Lecture

The advent of the United States as a global power coincided with the internationalization of the Armenian Question in the late nineteenth century. Since its early days, the United States had developed commercial relations with the Ottoman Empire. Like his predecessors, President Woodrow Wilson continued to cultivate close government-business relations by emphasizing the responsibilities of the "promotional state" abroad. Wilson's rhetoric of moralism and humanitarianism notwithstanding, his administration sought to maintain friendly relations with the Turkish government during the genocide and after World War I.