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Part 7 out of .7America and why are we such, wait who are we?
Right now this is awkward, because I’m talking about us, and unlike all of these other ancient civilizations, we actually care about us, and so actual names might have to be used opposed to an offensively dismissive one page summery (See Ottoman Empire). So instead we actually make a halfway effort to explain our complex and short culture, while neglecting older civilizations because this is IB, so we don’t care. Anyways, unto America. Now the image of America today is either brave heroic patriots of awesomeness who are constantly protecting the world from the evil forces, (I hate Michael Bay) or oppressive racist jerks who are oppressing the free world out of our addiction to oil and general bullet happiness (I hate James Cameron), but America of 1914 is a totally different animal. If any of you have ever seen the ABC show Mad Men, and I know none of you have, its about America during the early 60, shows how normal is a totally different, their aren’t any black people in any prominent positions, the two political parities aren’t as well established, women are oppressed and child beating is A-ok. This is even more apparent in 1914, where we see a lot of elements of modern day American culture, but its still strangely alien. For example, women don’t have any rights, and while slavery has ended, the Civil war is not as long ago as we think (the war ends in 1865) there are still veterans of that conflict, and many ex slaves and children of slaves still around, so segregation is still in full swing. Since this isn’t American history, I’ll try to keep this bulleted, but because America is the single most powerful nation in the entire world from 1945. First off, America in 1914 is still a major power, but not ‘the’ major power. Even people who hate America today cannot deny that we are the single most powerful nation in the entire world and that we can change the fate of whole continents with a single press statement, but in 1914, we were just another power the world wasn’t dictated by America’ whim. England was the most powerful nation in the world, and France, Russia and Germany had more international prestige than we did, we were more like a sideline power who tired to not get involved. We weren’t pushovers, nobody messed with us directly, our power was largely localized within our borders and so we weren’t really factored into the great power conflicts of Europe, they respected us enough to not mess with us but largely left us alone. When we rebelled, we didn’t rebel to become yet another European power, and didn’t want to get involved in all of the mainland’s constant backbiting and power struggles, we had a nation to rule, lands to settle and natives to systematically exterminate, in fact, George Washington’s final address was urging Americans to not get involved in European politics, we had a huge country to manage and we are blessed with enough resources that we don’t need any reliance upon another nation in order to thrive. Their were two exceptions to our isolationist policy, first, we were involved in overseas trading in Europe and Asia, through not in the same way as Europe was, but we were trading in our way, due to the massive profits to be made. We were sort of an international trader, working with every single side, but too far away and powerful to directly confront. Our second foray into international politics that is relevant to this discussion is the fairly recent Spanish American war in 1898, where we basically drove the Spanish out of the last colonies in America and the Pacific. The war was a massive experiment for America, because it was basically the first time we had expanded overseas against another major power on established colonies, we had taken British, French and Spanish land before, but that was all on the mainland, which we felt we had a legitimate claim to (manifest destiny). But with the Spanish American war, we basically were like “Um, yeah, we want all of those lands for ourselves” so nicked Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and very importantly, the Philippines, which I will cover later. So we had overseas colonies, as well as some spheres of influence in China, and we had obtained Hawaii. So we were part of the international stage, but we didn’t really want to be, WWI really didn’t mean anything to us. Basically, we will go into America in more sickening detail later, but for now what is important is the basic social structure of our society. Its worth noting that we are the only true Republic that isn’t actually a constitutional monarchy (Britain) or corrupt/inept (France). We aren’t perfect, we are racist, sexist, and close minded, but we are at least a democracy and we, as we do today, really believe in our democracy, which alienates us from the monarchies across Europe, specifically Russia, while simultaneously making us afraid of making commitments that lasted more than 8 years, due to our constantly changing leadership. And even if the President favored an idea, his congress could shut him down if they weren’t onboard with the idea. Finally, making money is a huge importance to America. We have the two party system at this point, with our old friends, the Democrats and the Republicans, but I’ll go into them later, because America enters the war late (as usual), but basically along with Democracy, Capitalism, was our big founding ideal, and it was at its most powerful in the 1914s. Big Business was in full power, and we weren’t keen on letting the government manage things too directly, through Theodore Roosevelt had set the stage for change earlier. Ok, I’m done, because America is complex and I’ll cover us in more detail when we actually you know...join the war.