Period 7: 1890–1945

Period 7 runs from 1890 to 1945 - the longest and densest period. Three storylines run through it: the growth of federal power in the economy, the rise of mass culture and the arguments it provoked, and the country's move to global power.

New territorial ambitions 领土野心 grew from a search for markets, naval strategy, and beliefs about national mission. Victory in the Spanish-American War 美西战争 gave the United States overseas possessions and forced a genuine argument.

The imperialism debate 帝国主义之争 is the examinable point: supporters argued for markets, strategic bases, and a civilising mission; opponents argued that ruling people without their consent contradicted the country's founding principles, and some argued on racial or economic grounds. Both positions must appear in a strong answer.

The United States continued its transition from a rural, agricultural economy to an urban, industrial 城市工业化 one, and Progressives 进步主义者 responded to the problems that came with it.

Try it — compare reform approaches. Teacher-written cases grounded in CED Topic 7.4: A journalist exposes political corruption and calls for action. A reformer wants professional experts to make government more efficient. Another wants voters to participate more directly in political decisions. Identify each approach. Do the last two give ordinary voters the same role? Explain a shared reform aim and a difference in method.

Worked comparison. Journalists exposed corruption, social injustice and inequality, creating pressure for change. Expert administration emphasised expertise and evidence 专业知识与证据 to diagnose problems and improve efficiency. Reform of politics itself 政治改革 could expand voter participation through direct primaries, initiatives, referendums and direct election of senators. Both sought better government, but expert administration and greater voter participation assigned authority differently. Progressives did not follow one fixed sequence.

Document practice — adapted from 2019 AP US History DBQ, Document 2. Paraphrase, not a quotation: in a 1902 speech, President Theodore Roosevelt treated corporations as creations of the state and argued that government had a right and duty to supervise them when they caused harm. He recognised that corporations could also do useful work. Identify the proposed government role. Does this support abolishing every corporation? Does the speech alone prove regulation was enacted and enforced?

Worked reading. Roosevelt advocated public supervision, not elimination of every corporation. Roosevelt used corporations' dependence on state authority to justify public supervision, challenging entirely private control. A speech establishes an expressed position; laws, enforcement and effects require further evidence. This is practice with one document, not a complete answer to the 2019 DBQ on political change, 1890–1920, and implies no score.

Progressives were divided over many issues. Some supported Southern segregation; others ignored it. They also disagreed over immigration restriction. Reform did not mean a shared commitment to equal rights. National reform efforts included economic regulation, expanding democracy and moral reform, including constitutional amendments concerning prohibition and women's suffrage.

Entry into the First World War 第一次世界大战 mobilised the economy and expanded federal power, but it also intensified debates about the nation's role in the world and about civil liberties at home, where dissent was prosecuted.

The war triggered the Great Migration 大迁徙, as African Americans moved north for wartime industrial jobs, reshaping northern cities and politics.

Afterwards the United States pursued a unilateral foreign policy 单边外交政策 - rejecting the League of Nations while remaining economically engaged abroad.

Innovations in communication and technology - radio, film, mass-circulation magazines, and the automobile - contributed to the growth of mass culture 大众文化, which increasingly set national tastes.

The same decade produced sharp divisions 尖锐分歧 over what the country should be:

• Immigration restriction 移民限制 through national-origins quotas.
• Conflict over religion and science, and over prohibition 禁酒令.
• A revived Ku Klux Klan 三K党 and organised nativism.
• The Harlem Renaissance 哈莱姆文艺复兴 and the "New Woman" as assertions of new cultural identities.

The Great Depression 大萧条 brought mass unemployment and social dislocation. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal 罗斯福新政 used government power to provide relief 救济, stimulate recovery 复苏 and pursue reform 改革.

Try it — explain programme functions. Teaching summaries: A, the Works Progress Administration employed people on public projects. B, the Agricultural Adjustment Act sought higher farm prices by reducing crop production. C, federal deposit insurance protected covered deposits when an insured bank failed. Match each to relief, recovery or reform, explaining its function. Could an employment programme also help recovery?

Worked purposes. A provided relief through income from work; spending could also support economic activity, so purposes could overlap. B aimed at recovery by reducing output to raise farm prices and improve farmers' incomes. C reformed the financial system through a continuing safeguard for covered deposits. It was not a promise to prevent every future crisis. Sorting agencies alone neither demonstrates success nor makes an argument.

Radical, union, and populist movements pushed Roosevelt toward more extensive measures. Conservatives in Congress and the Supreme Court sought to limit the New Deal's scope. Broader action and opposition both shaped contested policies; avoid a single-cause explanation.

Try it — judge effects. Teaching evidence paraphrased from CED Topic 7.10: the New Deal did not end the Depression, but left reforms and regulatory agencies and helped create a lasting political realignment toward the Democratic Party among many ethnic groups, African Americans and working-class communities. Assess the claim that continued depression means the New Deal had no economic or political effects.

Worked judgment. Failure to end the Depression was a limit, not an absence of effects. Relief programmes and lasting safeguards changed government's economic responsibilities. Institutions themselves affected economic life. Political realignment was another lasting effect. Judge a specific purpose with evidence rather than claiming complete success or that nothing changed.

Americans viewed the war as a fight for the survival of freedom and democracy against fascist aggression.

Mass mobilization 全面动员 helped end the Great Depression, and it changed society:

• Mobilisation and military service provided opportunities for women and minorities 妇女与少数族裔 to improve their status, though within continued segregation and discrimination.
• Migration from Mexico and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere increased to meet labour demand.
• Japanese Americans were forcibly interned 拘禁, the period's clearest case of wartime rights denied.

Victory came through Allied cooperation 盟国合作, industrial capacity, and technological advantage, ending with the use of atomic weapons against Japan.

The war-ravaged condition of Asia and Europe, and the dominant U.S. role in the Allied victory and in the occupations that followed, left the United States as the strongest power in the world - and set up the confrontation with the Soviet Union that Period 8 begins with.

Comparison is one useful reasoning skill for this period. Compare Progressive-era reform and the New Deal through their contexts, goals, government action and limits, using specific evidence.

Exam transfer — 2024 AP US History, Set 2, short-answer Q4(c), paraphrased. Explain how one development from 1900 to 1940 contributed to government involvement in the economy. Try either corporate growth and Progressive regulation or the Great Depression and New Deal relief. Explain how the development prompted a particular response; a sequence alone does not explain causation.

Teacher-written model. Mass unemployment during the Great Depression created demand for help that expanded federal involvement in the economy. New Deal employment programmes such as the WPA provided paid work on public projects to people needing income.

Why this fits. The official scheme accepts the Great Depression contributing to the New Deal. The model explains a need and a government response within the dates. Providing relief does not prove a programme ended the Depression. This is our Q4(c) model, not an official sample or a guarantee of credit.

Each part needs only one or two sentences: answer the question, cite one specific piece of evidence, and explain how it supports the answer.

Answer (a), (b) and (c).

(a) Briefly describe ONE reform achieved during the Progressive Era.

(b) Briefly explain ONE reason the United States entered the First World War.

(c) Briefly describe ONE way the New Deal changed the role of the federal government.

Model answer.

• (a) The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) gave the federal government power to regulate the safety and labelling of food and medicine.
• (b) Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, which sank American ships, together with the Zimmermann Telegram (1917), turned opinion toward war.
• (c) The Social Security Act (1935) made the federal government responsible for pensions and unemployment insurance, creating a lasting safety net.

• When asked to compare imperialist and anti-imperialist positions, explain both with relevant evidence.
• Compare Progressive goals, approaches and limits; reformers disagreed about participation, expertise, race and immigration.
• Sort New Deal programmes by relief, recovery, reform. Explain their functions, overlapping purposes and effects.
• State the CED's verdict directly: the New Deal did not end the Depression but left a lasting legacy.
• Wartime opportunity for women and minorities was real and limited. Use relevant evidence; acknowledging a limit alone does not guarantee complexity.
• Match evidence to the prompt and dates; explain a causal connection in Q4(c).

Vocabulary card meanings

territorial ambitions: Aims to control land beyond the existing borders. Spanish-American War: The 1898 war in which the United States took overseas possessions from Spain. imperialism debate: The argument over whether the United States should rule other peoples. urban, industrial: A society organised around cities and factory production. Progressives: Reformers who used expertise and government to address industrial problems. expertise and evidence: Specialist knowledge and facts, which Progressives trusted as guides to policy. politics itself: The workings of parties and government, which some reformers tried to clean up. First World War: The 1914-18 war that the United States entered in 1917. Great Migration: The early-twentieth-century movement of African Americans out of the South to cities in the North and the West. unilateral foreign policy: Acting abroad without binding the country to allies. mass culture: Entertainment and goods shared by a wide public, such as radio and film. sharp divisions: Deep splits over immigration, race, religion, and modern life. Immigration restriction: Laws that sharply limited who could enter the country. prohibition: The constitutional ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol. Ku Klux Klan: A white supremacist organisation revived in the 1920s with a broader list of targets. Harlem Renaissance: A flowering of African American art and literature centred in New York. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal: The 1930s programmes of relief, recovery, and reform during the Depression. relief: Immediate help for people without income. reform: Lasting changes to the rules of banking, labour, and welfare. Mass mobilization: Putting the whole economy and population onto a war footing. women and minorities: Groups whose wartime work and service changed, without ending inequality. interned: Forced into camps, as Japanese Americans were during the Second World War. Allied cooperation: Joint strategy among the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and others.