Question

1. How did the U.S. trade export policy from 1914-17 actually favor the Allies over Germany?

2. In 1917, why did President Wilson fear both a full Allied or German victory? Why did he fear the rise of the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia?

3.How did colonial people respond to Wilson’s call for “self-determination”? Why were they ultimately disappointed by the Versailles Treaty?

Answer 1

1. U.S. exports to Europe rose from $1.479 billion dollars in 1913 to $4.062 billion in 1917. Suppose that the United States had stayed out of the war, and that as a result all trade with Europe was cut off. Suppose further, that the resources that would have been used to produce exports for Europe were able to produce only half as much value when reallocated to other purposes such as producing goods for the domestic market or exports for non-European countries. Then the loss of output in 1917 would have been $2.031 billion per year. This was about 3.7 percent of GNP in 1917, and only about 6.3 percent of the total U.S. cost of the war.

US was supplying arms and ammunitions to the Allied powers. US was not preferring Germany as a trade partner. The total trade volume to and from Germany declined during the war war period. During the war years exports to the allied countries of Europe show a considerable increase, averaging for the 1915-1919 war period 3,111.8 millions, or 58.6 per cent of an average of 5, 307.4 exported to all countries during these five years. As against an increase of 267 per cent in our exports consigned during the period 1915-1919 to the allied countries in Europe over like exports consigned during the preceding live-year period, exports during the war period to the rest of the world increased but 67 per cent, which is probably less than the average rise in the price level, in other words, the large increase in exports shown for the war period was caused apparently altogether by the larger exports to the allied countries in Europe; exports to the rest of the world were probably less in volume than before the war.

2. Wilson feared that war would set Americans against one another because of the diverse backgrounds of Americans and the connection many Americans still felt for their homelands. If the allies had won the war, America would lose all its dominance in the international politics. If Germany had won the war, it would push the world into a German autocracy. This war could have been avoided. Wilson always wanted Peace rather than revenge.

Wilson's vision of American-supported "democracy throughout the world" permeated his declaration of war against Germany on 2 April 1917, less than a month after the "glorious" Russian Revolution. After more than two years of bloody conflict on the European continent, accompanied by increasing attacks on American shipping, the president announced to Congress that "autocratic government," like that in Germany, was more than just distasteful to U.S. sensibilities. Autocratic militarism, repression, and economic nationalism had become profound threats to the life of democracy. Wilson feared the degradation and destruction of his society. World revolution on the American model was necessary for U.S. survival. This is what Wilson meant when he proclaimed that the "world must be made safe for democracy." The future of "civilization" had reached an apparent turning point.. Emphasizing the liberated "voice of the Russian people," Wilson called for political openness, free trade, disarmament, "independent determination" for oppressed peoples, and a "general association" of peace-loving nations. Liberty and enterprise, not balance of power or divine right, would govern the international system. Affairs between nations would evolve to look more like the relations among citizens in the United States.

3. The colonial people welcomed the call for self determinism with open arms. After the end of the world war, many people wished to have an independent state.Early in the 20th Century, the idea of self-determination found expression within an intergovernmental setting at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Prior to the Conference two new emerging powers – the USA and USSR - had already begun to articulate the idea of self-determination, as reflected in statements by both their leaders: Lenin’s Peace Decree and Wilson’s Fourteen Point Plan. The Conference settled the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Turk empires. It positively considered self-determination for European territories (there were minor exceptions: Danzig, Memmel territories and Saar). Territories outside Europe such as Cameroon, Palestine and Syria were treated very differently. Through the League of Nations, a mandate system was created with a three tier grading system based on the ability of people in these territories to govern themselves. In effect non-European peoples were deemed unfit to govern themselves independently.

But once the war was over, the colonised people ended up with despair.

The principle of self-determination did not extend so far as to end colonialism; under the reasoning that the local populations were not civilized enough the League of Nations was to assign each of the post-Ottoman, Asian and African states and colonies to a European power by the grant of a League of Nations mandate.

One of the German objections to the Treaty of Versailles was a somewhat selective application of the principle of self-determination as the majority of the people in Austria and in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia wanted to join Germany while the majority of people in Danzig wanted to remain within the Reich, but the Allies ignored the German objections.