The Interwar Years:The Red Scare to Fascism

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States had begun to change because of massive waves of immigration, the acquisition of overseas territories (and attendant responsibilities) as a consequence of the Spanish-American War, and increasing urbanization and industrialization. In the Philippines, the United States faced a guerrilla insurgency, first from Filipinos seeking to create an independent state and then from the Muslim Moros in the southern part of the colony, seeking to separate from the rest of the territory. The acquisition of the Philippines and the consequent guerrilla warfare, however, did not lead to any campaigns of terrorism. In Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and Cuba, a de facto protectorate for a number of years, opposition to the American presence was not violent at this time. American military involvement or interference in Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua during or after World War I involved fighting, but did not bring any terrorist violence to the United States itself. Domestically, the Indian population had already been forced onto reservations or assimilated (more or less) into the general population, thereby ending over two hundred years of conflict.