Write short notes on any TWO of the following: (a) Louisiana purchase (b) Truman Doctrine (c) McCarthyism

(a) Louisiana Purchase

In 1803 the United States, under President Thomas Jefferson, bought the vast Louisiana territory from France for about 15 million dollars. Napoleon, who had regained the territory from Spain, needed money for war in Europe and had lost interest in an American empire after the French failure to suppress the Haitian revolution. The US originally sought only New Orleans to secure navigation on the Mississippi, but accepted the whole territory of roughly 828,000 square miles.

Significance: it roughly doubled the size of the United States; secured the Mississippi and New Orleans for western farmers; removed a European power from much of the continent; prompted the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–06); and opened the way for westward expansion and "Manifest Destiny". It raised constitutional questions — Jefferson doubted his authority to acquire territory — and later intensified the conflict over whether new states would allow slavery, contributing to the Missouri Compromise (1820) and eventually the Civil War.

(b) Truman Doctrine

On 12 March 1947, President Harry Truman asked Congress for 400 million dollars in aid for Greece, facing a communist insurgency, and Turkey, under Soviet pressure over the Straits, after Britain announced it could no longer support them. He declared that it must be US policy "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures".

Significance: it marked the formal start of the US policy of containment, articulated by George Kennan; ended American isolationism in peacetime; led to the Marshall Plan (1948), NATO (1949) and a global network of alliances; and framed the Cold War as a struggle between free and totalitarian systems. Critics argue that it committed the US to intervention worldwide, sometimes supporting authoritarian regimes in the name of anti-communism.

(c) McCarthyism

McCarthyism refers to the anti-communist campaign of the early Cold War associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. In February 1950, in a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, he claimed to have a list of communists in the State Department. Amid fears caused by the Soviet atomic bomb (1949), the communist victory in China and spy cases, he made sweeping accusations against officials, academics, writers and Hollywood figures. The House Un-American Activities Committee and loyalty programmes led to blacklists and dismissals.

Fall and legacy: McCarthy's televised attacks on the US Army in the Army–McCarthy hearings (1954) exposed his bullying tactics, and the Senate censured him in December 1954. "McCarthyism" now means reckless accusations of disloyalty without evidence. The episode damaged civil liberties, freedom of expression and careers, and remains a warning about the dangers of political witch-hunts in times of fear.