ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos


U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos

U.S. History 1877-Present 11: Reconstruction and Black Codes
6413 Views

Have you ever told one of your siblings to stop poking you, only to have them do something like hold their hand right in front of your face instead...

U.S. History 1877-Present 3: John D. Rockefeller
13980 Views

John D. Rockefeller. Greasy robber baron, or philanthropic saint? Why not both? Boy, that's a weird combination... 

U.S. History 1877-Present 3: Native Americans in the Gilded Age
9665 Views

Today we'll learn about plans to assimilate the American Indian population after reconstruction. If you've ever seen Star Trek, you'll know that fo...

See All

U.S. History 1877-Present 7: U.S. Foreign Policy in the 1920s 115 Views


Share It!


Description:

Turns out the U.S. was kind of a player in the 1920s, and you know what happens to players? They end up pretty depressed.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you Some say that harding and coolidge where major

00:06

isolationist like they popped a blindfold on a pair of

00:09

noise canceling headphones on america just of the nation didn't

00:12

have to deal with all the annoying things going on

00:14

in the rest of the world and this is kind

00:16

of true After world war one americans were definitely sick

00:19

of conflict sick of europe and sick of the continual

00:22

turmoil and tensions between nations that people wanted to things

00:26

to never have to fight another foreign war and to

00:28

stay out of foreign entanglements all together in a lot

00:31

of ways harding coolidge delivered what the people ordered they

00:35

could have had second careers as pizza guys The thing

00:37

is though that just because american foreign policy was generally

00:41

isolationist that doesn't mean that the u s was totally

00:44

isolated Sure we didn't want to get wrangled in any

00:47

political alliances since those kind of alliances are what made

00:50

world war one so massive but still industry was booming

00:53

and booming industries need markets no sell their stuff too

00:57

even america's stuff hungry consumer population couldn't consume everything the

01:01

factories here we're making our industries needed to sell stuff

01:04

To foreigners or else risk the horrors of not expanding

01:07

their business But this is where the whole political isolationism

01:11

thing gets stickier than the floor of a cheap movie

01:13

theater Country can work hard to avoid creating political alliances

01:17

with other nations and then have it all fall apart

01:19

when trade agreements become necessary These kind of agreements come

01:23

with promises There are promises about the volume of goods

01:26

that will be sold to the other nation How much

01:29

will be thought and how much everybody's going to charge

01:32

for all this stuff And when promises air made that

01:34

means that a relationship has formed So even though america

01:37

was a total commitment phobe back in the twenties we

01:40

were still going steady with plenty of other countries It's

01:43

true america was you know player Yeah cool But eventually

01:47

all this playing around ended up coming back to bite

01:49

us Us tried to skew all these economic alliance is

01:52

too much in its favour In the twenties the deck

01:54

was seriously stacked We basically exported all over the world

01:58

without doing much importing from other countries Eventually foreign trading

02:02

partners got sick of lopsided deals and retaliated All of

02:06

which helped to make the great depression even more depressing

02:09

like half of america eating shoes for dinner wasn't depressing

02:13

enough

Related Videos

Why Does the Constitution Still Work for Us?
5723 Views

Ever heard of a "living document"? They eat and breathe just like the rest of us! They even walk around on their own two legs. Okay, fine—maybe t...

The Puritans and the Division of Church and State
1280 Views

If the Puritans had gotten their way, religion would play a much larger role in lawmaking these days. Want to know more? Watch the video for all th...

Shays' Rebellion
6475 Views

What happened between the creation of the Articles of Confederation and the ratification of the current U.S. Constitution? This video analyzes the...

There's More Than One Way to Crack a Modernist Egg
539 Views

The Modernists thought the world had a lot of problems, and they were intent on fixing them—or at least talking about fixing them. Unfortunately,...

Federalism
2532 Views

This video explains Federalism and the quest for a fair balance between state and national power. It covers the progression and compromises of Fede...