AP U.S. History: Imperialism, Progressivism, World War I, and the Great Depression

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards reviewing key political, economic, diplomatic, and social concepts across early 20th-century U.S. History, spanning imperialism, progressivism, the First World War, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression/New Deal era.

Alfred Thayer Mahan

American naval officer whose 1890 book 'The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783' argued that control of the sea was the essential key to world domination, helping ignite an international naval arms race.

Great Rapprochement (1896)

The diplomatic reconciliation and growing friendship between the United States and Great Britain during the late 1890s, partly fostered in response to rising German geopolitical power.

Queen Liliuokalani

The last Hawaiian monarch, who strongly opposed foreign control and was overthrown in 1893 by armed white American planters assisted by unauthorized U.S. troops.

Teller Amendment

An 1898 proviso added to the U.S. declaration of war against Spain proclaiming that when the United States overthrew Spanish misrule, it would give Cuba its freedom.

Emilio Aguinaldo

Filipino leader who collaborated with U.S. forces to expel the Spanish in 1898, subsequently led an armed insurrection against American rule from 1899 to 1901, and was captured in 1901.

Platt Amendment

A 1901 amendment forced into the Cuban constitution allowing the United States to intervene militarily to restore order and requiring Cuba to lease naval coaling stations, including Guantanamo Bay, to the U.S.

Open Door Note

A diplomatic circular sent in 1899 by Secretary of State John Hay urging major imperialist nations to respect Chinese territorial integrity and maintain fair and equal commercial competition within their spheres of influence.

Boxer Rebellion

A violent 1900 uprising in China by superpatriotic martial artists ('Boxers') seeking to drive out or kill foreigners and Chinese Christians, eventually put down by a multinational rescue force that included American troops.

Roosevelt Corollary

Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 addition to the Monroe Doctrine asserting that chronic wrongdoing or financial insolvency by Latin American nations justified preventative military intervention by the United States.

Root-Takahira Agreement

A 1908 executive agreement wherein the United States and Japan pledged mutual respect for each other's territorial possessions in the Pacific and committed to upholding the Open Door policy in China.

Muckrakers

Early-twentieth-century investigative journalists and authors who wrote sensational, meticulously researched exposés revealing corruption, graft, and corporate abuses to arouse public outrage.

Initiative

A Progressive political reform permitting registered voters to bypass state legislatures and directly propose new statutes or constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Referendum

A Progressive electoral device that places enacted state legislation on the general ballot for final approval or rejection by the voting electorate.

Recall

A Progressive procedural reform enabling citizens to remove an objectionable or faithless elected public official before the end of their term through a special election.

Sixteenth Amendment

A 1913 constitutional amendment giving the United States Congress explicit authority to levy and collect taxes on individual and corporate incomes without apportionment among the states.

Muller v. Oregon

The 1908 Supreme Court ruling that accepted evidence showing the physical harm of hard labor on female workers, thereby upholding the constitutionality of special state laws restricting women's working hours.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

A tragic 1911 Manhattan industrial inferno in which 146 garment workers died behind locked exit doors, leading directly to stringent factory safety laws and workers' compensation legislation.

Square Deal

Theodore Roosevelt's reformist domestic platform centering on the 'Three Cs': control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation of natural resources.

Elkins Act of 1903

Progressive railroad legislation imposing stiff financial penalties on rail companies giving secret rebates and on favored corporate shippers who accepted them.

Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906

A consumer protection measure designed to halt the sale, manufacture, or transportation of adulterated or fraudulently mislabeled foods and patent pharmaceuticals.

Newlands Act of 1902

A federal statute directing revenue generated from the sale of arid western public lands toward constructing vast municipal irrigation dams and water projects.

Bull Moose Party

The popular moniker given to the Progressive Party in 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt split from William Howard Taft's Republicans, campaigning on his New Nationalism platform.

Triple Wall of Privilege

President Woodrow Wilson's term for the interconnected economic barriers favoring monopolists at the expense of common workers: tariffs, unfair banking systems, and industrial trusts.

Federal Reserve Act (1913)

A landmark banking measure creating the presidential-appointed Federal Reserve Board and twelve regional Federal Reserve banks authorized to regulate credit and issue paper currency.

Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914)

Federal legislation expanding the Sherman Act by outlawing price discrimination and interlocking directorates, while explicitly exempting labor and farm organizations from antitrust prosecution and legalizing peaceful strikes.

Zimmermann Note

A secret telegram sent in early 1917 by German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann proposing a German-Mexican military alliance against the United States in return for restoring lost territories in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Fourteen Points

Woodrow Wilson's idealistic January 1918 vision for post-World War I peace, advocating open covenants, freedom of the seas, removal of economic barriers, arms reductions, colonial self-determination, and a general League of Nations.

Committee on Public Information (CPI)

A wartime government agency directed by journalist George Creel tasked with building passionate civilian enthusiasm for World War I through propaganda, posters, pamphlets, and four-minute men speeches.

Espionage and Sedition Acts

Wartime federal laws enacted in 1917 and 1918 that severely restricted civil liberties by criminalizing draft interference, obstruction of war recruitment, or disparaging language aimed at the U.S. government, flag, or uniform.

Harlem Hellfighters

The celebrated all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment from New York that spent 191 days in frontline trenches during World War I, with 170 members awarded the French Croix de Guerre for valor.

Meuse-Argonne Offensive

A climactic Allied offensive from September 26 to November 11, 1918, engaging 1.2 million American soldiers to cut vital German rail lines, resulting in 120,000 U.S. casualties.

Lodge Reservations

A set of fourteen formal amendments to the Treaty of Versailles authored by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, designed to protect congressional war-declaring prerogatives under Article X of the League Covenant.

Fordism

The system of standardized, mass assembly-line factory production pioneered by Henry Ford that dramatically reduced manufacturing costs and made automobiles broadly affordable.

Flappers

Young American women of the 1920s who rebelled against traditional social conventions by donning short bobbed hair, wearing elevated hemlines, smoking, and asserting newfound cultural autonomy.

Palmer Raids

A series of federal raids coordinated in 1919 and 1920 by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer that arrested roughly 6,000 alleged left-wing radicals and deported 249 suspected subversives to Soviet Russia.

Criminal Syndicalism Laws

State measures enacted during the First Red Scare making it a criminal offense to advocate violence, terrorism, or unlawful destruction to achieve industrial or political change.

Immigration Act of 1924

Federal quota law setting national-origins restrictions at 2% of each nationality present in the 1890 census, sharply curbing Southern and Eastern European immigration and banning all Asian entry.

Volstead Act

The federal enforcement statute enacted by Congress in 1919 over presidential veto to carry out the provisions of the Eighteenth Amendment, establishing definitions for intoxicating liquors.

Scopes Trial

The highly publicized 1925 court trial in Dayton, Tennessee, pitting fundamentalism against modern scientific evolution after biology teacher John T. Scopes was charged with teaching Darwinism.

Teapot Dome Scandal

A 1920s bribery scandal during Warren G. Harding's presidency involving Interior Secretary Albert Fall, who leased federal naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to private oilmen in exchange for illicit loans.

Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)

A multinational treaty signed by 62 nations outlawing offensive military war as an instrument of national policy, though providing no enforcement apparatus and permitting defensive warfare.

Black Tuesday

October 29, 1929, the catastrophic trading collapse of the New York Stock Exchange in which over 16 million shares were dumped, sparking severe economic contraction and the Great Depression.

Hoovervilles

Impoverished shantytowns fabricated from cardboard, scrap iron, and packing boxes that sprang up across American cities, named cynically by suffering citizens after President Herbert Hoover.

Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF)

A muster of approximately 20,000 unemployed, destitute World War I veterans who converged on Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1932 demanding the early cash disbursement of congressionally promised bonuses.

Stimson Doctrine

A 1932 U.S. diplomatic pronouncement declaring that America would recognize no international territorial annexations or administrative changes achieved through military aggression.

Hundred Days

The initial three-month legislative session (March 9–June 16, 1933) of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency when Congress passed unprecedented volumes of emergency recovery, relief, and reform laws.

Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act

A 1933 emergency banking act establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to guarantee individual bank accounts up to $5,000, curbing bank runs and wildcat insolvencies.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

A 1933 New Deal relief agency employing roughly 3 million jobless young men on environmental projects like reforestation, firefighting, and flood control, with mandatory pay allotments sent home to parents.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

A massive 1935 relief agency directed by Harry Hopkins that allocated roughly $11 billion toward employing nearly nine million jobless workers on infrastructure works, literacy instruction, and federal art projects.

National Recovery Administration (NRA)

A sweeping early New Deal agency designed to assist labor and industry through voluntary fair-practice codes regulating maximum hours, minimum wages, and collective bargaining before being voided by the Supreme Court.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

A comprehensive federal public works initiative enacted in 1933 to construct dams across the Tennessee River system, generating cheap hydroelectric energy, managing floodwaters, and revitalizing regional poverty.

Dust Bowl

The drought-stricken, overcultivated region of the Southern Great Plains plagued by violent windstorms and pulverized topsoil in the 1930s, driving thousands of displaced farm refugees westward.

Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

New Deal legislation championed by Commissioner John Collier that repealed the assimilationist Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, promoting tribal self-government, land preservation, and Native cultural revival.

Social Security Act of 1935

A foundational welfare reform providing federal-state unemployment insurance, regular pension payments to retired workers funded by payroll taxes, and provisions for dependent mothers, children, and disabled individuals.

Wagner Act

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which legally affirmed the right of industrial labor to self-organize, choose bargaining representatives, and strike, creating the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938

New Deal labor legislation setting national standards for interstate commerce industries, mandating a 40-cent hourly minimum wage, capping weekly work at 40 hours, and barring child labor under age sixteen.

Court-Packing Plan

FDR's ill-fated 1937 legislative bill asking Congress to appoint a new Supreme Court justice for each sitting justice past age seventy who declined to retire, up to a maximum tribunal membership of fifteen.