In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture.[108] National infrastructure including telegraph and transcontinental railroads spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. The later invention of electric light and the telephone would also impact communication and urban life.[109]
The end of the Indian Wars further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets.[110] Mainland expansion was completed by the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.[111] In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the Spanish–American War.[112]
Rapid economic development at the end of the 19th century produced many prominent industrialists, and the U.S. economy became the world's largest.[113] Dramatic changes were accompanied by social unrest and the rise of populist, socialist, and anarchist movements.[114] This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms in many societal areas, including women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition, regulation of consumer goods, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.
World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
Further information: World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
U.S. troops approaching Omaha Beach in 1944.
The United States remained neutral from the outbreak of World War I, in 1914, until 1917 when it joined the war as an "associated power", alongside the formal Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference and advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this, and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles that established the League of Nations.[115]
In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage.[116] The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television.[117] The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, which included the establishment of the Social Security system.[118] The Great Migration of millions of African Americans out of the American South began before World War I and extended through the 1960s;[119] whereas the Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.[120]
At first effectively neutral during World War II while Germany conquered much of continental Europe, the United States began supplying material to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers.[121] During the war, the United States was referred as one of the "Four Policemen"[122] of Allies power who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union and China.[123][124] Though the nation lost more than 400,000 soldiers,[125] it emerged relatively undamaged from the war with even greater economic and military influence.[126]
The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences with the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and other Allies, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an Allied victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[127] The United States developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan; the Japanese surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.[128]
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