SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY: THE UNITED STATES AND WORLD WAR I ★^735- CHRONOLOGY •
1903 United States secures the
Panama Canal Zone
1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine
1905 The Niagara movement
established
1907 Gentleman’s Agreement
with Japan
1909 National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People organized
1910 Mexican Revolution begins
1914– World War I
1919
1915 Lusitania sinks
1916 Madison Grant’s The Pass-
ing of the Great Race
Randolph Bourne’s
“ Trans- National America”
1917 Zimmermann Telegram
intercepted
United States enters the war
Espionage Act passed
Russian Revolution
1918 Woodrow Wilson’s “Four-
teen Points” speech
Eugene V. Debs convicted
under the Espionage Act
1918– Worldwide flu epidemic
1920
1919 Eighteenth Amendment
Treaty of Versailles signed
1919– Red Scare
1920
1920 Senate rejects the Treaty of
Versailles
Nineteenth Amendment
1921 Tulsa Riot- •
an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Impressed
by Americans’ “exuberant energies,” Stead
predicted that the United States would soon
emerge as “the greatest of world- powers.” But
what was most striking about his work was
that Stead located the source of American
power less in the realm of military might or
territorial acquisition than in the country’s
single- minded commitment to the “pursuit
of wealth” and the relentless international
spread of American culture— art, music, jour-
nalism, even ideas about religion and gender
relations. He foresaw a future in which the
United States promoted its interests and val-
ues through an unending involvement in the
affairs of other nations. Stead proved to be an
accurate prophet.
The Spanish- American War had estab-
lished the United States as an international
empire. Despite the conquest of the Philip-
pines and Puerto Rico, however, the country’s
overseas holdings remained tiny compared
to those of Britain, France, and Germany.
And no more were added, except for a strip
of land surrounding the Panama Canal, ac-
quired in 1903, and the Virgin Islands, pur-
chased from Denmark in 1917. In 1900, Great
Britain ruled over more than 300 million
people in possessions scattered across the
globe, and France had nearly 50 million sub-
jects in Asia and Africa. Compared with these,
the American presence in the world seemed
very small. As Stead suggested, America’s em-
pire differed significantly from those of Euro-
pean countries— it was economic, cultural,
and intellectual, rather than territorial.
The world economy at the dawn of
the twentieth century was already highly
globalized. An ever- increasing stream of
goods, investments, and people flowed from
country to country. Although Britain still