IGCSE History

• Home
• Introduction to IGCSE
• The Road to Affluence: USA 1917 - 1941 (A9)
  • 1917 - 1929
    • The impact of the First World War
    • Immigration
    • Henry Ford and mass production
    • Farming in the 1920s
    • The Stock Market Boom
  • 1929 - 1941
    • The Wall Street Crash
    • The Depression
    • The policies of Hoover
    • Roosevelt and the New Deal
    • Reactions to the New Deal
• International Relations 1919-1939 (A8)
  • Collective Security
    • The Versailles Settlement
    • The Foundation of the League of Nations
    • Strengths and weaknesses of the League of Nations
    • Successes and failures of the League of Nations
    • Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand Pact
  • Appeasement
    • Manchuria
    • The Disarmament Conference
    • Abyssinia
    • Hitler and the League
    • Appeasement in action
• Revolution in China 1949 - 1996 (A14)
  • 1949 - 1976
    • China under Mao
    • Reform under Liu and Deng
    • The reasons for the Cultural Revolution
    • The impact of the Cultural Revolution
    • China 1971 - 1976
  • 1976 - 1996
    • The defeat of the Gang of Four
    • China under Deng Xiaoping
    • Reforms of the economy
    • The Democracy Movement
    • China in the 1990s
• South-East Asia 1945 - 1900 (A15)
  • Indo-China
    • The end of the French Empire
    • Vietnam 1954 - 1965
    • US involvement in Vietnam
    • The unification of Vietnam
    • Laos and Cambodia
  • South-East Asia
    • The struggle for control of Malaya
    • The creation of Malaysia
    • Singapore
    • Suharto and Indonesia
    • Sukarno and Pancasila
• Conflict and Crisis is the Middle East 1946 - 1996 (A16)
  • Unit overview
  • 1946 - 1967
    • The creation of Israel
    • The impact of the war of 1948 - 1949
    • The Suez Crisis
    • Superpower involvement in the Middle East
    • The Six Day War
  • 1967 - 1996
    • International terrorism
    • The war of Yom Kippur
    • The Palestinian Liberation Organisation
    • Lebanon and the occupied territories
    • Successes and failures from Camp David to Oslo
• The First World War (B4)
  • The Schlieffen Plan
  • Deadlock on the Western Front
  • Gallipoli
  • The Somme and Passchendaele
  • The War at Sea
  • The defeat of Germany
• The USA 1917-1929 (B7)
  • The Roaring Twenties
  • Advertising and consumerism
  • New forms of entertainment
  • Prohibition
  • Gangsterism
  • Hollywood
• China under Mao Zedong 1949 - 1959 (B10)
  • The creation of the Communist State
  • Land Reform
  • Communist society
  • The First Five Year Pan
  • The 100 Flowers
  • The Great Leap Forward
• The Changing Nature of Warfare (C3)
  • Unit overview
  • Warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century
  • Land warfare
  • Sea and aerial warfare
  • Atomic and nuclear weapons
  • Warfare at the end of the 20th Century
• Links

The impact of the First World War

1917-1929

A podcast is available for this unit. You can download it here (4.7 Mb) Podcast: A9-1

A slide & sound presentation is also available. This contains the above soundtrack and and photographs and cartoons from the period. Presentation A9-1

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the traditional US attitude towards foreign countries was isolationist.  This meant they thought the USA was better off having nothing to do with any other countries, including joining any alliances with other nations.  The policy had first been stated by President Monroe in 1823 and was known as the Monroe Doctrine.  In the past, when sea transport was slow and the USA was a little nation of farmers, this did not matter.  By the beginning of the twentieth century the USA was becoming an economic world power.

Before the war the USA had been a remote country, a land of opportunity, but one that many people knew little about.  Although wheat had been coming across the Atlantic since the 1870s, the US economy had still made little impact on Europe, but by 1917, all that had changed.

The USA declared war on Germany in April 1917 after its shipping was attacked by German submarines and the Zimmermann Telegram had revealed that Germany had tried to persuade Mexico to invade the USA.  Germany offered to support a Mexican attempt to recover the territory lost to the USA in the nineteenth century.  Until then US industry had benefited from the war.  During the war US industry had supplied Britain and France with materials for their armies.  US farmers increased exports of food to Europe 300 percent.  US banks had lent large sums to Britain and Italy.  US investors did well from the interest on loans to Europe of $10, 300,000,000.  After the war they had money to invest in the USA.  The USA had also hardly been affected by the devastation of the war.  Industry had been able to develop and introduce the assembly line which reduced costs dramatically.  US industry had been able to take over export markets from Britain and take advantage of the weakness of the British economy.

By 1919 the USA was the most powerful economy in the world.  It had probably been that powerful before the war, but by 1919 it was clear.  While the European counties struggled to get their economies going again and tried to repay their debts, the USA simply got richer.

Immigration

Zimmermann Telegram