Race and the Spanish-American War | Newsweek National News

Posted By: elfriede1 @ 03/31/2008 4:25:34 PM

Comment: Cuba???s misfortune was to have been geographically too close to the U.S. Not only had the Cuban patriots crossed the little island from west to east and vice versa but the remnants of the Spanish Empire were imploding with no help from the outside.
America wanted to have its own little empire and the literature that I have read in the past refers to America???s own destruction of the battleship Maine to initiate the Spanish American War in order to attain its own ends. After all it did end with a bunch of small islands in its asset side of the equation, a mini empire if you will, and with Guantánamo in Cuba. Much later it tried to replace the Cuban democracy of Prío Socarrás with the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista which led to Fidel Castro when this imposition got to be too much for most Cubans. Obviously business interests in the U.S. would have it a lot easier to deal with a dictator, and as a matter of fact it did succeed in dumping part of the mob in Havana.
Perhaps the world would be a quieter place to live in if we were to stop trying to change other people´s governments, particularly if they are democratic. It???s a lot easier for businesses in the U.S. to deal with a dictatorship in a foreign country than with the intricacies of a democracy. Just witness our dealings with Musharaff in Pakistan or Saddam in Iraq prior to Desert Storm just to name a couple of instances.

Posted By: kuyper47 @ 03/31/2008 1:53:49 PM

Comment: The only thing even remotely "humanitarian" about the Spanish-American War was President McKinley's professed wish to bring Christianity to "our little brown brothers" -- a community that had been practicing Christianity a hundred years before the Pilgrims washed up on Plymouth Rock. Certainly, there was nothing either humanitarian or Christian in the way that US troops treated Aguinaldo and his freedom fighters in the Philippines, or the Cuban soldiers in Cuba. Fact is, the United States' war with Spain was the result of the same forces that propelled its earlier war with Mexico -- jingoism, greed and a naked desire for territorial expansion.

Posted By: kuyper47 @ 03/31/2008 1:52:52 PM

Comment: The only thing even remotely "humanitarian" about the Spanish-American War was President McKinley's professed wish to bring Christianity to "our little brown brothers" -- a community that had been practicing Christianity a hundred years before the Pilgrims washed up on Plymouth Rock. Certainly, there was nothing either humanitarian or Christian in the way that US troops treated Aguinaldo and his freedom fighters in the Philippines, or the Cuban soldiers in Cuba. Fact is, the United States' war with Spain was the result of the same forces that propelled its earlier war with Mexico -- jingoism, greed and a naked desire for territorial expansion.

Posted By: JaneFranklin @ 03/31/2008 10:46:27 AM

Comment: I'd like to add that by going to war with Spain, a collapsing empire, in 1898, Washington gained two other possessions in addition to Cuba and the Philippines: Guam and Puerto Rico. (Hawaii was also annexed that year.)
And I want to point out that the reasons for invading Cuba were definitely not "mostly humanitarian." As I said in "Out-Platting Platt: From Colonization to Globalization," a paper presented in Havana in June 2001:
"Key theoreticians of 19th-century U.S. policy toward Cuba were quite frank. Thomas Jefferson viewed annexation of Cuba as part of an unprecedented 'empire for liberty.' John Quincy Adams compared Cuba to an apple that would eventually fall from its 'unnatural connection with Spain' into the hands of the United States.
"But that goal would be blocked by an independent Cuba. Hence the 1898 intervention, the Platt Amendment, more interventions in 1906, 1912, 1917, 1933, and U.S. policy ever since. The Platt Amendment merely formalized this policy of control for its historical period. As Secretary of War Elihu Root spelled out in 1901: '[The Platt Amendment] gives to the United States no right which she does not already possess.'" (For full article, see my homepage.)
Jane Franklin
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbfranklins

Posted By: JaneFranklin @ 03/31/2008 10:45:41 AM

Comment: I'd like to add that by going to war with Spain, a collapsing empire, in 1898, Washington gained two other possessions in addition to Cuba and the Philippines: Guam and Puerto Rico. (Hawaii was also annexed that year.)
And I want to point out that the reasons for invading Cuba were definitely not "mostly humanitarian." As I
said in "Out-Platting Platt: From Colonization to Globalization," a paper presented in Havana in June 2001:
"Key theoreticians of 19th-century U.S. policy toward Cuba were quite frank. Thomas Jefferson viewed annexation of Cuba as part of an unprecedented 'empire for liberty.' John Quincy Adams compared Cuba to an apple that would eventually fall from its 'unnatural connection with Spain' into the hands of the United States.
"But that goal would be blocked by an independent Cuba. Hence the 1898 intervention, the Platt Amendment, more interventions in 1906, 1912, 1917, 1933, and U.S. policy ever since. The Platt Amendment merely formalized this policy of control for its historical period. As Secretary of War Elihu Root spelled out in 1901: '[The Platt Amendment] gives to the United States no right which she does not already possess.'" (For full article, see my homepage.)
Jane Franklin
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbfranklins

Posted By: LatAm @ 03/30/2008 6:10:32 PM

Comment:
Not a bad article, considering the lack of information and the myths evidenced in most reports on the dandy little war. Still, it defies the historical record to say that the US invaded "for mostly humanitarian reasons," or that it takes a historian "steeped in socialist ideologist" to "suspect a plot by wealthy American businessmen to annex Cuba." That was well documented by historians long before the 1959 revolution, including some Cuban historians who later left for the U.S. because they were not socialists. Can it be that Evans has not begun to scratch the history of the colonial thirst for Cuba going back to Jefferson, or the many accounts contemporaneous to the invasion showing that the war was demanded by financiers and industrialists who wanted Cuba as a profit center? Or is he willing to take on the black-white issue (in the past) while judiciously choosing self-censure when it comes to recognizing that the U.S. was following a classic model of imperal expansion driven by profit and strategic location? Maybe putting it that way casts an imperssible light on the occupation of Iraq.

Posted By: LatAm @ 03/30/2008 6:09:16 PM

Comment:
Not a bad article, considering the lack of information and the myths evidenced in most reports on the dandy little war. Still, it defies the historical record to say that the US invaded "for mostly humanitarian reasons," or that it takes a historian "steeped in socialist ideologist" to "suspect a plot by wealthy American businessmen to annex Cuba." That was well documented by historians long before the 1959 revolution, including some Cuban historians who later left for the U.S. because they were not socialists. Can it be that Evans has not begun to scratch the history of the colonial thirst for Cuba going back to Jefferson, or the many accounts contemporaneous to the invasion showing that the war was demanded by financiers and industrialists who wanted Cuba as a profit center? Or is he willing to take on the black-white issue (in the past) while judiciously choosing self-censure when it comes to recognizing that the U.S. was following a classic model of imperal expansion driven by profit and strategic location? Maybe putting it that way casts an imperssible light on the occupation of Iraq.

Posted By: pochero @ 03/27/2008 12:34:55 AM

Comment: I am struck by the similarities between the Spanish surrender in Santiago and the Spanish surrender in Manila after Dewey's victory. In both cases, native rebels had already virtually beaten the Spaniards, and in both cases, the Spanish force wanted to surrender to the Americans to preserve their dignity.

Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 03/25/2008 5:06:49 PM

Comment: Of course,''misunderstanding''probably also contributes to the fact that Roosevelt did not ''charge up San Juan Hill'',at all. His volunteers took the lower Kettle Hill,which Roosevelt did not participate in,being mounted and seeing that the hill was covered in barbed wire. His legend would be spawned by friend Frederick Remingtons famous painting. Besides,''America As Greedy Murderous Imperialist''gets regular due in all of Americas colleges and universities and has for decades. Thomas is not on to anything new,but pursues an agenda peculiar to liberal graduates bearing journalism or other liberal arts degrees. That is,normalization of relations with Cuba under the next administration,Thomas himself,probably a canned Obamaite.

Posted By: furrlessgerbil @ 03/25/2008 4:34:47 PM

Comment: It isnt a socialist plot that America tried to take over Cuba for its own economic interest. There was nothing humanitarian about the intervention. American businesses took the island, which they had desired for years, and set up plantations and monopolies that lasted until 1959.

Posted By: rjones @ 03/25/2008 3:46:14 PM

Comment: Besides a few sentences mentioning Teddy Roosevelt, the Spanish-American war is almost a non-subject in US school's curriculum, and to learn almost anything about this war, the student must research it on his or her own. (Like that would ever happen)
In fact, if you ask most people today anything about it, they will probably tell you that because "President" Teddy Roosevelt and his tiny band of "Rough Riders" single-handily won the Spanish-American War, he was able to build the Panama Canal and sell souvenir Teddy Bears on the side.
It's odd how the racism behind the S-A war sounds so similar to the way our Government treated the American Indians in the old West, or the British treated the Black natives while colonizing Africa.