Spanish-American War

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Spanish-American War

Spanish-American War, a short and decisive conflict fought in 1898 that assured the final expulsion of Spain from the New World and the emergence of the United States as the dominant Caribbean power. Public opinion and the media in the United States had been urging intervention since the beginning of the Cuban rebellion against Spain in 1895. Many of the Cuban landowning elite had also been calling for U.S. intervention to restore order to the island. The pretext for the U.S. to enter the war was provided on 15 February 1898, when the U.S.S Maine, sent to Havana harbor to protect U.S. citizens, exploded and sank, killing 260 officers and enlisted men. No agreement was reached as to the cause of the explosion, but the United States concluded that it had been perpetrated from outside the ship. Since no accord for reparations was reached with Spain, the U.S. Congress declared war against Spain on 25 April. In the Teller Amendment to the war declaration, the United States asserted that it would make no attempt to establish control over the island.

The first battle of the war was fought in the Philippine islands, where the U.S. Navy destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on 1 May 1898. The Spanish quickly surrendered possession of the Philippines to the United States. In June, 17,000 troops landed at Siboney and Daiquirí, east of Santiago de Cuba. On 3 July the U.S. Navy destroyed the Spanish fleet, and subsequent land victories by Cuban and U.S. forces prompted the final surrender of the Spanish troops on 12 August.

The Cuban struggle for independence played a key role in Spain's defeat. The conflict had been consuming the crown's resources for several decades. From the outset of the rebellion in 1895, the Cuban Army of Liberation had controlled the rural areas, although not Havana or Santiago, the major cities. By the end of 1897, Cuban victory was all but complete. Yet although the war was fought between Cuban revolutionaries, the Spanish army, and the U.S. forces, Cuba was excluded from the peace negotiations that resulted in the Treaty of Paris. The independence movement of 1895–1898 had lost its most vital, younger leaders in the struggle, leaving older men and a weary liberation army to accept the compromise of its independence that was demanded by the U.S.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on 10 December 1898, involved more than just Spain's withdrawal from Cuba. In addition Spain lost Puerto Rico, the Philippine islands, and other islands in the Pacific and the West Indies. It terminated Spain's overseas empire. On 1 January 1899, when Spanish government officials retired from Cuba, General John R. Brooke established the U.S. military occupation of the island. Advocates of Manifest Destiny were vindicated by a relatively easy and inexpensive war. The United States assumed formal possession of Cuba and the right to supervise its national government by claiming responsibility for ending Spanish colonial government and unilaterally negotiating the peace terms.

See alsoCuba, War of Independence .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

French E. Chadwick, The Relations of the United States and Spain: The Spanish-American War, 2 vols. (1911).

Walter Millis, The Martial Spirit (1931).

Joseph E. Wisan, The Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1895–1898 (1934).

Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (1936).

Cosme De La Torriente y Peraza, Fin de la dominación de España en Cuba (1948), and Calixto Garc?ia: Cooperó con las fuerzas armados de los Estados Unidos en 1898, cumpliendo órdenes del gobernio cubano (1950).

Ramiro Guerra y Sánchez, et al., eds., Historia de la nación cubana, 10 vols. (1952).

Frank Freidel, The Splendid Little War (1958).

Hugh Thomas, Cuba; or, the Pursuit of Freedom (1971).

James D. Rudolph, Cuba: A Country Study (1985).

Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution (1988).