The Spanish-American War 1898

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2:12This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4. And this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. The Spanish-American War broke out in 1898 when many Cubans were already fighting for independence from Spain, and the United States came down on those Cubans' side. With a small army, but a much more powerful navy, the US soon defeated Spanish forces, won Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines from Spain, and a new Cuban Republic was born.

2:56And while the US emerged as a world power and Spain turned inwards to ask what had gone wrong, life in the former Spanish colonies was about to change dramatically. With me to discuss the Spanish-American War of 1898 are Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh, Stephen Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Buckingham, and Mary Vincent, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sheffield. Mary, let me ask you first of all, how important was empire to Spain in the 1890s? In the 1890s, empire is still enormously important to Spain culturally and as part of what you might call the national psyche.

3:43So even though Spain has, which has been one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen, even though Spain has lost nearly all its South American colonies by the 1820s at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it retains Cuba, it retains Puerto Rico, and it has the Pacific Islands, notably the Philippines. that allows Spain to still think that it is an imperial power. And so the narratives that are told within Spain are very much those of imperial destiny, not necessarily imperial greatness, but the idea that Spain's destiny is to be an imperial Catholic power that has a particular relationship with Spanish America, which is often summed up with the notion of hispanidad, hispanity, which is something that is shared, language, religion, culture.

4:29and within that, particularly the remnants of the empire that they have in the 1890s, which allow Spain to frankly pretend it's still an imperial power and is still at least a middle-ranking great power, Cuba holds a particularly important place. Such that they send in the 1890s a general there, Valeriano Vela, and he turns out to be a bit of a nasty piece of work. He does indeed. I know the British often think that concentration camps started in the Boer War, and it's actually the Cuban revolution of the 1890s. Vela replaces a man called, another general called Martínez Campos, who is keen to get some kind of negotiated settlement with the Cubans, some autonomy, some kind of home rule.

5:14And that is ruled, he fails. He's not supported by the government in Spain. They send Vela to enforce a military solution, which involves the re-concentration policy of denuding the rural areas and concentrating people in the cities. So you've got that civil war going on effectively in Cuba. Are the Spaniards looking at the US and what the US might be thinking about Cuba at the time? If you know anything about naval power, then yes, you are looking at the US and you are thinking that Spain is not going to win any conflict should that come. But that really is a limited number of elites, political elites, military elites and so on.

5:56for the general mood in Spain is one of a jingoism that's exaggerated even in a colonial era. The United States is presented as a pig. Spain is presented as a lion. There is an absolute insistence that somehow Spain's destiny, imperial destiny, and the fact that for many people Cuba is part of Spain and there's a clear political project to have it become part of Spain like the Canary Islands are, they don't countenance the prospect of any defeat from the United States. Well, Steve Wilkinson, in that case, despite this Leonine self-image that the Spaniards had, they had already lost a great deal of their empire in South America.

6:37Chile had gone Argentina, other states in South and Central America. How had it held on to Cuba for so long? Well, the short answer is sugar and slavery. So going back to the beginning of the 19th century, Cuba became very suddenly, at the end of the 18th, early 19th century, a major sugar producer, which entailed the importation of vast numbers of African slaves. And there was a fear amongst the newly rich planter class at the time of another high tea. There was a slave rebellion in the neighbouring colony of Saint-Domingue, which was owned by France. That was actually the cause of the explosion of sugar in Cuba.

7:16the sugar industry in Sandomang was decimated. A lot of the planters moved to Cuba, and that's how it became this major sugar producer very quickly. But the planters, who became newly rich from this business, feared another Haiti, and they kind of colluded with the Spanish crown. And the Spanish crown also got into the business of providing the slaves. So there was a mutual interest here in maintaining the colony by the plantocracy. Well, it was their counterparts in South America that had actually fought against Spanish rule. And so in Cuba, that antipathy between the crown and the elites didn't exist.

7:57In fact, there was the opposite. A second reason is to do with the United States itself, because the United States formed very early. And Frank will come in on this, I'm sure. Very early, the desire to acquire Cuba as a state of the union. and they watched very carefully how Spain was losing power there throughout the 19th century. Quite early on in 1823, John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, formulated a policy of waiting for Cuba to fall into their hands once Spain became too weak. So in actual fact, subsequently, administrations actually helped Spain maintain its colony because they rather Spain held onto it than it fell into other European powers' hands.

8:44So is that part of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the John Quincy Adams? Yes, Quincy Adams writes a letter in which he formulates what's known as the ripe fruit policy. Well, it's known as that in Cuba anyway, and he uses this analogy of the apple falling from a tree inevitably onto the ground. By the force of gravity, there was a political gravitation that would result in Cuba falling into their hands. He promulgates that in 1823, which is the exact same year as the Monroe Doctrine. So there is a link there. So back to the 1880s and 1890s, can you tell us a bit about José Martí, who he was and how he helped propel the Cuban independence movement?

9:22So Martí is a young man. And I should have said earlier that another reason for Cuba remaining a colony was not through the want of trying. The Cubans had a war of independence from 1868 to 78 when José Martí was a young man and he became radicalized as a youth. in the idea of Cuban independence, and was imprisoned for writing a seditious newspaper, and eventually was released from prison but went to exile in Spain. And he arrived in Spain exactly at the time when a particular philosophy, Krausism, became very prominent within Spanish culture, and he was influenced very much by it. And he formed very early on an opinion about the nature of the kind of republic that Cuba ought to become, which would be one which would be for the good of Cubans, all Cubans and with all Cubans, significantly meaning the African population.

10:21So Martí is known as the architect of Cuban independence and also the Cuban nationalism, this idea of Cubamidad as opposed to Hispanidad, which incorporates the African element into it. And so you have a kind of conceptualisation of a biracial nation. Now, Marti articulated that. What percentage of the Cuban population is of African heritage at this stage? At one point in the 19th century, it became about 50%. But by the time of the War of Independence of 1895, there'd been a very concerted effort to import a larger number of immigrants from Spain. And there was a very large mixed-race population.

11:05So there was a very deep class nature to the rebellion that took place in the island in 1895, which combined the two classes in this conceptualization of a Cuban republic that would be for all of them and they would have equal rights. And this is quite significant in determining both Spanish policy towards them and American policy later. Well, let me go on to that American policy, Frank. Steve has spoken about the idea of Cubanism as opposed to Hispanism. But he also mentioned that the United States was talking about absorbing Cuba as a state into the Union. So what are the options that the U.S.

11:46is weighing up at this point? The U.S. is considering a number of things. The president elected in 1896, the Republican president was William McKinley. His party was broadly committed to the expansion of the United States. The United States had just completed essentially a sanctuaries of expansion across the middle of North America. And McKinley and the people around McKinley were interested in acquiring, if not acquiring Cuba, maintaining an interest in Cuba. There were American investors in Cuba, particularly in the sugar industry that Steve mentioned. And what they didn't want to see was a lot of disorder in Cuba.

12:29So the rebellion in Cuba that began in 1895 was quite worrying to the McKinley administration. Also, and this is going to seem counterintuitive, believed that they were anti-imperial. This is going to be very difficult for our listeners to appreciate, I think, especially over the course of what we're about to discuss. But they looked back on their own history and the history of the United States as it was an anti-colonial country. It was founded in a rebellion against an empire. The Monroe Doctrine, as originally promulgated in 1823, was intended to warn big, bad, old-fashioned European empires, monarchical empires like Spain, out of the New World, saying, okay, we as the senior republic – it's very paternalistic – The senior republic in the hemisphere will look after and protect the other republics.

13:21The Monroe Doctrine will become something quite different in 1898, as I'm sure we're going to discuss. So they're sympathetic to the plight of the Cuban people and the Cuban rebels. But in terms of policy terms, Misha, they do want to wait. They think if they wait, it will collapse and either fall into their hands legally or economically. And so McKinley has a kind of wait and see policy, but he's under pressure because there are some real imperialists in the country as well, active imperialists, particularly in his administration, who want to acquire Cuba. So notwithstanding this self-perception of the Americans as anti-imperialist, what are the decisions that or what are the events that lead the U.S.

14:04to decide actually we're going to go in? Well, there are American citizens in Cuba that get caught up in the Cuban rebellion that began in 1895. And there are also there are there's an active Cuban community in the United States that is agitating on behalf of the Cuban rebels. So there's a great deal of sympathy for the Cuban rebels in the United States. And when those American citizens are threatened, and there are a couple of incidents where one or two of them are killed, the McKinley administration in January of 1898 dispatches one of its new battleships, the USS Maine to Havana, as a kind of statement of intent and to protect American interests on the island.

14:46The main explodes on February 15th, 1898. McKinley, President McKinley is actually quite cautious at this point. He wants to undertake a review. The media doesn't. So there are calls for the United States to enter the war. Spain has no motive to blow up the USS Maine. However, an early report suggests that the ship was destroyed by a Spanish mine. Subsequent research suggests it was probably an explosion on the ship that destroyed it. but 260 American sailors were killed. And that really ramps things up and there's a call for intervention in Cuba after that. But the most persuasive explanation that I've read is that it was an explosion in the coal room.

15:26Yes, that's what I understand. There was an investigation in 1976 by a US admiral that basically concluded that it was spontaneous combustion of the coal store and a defect in the design of the ship because the coal store was right next to the magazine and it ignited the magazine and that sank the ship. Frank, before we go into more detail about Spain and the Philippines and Cuba, what was the import of Cuba and the Philippines to the US's growing strategic interests in Central and South America and the Pacific Rim? Well, as Mary indicated, the United States Navy is growing. There's a navalist movement in the 1890s in the United States.

16:11There's a very influential book published in 1890 by Alfred Theramahan, who teaches at the Naval War College in America, called The Influence of Sea Power on History. And Mahan argues that Britain's success as an empire was a result of sea power. Likely true. And that if the United States wants to emulate Britain, it needs to develop its navy. So it invests considerably in its navy. The navies of the world at that time depend on coal, and they need coaling stations around the world. And so there's a belief that if the United States is going to compete with Britain, they're not worried about Spain, really, that they need to expand.

16:53And it's about gaining access to markets in Asia and in the Caribbean, and that naval expansion is the way to do this. And one of the strongest and most fervent proponents of this, of course, is Theodore Roosevelt, who will play a pretty significant role in the coming war. Mary Vincent, is there in Spain a connection to the Philippines the way there is to Cuba? What is that relationship between the Philippines, which is so far away from Spain? It is. And I think the relationship is remote. I don't think that the Philippines occupy anything like the same prominence in Spain or Spanish culture or in that kind of the imperial psyche that Cuba does.

17:34There is a real connection with Cuba for Spain, and for many Spaniards there isn't for the Philippines. There is mission activity, there is some commercial activity, but it is a long way away. And there are other Pacific islands as well, the Caroline Islands, which again don't. There's a reach. You could say that this empire stretches all of these thousands and thousands of miles, but the actual interest in Spain is definitely with the remaining American colonies. And they pour soldiers into Cuba. I mean, there are a lot of Spanish troops there, right? They pour soldiers into Cuba. So they deploy more soldiers in Cuba than the United States has in its standing army.

18:14And they've been pouring soldiers in through the 1890s because of the War of Independence in Cuba. Many are reservists. Serving officers are actually often reluctant to go and serve in Cuba. And that's almost certainly, well, that tells you quite a lot about the Spanish army, but that's a different question. A different issue. But what they do know is that the risks of dying of disease in Cuba are very, very high. Yellow fever and malaria scythe through the mobilised Spanish troops in Cuba, to which, of course, the response is to send more, hence the reliance on reservists. So, Steve Wilkinson, the Cuban rebels, they'd been at this for quite a long time, trying to overthrow the Spanish rule.

19:00Did they need US help? Was it important to them that the US come in on their side? It was because they, well, there's a moot point amongst historians. There is a tendency in historiography to exaggerate the requirement of American troops to fulfil the independence. But it would be fair, I think, to say that the war had been fought to a kind of a stalemate, that the Spanish were still occupying the main cities and the Cubans had managed to more or less liberate the countryside. but the countryside was absolutely destroyed. So had the war continued without American intervention, it's probably likely that Spain would be vanquished eventually, but it wouldn't have been done in a timely fashion that would leave Cuba with anything other than just devastation in its wake.

19:52The intervention of the Americans ended it quickly and therefore allowed Cuba to have some space to develop afterwards. So it was fortuitous for the Cubans that the Americans became involved when they did in that respect. And also they'd lost, the independence movement had lost their great leader, José Martí, because he rather, I thought, rather stupidly fought at the very beginning of the rebellion of 1895. Is that right? Yes, he wasn't a soldier. And against orders, he rode directly into the fire of the Spanish and committed what some people say is a form of political suicide. But he did leave a legacy which was enormously important to the story, and that was that in his knapsack, they found this very famous letter he was writing to his friend in Mexico, Manuel Machado, in which he says that everything that he'd done up to that point had been to try and prevent the United States from actually intervening in Cuba.

20:53because if the United States did, it would dominate the rest of Latin America using Cuba as a platform. And he says, I've lived inside the monster, meaning the United States, and I know its entrails. My sling is that of David. So this kind of conceptualisation of Cuba being a kind of bastion against American imperialism is set by Martí in his dying letter, and that is quite significant. So he sees it as sort of out of the Spanish frying pan into the American fire, is that right? That was the danger. And the leadership amongst the Cubans was very much of the mind. The great black general, Antonio Maceo, who was also killed in 1896, which was actually even bigger blow to the insurgency.

21:36He also said that we have to achieve independence without the Americans' help. We better not have any debts to such a powerful neighbour. That's what he said. So they were very clear they wanted to get independence without the Americans' help and they failed to do it and the Americans came in. So, Frank, what forces did the U.S. then throw at Cuba? Well, as Mary indicated, the United States Army was actually very small at the outbreak of the war. It was about 25 ,000 men. And most of those had, if they had any experience at all, had been used against indigenous people in the Trans-Mississippi West and North America in the wars against Native Americans in the 1870s and 80s.

22:17So they mobilized very quickly. President McKinley, once he asked Congress for authorization to protect American interest and protect the Cuban people, and I think that's an important rhetorical device of his, and they call up 125 ,000 men. But they're mostly new conscripts, and they're not terribly well trained. They mass in Florida, which is not a very pleasant place in the 1890s. And the hygiene within the army is not very well. There's a scandal about this after the war. So there's a very serious problem with public health and disease among the troops. But the United States has a navy and it has a growing navy that it had built up over the previous 10 or 15 years.

23:02So its naval forces are quite significant, but its military forces, its army forces are fairly weak. Well, they're large, but they're not terribly well trained or experienced. So, Mary Vincent, notwithstanding the weakness of American soldiery at the time, but the strength of the US Navy, they capture Manila and Cuba pretty quickly. What happens in Spain when they suddenly realise that these territories have been snatched away from them? I think that, well, the first response is one of horror. This has happened in the six weeks war. It's all over. Spain's lost its navy. entire navy for the second time in a century, one being at Trafalgar.

23:45So there's a feeling of profound humiliation. The speed of the defeat and the destruction of the navy does mean there's nowhere to go. You can't pretend that this was anything other than an utter defeat and a national humiliation. So there is an immediate concern that the political implications and economic ramifications will be immediate and will be severe. And oddly, that doesn't happen. One of the reasons that Spain has been so insistent on, or Spanish elite has been so insistent on keeping Cuba as a colony, is that Spanish politics at this time is ostensibly democratic, but actually oligarchic.

24:24So they run elections, the results of which are always known in advance, because they are always worked out between clientelist retinues. So there is a massive patronage network, which extends and includes Cuba because of the sugar trade, and does not include the Philippines and does not include the Caroline Islands. But there is a real concern amongst the elites, including people like the Queen Regent and the Prime Minister before he was assassinated, that the loss of Cuba will mean the collapse of this internal political system, which is entirely corrupt. These client-less networks will collapse.

24:58That doesn't happen. And that surprises and reassures everybody. And the economic impact, which is felt particularly in Catalonia, because Catalan textiles are not competitive internationally. So they need the protected markets in Cuba. But actually, these are commercial businesses. They understand the market and they develop new opportunities in Europe. So the economic impacts are not terribly severe. What does happen is an immediate mood of national introspection. How have we come to this? How have we been defeated by this parvenu Protestant nation in a matter of weeks? How do we have no empire left?

25:35Just interestingly, you mentioned Catalonia there and the impact on the Catalan economy. Does it spur a renewed interest in Catalan independence? Yes, it does. More, I think, Catalan devolution. Independence is very uncommon at this point. But demands for devolution and autonomy and greater Catalan say in their own affairs, that is already present and that is absolutely emboldened by the loss of Cuba. So, Steve, we're getting an idea of what happens in Spain. What actually changes for Cubans when independence happens? Well, independence doesn't come immediately. The Americans win, obviously, and then they settle a peace deal with the Spanish, the Treaty of Paris, and occupy Cuba for four years before they permit, I would say, Cuba to become independent under a constitution that basically includes elements that are written by the Americans to ensure that American interests are protected there.

26:37So what happens is there is a kind of situation arising where Cuba becomes nominally independent but doesn't really have sovereignty. Sovereignty resides elsewhere. And more or less the United States has the say-so over what happens on the island. As a consequence, the settlement is not to the satisfaction of most of the insurgents. The people that fought the war were fighting for this dream of a Cuba that was for all Cubans. They basically were shut out from the settlement. It pleased a number of very wealthy Cuban planters who maintained their property and their power within the island. but the mass of people that actually fought the war were denied what they thought they were fighting for.

27:24So for the rich Cubans it was a sort of everything has to change in order for things to stay the same, as it were. Yes, I mean that would be one way of putting it. There was a kind of split in the movement and the president that became the first president, Estrada Palma, was of the kind of class that was the former upper elite of Cuba And they'd kind of sat on the fence to some extent during the war. They finally came in on the side of independence. But some of them would have actually liked to have been annexed into the United States and make Cuba one of the United States even then. But independence was kind of dictated by the Americans themselves through what was known as the Teller Amendment.

28:04Frank, you wanted to come in there. Perhaps you can tell us about the Teller and Platt Amendments. Sure. So, I mean, one question that arises if we see this relatively straightforward military success for the United States is why didn't they annex Cuba? Particularly because there were people calling for it, as we discussed a few minutes ago. Well, there's an anti-imperial movement in the United States that's quite strong. And it's a curious mix. Some of them are sort of well-meaning humanitarians who don't think the United States should become an imperial power. Others are racists. The 1890s is a profoundly racist time in American history.