US Isolationism in the 1920s
After World War I the US attempted to become less
involved in world affairs.
The US refused to join the League of Nations.
The US closed the doors to immigration during the
1920's. Early on the US had excluded Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians, but
later the US began to exclude even Europeans, particularly eastern and
southern Europeans.
Why did the US, a nation of immigrants, suddenly turn
against immigration?
Answers: 1) anti-European feelings after WWI; 2) organized labor believed cheap immigrant labor forced down wages; 3) railroads and basic industries were well developed by 1920's and industrialists no longer felt the need for masses of unskilled workers; 4) more established Americans descended from northern Europe felt recent immigrants from eastern and southern Europe could never be truly American, and they also saw them as inferior; 5) radical political movement and ideologies such as socialism, communism, and anarchism were viewed as European in origin and as potential threats to political stability in the United States.
Immigration Laws:
1) Quota Act of 1921 – limited immigration from
each country to 3 % of total number who had immigrated in 1910 and set a
yearly limit of 350,000
2) The 1924 quota reduced the quota to 2%, the base
year changed from 1910 to 1890. This discriminated against eastern and
southern Europeans because many had come to the US after 1890
3) National Origins Act of 1929 – the base year was
moved to 1920, but total number was set at 150,000
The War of Tariffs:
America set high tariffs on imports to keep out
foreign products. This raised prices for American consumers because cheaper
foreign products were kept out of the US market. It also took away an
essential market (the US) from many European and Latin American countries.
People in these countries lost their jobs as factories were unable to sell
their products to the US, and farmers began to accumulate huge surpluses.
Eventually foreign nations responded by raising their own tariffs and
excluding American manufactured and farm products from foreign markets.
War Debts Unpaid:
The nations of Europe had accumulated huge debts
during World War I when they had borrowed massive sums of money from the US to
buy war goods. By 1918 the total amount owed to the US was about $10 billion.
The US lowered interest rates on loans when Europeans faced difficulties in
repaying, but high tariffs in the US prevented Europeans from earning the
dollars they needed to pay off the loans.
The European Allies looked to war reparations from
Germany as the solution to their debt problems. In 1921 a Reparations
Commissions fixed the total amount of German reparations at $33 billion.
Germany however was in the middle of an economic crises with high unemployment
and hyper-inflation and was completely unable to pay the reparations. Germany
attempted to borrow money from European and US banks to pay the reparations,
but there were limits to what the Germans could borrow. By 1930 Germany was
totally unable to make any other reparation payments.
A Legacy of Bitterness:
European allies claimed that they had done most of
the fighting and had suffered the most during the war, and that consequently,
the US should cancel all war debts. The US claimed that as much as 1/3 of the
loans had been made after the armistice and that therefore the Europeans
should have to pay. In the end most of the war debts and most of Germany's
reparations remained unpaid. Nonetheless, the US's unsuccessful attempt to
collect the war debts increased Europe's resentment against the US. Also, the
Allies' unsuccessful attempt to collect reparations from the Germans
contributed to a feeling of bitterness among the German people that
contributed to the rise of Hitler in the early 1930's
American relations with Latin America in the early
1900's had been characterized by US intervention to protect American
investments and lives, and to uphold the Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe
doctrine which said the US had the right to act as a police officer of the
Western Hemisphere. The Latin Americans resented US military intervention and
the influence of American business on their economies and governments.
American critics of US policy called it "dollar diplomacy" while
Latin American critics called it "Yankee imperialism."
By the early 1930's however relations with Latin
America had improved as Coolidge and Hoover worked hard to develop friendlier
relations. The State Department declared the Monroe doctrine would no longer
be used to justify US intervention in Latin American domestic affairs, and
Latin American nations encouraged US investment and gave greater protection to
these investments.
Although Harding and Coolidge recommended that the US
join the World Court, the Senate was influenced by Americans fears of getting
entangled in European alliances and affairs and refused to join the World
Court.
The US worked with Great Britain and Japan to
establish a naval holiday and a 5:5:3 ratio for capital ships (battleships and
heavy cruisers) to help stop the naval armaments race in Asia. France and
Italy would have fleets of equal size with a ratio of 1:.75 in this Five Power
Treaty.
In the Four Power Pact, Japan, Great Britain, the US
and France agreed to respect one another's rights in the Pacific and consult
in a case of aggression.
In the Nine-Power Treaty nine powers with interests
in Asia agreed to maintain the Open Door Policy for China and guarantee the
territorial integrity of China.
The Kellog-Briand Pact or the Pact of Paris,
attempted to outlaw war and was accepted by 62 nations. This was the idea of
1928 US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister
Aristide Briand. The pact was called "wishful thinking" since each
country added its own reservations, not one outlawed a war of self defense
(and most countries claim each war is a war of self-defense), and the document
said nothing about enforcement.
The Peace structure began to crumble when Japan
invaded Manchuria in 1931 in an effort to wipe out "foreign"
influence from the Far East. Japan violated the Open Door Policy, the Covenant
of the League of Nations which it had signed, the Nine Power Treaty, and the
Kellogg-Briand Pact. Nonetheless, neither the US nor the League of Nations
did anything to stop Japan beyond making statements of protest. Japan withdrew
from the League of Nations and made preparations to invade and conquer China
and Southeast Asia.
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany realized that they too could begin programs of aggression after 1933 without facing any real danger from the crumbling world peace structure.
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