Communist South and a Communist North. In 1956,
South Vietnam, with American backing, refused to hold the unification
elections. By 1958, Communist-led guerrillas known as the Viet Cong
had begun to battle the South Vietnamese government.
To
support the South’s government, the United States sent in
2,000 military advisors, a number that grew to 16,300 in 1963. The
military condition deteriorated, and by 1963 South Vietnam had lost
the fertile Mekong Delta to the Vietcong. In 1965, Johnson escalated
the war, commencing air strikes on North Vietnam and committing
ground forces, which numbered 536,000 in 1968. The 1968 Tet Offensive
by the North Vietnamese turned many Americans against the war. The
next president, Richard Nixon, advocated Vietnamization, withdrawing
American troops and giving South Vietnam greater responsibility
for fighting the war. His attempt to slow the flow of North Vietnamese
soldiers and supplies into South Vietnam by sending American forces
to destroy Communist supply bases in Cambodia in 1970 in violation
of Cambodian neutrality provoked antiwar protests on the nation’s
college campuses.
From
1968 to 1973 efforts were made to end the conflict through diplomacy.
In January 1973, an agreement reached and U.S. forces were withdrawn
from Vietnam and U.S. prisoners of war were released. In April 1975,
South Vietnam surrendered to the North and Vietnam was reunited
. |
America in Decline? 1973-1989 |
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Many
Americans think of the 1970s as a decade when “nothing happened,”
apart from the Watergate scandal, the Fall of Vietnam, the Arab Oil
embargoes, the Brady Bunch, and disco. In fact, the 1970s was one
of the most important of the postwar twentieth-century decades. It
saw a profound shift in the balance of power in American politics,
economics, and culture, driven by the rapid growth of the Sunbelt. |
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As President,
Ronald Reagan convinced a majority of Americans that the causes of
America’s decline were high taxes, excessive welfare spending,
insufficient military expenditures, excessively strong labor unions,
and liberalism. He doubled defense spending in real terms, drastically
reduced tax rates for the wealthy, and restored American confidence. |
- The
Collapse of Communism
|
European
Communism collapsed for many reasons. Partially, this was due to internal
economic weaknesses and a crisis of confidence on the part of Communist
government leaders. Partly it was the result of the Soviet Union’s
inability to sustain high military spending. In part, it reflected
the desire of ordinary East Bloc citizens to have a standard of living
comparable to the West’s. For these and other reasons, a half
century of Cold War confrontation came to a sudden and totally unexpected
end. |
America
in Our Time |
The
end of the Cold War unleashed ethnic and religious conflicts in many
parts of the world. Many of these conflicts were related to globalization,
the massive movement of capital, resources, entertainment, and peoples
across international borders. For Americans, the implications of these
developments became glaringly apparent with the rise of international
terrorism and the discovery that many people in various parts of the
world hated the United States and what it represented. The United
States was faced with difficult decisions: whether to focus on domestic
or international affairs; and whether to address world problems unilaterally
or multilaterally. |
- Ethnicity
and Religion in the Post-Cold War World
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- Terrorism
in Historical Perspective
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SECOND
EXAM |
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