I open class to remind the students that there would be a test of 10 questions to begin next week’s class…..please review notes and hand outs…..I also emphaszed that this was a general intro to American foreign policy in the Middle East….not intended to make them an expert…..
After the King-Crane Commission debacle the US was pretty much non-player in the Middle East….the UK and France had their problems with the artificially designed nations after the war….
In the US beginning in 1920 the population was fascinated by the Middle East thanx to the exploits of TE Lawrence….people flocked to movies about love and adventure in the desert……interest was shown for Arabic literature….Meanwhile the American foreign policy was centered around 3 issues…European imperialism, Zionism and the Armenian question…..
The question of European imperialism was accepted out right….even though the King-Crane had stated that the people of the region should be allowed self-determination without interference…..(pause here for discussion)……
The second question was that of Zionism (this is where the Balfour Statement is important)…….(use hand out for discussion)
Source: Learn and talk about Balfour Declaration, 1917 in British-administered Palestine, 1917 in Ottoman Syria, 1917 in international relations, 1917 in the United Kingdom
The third question was that of Armenia…..a little background……The Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the 20th Century, occurred when two million Armenians living in Turkey were eliminated from their historic homeland through forced deportations and massacres between 1915-1918.
A little background would be useful……
Source: Armenian Genocide – Facts & Summary – HISTORY.com
The question was…should Armenians have a homeland out of the old Ottoman Empire? Pres. Wilson deferred to the US Senate on the question of Armenia and that body rejected the proposal. At this point Wilson’s far reaching attempts at Middle East foreign policy was squashed and the US deferred to the powers of UK and France….
(Pause for discussion)
After the election of 1921 and the election of a Repub admin of Warren G. Harding the American people were through with international interventionism of WW1…in short the country became once again Isolationist in nature…..even to the point of passing the immigration law, National Origins Act of 1924 which limited or prohibited immigration from Europe and China….
Support for immigration restrictions, which began at the turn of the century and had built steadily for twenty years, led to congressional passage of the National Origins Act. This legislation severely restricted the total number of foreigners who would be allowed to enter the United States legally in any given year. It also instituted a quota system intentionally designed to hit Asia and eastern and southern Europe the hardest. The impact was to shut the doors of the country to Asians altogether and slow the flood of Italians, Poles, and Russians to a bare trickle of what it had been.
Immigration curtailment was unquestionably part of the rural counterattack of the 1920s. The countryside was the most Anglo-Saxon, the most Protestant, the most traditional area of the nation and the region that felt most threatened by continued immigration. The fact that rural residents were most supportive of immigration restrictions is clearly borne out by the fact that not a single congressman from south of the Mason-Dixon line or west of the Mississippi River voted against the National Origins Act. Only in the urban Northeast was there opposition. With the number of immigrants thus limited, many felt perhaps America could be saved.
This period of American foreign policy was almost non-existent….most of the interests were the Zionist Movement started by the Balfour Declaration…..
Stop here and discuss what was covered……
Review the events covered in this first week in prep for test on Monday…..
Told students that we would start next week with the 1930’s and the rise of Germany and the effects on foreign policy……
Class dismissed……
(Off I go…..young minds await)
