American Identity Dbq Essay

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The late 19th Century and early 20th Century changed the American identity for the better with the hope of inspiration from important people and our actions before and in war.

In an excerpt from Roosevelt Corollary, Roosevelt talks about how we acted for ourselves as well as others when we asserted the Monroe Doctrine. He seems to explain how we are not always able to help because we cannot be included, but in certain cases, we can help and we always try to. As an example, there were no ways in which we would be allowed to interfere with the case about putting a stop to atrocious conditions in Cuba, but if there were some ways, we would’ve helped in every way we could. This displays the helpful characteristic that America gained and still
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These actions started to change America poorly, allowing them to see and feel loss and hopelessness, but then left them stronger and ended up benefiting the United State’s economy. These years, 1914 to 1918 which consisted of World War 1, included terrible periods of fighting between several nations, all with alliances and some that conflicted each others alliances, but these actions all had starting points and causes. We first chose to not fight and to stay out of it, which immensely changed America’s identity because of the incidents we had to fight through, but many reasonable causes forced us to join the Allied Powers. There are three words that are very important to the US, they are militarism, alliances, and imperialism, these words will help explain how America formed into what it is today. Militarism was used to show power and avoid trouble, it was a belief in building up a nation’s military forces to increase a nation’s power, but the problem was that many nations, including our own, wanted to use their big armies when it was unnecessary. Alliances were used for protection and many people hoped it would keep peace, it was an agreement between nations to help each other if attacked, but the downside was alliances caused war to spread faster. For example, our alliance with Great Britain was a big factor in our reasoning to join the war, especially because of Lusitania which was a British ocean liner sunk by a German submarine in 1915 and killed 128 Americans, if we hadn’t had this alliance, we might have continued to sit out of the war. Imperialism could be defined as a stronger country controlling a weaker country for its own benefit, it was helpful since lands overseas could provide raw materials needed for our growing industry, but imperialism caused tension which was never good and is most likely a root to

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