“A Fight for Diplomacy” – Shaping Neutrality in Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency

Zubor, Bence (2018) “A Fight for Diplomacy” – Shaping Neutrality in Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency. Masters, Szegedi Tudományegyetem.

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Abstract

In 1917 the U.S. perspective of staying neutral in WWI had essentially failed. The isolationist policy of Woodrow Wilson had kept the country out of the conflict for 3 years but after various incidents started to threaten the Wilsonian neutral principles, the U.S. had to give up its military isolation. The idea of the president was that the United States would remain neutral during WWI but this proved to be a very hard task both for the president and the nation as well. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the triggering causes of the failure of the observance of U.S. neutrality in 1917. The primary data for this thesis is collected with the help of the American Presidency Project and its electronic database of texts. The main subjects of this analysis are the presidential speeches of Woodrow Wilson. Based on the aforementioned information the following research question can be formulated: How did Woodrow Wilson abandon U.S. neutrality in WWI and what were the causes of it? First and foremost of all when Wilson occupied the presidential office, the Mexican Revolution was his first concern, what became a so called “foreign policy beacon” for the president, who was relatively young and inexperienced in this field. Later on the plotting of Germany against Britain and the war zoning of the official British waters made Wilson to think about U.S. neutrality. When the Lusitania was sunk, Wilson for the first time was directly confronted with the peril of U.S. neutrality and he came close to the fact to abandon it. It was clearly a disquiet period as far as the neutrality question is concerned and the Sussex and Arabic incidents came as fuel to the fire. Although Wilson decided to go along with his plan of keeping the U.S. away from the war, the Zimmermann Telegram and later on the unrestricted submarine warfare left him no choice but to abandon his principles.

Institution

Szegedi Tudományegyetem

Faculty

Faculty of Arts

Department

Amerikanisztika Tanszék

Discipline

Humanities

Institute

Angol-Amerikai Intézet

Specialization

amerikanisztika

Supervisor(s)

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	06. Humanities
Depositing User:	szerkesztő BTK
Date Deposited:	2019. Apr. 25. 08:15
Last Modified:	2019. Apr. 26. 09:41
URI:	https://diploma.bibl.u-szeged.hu/id/eprint/74644

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