Our history teacher told us to do an history essay on How far was the 1920s a won decade.
How far was the 1920´s a won decade?
In the following essay I will talk how far 1920s was a won decade. I partly agree because they had some successful things but they also had failures.
In one hand, USA get isolated because they were a vast country and rich in natural resources. They didn’t need to import or export. The republican policies believed that government should interfere as little as possible in the everyday lives of the people. This was called Laissez-faire. Tariffs made expensive to import foreign goods, so they protected outside competition. The republicans kept taxation as low as possible. They made this so American people could waste their money in goods and wealthy people would reinvest their money in industries. They also allowed the development of trusts. This were corporations which dominated industry. Woodrow and the Democrats fought against trusts because they believed it was unhealthy for men.
On the other hand, Isolation negative too because when all goods were sold, they needed to export but Europe didn’t want to buy from USA because they were very poor because of the war. The farming industry had also problems too, Europe imported far less food from USA and farmers were produce surpluses of wheat which nobody wanted. And they were having competition with Canada wheat producers. When alcohol was prohibit there started being gangsters, who were violent and aggressive. Gangsters transported illegally alcohol from Canada. The gangsters pay the law so they weren’t persecuted.
The League was partly successful too. I partly agree because the League made many good thing such as Upper Silesia, which was an industrial region on the border between Germany and Poland. Both want to take control of it. The League decided to do a plebiscite which was that the citizens from Upper Silesia would vote to the country which they wanted to rule them. They divide the region but they built a safeguard to prevent future disputes. Secondly, Finland and Sweden both want to take control of the Aaland Islands. They appealed to the League. The League decided that they should be rule by Finland. They also solved the conflict in Corfu. Corfu was a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, between Greece and Albania. And there they murdered an important Italian general called Tellini and his army. So Mussolini, an Italian general, invaded Corfu. The league acted and made Greece pay compensations and Mussolini left the Corfu Islands. Two years after Corfu, Greek troops invaded Bulgaria after an incident on the border in which some Greeks soldiers were killed. And Bulgaria appealed for help. The league condemned the Greek action and ordered Greece to pull out and pay compensations to Bulgaria. The Greeks obeyed, but they complain that there seem to be one rule for the large states and another for the smaller ones.
But thy also had some failures, which one was the problem in Vilna. Poland and Lithuania were two states created by the post-war treaties. Vilna was made the capital of Lithuania but its population was largely Polish. In 1920 a Polish army took control of it. Lithuania appealed for help. The league protested to Poland, but Poland did not withdraw. Finally the league did nothing and Poles kept Vilna. Another failure was The Geneva Protocol. The Corfu incident demonstrated how the league could be undermined by its own members. Britain and France drew up the Geneva Protocol in 1924. This was that if two members were in dispute they would have to ask the league to sort out the disagreement and they would have to accept the Council’s decision. But before the plan could be put into effect, there was a general election in Britain. The new Conservative government refused to sign the Protocol. So the Protocol in fact weakened the League.