We explain how the history of the United States was in the twentieth century. In addition, economic growth, consumer society and civil rights movement.
How was the history of the United States in the twentieth century?
During the 1920s, the capitalist economy of the United States lived a period of prosperity which extended to other countries and was known as “the crazy years” or “the happy twenties.” This stage was interrupted by A serious economic crisis known as the great depression which began in the United States in 1929 and extended to most of the world during the 1930s.
In the first half of the twentieth century, The United States intervened decisively in the two great world conflicts that had had as an epicenter the European continent: World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). After World War II, the United States emerged as the great economic and military power of the western world.
The war effort and the measures taken in the thirties (the New Deal) had taken the American economy of depression at the same time as the other powers of the time (European countries and Japan) had been devastated by war.
Only the Soviet Union, which had also contributed to the allied triumph in World War II, He could compete with the United States. The US government soon stopped having the nuclear monopoly and The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union defined the period of the Cold War which lasted until the fall of the Soviet regime in 1991. In this context there were significant facts such as US participation in the wars of Korea and Vietnam.
During the second half of the twentieth century, The United States crossed a period of economic growth, mass consumption and well -being that, however, it was not exempt from conflicts due to social inequalities and segregation of the African -American population.
This tension climate generated important Fights for civil rights and manifestations of rejection of the Vietnam War . Acts such as the murders of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Martin Luther King or the “Watergate scandal” also stood out.
In the 1980s a conservative line triumphed that led Ronald Reagan and George Bush until a representative of the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton, in 1993, returned to the White House.
Frequent questions
How was the United States economy in the twentieth century?
During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States experienced significant economic growth, especially in industry and finance, but also crossed a serious economic crisis in the 1930s. In the second half of the twentieth century it had the largest gross domestic product (GDP) of the world economy.
How was the United States participation in the war conflicts of the twentieth century?
The United States participated in the two world wars, contributed decisively to the triumph of the allies and became the main creditor of the countries indebted by war, which reinforced its international position.
How was your foreign policy in the second half of the twentieth century?
Despite its traditional isolationism, after the Second World War the US government was involved in international affairs as the main power of the western capitalist world:
- financed the economic reconstruction of Western Europe,
- He developed the nuclear weapons and aerospace technology (in a race with the USSR),
- He intervened military or economically in Third World regions (such as Korea, Vietnam or Latin America) as part of its policy against communism.
How was your relationship with the USSR?
During the second half of the twentieth century, the United States became one of the two world superpowers. Until the late eighties he played with the USSR the economic, political and military domain within the Cold War. After the fall of the USSR in 1991, it strengthened as the only superpower.
How was internal policy?
In internal policy, the United States went through various conflicts throughout the twentieth century, such as demonstrations against the Vietnam War and civil rights in the 1960s or the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963 and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King in 1968.
American democracy after World War II
Until the seventies, Franklin's legacy D. Roosevelt and the New Deal implemented in the thirties determined the great features of American internal policy.
The political forces generally agreed to maintain the transformations of the thirties:
- An increase in state power and intervention.
- A significant role of unions In the march of the economy.
- A commitment to the welfare state, although in a lower version than that of Western Europe (for example, the United States did not adopt a universal health system).
- Acceptance of the need to solve minority problems.
The influence of these policies was confirmed with the election of the Democratic presidents Harry S. Truman (1945-1953), John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969). Even during the Government of Republican Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) there was no essential change in general politics.
The second half of the twentieth century was an era of economic prosperity and great social changes. There was an increase in the tertiary sector (services) and, in 1979, 47 % of the population worked in the services sector. The cities spread and many Americans went to live in suburban areas, a world of houses with garden and huge shopping centers (Malls). The car became an essential good for families that were also surrounded by multiple appliances.
The “witch hunt” by Senator Joseph McCarthy
The economic opulence of much of the population did not prevent social and political tensions. The development of the Soviet Atomic B
This fear was driven by some politicians, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy who He directed a “witch hunt” against anyone suspected of having leftist or communist ideas . McCarthy finally took a false step when he tried to incriminate senior army officers and, in 1954, Congress censored his activity.
The Civil Rights Movement
In the following years, The care center moved to the situation of minorities and the poorest population that had been excluded from general well -being. The Democratic Party took the initiative in this issue.
The reformist impulse was interrupted for the murder of the president Kennedy In 1963, but he was reinforced with his successor, Johnson, who launched the great society program (Great Society). Johnson declared the “war on poverty” and approved various laws to support the most disadvantaged sectors (health care for retirees, food for needy, social housing, educational reforms).
The social problem had intermingled with the “racial issue” in the United States. Since the fifties The African -American population starred a series of protests to end its legal marginalization and racial segregation in education and everyday life. In 1954, the Supreme Court took a historical step and failed against segregation in the educational system. Until that time, African -American and “White” children went to different schools.
A year later, a Protestant Pastor, Martin Luther King, headed a boycott against racial segregation On Montgomery's buses, Alabama, after Rosa Parks, an African -American activist, out of the refuse to give the seat to a “white” person. In August 1963, King directed a massive demonstration in Washington in which pronounced his famous speech I have a dream (“I have to Dream“) in which he made an allegation against racial inequality in his country.
Finally, the civil rights movement triumphed when President Johnson decided to act legally:
- In 1964, the Civil Rights Law was approved which ended segregation and discrimination in work centers and public facilities
- In 1965, the Law on Voting Law was approved, which eliminated the obstacles facing the African -American population to exercise vote in the southern states.
However, Johnson's reforms did not placate social discontent . Two protest lines converged in the second half of the sixties:
- In the “black ghettos” Of the big cities, youth was more receptive to radical nationalist leaders such as Malcolm X than Martin Luther King's pacifist preaching.
- The military escalation in Vietnam and the mandatory enlistment engendered a broad resentment in youth, which sought a new way of life away from their parents' model (pop music, hippie movement, sexual freedom).
In the summer of 1965, Social disturbances exploded in the district of Watts, of African -American majority, in Los Angeles. In the following years, the riots extended to other large cities and reached its peak in 1968, After the murder of Martin Luther King .
On the other hand, although the great demonstrations against the Vietnam War sought their inspiration in the pacifist ideology, in 1970 four students died at the University of Kent at the hands of the National Guard of the State of Ohio.
Richard Nixon's presidency
The “years of protest” changed essential aspects of American society but, at the same time, triggered a reaction that led to an important part of the population that had traditionally voted for the Democratic Party, changed its political opinion in favor of “the law and order” and will identify with the conservative Republican party.
With President Richard Nixon (1969-1974), The Republicans set a brake on Johnson's reforms . However, the Supreme Court made important decisions contrary to the president's objectives, such as the legalization of abortion in 1973.
The Democrats had carried out a reformist policy in the interior of the country that had contrasted with an aggressive foreign policy (as demonstrated by the missile crisis in Cuba or the Vietnam War).
Nixon did the opposite: he had a conservative attitude in internal matters but, in foreign policy, adopted a pragmatic position . In 1972 he traveled to Beijing and began the normalization of relations with communist China. The following year, negotiations with Vietnam del Norte began that led to the withdrawal of the US Vietnam troops.
Despite being re -elected in 1972, Nixon's political career ended abruptly two years later. After demonstrating that agents of his administration had spied on the Democratic Convention at the Watergate Hotel In Washington, Nixon was forced to resign in August 1974. It was the “Watergate scandal.”
The presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George Bush
The United States was in one of the most complex moments of the twentieth century. The political crisis and social discontent joined them A deep economic crisis aggravated by the rise in the price of oil agreed by the OPEC (Organization of oil exporting countries) in 1973. Economic stagnation, inflation and Unemployment marked the government of Republican Gerald Ford (1974-1977) and Democrat Jimmy Carter (1976-1980).
The feeling of discomfort increased with the failures of the foreign policy of the United States: from the precipitous exit of Vietnam in 1975 to the assault and the hostage in the US embassy in Tehran, after the triumph of the Ayatolá Jomeini revolution in Iran in 1979.
The discomfort favored a strong political turn to the right. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), representative of the most right-wing wing of the Republican Party, won overwhelmingly in the 1980 elections. It initiated a new economic policy that called into question the consensus around the state of well-being born with the New Deal and launched a policy of military rear.
Reagan was replaced by another Republican, George Bush Father (1989-1993), who had to deal with a strong economic recession, aggravated by the enormous deficit he had left. Economic difficulties explain that, although Bush contemplated as president of the United States the end of the Soviet Union, the great adversary of the United States during the Cold War, failed in his attempt to be re -elected in 1992. The Democrats, with Bill Clinton (1993-2001), returned to the White House .
American society
The consumer society
American society suffered Radical changes in the decades that followed World War II. New technological devices such as Television, reactors, medical advances or computers totally altered social life in the United States .
Economic prosperity led to the growth of the middle class, the expansion of higher education and the rapid increase in mass consumption. The construction of the highway network, cheap gasoline and The generalization of the car led to the United States to become the most mobile society in the developed world.
The new consumerist society created the prototype of the middle class family with a garden house on the outskirts of the city two cars and a great expenditure capacity. Although In the “black ghettos” of the cities the reality was very different, a growing number of Americans reached a high standard of living.
At this time, the United States society also became more permissive. The extension of contraceptive, especially the pill in the sixties led to premarital sex becoming the rule. This greater sexual freedom led to Divorce rate increase Already an increasingly repressive attitude towards homosexuality, extramarital sex or children born outside of marriage.
This attitude was adopted in large cities while in the countryside and small cities survived a traditional mentality linked to religious mandates.
The new immigration law
The United States consolidated in this period its condition as the country of immigrants . After the restrictive law of 1924, which hindered the immigration of countries that were not of northern Europe, the new 1965 immigration law opened the country to new migratory currents from Latin America (especially Mexico) and Asia.
The new wave of immigrants changed the ethnic composition of the population and in 2003 the population of Hispanic origin beat the population of African origin as the largest minority in the country. On the other hand, The illegal immigration phenomenon grew considerably and resulted in a broad national debate.
The feminist struggle and environmental awareness
As in Europe, the change in the situation of women was the great transformation of the second half of the twentieth century. Pioneer in the nineteenth -century suffragist movement, American society gave rise to a powerful feminist movement .
Figures like Betty Friedan (author of the book The mystique of femininitypublished in 1963) and organizations as now (National Organization for Women) encouraged The achievement of an increasingly equal position in the social and labor field . The legalization of abortion in 1973 was one of its great conquests, although it continued to find a powerful opposition movement in “pro-life” organizations.
Also In the sixties a new environmental sensitivity was born . Rachel Carson's book Silent spring (1962) He had a great impact on the country and is usually pointed out as the main inspiration of the environmental movement in the United States.
Very soon, the various administrations adopted environmental protection measures that, already in the 1980s, found the opposition of pressure groups that considered that these measures were against economic development and employment in the country. Despite this, Environmental consciousness extended by American society .
The United States economy
Economic prosperity after World War II
World War II had for the United States an economic cost ten times higher than that of World War I. However, The American economy was reinforced from the conflict :
- He ended the recession of the thirty decade.
- He revitalized the industry and stimulated technical-scientific progress in innovative fields (aeronautics, electronics and atomic energy).
- Because other economies (Western, Japanese and Soviet) suffered great damage that created reconstruction needs, the expansion of the US economy oriented to reconstruction motivated mass emigration towards the large industrial centers of the north and west of the country. In these migratory movements, the African -American population of the agricultural south took part.
While in 1913 the American GDP did not reach 9 % of the World Cup, in 1950 it was equivalent to more than 27 %. The United States GDP per capita was much higher than that of the other countries that had fought in the war.
The United States left World War II turned into the world economic leader . The rest of the capitalist world developed soon managed to recover and shorten distances with respect to the United States. The decades of the fifties, sixty and early seventies constitute the “golden age” of the capitalist economy.
The years 1950 to 1973 contrast with the interwar period: the world economy grew at a rate three times higher and no continent was outside the growth. In Western Europe and Japan growth was especially intense.
In comparison, the United States grew little, but it started from a much higher level in 1950 and the beginning of the 1970s had a GDP per capita almost 50 % higher than that of Western Europe and Japan.
The role of the United States in European reconstruction and, something later, in Japanese reconstruction, it was decisive. In the devastated postwar Europe, the Marshall Plan was one of the instruments of American aid which contributed to solving urgent problems and creating the conditions for the posterior economic takeoff.
Bretton Woods system
Especially important for the generalized economic growth of the “golden age” was The leading role of the United States in the creation of an international economic cooperation framework . The set of institutions and rules known as “Bretton Woods System” was designed at an international conference held in 1944 in the American town of the same name attended by representatives from more than forty countries.
From the Bretton Woods agreements, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (BM), the International Bank for Reconstruction and Promotion (BIRF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Commerce (GATT) emerged. These institutions lacked precedents and reflected concern for international economic cooperation:
- The BIRF granted loans in the long term for the post -world reconstruction and economic development of the poorest countries.
- The IMF took care of sustaining an international monetary system .
- The GATT promoted international trade by reducing protectionism.
The economic policy of the “Golden Age” also had a strong Keynesian influence. The objective of price stability was combined with that of the full employment. The State grew in size In response to the increase in its functions: regulation of the economy, public services and protection against adversity (unemployment insurance, pensions). Although this was more noticeable in Western Europe, in the United States its proportion with respect to GDP went from 21.4 % in 1950 to 31.1 % in 1973.
The United States unions accepted an implicit pact: improvements in the living standards of workers in exchange for moderate salary increases and of reinvestment of benefits by entrepreneurs to ensure that growth was not interrupted.
The oil crisis and the era Reagan
The “golden age” of the capitalist economy ended abruptly in the early seventies. In 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) increased the price of oil, which had remained stable for decades (2 to 3 dollars per barrel), as retaliation for Western support to Israel in the Yom Kippur War (1973).
Anyway, the United States was not one of the greats harmed, as it had a certain degree of energy independence, unlike Western Europe, Japan and less developed countries.
To the energy crisis was added the crisis of the Bretton Woods system . The American commercial deficit and the abandonment of convertibility into gold of the dollar introduced instability in the international monetary system. Unemployment and inflation were permanently installed on the economic scenario.
An additional increase in the price of oil in 1979 sharpened problems . A new economic term became popular: stagflation (Stagnation with inflation). In 1979-1981, IPC increases (consumer price index) exceeded 10 %.
To combat inflation, a restrictive monetary policy was adopted that ended up overcoming it but caused an increase in unemployment (almost 10 % in 1982-1983) and a growth of negative GDP per capita (-1 % in 1980-1982).
As of 1983, the United States economy recovered growth . By then, Keynesianism had been displaced by “reaghanism”, the economic policy applied by President Ronald Reagan: a combination of Tax cuts (especially for higher income), market deregulation and increased defense expenditure along with other public spending items.
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References
- Bender, T. (2023). History of the United States. A nation between nations. 21st century.
- Gopnik, A. et al. (2023). United States. Britannica Encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/
- Jenkins, P. (2019). Brief history of the United States. 5th. edition. Alliance.
