The Great Depression in the Americas (c.1920–1939)

A hands-off government approach to the economy. In the 1920s it meant almost no regulation of banks or the stock market, letting speculation and risk build up unchecked.

Raised US import tariffs; other countries retaliated with their own tariffs, shrinking international trade and weakening the global economy before 1929.

About 25,000 small, local banks existed with limited reserves and no deposit insurance, so one bank failure could trigger panic and a chain of collapses.

WWI overproduction continued after European demand recovered, so crop prices fell steadily through the 1920s, leaving indebted farmers in crisis years before 1929.

Severe dust storms across the Great Plains in the early 1930s, caused by drought combined with soil damaged by years of over-ploughing.

24 and 29 October 1929 — the two catastrophic days of the Wall Street Crash, when panic selling wiped out billions in stock value.

Hoover favoured voluntary cooperation and limited government (rugged individualism); Roosevelt used the New Deal to massively expand federal intervention and executive power.

A New Deal law guaranteeing workers the right to unionise and bargain collectively, greatly strengthening organised labour's power.

Created the first national safety net in US history, providing old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

A group of conservative businessmen who claimed Roosevelt's New Deal threatened free enterprise and individual liberty by expanding government power too far.

Long argued the New Deal did not go far enough to redistribute wealth to the poor, the opposite complaint from conservatives who said it went too far.

Hoover and the Republicans lost in a landslide, and Roosevelt built a new Democratic coalition of urban, immigrant, and Southern voters that dominated politics for a generation.

The 1929 Wall Street Crash collapsed world coffee prices; coffee was ~70% of Brazil's exports, destroying the economic base of the ruling coffee-and-dairy elite.

'Coffee with milk' — the Old Republic system where power alternated between São Paulo (coffee) and Minas Gerais (dairy) elites.

After a disputed election result favoring São Paulo's candidate, Vargas's Liberal Alliance launched a revolt; the army did not defend the old regime, and Vargas became provisional president in November 1930.

Vargas's authoritarian 'New State' dictatorship, begun in 1937 after he cancelled the scheduled 1938 election using a forged communist-plot pretext (the 'Cohen Plan').

Right: the São Paulo elite (1932 Constitutionalist Revolution) and the Integralistas (failed 1938 uprising). Left: the Communist-backed ANL (crushed 1935 uprising).

Minimum wage, labour courts, and pension institutes (IAPs) for urban workers — but unions were state-controlled and strikes were effectively banned ('state corporatism').

Rural laborers and Afro-Brazilian workers, who made up most of the workforce but stayed outside the formal-sector protections.

The vote — the new Electoral Code granted women's suffrage, and women voted for the first time in the 1933 Constituent Assembly election.

It promoted a state-approved national identity ('brasilidade') built around samba and Carnival, and used the propaganda ministry DIP (1939) to control radio and press, e.g. the 'Hora do Brasil' broadcast.

It stayed largely unchanged — the paternalist, assimilationist Indian Protection Service (SPI, est. 1910) continued its approach with no new reforms.

One view: an ambitious politician exploiting a crisis to seize power. Other view: a necessary modernizing response to a broken oligarchic system exposed by the Depression. A strong essay weighs both.

Thesis engaging the claim → argument for → argument against → a clear, substantiated judgement that directly answers 'to what extent'.

A 1932 Hoover programme that lent federal money to struggling banks and railroads, but gave no direct relief to individuals.

In 1932, unemployed WWI veterans camped in Washington DC demanding early bonus payments; Hoover sent the army to disperse them, making him look uncaring.

First New Deal (1933–35): emergency rescue — banks, farmers, jobs (Emergency Banking Act, CCC, AAA, NRA, TVA). Second New Deal (1935 on): lasting reform — WPA, Social Security Act, Wagner Act.

The USA's first national system of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.

A sharp economic downturn in 1937–38 after FDR cut New Deal spending too early, showing the recovery was still fragile.

He believed relief was a provincial responsibility, not a federal one, and refused extra funds to opposition-run provinces.

R. B. Bennett's 1935 package of unemployment insurance, minimum wage and market regulation laws, inspired by FDR; came too late to save his government and was mostly struck down by the Privy Council as unconstitutional.

President of Mexico from 1934, known for radical agrarian reform, oil nationalization, ISI and labour rights.

A policy of protecting new domestic factories with tariffs so a country makes goods at home instead of importing them.

Cárdenas nationalized foreign-owned oil companies, creating the state oil company PEMEX — still a source of national pride today.

A plot of communal land, collectively farmed by a village, used in Cárdenas's agrarian land redistribution.

The USA's New Deal (especially the Second New Deal) built lasting institutions like Social Security; Canada's Bennett New Deal was mostly struck down by the courts and achieved little before his government fell in 1935.