Introduction

Americans were especially hostile toward European imperialism, and when there was talk of Europe re-colonizing the New World after the Napoleonic Wars, the United States issued the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. President Monroe warned that the United States would consider it “dangerous to our peace and safety” should any European power expand into the Western Hemisphere. Monroe also emphasized that the United States would not interfere in European affairs. As America was entering the war, philosopher John Dewey endorsed American participation as an act of Progressivism. The resumption by Americans of their isolationist ways was jarring for a people whose entry into the Great War had been characterized by fervent idealism, and who in the war’s immediate aftermath believed that the United States was entering a new era of international involvement. Americans busily began to reinterpret the war and to reexamine the role that the United States had played and, more importantly, should henceforward play, in world affairs.