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History of United States

Castro, Raúl; Obama, Barack

U.S. Pres. Barack Obama (right) and Cuban Pres. Raúl Castro making televised addresses to announce the reestablishment of diplomatic relations and the easing of travel restrictions, December 17, 2014.

AP Images

Celebrating the end of World War I

Crowds on Wall Street celebrating the end of World War I, New York City, 1918.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 09634)

ration card

Sugar ration card used during World War I, 1917.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

U.S. Army recruits at Camp Pike, Arkansas, in 1918, following the United States' entry into World War I in April 1917.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Marne, Battle of the

Engineers of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division preparing to cross the Marne River near Mézy, France, July 1918.

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

U.S. 27th Infantry Division; end of World War I

The U.S. 27th Infantry Division passing through the Victory Arch in New York City in celebration of the end of World War I, March 25, 1919.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Battle of Guadalcanal

U.S. Marines landing on Guadalcanal, August 1942.

UPI/Bettmann Archive

World War I: “Wake Up” parade

Marchers in a “Wake Up” parade, 1917, during World War I.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

World War I

Woman working in an American airplane factory during World War I, 1917.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Executive Order 9981

First page of Executive Order 9981, signed by U.S. Pres. Harry Truman, July 26, 1948. The order desegregated the U.S. armed forces.

NARA

Executive Order 9981

Second page of Executive Order 9981, signed by U.S. Pres. Harry Truman, July 26, 1948. The order desegregated the U.S. armed forces.

NARA

English caricature of Thomas Paine's involvement in the French Revolution.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Caucus Curs in Full Yell, an 1824 cartoon by James Akin, showing “Old Hickory” (Andrew Jackson) under attack from a pack of dogs that represents the opposition press.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Granger movement

The Granger movement; lithograph published in 1873.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Irish emigrants departing for the United States.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproducution no. LC-USZ62-2022)

Swedish immigrants en route to the western United States in the mid-19th century.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

United States: 1783–1812

The United States, 1783–1812.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Triumphal arches, such as these near Philadelphia, were erected throughout the United States to commemorate the inauguration of Pres. George Washington on April 30, 1789.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Colonial exploration routes within the United StatesEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

English colonies in 17th-century North America

English colonies in 17th-century North America.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

A map, titled “Historical Geography” and created by John F. Smith (1888), that uses the images of two highly stylized trees superimposed onto a map of the United States to depict the spread and triumph of liberty (in the North) over slavery (in the South) from the founding of the United States through the Civil War.

The Newberry Library (A Britannica Publishing Partner)

Maryland colony

Map of Maryland colony.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization: members and partners

Map depicting the member countries and partner countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Kenny Chmielewski

Spanish viceroyalties and Portuguese territories

Spanish viceroyalties and Portuguese territories in the Western Hemisphere, 1780.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

United States: 1812–22Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

United States: 1822–54

The United States, 1822–54.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The United States, 1854–61.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

United States after 1861

The United States after 1861.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

battle casualties of the Korean War (1950–53)Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

money and output in the United StatesEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Nuclear tests in the South Pacific

Islands in the South Pacific were used extensively for nuclear tests between 1945 and 1995.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Hurricane Katrina in numbers

Hurricane Katrina formed on August 23, 2005, and in less than a week grew from a tropical depression into a category 4 hurricane. When Katrina made landfall on August 29 near New Orleans on the U.S. Gulf Coast, it brought widespread destruction and flooding with it. This infographic details Katrina's path and devastating impact.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Christine McCabe and Kenny Chmielewski

LEARN ABOUT THIS TOPIC in these articles:

Assorted References

• major reference
  • 
    In United States: History

    The territory represented by the continental United States had, of course, been discovered, perhaps several times, before the voyages of Christopher Columbus. When Columbus arrived, he found the New World inhabited by peoples who in all likelihood had originally come from the continent of…

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• Alabama claims
  • 
    In Alabama claims

    …claims, maritime grievances of the United States against Great Britain, accumulated during and after the American Civil War (1861–65). The claims are significant in international law for furthering the use of arbitration to settle disputes peacefully and for delineating certain responsibilities of neutrals toward belligerents. The dispute centred on the…

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• Alaska Purchase
  • 
    In Alaska Purchase

    …Purchase, (1867), acquisition by the United States from Russia of 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 square km) of land at the northwestern tip of the North American continent, comprising the current U.S. state of Alaska.

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• Alien and Sedition Acts
  • 
    In Alien and Sedition Acts

    …security laws passed by the U.S. Congress, restricting aliens and curtailing the excesses of an unrestrained press, in anticipation of an expected war with France.

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• American colonies
  • 
    In American colonies

    …a part of the eastern United States. The colonies grew both geographically along the Atlantic coast and westward and numerically to 13 from the time of their founding to the American Revolution (1775–81). Their settlements had spread far beyond the Appalachians and extended from Maine in the north to the…

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• Amistad mutiny
  • 
    In Amistad mutiny

    …captured and tried in the United States, and a surprising victory for the country’s antislavery forces resulted in 1841 when the U.S. Supreme Court freed the rebels. A committee formed to defend the slaves later developed into the American Missionary Association (incorporated 1846).

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• annexation
  • 
    In annexation

    Annexation of Hawaii by the United States in the late 19th century was a peaceful process, based upon the willing acceptance by the Hawaiian government of U.S. authority.

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• balance of power
  • In balance of power

    …just two non-European ones: the United States and the Soviet Union. The result was a bipolar balance of power across the northern half of the globe that pitted the free-market democracies of the West against the communist one-party states of eastern Europe. More specifically, the nations of western Europe sided…

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• civil rights movement
  • 
    In civil rights: The American civil rights movement

    Civil rights politics in the United States has its roots in the movement to end discrimination against African Americans. Though slavery was abolished and former slaves were officially granted political rights after the Civil War, in most Southern states African Americans continued to be systematically disenfranchised and excluded from public…

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• conservation
  • 
    In North America: The human imprint on the landscape

    When the United States and Canada became industrialized, they used coal, oil, iron, other metals, and wood with extravagance and often with great waste. The waste products of the factories of these countries started to pollute air, land, and water, and, as cities with enormous populations began…

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• dentistry
  • 
    In dentistry: Dentistry in 18th- and 19th-century America

    …beginnings of dentistry in the United States came in the 1630s with the settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who were accompanied by barber-surgeons. One of the first dentists in America was English surgeon and dentist John Baker, who settled in Boston in 1763. Other immigrants to follow included Robert…

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  • 
    In dentistry: Dentistry in 18th- and 19th-century America

    …beginning of licensure in the United States came about in 1868, with the states of New York, Ohio, and Kentucky leading the way.

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• détente
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Détente as realism

    …tactic “linkage” insofar as the United States would link positive inducements (e.g., arms control, technology transfers, grain sales) to expected Soviet reciprocity in other areas (e.g., restraint in promoting revolutionary movements). Nixon had no illusions that U.S.–Soviet competition would disappear, but he expected that this carrot-and-stick approach would establish rules…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The decline of détente

    …new American restraint, while the U.S. administration implicitly sold détente as a means of restraining Communist activity around the world. American conservatives were bound to lose faith in détente with each new incident of Soviet assertiveness, while liberals remained hostile to Nixon himself, his realpolitik, and his predilection for the…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Postmortem

    …by the rules, because the United States was unwilling to accord the U.S.S.R. genuine equality, or because détente was never really tried at all? Or did the differing U.S. and Soviet conceptions of détente ensure that, sooner or later, American patience would wear thin? The last explanation is, in foreshortened…

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• Founding Fathers
  • 
    In Founding Fathers

    …of the foundings of the United States: during the American Revolution, when independence was won, or during the Constitutional Convention, when nationhood was achieved.

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• Gates essay on history of civil rights in the United States
  • 
    In Monuments of Hope, Memorials to a Poisoned Past

    … ended, a retreat by the federal government that cleared the way for Southern “home rule” and the birth of Jim Crow. In between, a trio of constitutional amendments had been ratified, securing to millions of formerly enslaved African Americans their freedom and citizenship while removing race as a barrier to…

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• gay rights movement
  • 
    In gay rights movement: The beginning of the gay rights movement

    …Gender, and Reproduction, in the United States) that specialized in sex research. He also helped sponsor the World League of Sexual Reform, which was established in 1928 at a conference in Copenhagen. Despite Paragraph 175 and the failure of the WhK to win its repeal, homosexual men and women experienced…

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• Great Depression
  • 
    In Great Depression

    Although it originated in the United States, the Great Depression caused drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and acute deflation in almost every country of the world. Its social and cultural effects were no less staggering, especially in the United States, where the Great Depression represented the harshest adversity faced…

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• Great Migration
  • 
    In Great Migration

    …of European emigration to the United States, which had begun in the late 19th century and waned during World War I, slowed to a trickle with immigration reform in the 1920s. As a result, urban industries were faced with labour shortages. A huge internal population shift among African Americans addressed…

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• heraldry
  • 
    In heraldry: The United States

    There has been a remarkable evolution of heraldry in the United States. Ever since the American Revolution the use of arms, especially of arms of English families with whom the users were related or whose surname they bore, has continued. The College of…

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• historiography
  • 
    In historiography: Historiography in the United States

    The most influential American historian of the 19th century was George Bancroft (1800–91), who studied at the universities of Göttingen and Berlin (see below Johann Christoph Gatterer and the Göttingen scholars). During intervals in a busy career as a public official he wrote a…

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  • 
    In historiography: The United States

    Whereas in 1875 there was hardly anything that could be called a historical profession in the United States, by 1900 the American Historical Association (AHA) and its journal, the American Historical Review, as well as a number of university Ph.D. programs in history, had…

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• Irish Potato Famine
  • 
    In Great Famine

    …of corn (maize) from the United States, which helped avert some starvation. The Liberal (Whig) cabinet of Lord John Russell, which assumed power in June 1846, maintained Peel’s policy regarding grain exports from Ireland but otherwise took a laissez-faire approach to the plight of the Irish and shifted the emphasis…

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• judicial activism
  • In judicial activism

    Although in the U.S. context allegations of activism have been raised more recently by conservatives than liberals, such charges can be deployed by both sides, and the primary determinant is probably where the courts stand politically with respect to other government actors. In the first half of the…

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• Pictorialism
  • 
    In Pictorialism

    Pictorialists in the United States included Alvin Langdon Coburn, F. Holland Day, Gertrude Käsebier, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, and Clarence H. White. In the late work of Stieglitz, and that of Paul Strand and Edward Weston, American Pictorialism became less involved with atmospheric effects

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• plantations
  • 
    In plantation

    …plantation declined abruptly in the United States with the abolition of slavery. Most plantations were divided into small farms operated by individual owners or tenant farmers; others continued to operate as large plantations that were worked by wage-labourers or sharecroppers, many of whom were held under the tacit bondage of…

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• police system
  • 
    In police: Early police in the United States

    The United States inherited England’s Anglo-Saxon common law and its system of social obligation, sheriffs, constables, watchmen, and stipendiary justice. As both societies became less rural and agrarian and more urban and industrialized, crime, riots, and other public disturbances became more common. Yet…

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  • 
    In police: Developments in policing since 1900: the United States example

    The struggle for political control of the police in the United States gave rise to a distinctive strategy of policing that became influential throughout the Western democracies in the 20th century. The strategy involved new managerial techniques, integrated sources of authority, innovative…

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• radio broadcasting
  • 
    In radio: The Golden Age of American radio

    The Golden Age of American radio as a creative medium lasted, at best, from 1930 to 1955, with the true peak period being the 1940s. Writer-producer-director Norman Corwin, one of radio’s brightest talents, ruefully made the point that radio’s most creative era was…

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  • 
    In radio: The end of American radio’s Golden Age

    Although experimental mechanical television broadcasts had begun in 1925, the economic effects of the Great Depression and the demands of World War II put the development of electronic television on hold, thus extending the era of radio’s dominance. When American network…

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  • 
    In radio: Radio’s early years

    …the West Coast of the United States, for example, Charles (“Doc”) Herrold began operating a wireless transmitter in conjunction with his radio school in San Jose, California, about 1908. Herrold was soon providing regularly scheduled voice and music programs to a small local audience of amateur radio operators in what…

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  • 
    In radio: Pressures on public-service radio

    …and commercial radio in the United States. As more new stations (nearly always FM) went on the air, a growing number were either losing money or making very little. Outside the largest markets, radio was often a narrow-margin business. In response to pressure by struggling station owners, commercial radio was…

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  • 
    In radio: In the United States

    By the last two decades of the 20th century, American radio was presenting two seemingly opposite trends to listeners. Program variety appeared to increase as more stations competed for listeners and each strove to sound different while seeking to retain its existing audience.…

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  • 
    In radio: The rise of Top 40 radio

    Untouched by World War II, American radio stations rapidly expanded in number to more than 2,000 AM outlets by the early 1950s. Most were in smaller markets gaining local radio service for the first time. Beginning with the 1948–49 season, however, network television in the East and Midwest (with national…

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  • 
    In radio: FM growth

    …the broadcast business in the United States. In 1961 the FCC approved technical standards for stereophonic radio, a decision that helped place FM at the centre of the country’s growing interest in high-fidelity sound while also providing a service not available on AM. The commission’s mid-1960s decisions to limit program…

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  • 
    In radio: Pirates and public-service radio

    In the United States, which was already enjoying a surfeit of local outlets, the first new radio networks in decades appeared; these were tailored to the needs of stations, rather than the other way around. Early in 1968 ABC unveiled four new radio networks to replace its…

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• Reform Judaism
  • 
    In Judaism: Religious reform movements

    …the 200 synagogues in the United States (amalgamated in the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873) were Reform. In 1885 a conference of Reform rabbis formulated what was then the most comprehensive statement of Reform philosophy in the so-called Pittsburgh Platform. This manifesto announced that Judaism was an evolutionary…

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• secession
  • 
    In secession

    …a long history in the United States—but as a threat rather than as an actual dissolution of the Union. Pro-secessionists found philosophical justification for altering or abolishing a government and instituting a new one in the Declaration of Independence. More specifically, those who held that the Union was simply a…

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• ships and shipping industry
  • 
    In ship: 17th-century developments

    …in the New World of America and Australia there was so little existing production of trading goods that the establishment of ties required not only the pioneering of the trading route but also the founding of a colony to create new production. Shipping was critical in each of these relationships…

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  • 
    In ship: Shipping in the 19th century

    American independence played a major role determining how the final stage developed.

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  • 
    In ship: The steamboat

    …the rivers of the eastern United States. Colonial transportation had mainly taken place by water, either on the surfaces of coastal bays and sounds or on fairly broad rivers as far upstream as the lowest falls or rapids. Up to the beginning of the 19th century a system of coastal…

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  • 
    In ship: Passenger liners in the 20th century

    Lines launched the 53,329-ton United States. Though lighter than the Queen Elizabeth, greater use of aluminum in the superstructure and more efficient steam turbine engines allowed it to carry essentially the same number of passengers. The great advantage lay in its speed of 35.59 knots, which captured the Blue…

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• slavery
  • 
    In African Americans: Slavery in the United States

    Black slaves played a major, though unwilling and generally unrewarded, role in laying the economic foundations of the United States—especially in the South. Blacks also played a leading role in the development of Southern speech, folklore, music, dancing, and food, blending the cultural…

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• “Titanic” disaster inquiry
  • 
    In Titanic: U.S. inquiry

    The U.S. investigation, which lasted from April 19 to May 25, 1912, was led by Sen. William Alden Smith. In all, more than 80 people were interviewed. Notable witnesses included Second Officer Charles Lightoller, the most senior officer to survive. He defended the…

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• West Florida Controversy
  • In West Florida Controversy

    The United States, wishing to control the river outlets in the region, claimed the area as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1810 American frontiersmen in the Baton Rouge section rebelled against Spanish control, and the remainder was soon included in the Mississippi Territory.…

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• Westward movement
  • 
    In American frontier

    >United States history, the advancing border that marked those lands that had been settled by Europeans. It is characterized by the westward movement of European settlers from their original settlements on the Atlantic coast (17th century) to the Far West (19th century).

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• women’s suffrage
  • 
    In women's suffrage: The United States

    From the founding of the United States, women were almost universally excluded from voting. Only when women began to chafe at this restriction, however, was their exclusion made explicit. The movement for woman suffrage started in the early 19th century during the agitation…

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• world’s fairs
  • 
    In world's fair: The Great Exhibition and its legacy: the golden age of fairs

    In the United States, fairs were inspired by the experience of those who attended and participated in the early fairs in Europe. Although mechanics’ institutes existed in the United States in the 19th century, their occasional exhibitions do not appear to have had much influence on the…

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  • 
    In world's fair: The Great Exhibition and its legacy: the golden age of fairs

    …of the centennial commemoration of America’s Declaration of Independence concluded that a world’s fair would be the most appropriate type of celebration. Consequently, the U.S. Centennial Exhibition was held in Philadelphia in 1876. Its critical success and attendance of just under 10 million were enough to offset a large financial…

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  • 
    In world's fair: The Great Exhibition and its legacy: the golden age of fairs

    …world’s fairs held in the United States during this golden era tended to have characteristic differences from those held in Europe. U.S. participation in European fairs was privately managed. The absence of government involvement carried over to the organization of expositions in the United States, where federal aid was confined…

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  • 
    In world's fair: Modernism and Cold War rivalries

    …staging grounds for displays of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. At the expositions in Brussels (1958) and Montreal (1967), the main focus of attention was on the comparison between the pavilions of the rival countries, and critics and politicians analyzed them endlessly. Although the Soviet Union did not participate in the 1962 Century…

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  • 
    In world's fair: Modernism and Cold War rivalries

    Both the United States and the Soviet Union touted their space programs in their pavilions, but the real focus of the exposition was on the host country and its remarkable recovery just 25 years after the end of World War II. The exposition, which attracted a then-record…

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• Y2K bug
  • In Y2K bug

    In the United States, business and government technology teams worked feverishly with a goal of checking systems and fixing software before the end of December 1999. Although some industries were well on the way to solving the Y2K problem, most experts feared that the federal government and…

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automotive industry

• post war
  • 
    In automotive industry: The automotive industry after 1945

    …of it occurred outside the United States. Although American production continued to grow, its share of world automotive production fell from about 80 percent of the total to 20 percent. Among individual countries the United States was the leading producer until the recession of the early 1980s. In 1980 Japan,…

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Cold War and its demise

• 
  In Cold War

  …World War II between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. The Cold War was waged on political, economic, and propaganda fronts and had only limited recourse to weapons. The term was first used by the English writer George Orwell in an article published in 1945…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The coming of the Cold War, 1945–57

  The symbolic first meeting of American and Soviet soldiers occurred at Torgau, Ger., on April 25, 1945. Their handshakes and toasts in beer and vodka celebrated their common victory over Nazi Germany and marked the collapse of old Europe altogether; but their inarticulate grunts and exaggerated smiles presaged the lack…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: Total Cold War and the diffusion of power, 1957–72

  …making—in which the Soviets or Americans could try to prove that their system was the best. At the same time, the decolonization of dozens of underdeveloped states in Asia and Africa induced the superpowers to look beyond the original front lines of the Cold War in Europe and East Asia.

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The end of the Cold War

  …been cyclical, with both the United States and the U.S.S.R. alternating between periods of assertion and relaxation. In the first years after 1945 the United States hastily demobilized its wartime military forces while pursuing universal, liberal internationalist solutions to problems of security and recovery. Stalin, however, rejected American blueprints for…

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• Berlin blockade and airlift
  • 
    In Berlin blockade

    …the Western Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin.

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• biological weapons
  • In biological weapon: Biological weapons in the Cold War

    …the Soviet Union and the United States, as well as their respective allies, embarked on large-scale biological warfare R&D and weapons production programs. Those programs were required by law to be halted and dismantled upon the signing of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1972 and the entry into force…

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• containment
  • In containment

    …foreign policy pursued by the United States beginning in the late 1940s in order to check the expansionist policy of the Soviet Union. The term was suggested by the principal framer of the policy, the U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan, who wrote in an anonymous article in the July 1947…

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• Cuban missile crisis
  • 
    In Cuban missile crisis

    …major confrontation that brought the United States and the Soviet Union close to war over the presence of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Cuban missile crisis

    …reach most of the continental United States. He apparently hoped that these missiles, once in place, could then serve as a bargaining chip in negotiations leading to a neutralized Germany, which in turn might help Moscow persuade the Chinese to cease their own nuclear program. Instead, the ploy brought the…

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• Distant Early Warning Line
  • In Distant Early Warning Line

    …a warning system for the United States and Canada that could detect and verify the approach of aircraft or intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from the Soviet Union.

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• first strike
  • In first strike

    of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union practiced a nuclear strategy known as mutually assured destruction (MAD). That strategy involved the threat of massive retaliation against a nuclear attack, as both nations maintained arsenals of nuclear weapons large enough that either could survive a nuclear attack…

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• foreign policy with Latin America
  • 
    In history of Latin America: The United States and Latin America in the Cold War era

    Whatever policies Latin American countries adopted in the postwar era, they had to take into account the probable reaction of the United States, now more than ever the dominant power in the hemisphere. It was…

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• Marshall Plan
  • 
    In Marshall Plan

    The United States feared that the poverty, unemployment, and dislocation of the post-World War II period were reinforcing the appeal of communist parties to voters in western Europe. On June 5, 1947, in an address at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C.

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  • 
    In history of Europe: The blast of World War II

    …deputy military governor in the U.S. zone of postwar Germany, “was like a city of the dead.”

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• New Look strategy
  • In New Look

    …as a way for the United States to meet its Cold War military obligations without putting too much strain on the country’s economy.

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• political economy
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The world political economy

    …Central American revolutionaries, while the United States had been expelled from Iran and was suffering from inflation and recession at home. Eight years later the Reagan administration had rebuilt American defenses, presided over the longest peacetime economic expansion in 60 years, and regained the initiative in superpower relations. Because the…

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• Reykjavík summit of 1986
  • 
    In Reykjavík summit of 1986

    …11 and 12, 1986, between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. The meeting, the second between the two leaders, was intended not as a summit but as a session in which the leaders explored the possibility of limiting each country’s strategic nuclear weapons to

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• Truman Doctrine
  • In Truman Doctrine

    Harry S. Truman declaring immediate economic and military aid to the governments of Greece, threatened by communist insurrection, and Turkey, under pressure from Soviet expansion in the Mediterranean area. As the United States and the Soviet Union struggled to reach a balance of power during…

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  • 
    In history of Europe: The United States to the rescue

    Greece and Turkey, in the Cold War conditions of 1947, were strategically vital and highly vulnerable Western outposts on the southern flank of the U.S.S.R. and its satellite states. Turkey was especially exposed. In Greece, the mainly communist National Liberation…

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• weapons of mass destruction
  • In weapon of mass destruction

    …During the Cold War the United States, the Soviet Union, and other major powers built up enormous stockpiles containing tens of thousands of nuclear bombs, missile warheads, and artillery shells—so many that the military and diplomatic standoff of that era was sometimes described as a “balance of terror.” At the…

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conflicts

ARAB–ISRAELI WARS

• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The Suez Crisis

  U.S. policy was to play down the Arab–Israeli dispute and alert all parties to the danger of Communist penetration. To this end, Eisenhower dispatched a futile mission in January 1956 in hopes of reconciling Cairo and Tel Aviv. In addition, the United States agreed to…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The Six-Day War

  …to show moderation, while President Johnson told Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban to remain calm: “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone.” Neither superpower, however, was able to restrain its client. When Egyptian and Iraqi troops arrived in Jordan, giving every sign of an imminent pan-Arab…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: Palestinian terrorism and diplomacy

  The United States and the Soviet Union reacted with subtle attempts to fine-tune the outcome by alternately withholding or providing arms to the belligerents and by urging or discouraging a UN cease-fire. Nixon denied Israel an airlift of arms until October 13, preventing Israel from launching…

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• Yom Kippur War
  • 
    In Yom Kippur War

    …Golda Meir turned to the United States for aid, while the Israeli general staff hastily improvised a battle strategy. The reluctance of the United States to help Israel changed rapidly when the Soviet Union commenced its own resupply effort to Egypt and Syria. U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon countered by establishing…

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POST-SEPTEMBER 11 TERRORIST ATTACKS

• Afghanistan
  • 
    In Afghanistan: U.S.-led invasion and toppling of the Taliban

    ) The Taliban refused repeated U.S. demands to extradite bin Laden and his associates and to dismantle terrorist training facilities in Afghanistan. Within weeks of the attacks, the United States and Britain launched an intensive bombing campaign against the Taliban and provided significant logistical support to Northern Alliance forces in…

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VIETNAM WAR

• 
  In Vietnam War

  …and its principal ally, the United States. Called the “American War” in Vietnam (or, in full, the “War Against the Americans to Save the Nation”), the war was also part of a larger regional conflict (see Indochina wars) and a manifestation of the Cold War between the United States and…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: End of the Vietnam War

  The American achievement of détente with both Moscow and Peking and the failure of North Vietnam’s spring 1972 offensive moved both protagonists in that conflict to bargain as well. In October the secret talks in Paris between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho finally produced an agreement…

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• My Lai Massacre
  • 
    In My Lai Massacre

    …as 500 unarmed villagers by U.S. soldiers in the hamlet of My Lai on March 16, 1968, during the Vietnam War.

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• Afghan War
  • 
    In Afghan War: Insurgency against communist rule (1978–92)

    …Union’s Cold War adversary, the United States.

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Soviets in Afghanistan

    The United States was tardy in responding to the 1978 coup despite Carter’s concern over the arc of crisis and the murder of the U.S. ambassador in Kabul in February 1979. At the same time, the Soviet invasion aroused American suspicions of a grand strategy aimed…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Afghanistan

    …came in mid-1986, when the United States began to supply the Afghan rebels with surface-to-air Stinger missiles, which forced Soviet aircraft and helicopters to suspend their low-level raids on rebel villages and strongholds. In January 1987 Najibullah announced a cease-fire, but the rebels refused his terms and the war continued.

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• Afghanistan War
  • 
    In Afghanistan War: The September 11 attacks and the U.S.-British invasion

    The hijacking and crashing of four U.S. jetliners on September 11, 2001, brought instant attention to Afghanistan. The plot had been hatched by al-Qaeda, and some of the 19 hijackers had trained in Afghanistan. In the aftermath of the attacks, the administration of…

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  • 
    In Afghanistan War: Iraq takes centre stage

    …spring 2010 more than 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed in Afghanistan, while the British troops suffered some 300 deaths and the Canadians some 150. Both Britain and Canada stationed their troops in Afghanistan’s south, where fighting had been most intense. More than 20 other countries also lost troops during…

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• Balkans
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Balkans

    During the Cold War the United States patronized Yugoslavia because of its independence from the Soviet bloc. The Bush administration, preoccupied elsewhere, regarded the Yugoslav breakup as a European problem. The EC, in turn, did not want to wade into a civil war and could not agree on a common…

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• Bay of Pigs invasion
  • 
    In Bay of Pigs invasion

    …financed and directed by the U.S. government.

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• beginnings of East-West division
  • 
    In history of Europe: The blast of World War II

    Both U.S. and Soviet troops, from opposite directions, had helped to liberate Europe, and on April 25, 1945, they met on the Elbe River. They toasted each other and posed for the photographers; then the Soviets dug themselves into new defensive positions, still facing west.

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• Bering Sea Dispute
  • In Bering Sea Dispute

    …Sea Dispute, dispute between the United States, on the one hand, and Great Britain and Canada, on the other, over the international status of the Bering Sea. In an attempt to control seal hunting off the Alaskan coast, the United States in 1881 claimed authority over all the Bering Sea…

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• Bleeding Kansas civil war
  • 
    In Bleeding Kansas

    …small civil war in the United States, fought between proslavery and antislavery advocates for control of the new territory of Kansas under the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Sponsors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (May 30, 1854) expected its provisions for territorial self-government to arrest the “torrent of fanaticism” that had been…

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• Falkland Islands War
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Marxism and the Cuban role

    The United States was torn between loyalty to its NATO ally (and political friend of President Reagan) and the fear of antagonizing South Americans by siding with the “imperialists.” When U.S. diplomacy failed to resolve the dispute, however, the United States supplied Britain with intelligence data…

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• Grenadan invasion
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Nicaragua and El Salvador

    …a large airstrip that the United States feared would ultimately be used by Soviet aircraft. The evident incompetence of the New Jewel leadership, however, prompted a split in 1982 between Bishop’s supporters and hard-line Leninists. In October 1983 the revolution came apart when Bishop was arrested and, when protest demonstrations…

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• Iran-Iraq war
  • 
    In history of Arabia: The Iran-Iraq War

    U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his successor in 1981, Ronald Reagan, pledged American support to keep open the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 60 percent of the industrial world’s oil supply was being transported.

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Soviets in Afghanistan

    In 1987 the United States sharply increased its presence in the gulf by permitting Kuwaiti oil tankers to fly the U.S. flag and by deploying a naval task force to protect them in passage through the gulf. Compared to the situation of the 1950s, when John Foster Dulles’…

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• Iraq War (2003)
  • 
    In Iraq: The Iraq War

    …deadly terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 (see September 11 attacks). No clear connection was made linking Iraq with the attacks, but U.S. President George W. Bush argued that the attacks demonstrated the vulnerability of the United States and that this vulnerability, combined with Iraq’s antipathy…

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  • 
    In Baghdad: Health

    …became a major task of U.S. administrators following the initial phase of the Iraq War.

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  • 
    In Baghdad: Baghdad in modern Iraq

    Continuing tension between the U.S. and Iraqi governments led to the Iraq War in 2003. American troops entered the city in April and, despite criticism from other Arab states, met with little resistance from city residents. The main task of the U.S. administrators was to reestablish law and order…

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  • 
    In Iraq War

    …force of troops from the United States and Great Britain (with smaller contingents from several other countries) invaded Iraq and rapidly defeated Iraqi military and paramilitary forces. It was followed by a longer second phase in which a U.S.-led occupation of Iraq was opposed by an insurgency. After violence began…

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• Korean War
  • 
    In Korean War

    >United States as the principal participant, joined the war on the side of the South Koreans, and the People’s Republic of China came to North Korea’s aid. After more than a million combat casualties had been suffered on both sides, the fighting ended in July…

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  • 
    In Korean War: North to the Yalu

    …units and an assortment of U.S. support troops. The entire force was designated X Corps and was commanded by Major General Edward M. Almond, MacArthur’s chief of staff.

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  • 
    In Korean War: Air warfare

    Throughout the war U.S. political and military leaders studied the possible use of nuclear weapons, and upon four separate occasions they gave this study serious attention. The answer was always the same: existing atomic bombs, carried by modified B-29s, would have little effect except for leveling cities. The…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Korean War

    In 1945 Soviet and American troops occupied the peninsula, ruled by Japan since 1910, on either side of the 38th parallel. In North Korea indigenous Marxists under Kim Il-sung took control with Soviet assistance and began to organize a totalitarian state. In South Korea General John R. Hodge, lacking…

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• Lundy’s Lane Battle
  • In Battle of Lundy's Lane

    …of Niagara Falls, ending a U.S. invasion of Canada during the War of 1812. After defeating the British in the Battle of Chippewa on July 5, 1814, U.S. troops under General Jacob Brown established themselves at Queenston. On the night of July 24–25, a British force under General Phineas Riall…

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• Libya
  • 
    In Libya: Intensification of international efforts: NATO air strikes, diplomacy, and ICC warrants

    …operations in Libya from the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. The handover came after several days of debate among NATO countries over the limits of international military intervention; several countries argued that the coalition’s aggressive targeting of pro-Qaddafi ground forces had exceeded the mandate set by the UN…

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  • 
    In Libya Revolt of 2011: Uprising

    The United States, the European Union (EU), and a number of other countries also imposed sanctions. On February 28 the United States announced that it had frozen at least $30 billion in Libyan assets.

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• Mexico
  • 
    In Antonio López de Santa Anna

    …quell a rebellion by primarily U.S. settlers there. During the course of this punitive expedition, Texas declared its independence from Mexico (March 2). After his army had defeated Texan forces at the Alamo and Goliad, Santa Anna then moved eastward to the San Jacinto River, where he was defeated on…

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  • 
    In Mexico: The age of Santa Anna: Texas and the Mexican-American War

    …driving sociopolitical force in the United States. It envisioned a United States that would extend from sea to shining sea and perhaps would ultimately encompass all of Mexico. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, a move that Mexico saw as the first aggressive step and one…

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• Moro Wars
  • In Moro Wars

    …series of scattered campaigns involving American troops and Muslim bands on Mindanao, Philippines. The Moro fought for religious rather than political reasons, and their actions were unconnected with those of the Filipino revolutionaries who conducted the Philippine-American War (1899–1902).

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• Persian Gulf War (1990–1991)
  • 
    In Persian Gulf War

    …producer and exporter, prompted the United States and its western European NATO allies to rush troops to Saudi Arabia to deter a possible attack. Egypt and several other Arab nations joined the anti-Iraq coalition and contributed forces to the military buildup, known as Operation Desert Shield. Iraq meanwhile built up…

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  • 
    In Iraq: The invasion

    U.S. President George Bush and various allies, considering Iraq’s action an act of blatant aggression as well as a threat to Western interests, decided that the status quo ante had to be reestablished, and U.S. troops began arriving in Saudi Arabia the next day. A…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The first post-Cold War crisis: war in the Persian Gulf

    …Arabia looked at once to Washington and the United Nations for support. President Bush condemned Hussein’s act, as did the British and Soviet governments, and the UN Security Council immediately demanded that Iraq withdraw. Bush echoed the Carter Doctrine by declaring that the integrity of Saudi Arabia, now exposed to…

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• Philippine-American War
  • 
    In Philippine-American War

    United States and Filipino revolutionaries from 1899 to 1902, an insurrection that may be seen as a continuation of the Philippine Revolution against Spanish rule. The Treaty of Paris (1898) had transferred Philippine sovereignty from Spain to the United States but was not recognized by…

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• Plains Wars
  • 
    In Plains Wars

    >United States, along with its Indian allies, over control of the Great Plains between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.

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• Spanish-American War
  • 
    In Spanish-American War

    …War, (1898), conflict between the United States and Spain that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and resulted in U.S. acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America.

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  • 
    In William McKinley: Presidency

    … newspapers—were eager to see the United States intervene in Cuba, where Spain was engaged in brutal repression of an independence movement. Initially, McKinley hoped to avoid American involvement, but in February 1898 two events stiffened his resolve to confront the Spanish. First, a letter written by the Spanish minister to…

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  • 
    In Philippines: The Philippine Revolution

    …out between Spain and the United States (the Spanish-American War). After the U.S. naval victory in the Battle of Manila Bay in May 1898, Aguinaldo and his entourage returned to the Philippines with the help of Adm. George Dewey. Confident of U.S. support, Aguinaldo reorganized his forces and soon liberated…

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• Trent Affair
  • In Trent Affair

    …between Great Britain and the United States. On Nov. 8, 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes, commanding the Union frigate San Jacinto, seized from the neutral British ship Trent two Confederate commissioners, James Murray Mason and John Slidell, who were seeking the support of England and France for the cause of the…

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• U-2 Incident
  • 
    In U-2 Incident

    …conference in Paris between the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France.

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crime

• gangs
  • In gang: History

    …gangs were prevalent in the United States in the mid-19th century, followed by Jewish gangs in the early 20th century, and Asian and Latino gangs in the late 20th and early 21st century.

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• lynchings
  • 
    In lynching

    …of reported lynching in the United States indicate that, between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 persons were lynched, of whom 1,293 were white and 3,437 were black. Lynching continued to be associated with U.S. racial unrest during the 1950s and ’60s, when civil rights workers and advocates were threatened and in…

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• reformatories
  • In reformatory

    …boys also appeared in the United States in the mid-19th century, and reformatories for girls spread rapidly from the early 20th century. The institutions for girls, which usually were smaller than those for boys, were concerned primarily with controlling sexual promiscuity and teaching domestic skills. As in England, most reformatories…

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culture

• blackface minstrelsy
  • In blackface minstrelsy

    …sizeable audiences in both the United States and Britain. Although blackface minstrelsy gradually disappeared from the professional theatres and became purely a vehicle for amateurs, its influence endured in later entertainment genres and media, including vaudeville theatre, radio and television programs, and the world-music and motion-picture industries of the 20th…

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• science fiction
  • 
    In science fiction: The world of science fiction

    …generally disreputable, particularly in the United States, where it first catered to a juvenile audience. Following World War II, science fiction spread throughout the world from its epicentre in the United States, spurred on by ever more staggering scientific feats, from the development of nuclear energy and atomic bombs to…

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  • 
    In science fiction: Mass markets and juvenile science fiction

    During this period in the United States, “dime novels” (shoddily produced pamphlets that usually sold for a nickel) and boys’ adventure magazines proliferated. The stories distributed in these books and magazines, such as Luis Senarens’s Frank Reade, Jr., and His Steam Wonder (1884), often boasted SF elements that appealed to…

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  • 
    In science fiction: The golden age of science fiction

    …1934 SF readership in the United States was large enough to support the establishment of the Science Fiction League, Gernsback’s professionally sponsored fan organization (with local chapters in the United Kingdom and Australia). Like a kind of freemasonry, SF fandom spread across the United States. Eager young devotees soon had…

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  • 
    In science fiction: New directions in fiction

    In Britain and the United States, the editorial polemics of Michael Moorcock (associated for many years with New Worlds and its anthologies) and Harlan Ellison (Dangerous Visions [1967] and Again, Dangerous Visions [1972]) led a rebellious New Wave movement that facilitated the genre’s move in fresh directions. Sporting a…

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economics

• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
  • 
    In American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

    …was designed to stimulate the U.S. economy by saving jobs jeopardized by the Great Recession of 2008–09 and creating new jobs.

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• bank branching restrictions
  • 
    In bank: Entry, branching, and financial-services restrictions

    In the United States through much of the 20th century, a combination of federal and state regulations, such as the Banking Act of 1933, also known as the Glass-Steagall Act, prohibited interstate banking, prevented banks from trading in securities and insurance, and established the Federal Deposit Insurance…

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• Bretton Woods system
  • 
    In money: The Bretton Woods system

    …II, Great Britain and the United States outlined the postwar monetary system. Their plan, approved by more than 40 countries at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, aimed to correct the perceived deficiencies of the interwar gold exchange standard. These included the volatility of floating exchange rates, the inflexibility…

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• deposit insurance
  • 
    In bank: Origins of deposit insurance

    Although various U.S. state governments experimented with deposit insurance prior to the establishment of the FDIC in 1933, most of these experiments failed (in some cases because the banks engaged in excessive risk taking). The concept of national deposit insurance had garnered little support until large numbers…

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• mortgage-backed securities
  • In mortgage-backed security

    …boom that occurred in the United States prior to the financial crisis of 2007–08. The crisis brought with it a substantial increase in defaults on mortgage loans and turned the MBSs that carried defaulted loans into “toxic” (essentially worthless) assets. To mitigate the resulting damage to financial markets and to…

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international relations

• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The era of the great powers

  The outcome of the U.S. Civil War and Anglo-American settlement of the Canadian border ensured that North America would not develop a multilateral balance-of-power system. South and Central America had splintered into 17 independent republics following the final retreat of Spanish rule in 1820, but the new Latin American…

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CUBA

• 
  In Cuba: Filibustering and the struggle for independence

  People in the United States, especially in the southern slave states, showed a lively and growing interest in the island and supported a series of filibustering expeditions led by Narciso López (1849–51) and others. (The red, white, and blue battle flag that López flew was designated the Cuban…

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• 
  In Cuba: Occupation by the United States

  Although Cuban independence was granted by the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898), U.S. forces continued to occupy the country, and General John R. Brooke, who was designated the military governor on January 1, 1899, tried to exclude Cubans from government. He disbanded…

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• 
  In Cuba: National evolution and Soviet influence

  …States since the revolution, the U.S. trade embargo imposed in the early 1960s remains essentially in force. U.S. activities such as the invasion of Grenada, investigations concerning the condition of political prisoners in Cuba, and propaganda radio broadcasts beamed toward Cuba since 1985 perpetuated bilateral antagonism. Emigration from Cuba to…

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• 
  In Havana: Alliance with the United States

  …with the aid of the United States, and for six decades thereafter Cuba was a close economic and political ally of that country. Increasing numbers of U.S. businesses and tourists were drawn to Havana, which acquired the look of a U.S. city, with the signs of its northern neighbour’s influence…

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• Cuban Revolution
  • 
    In Cuban Revolution: U.S. rule and the creation of the Cuban Republic

    … passed from Spain to the United States on January 1, 1899, and it was governed by direct U.S. military administration until May 20, 1902. During these years, Cubans filled more public offices than they had under Spanish rule, and much was done for public works, sanitation, and education. Most notable…

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FRANCE

• 
  In France: Foreign policy and financial crisis

  …support given to the rebellious North American colonies in the American Revolution (1775–83). French military officers, most notably the young marquis de Lafayette, fought with the American forces, and for a short while the French navy had control of the high seas. The real victor of the Siege of Yorktown,…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: France’s independent course

  …at NATO’s reliance on the United States and publicly doubted whether the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Europe was still reliable after Sputnik. Would the Americans really risk a nuclear attack on New York City or Washington, D.C., to defend Berlin or Paris? Therefore, de Gaulle accelerated the quiet development of…

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• Statue of Liberty
  • 
    In Statue of Liberty

    …of the peoples of the United States and France. Standing 305 feet (93 metres) high including its pedestal, it represents a woman holding a torch in her raised right hand and a tablet bearing the adoption date of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) in her left. The torch,…

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KOREA

• 
  In 38th parallel

  The line was chosen by U.S. military planners at the Potsdam Conference (July 1945) near the end of World War II as an army boundary, north of which the U.S.S.R. was to accept the surrender of the Japanese forces in Korea and south of which the Americans were to accept…

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• 
  In North Korea: Domestic priorities and international cooperation

  …over nuclear issues with the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which had been denied access by the North Koreans to an experimental facility at Yŏngbyŏn, where it was suspected that North Korea was diverting plutonium to build nuclear weapons. In the summer of 1994 the North…

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• 
  In North Korea: Relations with the South

  …Korean navy forcibly seized a U.S. intelligence ship, the USS Pueblo, and its crew off North Korea’s east coast and held the crew hostage for nearly a year. In April 1969 North Korea shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane in the international airspace over the east coast of the peninsula.…

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• 
  In North Korea: Internal challenges and international relations

  Relations with the United States in particular reached a low point in January 2002, when U.S. Pres. George W. Bush named North Korea, with Iran and Iraq, as part of an “axis of evil” of countries that were pursuing the development of weapons of mass destruction. Tensions remained…

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• 
  In Korea: Division of Korea

  …December 1, 1943, by the United States, Great Britain, and China, pledged independence for Korea “in due course.” This vague phrase aroused the leaders of the Korean provisional government in Chongqing to request interpretation from the United States. Their request, however, received no answer. At the Yalta Conference held in…

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• Agreed Framework
  • In Agreed Framework

    …increased energy aid from the United States. The Agreed Framework sought to replace North Korea’s nuclear power program with U.S-supplied light-water reactors, which are more resistant to nuclear proliferation. Despite some success with initial implementation, the agreement effectively ended in 2003 because of open hostility between the two countries.

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PALESTINE

• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The Middle East

  A first apparent breakthrough for U.S. policy occurred in November 1988, when the Palestine National Council, meeting in Algiers, voted overwhelmingly to accept UN Resolutions 242 and 338, calling for Israel to evacuate the occupied territories and for all countries in the region “to live in peace within secure and…

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• 
  In Palestine: World War II

  …number of pro-Zionist statements from U.S. politicians. In August 1945 U.S. President Harry S. Truman requested that British Prime Minister Clement Attlee facilitate the immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors into Palestine, and in December the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives asked for unrestricted Jewish immigration to the…

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• 
  In Palestine: The birth of the Palestinian Authority

  …Peres signed an agreement in Washington providing for the expansion of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and for elections of a chairman and a legislative council of the PA. The PA would gain control over six large West Bank towns (Janīn, Nāblus, Ṭūlkarm, Qalqīlyah, Ramallah, and Bethlehem) as well…

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• UN statehood request opposition
  • 
    In Mahmoud Abbas: Peace process and international relations

    …opposed by Israel and the United States—had become necessary, he argued, because the U.S.-mediated peace negotiations had placed too little pressure on Israel to make concessions for peace.

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PHILIPPINES

• 
  In Emilio Aguinaldo

  …ceded by Spain to the United States by the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on December 10, 1898.

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• 
  In Philippines: Security

  …shortly after Philippine independence, the United States continued to maintain several bases in the Philippines and to provide the Philippines with military equipment and training. Revision of the agreements in 1978 recognized Philippine sovereignty over the bases. All installations subsequently raised the Philippine flag and were placed under Filipino command.

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The Philippines and Central America

  …a long-standing ally of the United States, lost his grip on power. Crowds backed by leading elements in the Roman Catholic church, the press, labour unions, and a portion of the army rose up to demand his resignation. The Reagan administration, like previous U.S. administrations, had tolerated Marcos in light…

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• design of flag
  • In flag of the Philippines

    …was finally suppressed by the United States, and its flag was outlawed between 1907 and 1920. In 1936 the new Commonwealth of the Philippines adopted that flag in anticipation of eventual independence. Under Japanese occupation, the Philippine flag was first forbidden and then officially recognized on October 14, 1943, when…

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• Afghanistan
  • 
    In Afghanistan: Overview

    …the Soviet Union and the United States, accounted for more than four-fifths of government investment and development expenditures during that period. Roads, dams, power plants, and factories were constructed, irrigation projects carried out, and education broadened. When foreign assistance declined in the 1970s, the sale of natural gas to the…

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  • 
    In Afghanistan: Civil war, communist phase (1978–92)

    …killed, and the elimination of U.S. assistance to Afghanistan was guaranteed.

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  • 
    In Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

    Backed by the United States, the mujahideen rebellion grew, spreading to all parts of the country. The Soviets initially left the suppression of the rebellion to the Afghan army, but the latter was beset by mass desertions and remained largely ineffective throughout the war.

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  • 
    In Afghanistan War

    …2008, was marked by a U.S. strategy of defeating the Taliban militarily and rebuilding core institutions of the Afghan state. The third phase, a turn to classic counterinsurgency doctrine, began in 2008 and accelerated with U.S. Pres. Barack Obama’s 2009 decision to temporarily increase the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.…

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  • 
    In Afghanistan War: Iraq takes centre stage

    The United States consistently represented the largest foreign force in Afghanistan, and it bore the heaviest losses. By spring 2010 more than 1,000 U.S. troops had been killed in Afghanistan, while the British troops suffered some 300 deaths and the Canadians some 150. Both Britain and…

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• Armenia
  • 
    In Armenia: The republic of Armenia

    …Wilson hoped to persuade the United States to accept a mandate for an independent Armenia, but the Senate refused the responsibility (June 1, 1920). On August 10 Armenia, now recognized de jure, signed the Treaty of Sèvres, by which the Ottomans recognized Armenia as a free and independent state. On…

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• Australia
  • 
    In Australia: World War II

    The United States became Australia’s major ally. In a famous statement (December 1941), Prime Minister Curtin declared: “I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free from any pangs about our traditional links of friendship to Britain.” A sharper note of independence from Britain…

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  • 
    In Australia: International affairs

    …theme was Australian acceptance of U.S. dominance—all the more inexorable as the United Kingdom abandoned much of the modest interest it had cherished for Australia. The U.S. alliance crystallized in the 1951 Australia–New Zealand–United States (ANZUS) Pact, reinforced (1955–77) by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Only

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• Austria
  • 
    In Austria: End of the Habsburg empire

    …he sent a note to President Wilson asking for an armistice on the basis of the Fourteen Points. On October 18 the U.S. secretary of state, Robert Lansing, replied that, in view of the political development of the preceding months and, especially, in view of the fact that the new…

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  • 
    In Austria: Allied occupation

    …the four occupying armies (U.S., British, French, and Soviet). In September 1945 a conference of representatives of all states extended the authority of the Renner government to all parts of Austria.

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  • 
    In Austria: Anschluss and World War II

    , and the United States, a declaration was published that declared the Anschluss null and void and pledged the Allies to restore Austrian independence; it also reminded the Austrians that they had to make an effort to rid themselves of the German yoke. Though the British prime minister,…

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• Bahrain
  • 
    In Bahrain: Security

    …defense cooperation agreement with the United States. Bahrain is the headquarters for the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. The United Kingdom maintains a small military presence.

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• Bermuda
  • 
    In Bermuda: Economy

    Principal trading partners include the United States, which supplies nearly seven-tenths of Bermuda’s imports by value; the countries of the European Union; Canada; and various Caribbean countries.

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• Bolivia
  • 
    In Bolivia: Post-1952 regimes

    …massive financial support from the United States, that brought inflation under control; at the same time, he also suspended most of the advanced social programs of the revolution. The government ended worker coadministration of the nationalized mine companies and cut back on social services. It also invited North American petroleum…

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• Bulgaria
  • 
    In Bulgaria: Boris’s alliance with Germany

    …on Great Britain and the United States, a move of only symbolic importance, but Tsar Boris avoided joining the war against the Soviet Union, fearing that this would lead to popular unrest. Bulgaria did not send troops to the front and was relatively untouched by military operations until the summer…

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• Cambodia
  • 
    In Cambodia: Independence

    …countries were allied with the United States, which the prince disliked. At the same time, Sihanouk feared the eventual success of the Vietnamese communists in their war against South Vietnam and the United States, and he dreaded the prospect of a unified Vietnam under communist control. To gain some freedom…

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• Canada
  • 
    In Canada: Foreign affairs

    …and the emergence of the United States as the world’s foremost economic and military power. Canada’s relations with Britain remained close but less extensive than in the past, whereas those with the United States became closer. The creation of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense in 1940 was a significant…

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  • 
    In Canada: U.S.-Canadian relations

    The policy of the Liberal government (in power since 1935), wartime cooperation, and the close economic interconnections between Canada and the United States had brought the two neighbours into a more intimate relationship than ever before. After World War II Canada’s special relations…

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  • 
    In Canada: Foreign relations

    Canada’s relations with the United States were close, but there had been a long record of border disputes, the settlements of which frequently were resented, rightly or wrongly, by Canadians. Canada and the United States also clashed over fishing rights in the North Atlantic and, in the 1890s, over…

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• Caribbean
  • 
    In sphere of influence

    …Doctrine (1823) effectively asserted a U.S. sphere of influence in the “New World” by excluding further European colonization in the Americas, presaging later U.S. interventions in the internal affairs of smaller neighbours. In the aftermath of World War II, the Soviet Union created a sphere of influence as a political…

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• Chile
  • In Itata and Baltimore incidents

    …two serious occurrences involving the United States and Chile, the first taking place during and the second shortly after the Chilean civil war of 1891.

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  • 
    In Chile: The presidency of Gabriel González Videla

    Economic links with the United States, which had grown after the economic crisis of the 1930s, were strengthened after World War II; U.S. investments in Chile increased from $414,000,000 in 1945 to $540,000,000 in 1950, largely in copper production. By 1952 the United States had loaned $342,000,000 to the…

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• China
  • 
    In China: The first Opium War and its aftermath

    …of Wanghia (Wangxia) with the United States and in October the Treaty of Whampoa (Huangpu) with France. These arrangements made up a complex of foreign privileges by virtue of the most-favoured-nation clauses (guaranteeing trading equality) conceded to every signatory. All in all, they provided a basis for later inroads such…

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  • 
    In China: International relations

    The United States, the European Community (later succeeded by the European Union), and Japan imposed sanctions, though by 1992 China had largely regained its international standing with all but the United States. But by the mid-1990s both sides had taken steps toward improved relations, and China…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Chinese civil war

    In 1945, Truman reaffirmed America’s commitment to a “strong, united, and democratic China” and dispatched Marshall to seek a truce and a coalition government between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists at Chungking and Mao Zedong’s Communists in Yen-an. Neither side, however, had any intention

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• Colombia
  • 
    In Colombia: The return of the Conservatives, 1880–1930

    …refused an offer from the United States to build a canal across the isthmus, and in 1903 the Panamanians revolted against the government in Bogotá. They negotiated a treaty with the United States that created a Canal Zone 10 miles (16 km) wide under U.S. sovereignty in exchange for an…

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  • 
    In canals and inland waterways: The Panama Canal

    Meanwhile, U.S. interest had been actively maintained, but the situation was complicated by political difficulties and questions of sovereignty. A treaty between Britain and the United States recognized the exclusive U.S. right to construct, regulate, and manage a canal across the isthmus; but Panama was Colombian…

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• Colombo Plan
  • In Colombo Plan

    The United States, Japan, and a number of Southeast Asian, East Asian, and Pacific countries joined later. The plan came into full operation in 1951. Its name was changed following the end of participation by several newly communist countries of Southeast Asia.

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• Costa Rica
  • 
    In Costa Rica: Costa Rica in the 20th century

    … of 1916, which gave the United States permission to use the San Juan River (the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica) as part of an interoceanic canal route. Costa Rica protested that Nicaragua was violating preexisting treaty rights and that opening a route would threaten Costa Rican security. The claim…

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• Czechoslovakia
  • 
    In Czechoslovak history: Struggle for independence

    From the United States came material help and moral encouragement, though U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s early statements pertaining to the peace aims were rather hazy. But several weeks after the United States declared war on Austria-Hungary, President Wilson promulgated his celebrated Fourteen Points (January 1918), the 10th…

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• Diego Garcia
  • 
    In Diego Garcia

    …to enable the development of U.S. military facilities established in accordance with an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom. Development of this base for air and naval support in the late 1970s and ’80s evoked strong opposition from littoral states of the Indian Ocean area, who wished…

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• Dominican Republic
  • 
    In Dominican Republic: Intervention by the United States

    Meanwhile, the United States had expanded its commercial interests in the Dominican Republic (and the entire Caribbean region), and it had replaced Europe as the republic’s major trading partner. However, U.S. and European investors became alarmed by the republic’s deteriorating financial situation. In…

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  • 
    In Dominican Republic: Caudillos

    Báez then approached the United States with a protectorate plan. Pres. Ulysses S. Grant favoured annexation, but the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the treaty by one vote.

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• East Asian Economic Group
  • In East Asian Economic Group

    …would notably exclude both the United States and Australia. The creation of the European Union (EU) under the 1992 Maastricht Treaty and the signing of the 1992 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were important factors in Mahathir’s argument that East Asia needed its own bloc.

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• Egypt
  • 
    In Egypt: Ismāʿīl, 1863–79

    …cotton exports caused by the American Civil War (1861–65) greatly increased Britain’s demand for Egyptian long-staple cotton. This product had been introduced and developed in Muḥammad ʿAlī’s time, but its production had languished until the interruption of supplies of American cotton caused a fourfold increase in price during the war…

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  • 
    In Egypt: The Nasser regime

    …with the support of the United States, to counter the threat of Soviet expansion in the Middle East. With the 1955 arms deal, the Soviet Union established itself as a force in the region.

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  • 
    In Egypt: The Sadat regime

    …days of fighting—and once the United States abandoned its early neutrality and resupplied Israel with a massive airlift of military supplies—the Israelis drove the Egyptians and Syrians back. A cease-fire was secured by the United States while Egyptian troops remained east of the Suez Canal and Israeli forces had crossed…

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  • 
    In Egypt: The Mubarak regime

    …of ongoing efforts by successive U.S. presidents and by their own president to promote peace between Israel and other Arab countries and, particularly, the Palestinians. In a changing global economy, there was a popular suspicion that such attempts at fostering better relations might have some ulterior motive. In particular, many…

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• El Salvador
  • 
    In El Salvador: Civil war

    …addition, the role of the United States, which previously had shown very little interest in the affairs of El Salvador, changed markedly with Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as president in January 1981. During the balance of the decade, the United States supplied El Salvador with financial aid amounting to $4 billion;…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Nicaragua and El Salvador

    Opponents of U.S. involvement warned of another Vietnam in Central America, while supporters warned of another Cuba.

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• Ethiopia
  • 
    In eastern Africa: Pan-Somalism

    …subversive and turned to the United States, which he concluded would be the dominant postwar power, to balance the geopolitical threat. American lend-lease and other assistance permitted Ethiopia to rebuff Britain and to secure the return of the Ogaden in 1948. The vision of Greater Somaliland, however, dominated Somali political…

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  • 
    In Ethiopia: Return to power

    …1945 at a meeting with U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Haile Selassie submitted memoranda stressing the imperative for recovering Eritrea and thereby gaining free access to the sea. In 1948 and again in 1949, two commissions established by the wartime Allied Powers and by the United Nations (UN) reported that…

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  • 
    In eastern Africa: Cracks in the empire

    …a country tied to the United States and Israel. This largely Muslim movement received an infusion of young Christians after 1962, when, through Addis Ababa’s manipulation, the Eritrean assembly voted to adopt the status of a governorate. The ELF now had sufficient strength to attack Eritrea’s administrative and economic infrastructure.…

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• functionalism
  • In functionalism: Critique of functionalism

    The United States withdrew from the ILO between 1977 and 1980 and briefly suspended its participation in the IAEA from 1982 to 1983. In both cases, U.S. criticism turned crucially on accusations that the agencies were adopting discriminatory practices against Israel’s rights to participation. The United…

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• German reunification
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: From skepticism to reality

    …Germany fully allied with the United States and the EC, while a neutral Germany might become a loose cannon vacillating between Moscow and the West. So it was that on the day after the Malta summit, President Bush declared his support for a gradually reunited Germany to remain in NATO…

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• Germany
  • 
    In Germany: Allied occupation and the formation of the two Germanys, 1945–49

    Americans, British, French, and Soviets divided Germany into four zones. The American, British, and French zones together made up the western two-thirds of Germany, while the Soviet zone comprised the eastern third. Berlin, the former capital, which was surrounded by the Soviet zone, was

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• Greece
  • 
    In Greece: Emigration

    …from the Peloponnese to the United States, that characterized the late 19th and early 20th centuries. About one-sixth of the entire population participated in this great exodus, the vast majority being male. The early emigrants had little intention of settling permanently overseas, though few ever returned to their homeland. Migrant…

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  • 
    In Greece: Civil war and its legacy

    The United States, assuming Britain’s former mantle as Greece’s chief external patron, soon provided military equipment and advice. American intervention and the consequences of the break between Josip Broz Tito (under whose leadership the Yugoslav state would eventually unite) and Stalin, combined with factionalism and altered…

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• Greenland
  • 
    In Greenland: History

    …under the protection of the United States during the German occupation of Denmark in World War II and was returned to Denmark in 1945. Following the war, Denmark responded to Greenlanders’ complaints over its administration of the island. The monopoly of the Royal Greenland Trading Company was abolished in 1951,…

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• Guatemala
  • 
    In Jacobo Arbenz

    As the reforms advanced, the U.S. government, cued by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, became increasingly alarmed, fearing the threat to sizable American banana investments and to U.S. bank loans to the Guatemalan government as well. Also of concern to the United States were the increasingly close relations between…

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  • 
    In Guatemala: Demographic trends

    …the 1980s, and to the United States and Belize. Many of these refugees returned home with the help of a United Nations refugee commission, which functioned until 2004; however, the number of Guatemalans emigrating continued to rise into the 21st century.

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  • 
    In Guatemala: Guatemala from 1931 to 1954

    …a heavy impact upon the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company, and the growth of communist influence became the most troublesome issues of the Arbenz regime. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began efforts to destabilize the regime and recruited a force of Guatemalan exiles in Honduras, which was led by the…

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• Honduras
  • 
    In Honduras: The 20th century

    The U.S. president, William Howard Taft, sent marines to protect American banana investments, which by this time had grown considerably, with three companies exploiting this Honduran product. All three made large capital outlays in the form of improved port facilities, railroads, workers’ settlements, and similar developments.

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• Iceland
  • 
    In Iceland: Security

    The United States, having assumed responsibility for Iceland’s defense, maintains a naval air station at Keflavík International Airport under NATO auspices.

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• India
  • 
    In India: Foreign policy

    …to receive arms from the United States, Nehru withdrew his support.

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  • 
    In India: Foreign policy

    Relations with the United States improved during the last half of the 1980s, with greater trade, scientific cooperation, and cultural exchanges. When civil rule resumed in Pakistan in 1988, India’s relations with that country also reached a new level of friendship, though the South Asian thaw proved to…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: China, India, and Pakistan

    The United States looked to India as a laboratory of democracy and development in the Third World and a critical foil to Communist China and in consequence had contributed substantial amounts of aid. The U.S.S.R. also began an effective aid program in 1955, and Nehru looked…

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• Indonesia
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: China, India, and Pakistan

    The Kennedy administration had tried to appease Sukarno with development aid and even obliged the Dutch to cede Irian Barat (Irian Jaya) in the face of Sukarno’s threats in 1963. Sukarno still turned to Moscow for support and gave himself over to profligate personal behaviour and…

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  • In East Timor and Indonesia Action Network

    The United States remained a firm ally of Indonesia throughout most of this period, providing aid, diplomatic support, and military training to the Suharto regime. In the wake of a 1991 massacre of hundreds of funeral marchers by the Indonesian armed forces at the Santa Cruz…

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• Iran
  • 
    In Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi: Policies

    …support and assistance of the United States and the United Kingdom, restored Mohammad Reza to power.

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Iranian revolution

    …the importance of Iran for U.S. interests, including the presence there of critical electronic listening posts used to monitor missile tests inside the U.S.S.R., Carter was unable to choose between personal loyalty toward an old ally and the moral argument on behalf of reform or abdication. In January 1979 the…

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  • 
    In Iran: Foreign relations

    Relations with the United States remained close, reflected by the increasing predominance of Western culture in the country and the growing number of American advisers, who were necessary to administer the shah’s ambitious economic reforms and, most important, to aid in the development of Iran’s military. The Iranian…

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  • 
    In Iran: Postrevolutionary chaos

    …November 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy by a group of Iranian protesters demanding the extradition of the shah, who at that time was undergoing medical treatment in the United States. Through the embassy takeover, Khomeini’s supporters could claim to be as “anti-imperialist” as the political left. This ultimately gave…

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• Iraq
  • 
    In Iraq: The Iran-Iraq War

    Relations with the United States, which had resumed in 1984, began to improve. In 1987 the United States agreed to reflag 11 Kuwaiti tankers and escort them in international waters through the Strait of Hormuz. Britain and France also escorted tankers carrying their own flags. Although a U.S.…

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• Islamic fundamentalism
  • 
    In fundamentalism: Islamic fundamentalism

    …al-Qaeda, which repeatedly condemn the United States for enabling the dispossession of the Palestinians, for orchestrating international sanctions on Iraq that contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens in the 1990s, and for maintaining a military “occupation” of Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War (1990–91).…

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• Israel
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The creation of Israel

    The United States and Britain feared that the Arabs would turn to the Soviets for aid, but the U.S.S.R. mystified all parties in October by agreeing with the American plan for partition. The Soviets apparently hoped to hasten British withdrawal, insinuate themselves into Middle Eastern diplomacy,…

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  • 
    In Israel: The war of 1948

    …was quickly recognized by the United States, the Soviet Union, and many other governments, fulfilling the Zionist dream of an internationally approved Jewish state. Neither the UN nor the world leaders, however, could spare Israel from immediate invasion by the armies of five Arab states—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan…

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  • 
    In Israel: The Suez War

    …lines, but not before the United States had agreed to placing a UN peacekeeping force in the Sinai. American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles also promised in writing that the United States would treat the Strait of Tiran as an international waterway and keep it open.

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• Italy
  • 
    In Italy: The Cold War political order

    De Gasperi visited the United States in January 1947 and returned with $150 million in aid. He had excluded the Communists and their allies, the Socialists, from his government the previous May both to placate the Vatican and the conservative south and to ensure that much-needed U.S. aid continued.…

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• Japan
  • 
    In Japan: The opening of Japan

    …various Western powers that the U.S. government would send an expeditionary fleet to Japan. In 1846 Commander James Biddle of the American East Indian fleet appeared with two warships in Uraga Harbour (near Yokohama) and held consultations with bakufu representatives on the question of opening commercial relations. When refused by…

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  • 
    In Japan: Foreign relations

    The United States and Great Britain did what they could to assist the Chinese Nationalist cause. The Burma Road into southern China permitted the transport of minimal supplies to Nationalist forces. Constant Japanese efforts to close this route led to further tensions between Great Britain and…

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  • 
    In Japan: Foreign relations

    The intended target was the United States, since the Soviets and Nazis had already signed a nonaggression pact in 1939, and the Soviets were invited to join the new agreement later in 1940.

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  • 
    In Japan: International relations

    …were worked out by the United States and its noncommunist allies during the command of General Matthew B. Ridgway, who succeeded MacArthur as supreme commander in April 1951.

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  • 
    In Japan: International relations

    …its close cooperation with the United States, but it also has sought to rebuild relations with its Asian neighbours. Despite the rapid political transformation of the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, ties between the United States and Japan have been…

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  • 
    In Empire of Japan: The last shogun

    …establish diplomatic relations with the United States. The following year Perry returned with a much larger fleet, and it soon became clear that the shōgun (Japanese: “barbarian-subduing generalissimo”) was unable to protect Japan from this new wave of “barbarians.” Concessions were made to them in spite of the objections of…

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• Jordan
  • 
    In Jordan: Securing the throne, 1953 to c. 1960

    …to Great Britain and the United States for assistance. Washington agreed to provide additional military and economic aid. The British government, eager to see the pro-Western Ḥussein secure in Jordan, stationed British paratroops in the country until late 1958. As a result, anti-Hāshimite Palestinians supported by Nasser made no further…

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• Kuwait
  • 
    In Kuwait: Iran-Iraq War

    …relations in 1963) and the United States to provide protection for its tankers in early 1987. The effect of the war was to promote closer relations with Kuwait’s conservative gulf Arab neighbours (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman), with whom Kuwait had formed the Gulf Cooperation…

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• Latin America
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Latin-American problems

    …Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, the United States had frequently been accused of meddling too much in the affairs of other states in the hemisphere. By the 1950s the contradictory charge was leveled that the United States was not involving itself enough, as evidenced by the fact that the United States…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Marxism and the Cuban role

    Before 1958 the United States—the “colossus to the north”—had used its influence to quell revolutionary disturbances, whether out of fear of Communism, to preserve economic interests, or to shelter strategic assets such as the Panama Canal. After Castro’s triumph of 1959, however, the United States undertook to improve…

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  • 
    In history of Latin America: Good Neighbor Policy and World War II

    …power of the hemisphere, the United States. During the 1920s it had already begun a retreat from the policy of active intervention in Latin America. This policy, adopted in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and the United States’ open support of Panamanian secession from Colombia, had featured the creation…

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• Lebanon
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Regional crises

    The United States sent Marines to Beirut to facilitate the evacuation of the PLO, while it tried without success to piece together a coalition Lebanese government and induce the Israelis and Syrians to withdraw. In October 1983 terrorists blew up the U.S. Marine barracks, killing more…

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  • 
    In Lebanon: Chamoun regime and the 1958 crisis

    …coup, President Chamoun immediately requested U.S. military intervention, and on the following day U.S. Marines landed outside Beirut. The presence of U.S. troops had little immediate effect on the internal situation, but the insurrection slowly faded out. Parliament turned to the commander of the army, General Chehab, as a compromise…

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• Liberia
  • 
    In western Africa: The fall of the African kingdoms

    …the Sierra Leone example, private U.S organizations had settled freed slaves for whom there was no place in their own society prior to 1863. British and French merchants questioned the right of the settlers to control and to tax their trade and, since formal U.S. policy was anticolonial, the result,…

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  • 
    In Liberia: History

    …a suitable home for freed American slaves. In 1818 two U.S. government agents and two officers of the American Colonization Society (founded 1816) visited the Grain Coast. After abortive attempts to establish settlements there, an agreement was signed in 1821 between the officers of the society and local African chiefs…

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• Libya
  • 
    In Libya: The Qaddafi regime

    Libya’s relationship with the United States, which had been an important trading partner, deteriorated in the early 1980s as the U.S. government increasingly protested Qaddafi’s support of Palestinian Arab militants. An escalating series of retaliatory trade restrictions and military skirmishes culminated in a U.S. bombing raid of Tripoli and…

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• Mexico
  • 
    In Mexico: Trade

    The United States is Mexico’s most important trading partner, and U.S.-based companies account for more than half of Mexico’s foreign investment. The United States is also the source of about one-half of Mexican imports and the destination for some four-fifths of the country’s exports. In contrast,…

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  • 
    In Mexico: Expansion of Spanish rule

    …area that is now the United States, a settlement had been made in Florida in 1565. In 1598 Juan de Oñate began the conquest of New Mexico, though the Pueblo Indians of the region rebelled in 1680 and were not reconquered until 1694. The Pueblo Rebellion was by no means…

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  • 
    In Mexico: The military revolution

    The new president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, was determined to oust Huerta and, on flimsy pretexts, landed U.S. troops at Veracruz and occupied it (see Veracruz incident). All of the revolutionary leaders except Villa rejected this external intervention in a national struggle. The combined revolutionary forces unseated Huerta

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• Mongolia
  • 
    In Mongolia: Old friends, new friends

    …number of years with the United States (the two countries established diplomatic relations in January 1987) and several other countries. High-ranking Mongolian officials began visiting the United States in 1991, but the brief visit George W. Bush paid to Ulaanbaatar in November 2005 was the first by any sitting U.S.…

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• Monroe Doctrine
  • 
    In Monroe Doctrine

    …(December 2, 1823), cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy enunciated by Pres. James Monroe in his annual message to Congress. Declaring that the Old World and New World had different systems and must remain distinct spheres, Monroe made four basic points: (1) the United States would not interfere in the internal…

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• Myanmar
  • 
    In Myanmar: The unsettled early years, 1948–62

    …Nationalist China (Taiwan) by the United States, Burma stopped accepting U.S. aid and rejected all other foreign aid.

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  • 
    In Myanmar: Myanmar since 1988

    …the April 2012 elections, the United States and European Union announced plans to begin lifting some of the economic sanctions and other restrictions that had been in place since the early 1990s, and in November U.S. Pres. Barack Obama made a brief visit to Yangon. In addition, in early 2012…

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• New Zealand
  • 
    In New Zealand: World War II and the postwar decades

    …theatre was dominated by the United States, the forces of which provided New Zealand’s sole defense. The fact that disaster was averted by American, not British, forces required a change in New Zealand’s attitudes; security was conferred by a foreign, though friendly, power. External relations in the postwar period reflected…

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• Nicaragua
  • 
    In Nicaragua: Economy

    …declared on Nicaragua by the United States in 1985, along with economic mismanagement by the Sandinista government, brought about economic decline, service shortages, war-driven inflation, and a growing foreign debt that lasted throughout the decade. In the late 1980s the Sandinistas implemented an austerity program featuring some privatization and sharp…

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  • 
    In Nicaragua: The Sandinista government

    On February 25, 1990, the U.S.-endorsed and U.S.-financed National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Opositor; UNO) coalition and its presidential candidate, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the widow of the martyred newspaper editor, won an upset victory, and a peaceful transfer of administrations took place on April 25.

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Nicaragua and El Salvador

    …and received large sums of U.S. aid. A radical faction soon took control of the revolution, however, and moderates either departed or were forced out of the government in Managua. The Sandinistas then socialized the economy, suppressed freedom of the press and religion, and established close ties to Cuba and…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Philippines and Central America

    The U.S. conflict with the Nicaraguan revolutionary regime of Daniel Ortega also reached a climax in 1989. On February 14 five Central American presidents, inspired by the earlier initiatives of the Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace laureate Óscar Arias Sánchez, agreed to plans for a…

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• Pakistan
  • 
    In Pakistan: Zia ul-Haq

    …Reagan became president of the United States in 1981, Washington also answered the call for help. Pakistan soon became the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, which by the end of Reagan’s second term had reached several billion dollars. Not insignificantly, Reagan also waived all trade restrictions on aid…

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• Panama
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The Philippines and Central America

    Closer to home, the United States continued to face not only the aggressively hostile Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and the leftist rebellion in El Salvador (backed, the White House said, by Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet Union) but also a growing rift with the Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega

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  • 
    In Panama: Panama Canal and coastal ports

    …Panama Canal, built by the United States and operated continuously since its opening in 1914, has fortified Panama’s role as an international shipping and trade centre. From 1903 until 1979 a strip of land 10 miles (16 km) wide lying on either side of the canal, the Canal Zone, was…

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  • 
    In Panama: Transcontinental railroad and canal projects

    … of 1846 had granted the United States a right-of-way through the isthmus and thus the right to intervene to protect the line and free transit across the continent. Political turmoil raged while construction was under way. Panama inaugurated and discarded 20 governors (also called presidents), while New Granada (now Colombia)…

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  • 
    In Panama: Treaty relations with the United States

    Throughout the years of Panama’s independent existence, treaty relations with the United States have been subjected to several major changes. By the protocol of 1936, the United States yielded its right to seize additional land for its administration or defense of the canal.…

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• Paraguay
  • 
    In Paraguay: Paraguay’s conflicts with its neighbours

    …a large flotilla of the U.S. Navy appeared to force a solution to a complex diplomatic issue, but British war vessels captured and held for a time the flagship of the small Paraguayan navy. In most of those contretemps, López was forced to give in, and the consequent humiliation lent…

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• Point Four Program
  • In Point Four Program

    …provided initially mainly by the United States and, on a bilateral basis, frequently through contracts with U.S. business and educational organizations. Eventually several new national and international organizations were created to contribute to various aspects of development—such as the International Finance Corporation (1956) for investing equity capital in private enterprises…

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• Poland
  • 
    In Poland: The rebirth of Poland

    …radically in 1917 when the United States entered the war and two revolutions shook Russia. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, to whom the great Polish patriot and pianist Ignacy Paderewski had gained access through Colonel Edward M. House, already spoke of a united and autonomous Poland in a

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• post-Cold War
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The quest for a new world order, 1991–95

    ” In fact, American opinion was sharply divided on how to take advantage of the sudden, surprising victory in the Cold War. Neo-isolationists urged the United States to pare back foreign commitments, neo-nationalists wanted the country to look more to its own interests abroad, liberals hoped for a…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Assertive multilateralism in theory and practice

    …to take advantage of the U.S. public’s discontent over economic issues. Like Woodrow Wilson, however, who had the same desire, Clinton was harassed by overseas crises from the start.

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• pre-World War I era
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The era of the great powers

    …Monroe Doctrine, promulgated by the United States and enforced by the British navy, sufficed to spare Latin America new European adventures, the only major exception—Napoleon III’s gambit in Mexico—occurring while the United States was preoccupied with civil war. When the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian tsar and

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Attitude of the United States

    …case of war with the United States. British intelligence intercepted the Zimmermann telegram and leaked it to Washington, further inflaming American opinion. When U-boats proceeded in mid-March to sink the Algonquin, City of Memphis, Vigilancia, and Illinois (the latter two without warning), Wilson went before Congress and in a lofty…

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• pre-World War II era
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Peacemaking, 1919–22

    …prestige and power of the United States, suggested that the dream of a New Jerusalem in world politics was not merely Armistice euphoria. A century before, Europe’s aristocratic rulers had convened in the capital of dynasties, Vienna, to fashion a peace repudiating the nationalist and democratic principles of the French…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Japan’s aggression in China

    …events that would lead to Pearl Harbor.

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• Qatar
  • 
    In Qatar: Independence

    …1990s Qatar agreed to permit U.S. military forces to place equipment in several sites throughout the country and granted them use of Qatari airstrips during U.S. operations in Afghanistan in 2001. These agreements were formalized in late 2002, and Qatar became the headquarters for American and allied military operations in…

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• Romania
  • 
    In Romania: The seizure of power

    …without vigorous intervention by the American and British governments. These indeed protested the communists’ tactics, but, when they officially recognized the Groza government in February 1946 in return for the promise of early elections, they gave up any remaining leverage they might have had. The communists postponed the elections because…

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• Russia
  • 
    In Russia: Foreign affairs

    …the West, particularly with the United States. The initial honeymoon period in U.S.-Russian relations ended abruptly, as it became increasingly clear that some geopolitical goals of each country were incompatible. Russia opposed the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Although Russia eventually accepted the inevitability of NATO…

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• Ryukyu Islands
  • In Ryukyu Islands

    …in World War II, the United States took control of the islands. The military government was replaced in 1951 by a civil administration based in Naha (on Okinawa), the islands’ largest city. The chief executive, who originally was appointed by the U.S. high commissioner, was elected by the legislature in…

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• Saudi Arabia
  • 
    In Saudi Arabia: Foreign affairs

    Since World War II, the United States had become the most influential foreign power in Saudi Arabia. American interest was directed toward the oil industry, which was owned by U.S. companies. In 1960 Saudi Arabia helped found the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The Saudis favoured the United…

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  • 
    In Saudi Arabia: The Islamist opposition

    …them was the presence of U.S. troops and those of other non-Muslim countries on Saudi soil, a presence that—given the proximity of the two holy cities—they deemed not only an affront to their religion but a situation designed only to protect the regime. In November 1995 an explosion rocked the…

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  • 
    In Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

    …the West, especially with the United States. In 2001 relations between the two countries grew strained over Saudi claims that the U.S. government was not evenhanded in its approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The situation worsened later in the year, following the September 11 attacks against the United States and…

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• Somalia
  • 
    In Somalia: Pan-Somalism

    Since the United States and the West provided military support to Ethiopia and Kenya, Somalia turned to the Soviet Union for military aid. Nevertheless, the republic maintained a generally neutral but pro-Western stance, and, indeed, a new government formed in June 1967 under the premiership of Maxamed…

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  • 
    In Somalia intervention

    >United States-led military operation in 1992–93 mounted as part of a wider international humanitarian and peacekeeping effort in Somalia that began in the summer of 1992 and ended in the spring of 1995. The intervention culminated in the so-called Battle of Mogadishu on October 3–4,…

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• South Africa
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Regional crises

    United States diplomacy sought quietly to promote a comprehensive settlement of South Africa’s problems by pressuring Pretoria to release South West Africa (Namibia) and gradually dismantle apartheid in return for a Cuban evacuation of Angola and Mozambique. This policy of “constructive engagement,” by which the…

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• Spain
  • 
    In Spain: Imperial problems

    …and destroyed France as an American power. Spain lost the territory between Florida and the Mississippi, in return gaining Louisiana from France. Spain also had to recognize Portuguese advances in the Río de la Plata (the fort of Sacramento) and the British right to cut mahogany in Central America. The…

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  • 
    In Spain: Franco’s Spain, 1939–75

    …of the Cold War, the United States would come to consider Spain a valuable ally against the Soviet Union and that France and Britain, though declaring support for the democratic opposition, would not intervene directly to overthrow him at the cost of renewed civil war. Hence, the hopes of the…

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• Sweden
  • 
    In Sweden: Policy during World War I

    …by the entry of the United States into the war in 1917. Hammarskjöld was forced to resign; he was followed by a Conservative government and shortly afterward by a Liberal one, both of which conducted a more-diplomatic trading policy with the Allies. In May 1918 an agreement was reached with…

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• Syria
  • 
    In Syria: Uprising and civil war

    The United States and the European Union (EU) imposed sanctions that included travel bans and asset freezes targeted against Assad and more than a dozen senior Syrian officials thought to be directing the government’s actions against the protesters. In addition, an arms embargo was applied to…

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  • 
    In Syria: Uprising and civil war

    …evident that majorities in the United States and in the United Kingdom were opposed to military action. A motion in the British Parliament to authorize strikes in Syria failed on August 29, and a similar vote in the U.S. Congress was postponed. Meanwhile, diplomacy took centre stage, resulting in an…

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  • 
    In Syrian Civil War: Civil war

    …evident that majorities in the United States and the United Kingdom were opposed to military action. A motion in the British Parliament to authorize strikes in Syria failed on August 29, and a similar vote in the U.S. Congress was postponed on September 10. Meanwhile, diplomacy took centre stage, resulting…

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• Third World
  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Decolonization and development

    , the United States, and China. All three assumed that the new nations would naturally opt for the democratic institutions of their mother countries or, on the other hand, would gravitate toward the “anti-imperialist” Soviet or Maoist camps. The United States had urged Britain and France to…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Regional crises

    U.S.–Soviet competition in the Third World also continued through the 1980s as the Soviets sought to benefit from indigenous sources of unrest. The campaign of the Communist-led African National Congress (ANC) against apartheid in South Africa, for instance, might serve Soviet strategic aims, but the…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Disengagement in the Third World

    Moreover, the United States faced opposition to friendly regimes in the Philippines, El Salvador, and, of course, Israel. The Soviet Union’s financial crisis increasingly limited its ability to underwrite client states, however, while its troubles in eastern Europe and at home afforded the United States the opportunity…

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• Tunisia
  • 
    In Tunisia: Foreign relations

    …particular, with France and the United States. There were, nonetheless, some early crises, including a French bombing raid on the Tunisian village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef (Sāqiyat Sīdī Yūsuf) in 1958, during which France claimed the right to pursue Algerian rebels across the border; the Bizerte incident of 1961, concerning…

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• Turkey
  • 
    In Turkey: World War II and the postwar era, 1938–50

    …Turkey to seek and receive U.S. assistance; U.S. military aid began in 1947 (providing the basis for a large and continuing flow of military aid), and economic assistance began in 1948.

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  • 
    In Turkey: Early Cold War era: Western-oriented policy and membership in NATO and CTO

    …particularly the friendship of the United States. Turkey sent troops to fight in the Korean War and joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; 1952) and the Central Treaty Organization (1955). This Western-oriented policy derived from Turkey’s fear of its enormous northern neighbour, the Soviet Union, from its dependence on…

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• United Kingdom
  • 
    In Canada: The War of 1812

    …largely be traced to the Anglo-U.S. rivalry in the fur trade. British traders and soldiers had supplied Indian tribes and afforded them moral support in their contest with the advancing U.S. frontier. Britain had surrendered the western posts by the Jay Treaty of 1794, but the cause of the Canadian…

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: Great Britain and decolonization

    …its special relationship with the United States to procure modern weapons. Eisenhower agreed to sell the Skybolt air-launched missile to Britain by way of healing the wounds inflicted by Suez and shoring up NATO after Sputnik. When McNamara subsequently cut the Skybolt program in his campaign to streamline the Pentagon,…

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• United Nations
  • 
    In United Nations: History and development

    The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union took the lead in designing the new organization and determining its decision-making structure and functions. Initially, the “Big Three” states and their respective leaders (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin) were

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• U.S.S.R.
  • 
    In Mikhail Gorbachev: General secretary of the CPSU: perestroika to the fall of the Soviet Union

    …he signed an agreement with U.S. President Ronald Reagan for their two countries to destroy all existing stocks of intermediate-range nuclear-tipped missiles. In 1988–89 he oversaw the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan after their nine-year occupation of that country.

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  • 
    In 20th-century international relations: The collapse of the Soviet Union

    American conservatives urged the White House to support the republics’ struggle for freedom, but Bush insisted on caution. He had worked closely with Gorbachev to end the Cold War peaceably and feared that his fall from power would mean either the return of Communist hard-liners…

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  • 
    In Soviet Union: Foreign policy

    The United States was the main holdout, refusing recognition on the grounds that the communist regime routinely violated accepted norms of international behaviour. Absence of diplomatic relations, however, did not prevent Americans from carrying on business with Soviet Russia. On a different level, Moscow strove to…

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  • 
    In Soviet Union: Foreign policy

    Relations with the United States were strained after the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam in early 1965 but later improved. The United States, the U.S.S.R., and the United Kingdom signed the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibited putting nuclear weapons in orbit, in January 1967. The Arab-Israeli War again…

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• Venezuela
  • 
    In Venezuela: The reigns of Guzmán Blanco and Crespo

    President Crespo appealed to the United States, and in 1895 U.S. president Grover Cleveland pressured Britain to arbitrate. An international tribunal handed down a decision in 1899 that failed to satisfy Venezuela’s demands.

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  • 
    In Hugo Chávez: The Chávez presidency

    He also alienated the United States and other countries in the West by forging close ties with Iraq, Iran, and Libya, as well as by openly criticizing the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks of 2001. By early 2002 his approval rating had fallen to 30…

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• Vietnam
  • 
    In Vietnam: The First Indochina War

    The United States, fearful of the spread of communism in Asia, sent large amounts of aid to the French. The French, however, were shaken by the fall of their garrison at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 and agreed to negotiate an end to the war…

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  • 
    In Vietnam: Reunification and early challenges

    …imposed on Vietnam by the United States and most other Western countries. Only the Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe stood by Vietnam.

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• Virgin Islands
  • 
    In United States Virgin Islands: History

    …and in the 1860s the United States began negotiations to purchase the islands from Denmark. The sale was made in 1917 for $25 million. The islands were administered by the U.S. Navy until 1931, when they were transferred to the Department of the Interior; civilian governors appointed by the president…

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  • 
    In Virgin Islands: Settlement and history of the U.S. Virgin Islands

    U.S. interest in the islands began in the Civil War period, but the U.S. Senate refused in 1870 to approve the purchase of St. Thomas and St. John for $7.5 million. The United States moved decisively only in World War I, when it was seen…

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• Yemen
  • 
    In Yemen: Demographic trends

    …in Wales), and in the United States (in industrial areas of the Northeast and Midwest and in the agricultural areas of California). The remittances of these emigrants played an important role in the balance of payments, in radically increasing the income of most Yemenis, and in funding many local development…

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  • 
    In Yemen: Yemen and the war on terror

    …with many countries—but especially the United States—changed dramatically with al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In fact, the change in relations with the United States was anticipated in the reactions by both countries to the suicide

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• Zanzibar trade treaty
  • 
    In eastern Africa: The Omani ascendancy

    …the most important were the Americans. They were the first Westerners to conclude a trade agreement with Saʿīd (1833) and the first also to establish a consul at Zanzibar (1837). (Their prime achievement was to capture the cloth trade to East Africa—so that cheap cotton cloth thenceforth came to be…

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Native American Indian relations

• 
  In American Indian: Colonization and conquest

  …resistance, the governments of the United States and Canada disenfranchised most Northern American tribes of their land and sovereignty. Most indigenous individuals were legally prohibited from leaving their home reservation without specific permission; having thus confined native peoples, the two countries set about assimilating them into the dominant culture. Perhaps…

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• 
  In Native American: The American Revolution (1775–83)

  between England and the new United States included the English cession of the lands south of the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes and as far west as the Mississippi River. The indigenous nations were not consulted regarding this cession, which placed those Iroquois who had been allied with…

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• 
  In Native American: Removal of the eastern nations

  The first full declaration of U.S. policy toward the country’s indigenous peoples was embodied in the third of the Northwest Ordinances (1787):

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• 
  In Native American: The conquest of the western United States

  In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo granted the United States all of Mexico’s territories north of the Rio Grande (see Mexican-American War); in the same year, gold was discovered in California.

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• 
  In Native American: Assimilation versus sovereignty: the late 19th to the late 20th century

  of Canada and the United States.

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• Carson
  • 
    In Kit Carson

    …over the region for the United States. From then until the end of the war with Mexico (1846–48), Carson alternated fighting and guiding with dispatch-bearing to Washington, where his reputation for bravery, loyalty, and devotion to duty won for him many friends in high office.

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Pacific Islands

MARSHALL ISLANDS

• 
  In Marshall Islands

  …Marshalls were administered by the United States as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands from 1947 to 1986, when the Trust Territory was dissolved by the U.S. government.

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• nuclear testing
  • 
    In Micronesian culture: Contemporary Micronesia

    …was introduced to the world—the United States exploded atomic bombs over the Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands. The first U.S. tests, code-named Able and Baker, occurred as part of a program known as Operation Crossroads. The target of the operation comprised some 90 ships that were anchored…

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• American Samoa
  • 
    In American Samoa: History

    In 1878 the United States signed a treaty for the establishment of a naval station in Pago Pago Harbor. An 1899 agreement between colonial powers divided Samoa into spheres of influence: Germany gained control of the western islands, and the United States took the eastern islands. Formal cession…

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• Guam
  • 
    In Guam: History

    Guam was ceded to the United States, and Spain sold the other islands of the Marianas to Germany in 1899. From that time until 1950 (except for the period of its occupation by the Japanese during World War II) the governor of the island was a naval officer appointed by…

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• Kiritimati Atoll
  • In Kiritimati Atoll

    ) Although claimed by the United States under the Guano Act of 1856, the atoll was incorporated into the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony by Great Britain in 1919. Kiritimati played a role during World War II for Allied forces, who used it as an important refueling station for military…

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• Mariana Islands
  • 
    In Northern Mariana Islands: Events since c. 1950

    The U.S. invasion of the Marianas during the war destroyed the Japanese-created economy in the islands, and after the war the United States began the task of rebuilding. In 1947 Pres. Harry S. Truman signed an agreement with the United Nations (UN) to administer the Northern…

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• Micronesia
  • 
    In Micronesia: History

    …strategic area to allow the United States to set up military bases as deemed necessary; consequently, ultimate responsibility for the trust territory rested with the UN Security Council rather than with the UN General Assembly, as was the case with other trust territories.

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• ocean exploration
  • 
    In Pacific Ocean: Exploration since the 20th century

    …Pacific were those of the American ship Carnegie (1928–29), the Danish vessel Dana II (1928–30), the Swedish ship Albatross (1947–48), and the Danish ship Galathea (1950–52). In the late 1950s the Soviet vessel Vityaz carried out detailed soundings of the deep trenches of the western Pacific, and in 1960 the…

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• Palau
  • 
    In Palau: History

    …period of administration by the U.S. Navy, Palau became part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under U.S. administration in 1947. A constitution was adopted in 1981 (following two prior referendums), and elections were held in the same year. The country became internally self-governing in 1981.…

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• South Pacific Commission
  • In Secretariat of the Pacific Community

    …Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States to advise them on economic, social, and health matters affecting the South Pacific island territories they administered. It is the oldest regional organization in the Pacific and is headquartered in Nouméa, New Caledonia. Guam and the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands joined…

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political philosophy or doctrine

• 
  In political philosophy: American constitutionalism

  The founders of the United States were deeply influenced by republicanism, by Locke, and by the optimism of the European Enlightenment. George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all concurred that laws, rather than men, should be the final sanction and that government should be responsible to the governed.…

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• anarchism
  • 
    In anarchism: Anarchism in the Americas

    In the United States, a native and mainly nonviolent tradition of anarchism developed during the 19th century in the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Joseph Labadie, and above all Benjamin Tucker. An early advocate of women’s suffrage, religious tolerance, and fair labour legislation,…

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• conservatism
  • 
    In conservatism: The United States

    The perception of the United States as an inherently liberal country began to change in the wake of the New Deal, the economic relief program undertaken by the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 to help raise the country…

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• fascism
  • 
    In fascism: National fascisms

    In the United States the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization founded at the end of the Civil War and revived in 1915, displayed some fascist characteristics. One of its offshoots, the Black Legion, had some 60,000 members in the early 1930s and committed numerous acts…

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• individualism
  • 
    In individualism

    In the United States, individualism became part of the core American ideology by the 19th century, incorporating the influences of New England Puritanism, Jeffersonianism, and the philosophy of natural rights. American individualism was universalist and idealist but acquired a harsher edge as it became infused with elements…

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• nationalism
  • 
    In nationalism: English Puritanism and nationalism

    …that form that it influenced American and French nationalism in the following century.

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• popular sovereignty
  • 
    In popular sovereignty

    …also called squatter sovereignty, in U.S. history, a controversial political doctrine according to which the people of federal territories should decide for themselves whether their territories would enter the Union as free or slave states. Its enemies, especially in New England, called it “squatter sovereignty.”

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• progressive millenialism
  • 
    In eschatology: Later progressive millennialism

    …with the role of the United States in history proved to be a volatile mixture in the hands of Protestant ministers, and for much of that period millennialism fed the fires of nationalism and Manifest Destiny. In a typical utterance, a leading Presbyterian minister of the 1840s, Samuel H. Cox,…

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• sovereignty
  • 
    In sovereignty: History

    …the Supreme Court of the United States asserted successfully in Marbury v. Madison (1803) its right to declare laws unconstitutional through a procedure called judicial review. Although this development did not lead to judicial sovereignty, it seemed to vest the sovereign power in the fundamental document itself, the Constitution. This…

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television

• program history
  • 
    In Television in the United States

    …created and broadcast in the United States. American TV programs, like American popular culture in general in the 20th and early 21st centuries, have spread far beyond the boundaries of the United States and have had a pervasive influence on global popular culture.

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• technical developments
  • 
    In television: Mechanical systems

    …Charles Francis Jenkins in the United States to build the world’s first successful televisions. The question of priority depends on one’s definition of television. In 1922 Jenkins sent a still picture by radio waves, but the first true television success, the transmission of a live human face, was achieved by…

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terrorism

AL-QAEDA

• 
  In al-Qaeda

  …declared holy war against the United States. The organization established camps for Muslim militants from throughout the world, training tens of thousands in paramilitary skills, and its agents engaged in numerous terrorist attacks, including the destruction of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (1998), and…

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• September 11 attacks
  • 
    In September 11 attacks

    …al-Qaeda against targets in the United States, the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil in U.S. history. The attacks against New York City and Washington, D.C., caused extensive death and destruction and triggered an enormous U.S. effort to combat terrorism. Some 2,750 people were killed in New York, 184 at…

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  • In hijacking

    …hijacked four airliners in the United States and flew two of them into the World Trade Center complex in New York City and one into the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after passengers—apprised of their fate via cellular telephone—attempted to overtake their attackers. Overall,…

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  • 
    In Pentagon

    …the Pentagon’s groundbreaking, five terrorists hijacked a commercial airliner and piloted it into the building during the September 11 attacks. Part of the southwest side of the building was destroyed, and 189 people, including the terrorists, were killed. The damage was largely repaired within a year.

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  • 
    In terrorism: History

    …the late 20th century the United States suffered several acts of terrorist violence by Puerto Rican nationalists (such as the FALN), antiabortion groups, and foreign-based organizations. The 1990s witnessed some of the deadliest attacks on American soil, including the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in…

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• Bush administration
  • 
    In George W. Bush

    ), 43rd president of the United States (2001–09), who led his country’s response to the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and initiated the Iraq War in 2003. Narrowly winning the electoral college vote in 2000 over Vice Pres. Al Gore in one of the closest and most-controversial elections in…

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trade

• African slaves
  • 
    In Middle Passage

    …the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. It was one leg of the triangular trade route that took goods (such as knives, guns, ammunition, cotton cloth, tools, and brass dishes) from Europe to Africa, Africans to work as slaves in the Americas and…

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  • 
    In western Africa: The abolition of slavery

    …nations, notably France and the United States, whose own naval controls were fitful, objected strongly to British warships stopping, searching, and, if need be, arresting their ships at sea. Furthermore, as long as there was a market for slaves in the Americas (i.e., until all the American countries had abolished…

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• Iron Act
  • In Iron Act

    U.S. colonial history, one of the British Trade and Navigation acts; it was intended to stem the development of colonial manufacturing in competition with home industry by restricting the growth of the American iron industry to the supply of raw metals. To meet British needs,…

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• North American Free Trade Agreement
  • 
    In North American Free Trade Agreement

    …and services passing between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The pact effectively created a free-trade bloc among the three largest countries of North America. NAFTA went into effect in 1994 and remained in force until it was replaced in 2020.

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• Open Door policy
  • 
    In Open Door policy

    …of principles initiated by the United States in 1899 and 1900 for the protection of equal privileges among countries trading with China and in support of Chinese territorial and administrative integrity. The statement was issued in the form of circular notes dispatched by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay to…

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• smuggling
  • In smuggling

    …sale of liquor in the United States (1920–33), fleets of ships carried liquor from Europe and the West Indies to the Atlantic coast, while truckloads were run all along the Canadian frontier. In the second half of the 20th century, such drugs as heroin, cocaine, and cannabis were products for…

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treaties and accords

TREATY OF PARIS

• 
  In Treaty of Paris

  …representatives of Spain and the United States in Paris on Dec. 10, 1898 (see primary source document: Treaty of Paris).

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• document

• Alliance for Progress
  • In Alliance for Progress

    …development program established by the United States and 22 Latin American countries in the Charter of Punta del Este (Uruguay) in August 1961. Objectives stated in the charter centred on the maintenance of democratic government and the achievement of economic and social development; specific goals included a sustained growth in…

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• Antarctic Treaty
  • In Antarctic Treaty

    Norway, South Africa, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Later other nations acceded to the treaty.

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  • 
    In Antarctica: The Antarctic Treaty

    >United States), the treaty was enacted on June 23, 1961.

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• Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty
  • In Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

    …ratified in 1972 between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit deployment of missile systems that could theoretically be used to destroy incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) launched by the other superpower. Negotiations to prohibit ballistic missile defenses were first proposed by the United States in 1966 but…

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• Central Treaty Organization
  • In Central Treaty Organization

    That same year the United States became an associate member, the name of the organization was changed to CENTO, and its headquarters was moved to Ankara. Following the fall of the shah in 1979, Iran withdrew, and CENTO was dissolved.

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• Chemical Weapons Convention
  • In Chemical Weapons Convention: Negotiating a treaty

    …at the initiative of the U.S. government, a diplomatic conference was called in Geneva, and a multinational protocol was negotiated and signed by most states prohibiting the use of poison gas and biological weapons in war. Ironically, the United States did not sign the protocol until 1975, owing to domestic…

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• Columbia River Treaty
  • In Columbia River Treaty

    …agreement between Canada and the United States to develop and share waterpower and storage facilities on the Columbia River. The treaty called for the United States to build Libby Dam in northern Montana and for Canada to build dams at three locations in British Columbia. Hydroelectric power was to be…

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• Franco-American Alliance
  • In Franco-American Alliance

    …the turning point of the U.S. War of Independence. Resentful over the loss of its North American empire after the French and Indian War, France welcomed the opportunity to undermine Britain’s position in the New World.

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• Geneva Accords
  • In Geneva Accords

    Laos, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, the Viet Minh (i.e., the North Vietnamese), and the State of Vietnam (i.e., the South Vietnamese). The 10 documents—none of which were treaties binding the participants—consisted of 3 military agreements, 6 unilateral declarations, and a Final Declaration of the Geneva…

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• Ghent Treaty
  • 
    In Treaty of Ghent

    …between Great Britain and the United States to end the War of 1812 on the general basis of the status quo antebellum (maintaining the prewar conditions). Because the military positions for each side were so well balanced, neither country could obtain desired concessions. No mention was made in the peace…

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• Harris Treaty
  • In Harris Treaty

    …and diplomatic privileges for the United States in Japan and constituted the basis for Western economic penetration of Japan. Negotiated by Townsend Harris, first U.S. consul to Japan, it provided for the opening of five ports to U.S. trade, in addition to those opened in 1854 as a result of…

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• Helsinki Accords
  • In Helsinki Accords

    …formal recognition of this, the United States and its western European allies pressed the Soviet Union for commitments on such issues as respect for human rights, expansion of contacts between eastern and western Europe, freedom to travel, and the free flow of information across borders. The Final Act, signed at…

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• Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
  • 
    In Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

    … arms-control accord reached by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987 in which those two nations agreed to eliminate their stocks of intermediate-range and shorter-range (or “medium-range”) land-based missiles (which could carry nuclear warheads). It was the first arms-control treaty to abolish an entire category of weapons systems.…

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• Kanagawa treaty
  • In Treaty of Kanagawa

    Concluded by representatives of the United States and Japan at Kanagawa (now part of Yokohama), it marked the end of Japan’s period of seclusion (1639–1854). The treaty was signed as a result of pressure from U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who sailed into Tokyo Bay with a fleet of warships…

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• London Naval Conference
  • In London Naval Conference

    …it included representatives of the United States, France, Italy, and Japan. At the end of three months of meetings, general agreement had been secured on the regulation of submarine warfare and a five-year moratorium on the construction of capital ships. The limitation of aircraft carriers, provided for by the Washington…

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• Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty
  • 
    In Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

    …by the United Kingdom, the United States, the Soviet Union, and 59 other states, under which the three major signatories, which possessed nuclear weapons, agreed not to assist other states in obtaining or producing them. The treaty became effective in March 1970 and was to remain so for a 25-year…

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• Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
  • 
    In Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty

    …and counterproposals made by the United States and the Soviet Union, which were the two dominant nuclear powers at the time. During most of 1959, both the United States and the Soviet Union temporarily suspended their testing, but negotiations over the next two years were slowed by renewed Cold War…

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• Organization of American States
  • 
    In Organization of American States: History

    At the urging of the United States, the OAS Charter was signed on April 30, 1948, at the conclusion of the Ninth Pan-American Conference, held in Bogotá, Colom. The aims of the organization were to strengthen the peace and security of the Western Hemisphere, to promote the peaceful settlement of…

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• Panama Canal
  • 
    In Panama Canal

    …was controlled solely by the United States, which built it. In 1979, however, control of the canal passed to the Panama Canal Commission, a joint agency of the United States and the Republic of Panama, and complete control passed to Panama at noon on December 31, 1999. Administration of the…

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• Paris Peace Conference
  • 
    In Paris Peace Conference

    …meeting of the French, British, U.S., and Italian heads of government and foreign ministers—respectively, Georges Clemenceau and Stephen Pichon; Lloyd George and Arthur James Balfour; Woodrow Wilson (who fell ill at the conference, probably having contracted the flu as the influenza pandemic of 1918–19 raged) and

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• Peace of Paris
  • 
    In Peace of Paris

    … on one side and the United States, France, and Spain on the other. Preliminary articles (often called the Preliminary Treaty of Paris) were signed at Paris between Britain and the United States on November 30, 1782. On September 3, 1783, three definitive treaties were signed—between Britain and the United States…

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• Reciprocity Treaty of 1875
  • In Reciprocity Treaty of 1875

    …special economic privileges for the United States that were denied to other countries. The treaty helped establish the groundwork for the Hawaiian islands’ eventual annexation.

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• Root–Takahira Agreement
  • 
    In Root-Takahira Agreement

    30, 1908), accord between the United States and Japan that averted a drift toward possible war by mutually acknowledging certain international policies and spheres of influence in the Pacific. The inflammatory effect of discriminatory legislation against Japanese labourers in California had been ameliorated in 1907 by the Gentlemen’s Agreement. The…

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• Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
  • 
    In Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

    …the United Kingdom, and the United States. The treaty came into force on February 19, 1955. Pakistan withdrew in 1968, and France suspended financial support in 1975. The organization held its final exercise on February 20, 1976, and formally ended on June 30, 1977.

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• Versailles Treaty
  • 
    In Treaty of Versailles

    When the German government asked U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson to arrange a general armistice in October 1918, it declared that it accepted the Fourteen Points he had formulated as the basis for a just peace. However, the Allies demanded “compensation by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population…

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World War I

• 
  In 20th-century international relations: Attitude of the United States

  …war on Germany, and the United States became an associated (not an Allied) power. Henceforth World War I hinged on whether the U-boats could force Britain to her knees and the German armies overwhelm the sagging Western Front before the men and matériel of the aroused Yankees could arrive in…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: Germany’s final battles

  The fourth U.S. note (November 5) informed the Germans of Allied agreement and the procedures for dealing with Foch.

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• 
  In World War I: Peace moves and U.S. policy to February 1917

  …German chancellor Bethmann and the U.S. president Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, having proclaimed the neutrality of the United States in August 1914, strove for the next two years to maintain it. (See the video.) Early in 1916 he sent his confidant, Colonel Edward M. House, to sound London and Paris about…

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• 
  In World War I: The Armistice

  …however, now had a Franco-U.S. force of 28 divisions and 600 tanks in the south ready to strike through Metz into northeastern Lorraine. Since Foch’s general offensive had absorbed the Germans’ reserves, this new offensive would fall on their bared left flank and held the promise of outflanking their…

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• “Lusitania” sinking
  • 
    In Lusitania

    …to the entry of the United States into World War I.

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• submarine warfare
  • 
    In Germany: World War I

    …that it would bring the United States into the war, because it offered a slim hope of quick victory if Triple Entente ships carrying men and supplies could be prevented from reaching France. Ludendorff also mounted a major offensive in April 1918, ignoring Woodrow Wilson’s proposal of Fourteen Points for…

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• Zimmermann Telegram
  • In Arthur Zimmermann

    …into an alliance against the United States.

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World War II

• 
  In World War II

  >United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000–50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest…

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• 
  In World War II: Central Europe and the Balkans, 1940–41

  …Britain still undefeated and the United States increasingly inimical to Germany, he decided that the conquest of the European part of the Soviet Union must be undertaken in May 1941 in order both to demonstrate Germany’s invincibility to Great Britain and to deter the United States from intervention in Europe…

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• 
  In World War II: Japanese policy, 1939–41

  …with the opposition of the United States to their plans for territorial aggrandizement. When Japanese troops entered northern Indochina in September 1940 (in pursuance of an agreement extorted in August from the Vichy government of France), the United States uttered a protest. Germany and Italy, by contrast, recognized Japan as…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: From neutrality to active aid

  …change of mood to the United States. While isolationism was still widespread, the vast majority of Americans were sympathetic to Britain, and Roosevelt did not follow Wilson in asking Americans to be neutral in thought as well as deed. Instead he set out to lead public opinion and gradually expand…

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• 
  In 20th-century international relations: The atomic decision

  On September 2, 1945, however, General MacArthur received the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, and the greatest war in history came to a close.

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• 
  In World War II: The German collapse, spring 1945

  …of Soviet as well as U.S., British, and French delegations. At midnight on May 8, 1945, the war in Europe was officially over.

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• Battle of the Atlantic
  • In Battle of the Atlantic

    At that critical juncture, the United States, though still technically a nonbelligerent, assumed a more active role in the Atlantic war. In 1940, through the Destroyers for Bases deal, the United States turned over 50 World War I destroyers to Great Britain, which helped to make good previous naval losses.…

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• Casablanca Conference
  • 
    In Casablanca Conference

    …II in Casablanca, Morocco, between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and their respective military chiefs and aides, who planned future global military strategy for the western Allies. Though invited, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin declined to attend.

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• Dumbarton Oaks Conference
  • 
    In Dumbarton Oaks Conference

    …China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom formulated proposals for a world organization that became the basis for the United Nations.

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• Hitler
  • 
    In Adolf Hitler: World War II

    …to declare war on the United States. From this moment on his entire strategy changed. He hoped and tried (like his idol Frederick II the Great) to break what he deemed was the unnatural coalition of his opponents by forcing one or the other of them to make peace. (In…

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• Leyte Gulf
  • 
    In Battle of Leyte Gulf

    …the Japanese Combined Fleet, permitted U.S. invasion of the Philippines, and reinforced the Allies’ control of the Pacific.

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• Midway Battle
  • 
    In Battle of Midway

    …with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan’s first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.

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• military aircraft production
  • 
    In aerospace industry: World War II

    …to August 14, 1945, the United States produced 300,317 military aircraft. Beginning in early 1942, factories ran 24 hours a day, six to seven days a week. By the end of 1943 the industry labour force had swelled to a high of 2.1 million workers, including tens of thousands of…

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• Nisei
  • 
    In Nisei

    …born and educated in the United States. During World War II all persons of Japanese ancestry on the U.S. West Coast were forcibly evacuated from their homes and relocated in inland detention centres as a result of mass hysteria following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). The…

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• North Africa campaigns
  • 
    In North Africa campaigns: Planning a second front in Africa

    The Anglo-U.S. invasion of northwest Africa had its origins at the Arcadia Conference in Washington, D.C., in the winter of 1941–42 and at meetings in London the following July. Under pressure from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to open a second front, the Western Allies debated how…

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  • 
    In North Africa campaigns: Planning a second front in Africa

    U.S. diplomatic representative in North Africa, prepared the way for the landings by discreetly eliciting support from French officers whom he felt were likely to sympathize with the project. He relied particularly on Gen. Charles Mast, commander of the troops in the Algiers sector, and…

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  • 
    In North Africa campaigns: The Allied landings in North Africa

    …on November 8, 1942, the Americans had achieved surprise too fully, throwing their friends and helpers into confusion. The French whom they had enlisted to their cause were caught unready to aid them effectively, and the landings initially met resistance, albeit less at Algiers than at Oran or Casablanca. On…

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• Oder-Neisse Line
  • In Oder–Neisse Line

    …the Soviet Union, and the United States—moved back Poland’s eastern boundary with the Soviet Union to the west, placing it approximately along the Curzon Line. Because this settlement involved a substantial loss of territory for Poland, the Allies also agreed to compensate the reestablished Polish state by moving its western…

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• Pacific War
  • 
    In Pacific War: Japan’s strategy in the Pacific and Southeast Asia

    …defined hypothetical enemies, Russia, the United States, and France fell into this category. From the geostrategic standpoint, the Army would have the major role in a war against Russia, the Navy in one against the United States. Except for a few occasional revisions, the gist of this war plan remained…

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• Pearl Harbor
  • 
    In Pearl Harbor attack

    …precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan.

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• Potsdam Conference
  • 
    In Potsdam Conference

    The chief participants were U.S. President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (or Clement Attlee, who became prime minister during the conference), and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.

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• Quebec Conference
  • 
    In Quebec Conference

    Differences between U.S. and British strategists about the coordination of the Italian campaign with Operation Overlord (the planned Normandy Invasion) were not resolved and had to be settled at meetings in Moscow, Tehrān, and Cairo later that year. Roosevelt and Churchill met again at Quebec the following…

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• strategy and tactics
  • 
    In naval warfare: The age of the aircraft carrier

    U.S. and Japanese naval aviators were pacesetters in these developments.

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• Tehrān Conference
  • 
    In Tehrān Conference

    …28–December 1, 1943), meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehrān during World War II. The chief discussion centred on the opening of a “second front”

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• Yalta Conference
  • 
    In Yalta Conference

    ” Britain and the United States supported a Polish government-in-exile in London, while the Soviets supported a communist-dominated Polish committee of national liberation in Lublin. Neither the Western Allies nor the Soviet Union would change its allegiance, so they could only agree that the Lublin committee would be broadened…

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