The War With Spain In 1898

"Remember the Maine!" The war cry spread throughout the United States after the American battleship was blown up in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. Americans, already sympathetic with Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain, demanded action. Brief and decisive, not too costly, the Spanish-American War made the United States a world power.David F. Trask's War with Spain in 1898 is a cogent political and military history of that "splendid little war." It describes the failure of diplomacy; the state of preparedness of both sides; the battles, including those of Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders; the enlargement of conflict to rout the Spanish from Puerto Rico and the Philippines; and the misconceptions surrounding the war.

A fascinating encyclopedic survey of the Spanish-Cuban/American War, the Philippine War, and the small wars between 1899 and the end of the occupation of Haiti in 1934. The name changes themselves are instructive. The usage of "Spanish-American War" ignores the fact that the war in Cuba had been largely won by the Cuban revolutionaries before US intervention, hence the new title, Spanish-Cuban/American War. The use of "Philippine Insurrection" is replaced by Philippine War, since the Philippine forces had taken much of the islands from Spain before US ground forces arrived. And guerillas or revolutionaries have replaced "bandits," the term used by the US to discredit oppositional forces. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A century after the Cuban war for independence was fought, Louis Perez examines the meaning of the war of 1898 as represented in one hundred years of American historical writing. Offering both a critique of the conventional historiography and an alternate history of the war informed by Cuban sources, Perez explores the assumptions that have shaped our understanding of the "Spanish-American War--a construct, he argues, that denies the Cubans' participation in their own struggle for liberation from Spanish rule. Perez examines historical accounts of the destruction of the battleship Maine, the representation of public opinion as a precipitant of war, and the treatment of the military campaign in Cuba. Equally important, he shows how historical narratives have helped sustain notions of America's national purpose and policy, many of which were first articulated in 1898. Cuba insinuated itself into one of the most important chapters of U.S. history, and what happened on the island in the final decade of the nineteenth century--and the way in which what happened was subsequently represented--has had far-reaching implications, many of which continue to resonate today.

From 1895 to 1898, Cuban insurgents fought to free their homeland from Spanish rule. Though often overshadowed by the "Splendid Little War" of the Americans in 1898, according to John Tone, the longer Spanish-Cuban conflict was in fact more remarkable, foreshadowing the wars of decolonization in the twentieth century. Employing newly released evidence--including hospital records, intercepted Cuban letters, battle diaries from both sides, and Spanish administrative records--Tone offers new answers to old questions concerning the war. He examines the origin of Spain's genocidal policy of "reconcentration"; the causes of Spain's military difficulties; the condition, effectiveness, and popularity of the Cuban insurgency; the necessity of American intervention; and Spain's supposed foreknowledge of defeat. The Spanish-Cuban-American war proved pivotal in the histories of all three countries involved. Tone's fresh analysis will provoke new discussions and debates among historians and human rights scholars as they reexamine the war in which the concentration camp was invented, Cuba was born, Spain lost its empire, and America gained an overseas empire.

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