Spanish American War

Miltarily speaking, the Spanish-American War of 1898 was so brief and relatively bloodless as to have been a mere passing episode in the history of modern warfare. Its political and diplomatic consequences, however, were enormous: it catapulted the United States into the arena of world politics and set it, at least briefly, on the new road of imperialism. To be sure, specific events drove the United States to hostilities in 1898; but the stage had already been set by profound changes in thought about the nation’s mission and its destiny.

Before the 1890s, roughly speaking, most Americans had adhered stubbornly to the belief, as old as the Revolution itself, that their country should remain aloof from European affairs and offer an example of democracy and peace to the rest of the world; but slowly in the 1880s, and more rapidly in the 1890s, new currents of thought eroded this historic conviction. The United States had become a great power by virtue of its prodigious economic growth since the Civil War; numerous publicists said that it ought to begin to act like one. Propagandists of sea power, above all, Captain Alfred T. Mahan, argued that future national security and greatness depended upon a large navy supported by bases throughout the world. After the disappearance of the American frontier in 1890, the conviction grew that the United States would have to find new outlets for an ever-increasing population and agricultural and industrial production; this belief was particularly rife among farmers in dire distress in the 1890s. Social Darwinists said that the world is a jungle, with international rivalries inevitable, and that only strong nations could survive. Added to these arguments were those of idealists and religious leaders that Americans had a duty to “take up the white man’s burden” and to carry their assertedly superior culture and the blessings of Christianity to the backward peoples of the world.

It was against this background that the events of 1898 propelled the United States along the road to war and empire. Cuban rebels had begun a violent revolution against Spanish rule in 1895, set off by a depression caused by a decline in U.S. sugar purchases from Cuba. Rebel violence led progressively to more repressive Spanish countermeasures. Cuban refugees in the United States spread exaggerated tales of Spanish atrocities, and these and numerous others were reprinted widely (particularly by William Randolph Hearst’s New York American and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, then engaged in a fierce battle for circulation). President Cleveland resisted the rising public demand for intervention, but by early 1898 the pressure, then on his successor, McKinley, was too great to be defied. When an explosionвЂ"caused by a submarine mine, according to a U.S. naval court of inquiryвЂ"sank the USS Maine with large loss of life in Havana harbour on Feb. 15, 1898, events moved beyond the president’s control. Though Spain was willing to make large concessions to avoid war, it adamantly resisted what had become the minimum public and official U.S. demandвЂ"Spanish withdrawal from