HIST 209 The United States in the World Since 1900

This course traces the United States' rise to global superpower over the first half of the twentieth century; its engagement with and interventions in a decolonizing Cold War world; and finally its transition to its contemporary role as part of an increasingly multilateral and internationalist world order. Our investigation of US engagement with the wider world rests on the understanding that as America's influence on the world grew so did the world's influence on America. Lectures and readings will cover America's political and military dealings with other powers - that is US diplomatic history as traditionally understood - but also address Americans' cultural social economic and intellectual interactions with foreign peoples both at home and abroad. Specific topics include US overseas imperialism the US role in both world wars and the Cold War the heightened significance of Asia and the Pacific World after 1940 internationalism and the creation of the United Nations the emergence of the Third World and Washington's ambivalent relationship to global decolonization Americans' involvement in the global revolutions of the 1960s the economic upheavals of the 1970s the end of the Cold War and the politics of a post-Cold War post-9/11 world.