The Spanish-American War and the ‘Empire By Default’

Indiana State Library and Historical Bureau, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

After the positive response to my piece on a series of books about World War I that I finished recently, I thought it might be interesting to add an occasional feature about what book I’m reading at the moment. My tastes run the gamut from fiction to science to theology, but history is one of my favorite genres.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slogging through “Empire by default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century” by Ivan Musicant. Some of you who follow me on Twitter may recall that I was asking for recommendations about the Spanish-American War a couple of months ago. “Empire by Default” was the top pick and I think it might have been the only recommendation. The Spanish-American War isn’t exactly a hot literary topic.

I became interested in the Spanish-American War after reading about WWI. Several of the figures who were prominent in America during the Great War period were young bucks during the Spanish-American War, much as many of the prominent WWII generals cut their teeth as junior officers during WWI. A couple of household names from the Spanish-American War that are recognizable today include Theodore Roosevelt and “Black Jack” Pershing, who earned his nickname through his service with the segregated 10th Cavalry in Cuba.

It’s also interesting to note that some Civil War figures made an appearance in the Spanish-American War as well. Commodore George Dewey, the hero of the Battle of Manila Bay, was a Civil War veteran of the Union Navy. Joseph Wheeler, an American cavalry general, had been a Confederate general before being elected to Congress representing Alabama. “Fighting Joe” Wheeler was tapped by President McKinley to lead volunteers in both Cuba and the Phillippines.

And then there are the familiar-but-different names that pop up. For instance, the General MacArthur of the Spanish-American War was another veteran of the Civil and Indian Wars, but Arthur MacArthur was the father of the General MacArthur that most of us are familiar with. Baron von Richthofen even shows up in the Phillippines, but in this case, the baron is Oswald the diplomat rather than Manfred the fighter pilot.

The Spanish-American War lasted only four months, but its brevity belies its impact on both the course of American history and the geopolitical balance of the time. It was the first time that the US had intervened on behalf of foreign freedom fighters across the water from its own borders, a policy that would be repeated many times in the future.

The war also marked the beginning of the imperial phase of American history. The US took trophies from the Spanish in the form of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Phillippines. Ironically, the war that began with Americans moralizing against heavy-handed Spanish colonialism ended with the US taking possession of several territories, some of which it still possesses today, and the onset of another even lesser-known war, the Philippine-American War, against some of the same people who had fought Spanish oppression.

The Spanish-American War also sparked advances in areas that were seemingly unrelated to the military. On one hand, the expansion of American seapower in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was instrumental in the push for the construction of the Panama Canal. On the other, the loss of life and manpower from tropical diseases inspired medical breakthroughs such as the prevention and treatment of yellow fever, an effort led by Maj. Walter Reed, another name that is still familiar to many of us.

The run-up to the Spanish-American War also holds some warnings for our own time. As with WWI, the war was preceded by a war fever that was largely devoid of objective facts. The destruction of the USS Maine in Havana was used as a reason to whip up sentiment against the Spanish, although it now seems certain that the explosion that sank the ship was an accident.

The sinking of the Maine came atop years of coverage of the Cuban revolution. While there were definitely atrocities committed by the Spanish as they fought to put down the revolt, American newspapers largely disregarded similar crimes committed by the rebels. This pattern would repeat two decades later when the media would whip up sentiment against the Germans in WWI even though the British and French behaved in a similar fashion.

If you like somewhat obscure history, “Empire by Default” is a very readable and comprehensive (the librarian called it a “doorstop” when I picked it up) account of the Spanish-American War. The “splendid little war” left a large mark on America and the world.