Critical Thinking Questions
- Describe the United States’ movement from isolationism to expansion-mindedness in the final decades of the nineteenth century. What ideas and philosophies underpinned this transformation?
- What specific forces or interests transformed the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world between 1865 and 1890?
- How did Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” differ from Roosevelt’s “big stick” policy? Was one approach more or less successful than the other? How so?
- What economic and political conditions had to exist for Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” to be effective?
- What factors conspired to propel the United States to emerge as a military and economic powerhouse prior to World War II?
