The Making of a World Power: Spanish-American War to World War II

Dr. Gary Darden - Associate Professor of History, Chair, Department of Social Sciences and History, Fairleigh Dickinson University
5 Thursday afternoons 1:30 - 3:30 pm, September 10, 17, 24, (skip Oct 1), 8, and 15, 2026

Over the course of the 19th century, the United States steadily built a continental empire from the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 through the Settlement of the West in the 1890s, but the pressing debate was whether that impetus for expansion should cross the oceans of the world to match its industrial power and expressed need for global markets and raw materials. From the Spanish American War through World War I, the United in one generation engaged in a global scope of military intervention and economic activity that faced a Nationalist blowback in the 1920s to an Isolationist resurgence in the 1930s. 

1. Origins & Debates of U.S. Expansion in the 19th Century

2. Lowest Hanging Fruit: War with the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean & Pacific

3. Dollar Diplomacy: U.S. Investment & Intervention in Latin American & East Asia

4. Make the World Safe for Democracy: World War I and the American Intervention

5. Postwar Reaction at Home & Abroad: from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression 

Dr. Gary Darden is an Associate Professor of History and the Chair of the Department of Social Sciences and History, Becton College of Arts & Sciences, Fairleigh Dickinson University. His specialization is modern American political history. He earned his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 2005, the same year he began his career at FDU.  He is a native of Texas and lives in New York City.