American History - Introduction

The full name of the United States is the United States of America, and the main part of the land is located in the center of North America. It covers an area of ??9.372 million square kilometers, accounting for 1/20 of the world's total land area, ranking 4th in the world. It consists of 48 contiguous states, one federal district (the District of Columbia), and two states: Alaska and Hawaii. The population is 239.3 million people (1985), of which 188.2 million are white, 28.5 million are black, and 17.6 million are Spanish-speaking (60% of which are Mexican). There are 3.6 million people of Asian and Pacific origin and 1.4 million Indians. The religious beliefs are mainly those of various Christian sects and Catholicism, with 142.17 million followers, 78.7 million Protestants, 52.28 million Catholics, 4.05 million Jews, and 7.14 million other believers. General English. Capital Washington.

The establishment of the British North American Colonies. The original inhabitants of North America were Indians. From the 16th to the 18th century, North America became a region where Western European countries that were engaged in primitive accumulation of capital competed for colonization. In North America, the French established New France (including the Great Lakes area of ??the lower St. Lawrence Basin, the Mississippi River Basin, etc.); the Spanish established New Spain (including Mexico and the vast areas of the southwestern United States).

From 1607 to 1733, Britain established 13 colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Most of the people who arrived in the colonies were poor working people in Western Europe, as well as aristocrats, landowners, and the bourgeoisie, with the British, Irish, Germans, and Dutch being the most numerous. Among the immigrants were those fleeing war and religious persecution, voluntary and involuntary "indentured servants", beggars, and criminals; and black people trafficked to the United States from Africa (see British North American Colonies). In 1607, Britain established its first colonial stronghold, Jamestown. In 1620, a group of Puritans came to North America on the "Mayflower" ship and established the Plymouth Colony.

During the North American War of Independence, Britain adopted exploitative and repressive policies towards the North American colonies. The Seven Years' War between Britain and France fighting for maritime hegemony and plundering colonies ended with Britain's victory. The British took over Canada in North America and controlled New France east of the Mississippi River. Before the Seven Years' War, although Britain promulgated a series of mercantilist navigation laws, trade laws, and industrial laws to restrict the independent development of the North American colonial economy, the contradiction between Britain and France at that time was more serious than the contradiction between Britain and the colonies. Britain also wanted to use North America to The colonies' manpower and material resources were used to resist France, so the execution was ineffective. Merchants in the northern colonies made huge profits through smuggling trade with Spain and the French West Indies, which promoted the development of industry and commerce in the northern colonies. After the Seven Years' War, Britain comprehensively strengthened its control over the North American colonies, declaring the west of the Appalachian Mountains as royal property and prohibiting colonial people from getting involved; it also levied heavy taxes, severely suppressed smuggling, and restricted the economic activities of colonial people. In the mid-1860s, the British promulgated the Sugar Tax Act, the Stamp Duty Act (see the Stamp Duty Ordinance), the Townshend Tax Act and other laws, which seriously damaged the economic interests of people from all walks of life in the colonies. Since the establishment of Parliament in Virginia in 1619, various colonies have established parliaments one after another to compete with the British. In 1765, nine colonies held a meeting to protest the stamp tax, setting off a wave of rebellion.

In the 1870s, Britain further implemented repressive policies, and the Boston Massacre occurred in 1770. The Tea Tax Act was passed in 1773, causing the Boston Tea Party. In 1774, five intolerable decrees were promulgated, such as closing the Port of Boston, deploying more British troops, canceling the autonomy of Massachusetts, establishing British judicial power over the colonies, etc., and tightened control and suppression of the colonies politically and militarily. From 1772 to 1774, communications committees were generally established in various colonies to lead the colonial people's anti-British struggle. American History: On September 5, 1774, representatives of the colonies except Georgia held the 1st Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and passed a resolution to sever all trade relations with Britain, and then passed the "Declaration of the Rights and Resentments of the Colonies". Present a petition to the King of England. On April 18, 1775, in Lexington and Concord near Boston, colonial patriots fired shots of resistance, marking the beginning of the North American War of Independence. In May, the 2nd Continental Congress was held. In July of the following year, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, declaring the 13 colonies independent from Britain.

When the North American War of Independence began, due to the disparity in strength between the two sides, the war lasted for 8 years. By October 1781, the American and French forces captured Yorktown, the last stronghold of the British army, and the War of Independence basically ended successfully. In 1783 Britain and the United States signed the Peace of Paris. The North American War of Independence was the first large-scale colonial war for national liberation in world history. It was a bourgeois democratic revolution led by the bourgeoisie and planters. A number of outstanding politicians emerged during the Revolutionary War, such as G. Washington, the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, T. Jefferson, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, diplomat B. Franklin, and cultural warrior T. Paine.

The establishment of an independent national sovereign state. During the war, the Continental Congress formulated the Articles of Confederation. From 1781 to 1787, 13 states formed the Confederate Congress and declared the establishment of the American Republic. It was a loose of the Interstate Alliance. In 1784, the "Queen of China" came to China for trade. Shays' Rebellion broke out in 1786, shocking the bourgeoisie and slave owners. They were determined to strengthen central power and protect the economic interests of property owners. In 1787, the Constitutional Convention was held secretly in Philadelphia. During the meeting, representatives of large and small states argued and agreed that each state should elect two senators; on the issue of slavery, the northern bourgeoisie also made major compromises with the slave owners of the southern plantations and acquiesced in slavery. In terms of taxation and allocation of seats in the House of Representatives, southern slaves were counted as 3/5 of the population, and the draft constitution was finally formulated. This is the world's first written constitution. It was ratified by nine states in June 1788.

According to the Constitution, the United States has established a federal state with the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers and mutual checks and balances. The broad masses of the people were dissatisfied with the fact that the Constitution did not contain any bill of rights and set off a protest movement. As a result, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were added, and in December 1791, they were ratified by 11 states and came into effect. Among them, it is famous for the "Bill of Rights" (see the U.S. Constitution of 1787).

The federal government was established in 1789. In April, Washington took office as the first president of the United States. Re-elected in 1792. From 1789 to 1791, during the political struggle over differences in domestic and foreign policies, the Federalist Party was organized by Treasury Secretary A. Hamilton, who advocated centralization of power, was pro-British in diplomacy, and controlled the power of the federal government. Secretary of State T. Jefferson advocated safeguarding the democratic rights of the domestic people, sympathized with the French Revolution, and organized the Democratic *** and the Party. In 1793, when European powers jointly intervened in the French Revolution, Washington adopted a policy of neutrality. In November 1794, the federal government and Britain signed the Jay Treaty, which undermined U.S. sovereignty. Pro-British and pro-French became the dividing line between the Federalist Party and the Democratic Party in foreign policy. In terms of domestic affairs, the federal government formulates tariff regulations, establishes banks, and stabilizes the economy, but implements methods that are not conducive to poor people to repay national debts and state debts, and levies national taxes. When farmers in western Pennsylvania revolted over taxes on domestic liquor, Hamilton personally led his troops to suppress it. In 1798, the Federalist J. Adams government promulgated four laws that undermined the people's democratic rights. Among them, the "Alien Law" was enacted to expel aliens from France and Ireland, and the "Sedition Law" stipulated that the President or Congress should Those whose words or writings are "intended to slander" or "slander" the government will be punished. These measures aroused popular indignation. The Federalist Party's reputation declined.

In 1801, T. Jefferson of the Democratic Party was elected president. The Jefferson administration repealed the above four laws, cut expenditures, eased taxes, canceled alcohol taxes, and encouraged agricultural exports. In 1803, Louisiana, covering an area of ??more than 2 million square kilometers, was purchased from France. Britain has always been unwilling to lose its North American colonies. British ships continued to intercept American ships on the high seas and forcibly requisitioned American sailors. In order to maintain freedom of navigation, the United States launched its second war against Britain from 1812 to 1814 (see the American-British War (1812)). Except for naval battles, the advantage lies with the British army. In August 1814, the British army captured the capital of Washington and burned the Presidential Palace and Congress. In December 1814, Britain and the United States signed a peace treaty in Ghent, Belgium. This war enabled the United States to get rid of British political control and economic penetration and become a completely independent national sovereign country.

The different economic developments of the North and South before the American Civil War. From the early 19th century to before the Civil War, the United States expanded its territory from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast. The U.S. economy has changed significantly.

This is mainly reflected in the fact that the economies of the north and the south develop in different directions. On the basis of long-term fraudulent fur trade and land plundering of Indians, slave trade, and land speculation in the West, the bourgeoisie of the northern United States took advantage of the opportunities of wars among European countries to develop maritime trade and expand the shipping industry. Carry out a large amount of primitive accumulation of capital. In the north, the first cotton spinning mill using the Arkwright spinning machine was established in Rhode Island as early as 1790. Since then, other factories have emerged. Since the early 19th century, a large amount of money has been invested in industry and commerce, and capitalist industrial production has developed. While vigorously introducing Western European science and technology, creativity and invention were encouraged. In the 1950s, industrialization advanced rapidly. In 1860, the United States ranked fourth in the world in industrial production. Two-thirds of manufactured goods are produced in the Northeast. Western European immigrants poured in in large numbers and moved westward, providing free wage labor for the development of a capitalist economy. In the South, the cotton plantation economy based on slave labor continued to expand, extending from the Atlantic coast states to Texas. Slavery developed as a tumor on the capitalist organism. Sponsors from the South and the North debated whether to promote free labor or slavery in the newly opened areas of the West, which became the subject of national political struggle. In 1820, the North made concessions to the South and reached the Missouri Compromise, and the dispute between the two sides temporarily subsided.

Diplomacy and politics before the American Civil War In 1823, US President J. Monroe issued the "Monroe Declaration" (see Monroe Doctrine). Opposition to the interference of European powers in Western Hemisphere affairs provided the basis for the United States to penetrate and interfere in Latin America in the future. In 1844, the United States forced the Qing government of China to sign the unequal Treaty of Wangxia. From 1846 to 1848, the United States launched a war against Mexico and annexed Texas, New Mexico and California to the United States (see color map). From 1851 to 1864, he participated in the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion in China and forced Japan to open its doors. American History In terms of politics, the Federalist Party convened the Hartford Convention in 1814, towards the end of the American-British War, in an attempt to split the Union, but failed and disintegrated. The decline of the Federalist Party marked the beginning of the transition from commercial capital to industrial capital. From 1816 to 1824, the United States entered a period of democratic democracy and one-party rule, which represented the common interests of the northern bourgeoisie and southern slave owners. Xi called it the "harmonious period". After the democratic revolution and the party split, political forces were regrouped. In 1828, the American Democratic Party, which represented part of the bourgeoisie and plantation owners, the Western Frontier Farmers and the Coastal City Workers Alliance, was established and elected A. Jackson as the presidential candidate. Jackson was elected and re-elected as president until March 1837. The Whig Party was established in the United States in 1834. It represented the interests of industrialists, merchants and some planters. The Jackson administration used deception and force to expel the Indians west of the Mississippi River and stopped the secession crisis caused by South Carolina's high tariff laws. The Jackson administration abolished the law that imprisoned poor people for debt, popularized universal suffrage for white men, and carried out some democratic reforms, which Xi called "Jacksonian democracy." The workers' struggle for a ten-hour working day was very active. Professional and technical workers in cities such as New York and Philadelphia organized workers' parties and participated in local elections. From 1828 to 1856, the Democratic Party and the Whig Party became the two major opposing parties. Except for the two presidential elections in 1840 and 1848, which were won by the Whig Party, all other presidential elections were won by the Democratic Party.

With the intensification of the struggle between the two different social and economic systems in the South and the North and the continuous rise of black slave resistance, the mass abolition movement in the United States was widely carried out. In 1840, the "Liberty Party", which advocated the abolition movement, was established. In 1848, abolitionists, anti-slavery elements in the Democratic and Whig parties organized the Free Soil Party with the purpose of establishing free states in the West. In 1850, after disputes, the two sides reached the Compromise of 1850. In the same year, Congress passed the severe Fugitive Slave Tracing Law (see Compromise of 1850). In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which abolished the geographical boundaries between slave states and free states, thus abolishing the Missouri Compromise. It was strongly opposed by the northern industrial bourgeoisie and established in 1854* ** and the party, with the purpose of opposing slavery. In 1856, Democratic Party J. Buchanan was elected president; at this time, the Democratic Party had actually become a party representing the interests of slave owners. In 1857, the Supreme Court issued the Scott decision, whose legal implication was to expand the scale of slavery nationwide.

In 1859, the anti-slavery armed uprising led by J. Brown was suppressed (see John Brown's Rebellion). In the 1860 presidential election, the Republican candidate A. Lincoln won. The southern slave-owning group, which had been plotting rebellion for a long time, decided to secede from the Union and in February 1861 established a separate Southern Confederacy, which declared to uphold slavery.

The American Civil War and Reconstruction Period In April 1861, the Southern Confederacy occupied Sumter Fort without declaring war, and the American Civil War broke out.

In May 1862, Lincoln promulgated the Homestead Act, allowing farmers who had cultivated western land for five years to obtain the right to use 160 acres of land after paying a $10 certificate fee. The majority of farmers who were colonizing the west sided with the abolitionists and isolated the Southern Confederacy. On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation promulgated by Lincoln came into effect. Black slaves in the rebel states were regarded as free people and allowed to join the army. In a short period of time, 186,000 black people joined the federal army. American Marxists and workers actively participated in the federal army's battle. J. Wedemeyer, a comrade of K. Marx and F. Engels, moved to Missouri and other places and contributed to the defense of the border states. The struggle of the workers of various European countries, especially the British workers, against the armed intervention of their own governments in the federal government contributed to the Union's military victory. In 1864, federal troops occupied Atlanta, Georgia, cutting the Confederacy in two and achieving a decisive victory. On April 9, 1865, General R.E. Lee, commander-in-chief of the Confederate Army, surrendered. The Civil War ended with a Union victory. On April 14, Lincoln was assassinated and died the next day. Vice President A. Johnson succeeded him as president. Johnson pursued a policy of compromise with southern planters. In November 1865, Mississippi first promulgated the "Black Code" to brutally persecute black people. The Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization founded in 1866, targeted newly freed black people. In this chaotic situation, Congress, dominated by the Democratic Party and radicals, proposed an impeachment case for the president (failed by one vote), and passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, 1868 and 1870 respectively (declaring Slavery no longer exists in the United States), the 14th Amendment (blacks are recognized as U.S. citizens), and the 15th Amendment (giving blacks the right to vote). In March 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction of the South Act and imposed military control on the South. From 1867 to 1877, the South carried out democratic reconstruction. Each state established a joint power of blacks and whites to govern, and formulated democratic and progressive laws. 14 blacks were elected to the House of Representatives and two blacks were elected to the Senate. The conservative forces of the bourgeoisie in the north tried to compromise with the plantation owner forces in the south and restore the old order in the early post-war period in the south in order to fully deal with the rising worker and peasant movements across the country. R.B. Hayes became president, marking the end of Democratic Reconstruction. In 1877, blacks became economically sharecroppers in the grain sharecropping system and remained politically powerless (see Reconstruction period). U.S. History U.S. History The U.S. economy developed rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. After the Civil War, the abolition of the southern plantation system created conditions for the large-scale development of capitalism across the country; the shipbuilding and machine manufacturing industries developed rapidly, and the transcontinental The completion of four railways (see color map), the reclamation of vast lands in the west, and the disappearance of frontiers promoted the formation and expansion of a unified domestic market. In the process of increasing development in the central and western regions, the far west and the south, each region developed industries with local characteristics. The large influx of foreign immigrants provided abundant labor and enabled large-scale agricultural production in North America. Agricultural mechanization developed rapidly in the second half of the 19th century. From 1860 to 1916, the area of ??cultivated land increased from 407 million acres to 879 million acres, and the area of ??improved land more than tripled. The output of wheat and corn has increased by more than three times. Large-scale production in agriculture is crowding out and merging small-scale production. In the industrial north, agriculture is increasingly adopting intensive farming. In other agricultural-dominated areas, the number of large farms is gradually increasing. In 1900, half of the total agricultural products in the United States was 1/6 produced by large farmers, forming an American-style agricultural capitalist development path. United States History United States History In the second half of the 19th century, there were important inventions and breakthroughs in the field of science and technology, the first of which was the application of electricity. A.G. Bell invented the telephone in 1876, T.A. Edison manufactured the electric light in 1886, the Duryea brothers successfully trial-produced a car in 1892, and the Wright brothers successfully trial-produced an airplane in 1903. Electricity was widely used in industry, leading to the overall development of the American capitalist economy.

In 1880, the proportion of U.S. industry in the nation's gross domestic product exceeded that of agriculture, and its gross industrial production jumped from fourth place in the world in 1860 to first place in 1894. The United States has become a highly developed capitalist country.

The struggle of the American people at the end of the 19th century. With the accumulation of production and the concentration of capital, the American social structure has undergone tremendous changes. The urban population has increased rapidly, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat have become two opposing classes. The organizational and combative nature of the industrial proletariat has been greatly enhanced. After the Civil War, two major workers' organizations, the National Labor League and the Knights of Labor, were established successively, both with the goal of fighting for an eight-hour working day. The National Labor League also put forward the progressive slogan of "equal pay for equal work"; the Knights of Labor was initially a secret organization, but became public in 1881, becoming the first native American workers' organization, and attracted unskilled workers, women, small owners and farmers to participate. In 1884, the organized trade unions and federations of labor (the predecessor of the American Federation of Labor) in the United States and Canada were established. They passed a historic resolution calling for the implementation of an eight-hour work day on May 1, 1886. The rapid development of capitalist production has further intensified the contradiction between labor and capital (see U.S. Labor Organization). In July 1877, railroad workers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania went on strike, which soon spread to important railroad lines across the country, marking the first large-scale national strike in American history. On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers held a demonstration for an eight-hour working day. On the evening of May 3, the Chicago Massacre occurred. Therefore, at the Paris Congress of the Second International in 1889, a resolution was passed stipulating that May 1 is International Labor Day. In 1892, the Carnegie Steel Company lowered wages, sparking a strike by Homestead steel workers. In 1894, veteran J. Coxey led the unemployed army to march on Washington; in July, workers went on strike because Pullman Company refused workers' reasonable demands, and the Midwestern railways were paralyzed. The above-mentioned strikes and "march" were suppressed.

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, most of the new immigrants who poured into the United States came from Southeast European countries. They either worked in cities or as unskilled workers in emerging basic industries. Regardless of this major change in the structure of workers, the AFL still insists on organizing only industrial unions of skilled workers, implements compromise policies with business owners, and ignores the interests of unorganized workers and blacks. In 1905, a new left-wing union based on industrial principles, the Industrial Workers of the World, was established to organize unskilled workers, migrant workers from the west, and new immigrant workers from the east, including women, blacks, and Chinese workers; the alliance's combat effectiveness was very strong. Strong, he has led many strikes to fight for higher wages and better treatment. As it continued to suffer repression and was gradually imbued with anarcho-syndicalist ideas, it disintegrated in the early 1920s.

Although American agriculture developed tremendously in the second half of the 19th century, most farmers were in trouble due to the price gap between industrial and agricultural products and the agricultural crisis. Since the late 1960s, American farmers have successively carried out farmers' associations. The Socialist Movement, the Green Back Note Movement, and the Farmers' Union Movement launched a struggle against the exploitation of monopoly organizations and the oppression of intermediary merchants. In 1892, a third national party, the People's Party, was formed with farmers from the central and western regions as its backbone. It demanded economic and political reforms and participated in the presidential election. In 1896, the People's Party and the Democratic Party jointly participated in the presidential election, and part of its platform was absorbed by the Democratic Party. By 1900, the People's Party disintegrated.

Progressives among the urban middle class exposed a large number of shortcomings in American society at that time, launched a reform movement, and played a certain role in promoting democratization in the United States.

In March 1909, female workers in Chicago, USA, held strikes and demonstrations to fight for equal pay for equal work, which won the support and response of women across the country and around the world. The following year, the International Congress of Women decided to change March 8 It is designated as International Women’s Day. It took until 1920 for the United States Congress to pass the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.

After the 1870s, black people suffered from oppression and racial discrimination. From 1888 to 1900, an average of 156 black people were killed each year by lynching. In 1905, the famous black scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois led the Niagara Movement to protest against this, which became the starting point of the modern black liberation movement.

In 1887, the U.S. government abolished public ownership of land for Indians and granted Indians U.S. citizenship in 1924.

The United States once recruited Chinese workers to the West at a low cost to build the transcontinental railway. The Chinese workers went through many hardships and made great contributions to the development of the West. However, when the development work was generally completed, anti-Chinese atrocities continued to occur. After the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1902, Chinese workers were basically prohibited from entering the country (see the American Anti-Chinese Movement (late 19th century)).

The socialist movement in the United States in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century represented scientific socialism, which represented the interests of the advanced proletariat, and had spread in the United States before the Civil War. With the development of production after the Civil War, the basic contradictions of American capitalism deepened and economic crises continued to occur. During the periodic crises of 1873, 1883, and 1893, social wealth became increasingly polarized and class contradictions became prominent. In 1867, Marxists formed the American branch of the First International in New York. From 1872 to 1876, the General Committee of the First International was located in New York, with F.A. Sorge, a comrade of Marx and Engels, as General Secretary. In 1876, the American Workers' Party was established. Within it, the Marxists waged a struggle against the Lassalleanists. In 1877, the American Workers' Party was reorganized into the Socialist Labor Party, controlled by the Lassalle F. faction. In the 1990s, D. de León took over the leadership of the party, emphasizing the fight for a majority of seats at the ballot box and breaking away from the broad masses of workers. The outstanding socialist E.V. Debs founded the Social Democratic Party of the United States in 1898 and reorganized it into the Socialist Party of the United States in 1901. In 1912, the number of Marxists in the United States was very small, and they were never able to form a strong revolutionary workers' party and give correct leadership to the then flourishing workers' and peasants' movement.

The domestic and foreign policies of the United States before World War I. The United States was a latecomer capitalist country. By the end of the 19th century, it was catching up in carving up the world, plundering colonies and spheres of influence, and competing with other imperialist countries. Activity. In 1889, the United States held the Pan-American Conference to penetrate into Latin America. In 1898, the Spanish-American War was launched, defeating the old colonialist Spain (see color picture), seizing Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, Guam and the Philippine Islands in the Pacific, and then annexing the Hawaiian Islands. During the administrations of T. Roosevelt and W.H. Taft, the United States alternately used "big stick policy" and "gold dollar diplomacy." Under the cover of the Monroe Declaration, political and financial control was established through penetration and invasion of the Caribbean. In 1903, the United States launched a coup in Panama and seized the Panama Canal Zone. In the Far East, the United States proposed an "open door" policy toward China in 1899, recognizing the sphere of influence of the great powers in China and using its own economic advantages to expand trade. In 1900, the United States joined the Eight-Power Allied Forces, violated China's territorial sovereignty, and obtained the privilege of stationing troops in Beijing and other places. The United States supported Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. After the Russo-Japanese War, the conflict between the United States and Japan intensified over the competition for the market in Northeast China. After negotiations, the two sides signed the Roto-Gaoping Agreement in 1908. Both parties agreed to maintain the vested interests of the two countries in the Pacific. After China’s Revolution of 1911, the United States actively penetrated China economically. American History In the 1912 presidential election, due to the split between the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party, T.W. Wilson, the Democratic presidential candidate, came to power. Wilson used "new freedom" as a call for reforms. In terms of domestic affairs, he lowered tariffs, established the Federal Reserve Bank system, passed the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), and levied a progressive income tax (see Antitrust Act). In terms of foreign policy, under the cover of the Monroe Declaration, he carried out armed intervention in countries such as Mexico and Nicaragua in the Western Hemisphere.

The United States from World War I to the late 1920s

After the beginning of World War I, the United States declared neutrality, provided arms to both warring parties, and soon launched an attack on the Allied Powers. loan. In 1916, Wilson appealed to voters' opposition to the United States' involvement in the war, won votes, and was re-elected. In 1917, in order to ensure its economic interests in the Allied Powers, the United States declared war on Germany on April 6 after a German submarine sank an American ship.

After the United States entered the war, the Wilson government implemented the Espionage Punishment Act and the Sedition Act in 1917, suppressing the socialist left, members of the militant Industrial Workers of the World, and anti-war people. More than 1,500 people were arrested. In 1919, workers' strikes were suppressed many times. During the war, due to the interruption of foreign immigration to the United States, a large number of blacks moved northward, supplementing the much-needed labor force in the north. Blacks enlisted in the army and went to fight abroad, which also broadened their horizons.

During Wilson's administration, 425 black people were lynched. After the war, black people's struggle against lynching and racial discrimination became increasingly fierce.

In 1917, the United States and Japan signed the Lansing-Ishii Agreement, and the United States recognized Japan's special interests in Shandong, Northeast China, and Inner Mongolia. In 1918, the United States participated in the armed intervention of 14 countries against Soviet Russia, and did not withdraw its troops until 1920 (see Civil War in Soviet Russia). In November 1918, Wilson signed the armistice agreement with Germany. World War I spurred economic prosperity in the United States. After the war, the United States changed from a debtor country that owed $6 billion to a creditor country that lent $10 billion, making the United States the richest country. The war developed general monopoly capital into state monopoly capital. In December of the same year, Wilson personally led a delegation to Europe to participate in the Paris Peace Conference, proposing Wilson's Fourteen Points Plan as the basis for concluding a peace treaty. At the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson acquiesced in Japan's use of the opportunity of the European War to seize the rights and interests formerly occupied by Germany in Shandong in China, and carried out behind-the-scenes activities to prepare to recognize Japan's "Article 21" to monopolize China. The Chinese people launched the anti-imperialist "May Fourth Movement", forcing Chinese representatives to refuse to sign the peace treaty. Wilson also attempted to intervene in world domination by establishing the League of Nations. The emerging Midwestern consortium in the United States advocated that the United States should focus on expanding to the Asia-Pacific region and requested to avoid being involved in European disputes. Therefore, the Senate controlled by the Democratic Party proposed fourteen reservations to the League of Nations Covenant, which actually boycotted the League of Nations Covenant. The United States did not participate in the League of Nations. After the establishment of the League of Nations, leadership was in the hands of Britain and France.

In 1921, when *** and W.G. Harding came to power, the United States fell into a comprehensive economic depression. He proposed "industrial normalization" and "rescuing capitalism"; he implemented anti-Communist policies internally and persecuted progressives. The American Communist Party established in 1919 was forced to go underground. In order to compete for hegemony in the Far East and Pacific regions, the United States held the Washington Conference from 1921 to 1922, dismantled the Anglo-Japanese alliance, obtained the right to build capital ships with a tonnage equal to that of the United Kingdom, and under the "open door" and "equal opportunity" Under the flag, the Nine-Nation Pact was concluded, resulting in a situation where the imperialist powers jointly controlled China. In terms of its European policy, the United States formulated the Dawes Plan in 1924 to provide loans to Germany to restore the German economy.