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International relations in an age of imperialism 1871–1918
All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power. President Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech to the US Congress, December 1904.
The USA in 1914 The USA’s attempts to enhance its power-base in the Pacific region and, in particular, to gain trading rights in China, were less successful. Here it met stern opposition from well-established imperial nations such as Britain, Germany, France and Russia, as well as from the newly emerging power of Japan. Nevertheless, by 1914 the USA had emerged as a prosperous and strong regional power, with a growing influence over world financial markets and a new-found commitment to its own form of imperialistic expansion.
Questions 1 Why did the USA move away from its traditional isolationist foreign policy in the period 1871–1914?
Source A A cartoon publ ished in the American m agazine Puck in 1906.
2 How far was President Theodore Roosevelt responsible for the USA’s move towards a more expansionist foreign policy? 3 Look at the cartoon in Source A opposite. What does it suggest about the emergence of the USA as a world power by the time it was published in 1906?
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