Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: What, then, is the American?
- 2 The American century
- 3 The regions and regionalism
- 4 Immigration to the United States in the twentieth century
- 5 Religion in the United States in the twentieth century: 1900-1960
- 6 Shifting boundaries: religion and the United States: 1960 to the present
- 7 The Hispanic background of the United States
- 8 African Americans since 1900
- 9 Asian Americans
- 10 Women in the twentieth century
- 11 Queer America
- 12 The United States, war, and the twentieth century
- 13 The culture of the Cold War
- 14 Secret America: the CIA and American culture
- 15 Vietnam and the 1960s
- 16 New York City and the struggle of the modern
- 17 Music: sound: technology
- 18 African American music of the twentieth century
- 19 Hollywood cinema
- 20 Popular culture
- 21 Theatre
- 22 Society and the novel in twentieth-century America
- 23 “Preferring the wrong way”: mapping the ethical diversity of US twentieth-century poetry
- Index
- Series List
12 - The United States, war, and the twentieth century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 January 2007
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: What, then, is the American?
- 2 The American century
- 3 The regions and regionalism
- 4 Immigration to the United States in the twentieth century
- 5 Religion in the United States in the twentieth century: 1900-1960
- 6 Shifting boundaries: religion and the United States: 1960 to the present
- 7 The Hispanic background of the United States
- 8 African Americans since 1900
- 9 Asian Americans
- 10 Women in the twentieth century
- 11 Queer America
- 12 The United States, war, and the twentieth century
- 13 The culture of the Cold War
- 14 Secret America: the CIA and American culture
- 15 Vietnam and the 1960s
- 16 New York City and the struggle of the modern
- 17 Music: sound: technology
- 18 African American music of the twentieth century
- 19 Hollywood cinema
- 20 Popular culture
- 21 Theatre
- 22 Society and the novel in twentieth-century America
- 23 “Preferring the wrong way”: mapping the ethical diversity of US twentieth-century poetry
- Index
- Series List
Summary
No major advanced industrial nation has suffered less or profited more from its twentieth-century wars than the United States. Nor has any nation dispatched its troops to as many places across the globe in the late twentieth century to defend and extend its national interest. At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States possessed one of the smallest armies in the industrial world; a century later its armed forces spanned the globe, bristling with deadly hardware and sophisticated technology, a military power without peer. To a large extent, this remarkable transformation had resulted from participation in two European wars, which had necessitated a reorganization of society and the establishment of new controls over its citizens.
The Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars
By the 1890s, many influential Americans believed their economy required access to foreign markets to avoid future depressions. Incorporating this notion into a broader ideological framework, influential policymakers sought to establish an indirect control of large areas of the Caribbean and the Pacific. These ideas, informed by notions of racial hierarchy and articulated through a gendered vocabulary, provided the larger context for the war of 1898, as two presidents faced a growing Cuban insurrection against Spanish rule.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture , pp. 235 - 255Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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