3) The Alienated 1910s

Events and Policies

- William Howard Taft (1857-1930, in office 1909-1913, 27^th President)

- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924, in office 1913-1921, 28^th President)

Tampico Affair (1914)

- started as a minor incident between Mexican land forces loyal to General Victoriano Huerta and US soldiers from U.S.S. Dolphin who were detained in the Tampico harbour, though this was a violation of sovereign immunity (all soldiers of all states are equal and immune to legal actions of other soldiers unless they willingly submit)

- resulted in a brief punitive expedition and a six-month US occupation of the crucial Mexican port city Veracruz

First World War (1914-1918)

- triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne

- the conflict of Central Powers (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Bulgaria) and Allied Powers (originally France, Russian Empire, UK, later Canada, Australia, Italy, Japan, US)

- the US declared war on Germany (1917) when it violated American neutrality by attacking international shipping

- Zimmermann Telegram (1917): Germany offered Mexico material aid in reclaiming the territory lost to the US in the Mexican-American War and a military alliance, if the US seem likely to enter the WWI against Germany

- the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) were sent to Europe under General John J. Pershing, promoted to the highest military rank, General of the Armies, in 1917

- Fourteen Points (1918): President Wilson’s proposal of after-war arrangements presented at the Paris Conference

- Treaty of Versailles (1919): ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers, required Germany to accept sole responsibility for causing the war, disarm, make territorial concessions, and pay reparations

- League of Nations (1919-1946): an inter-government organization founded to uphold Rights of Man, prevent war through collective security, and settle disputes between countries through diplomacy (replaced by United Nations)

Society

- Boy Scouts of America (1910): the largest youth organization in the US, founded to train responsible citizenship, character development, and self-reliance

- RMS Titanic (1912): the ocean liner strikes an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sinks on its maiden voyage

- Spanish flu (1918-1920): the influenza pandemic spreads to nearly every part of the world, hastened by the massive troop movement during the WWI and their unsanitary conditions, kills 50-100 mil. people worldwide

Wilsonianism

- an Idealist school of thought personified in American diplomatic history by Woodrow Wilson

- believes that a state should make its internal political philosophy the goal of its foreign policy (e.g. ending poverty at home should be coupled with tackling poverty abroad)

- emphasizes the idea of American Exceptionalism, the belief that the US occupy a special niche among developed nations in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions, and unique origins

Temperance Movement

- Women’s Christian Temperance Union (1880): succeeded in implementing strong legislation mandating that all students receive anti-alcohol education, made a major contribution to establishing the National Prohibition (1919)

- Flying Squadron of America (1914-1915): a temperance organization touring the country with their campaign

Culture

- the Ballroom decade, many fashionable restaurants are equipped with dance floors

- rising popularity of jazz music

- first crossword puzzle appears

Film

- Hollywood District in Los Angeles, California, replaces the East Coast as the centre of the film industry

- Oliver Twist (1912) released as the US first feature film

- Charlie Chaplin débuts his trademark moustached, baggy-pants ‘little tramp’ character (1914)

- the four Warner Brothers open their first West Coast studio (1918)

Photography

- Alfred Stieglitz: promoter and later husband of the painter Georgia O’Keeffe

- Edward Steichen: photographer, painter, and art curator, author of the photography ‘The Pond-Moonlight’ (1904)

Visual Arts

- Armory Show (1913, New York City): a massive group exhibition of innovative contemporaneous artists from Europe and the US, a seminal event in the history of the modern art

- 291 Art Gallery: an avant-garde gallery established by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz in New York City

- Marcel Duchamp: a Dadaist, Surrealist, and Cubist painter, author of ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’ (1912)

- Norman Rockwell: a painter and illustrator, art editor for the Boy Scout magazine Boy’s Life between 1913-1916

- Georgia O'Keeffe: a modernist painter of flowers, rocks, and landscapes with sexual innuendos

- Maurice Prendergast: an impressionist painter

- Horace Pippin: a realist painter of African-American life scenes

- The Ashcan School (or, Gritty City Art): a loose group of urban realism painters, including George Luks (‘Hester Street’), John Sloan (‘The Wake of the Ferry’), or Edward Hopper

Architecture

- Beaux-Arts: an opulent neoclassical style

- New York City public buildings: Woolworth Building (1913, architect Cass Gilbert), Grand Central Terminal (rebuilt 1913), New York Public Library (established 1895)

- Frank Lloyd Wright: Midway Gardens in Chicago, Illinois (1913, demolished)

Literature

- popular culture: Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes (1912)

- WWI subject: Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929)

- movements: Vorticism, Imagism (Ezra Pound, H.D., Marianne Moore)

- milestone publications: Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1911), Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons (1914), T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919)