The Spanish-American War

The event that most clearly thrust the United States into its new role as a Great Power was the Spanish-American War of 1898, which was fought mainly over the issue of who controlled the Philippines and Cuba, both long-standing Spanish colonies.

Known as the ‘Splendid Little War', the Spanish-American War lasted only four months. It clearly exposed the weakness of the Spanish Empire and resulted in the American acquisition of the Philippines (with a $20 million nominal payment to Spain), Puerto Rico and Guam. As a result, the United States became a major Pacific Power and acquired bases that satisfied both the navalists and those calling for it to gain a foothold in the Chinese market. In addition, the United States naturally strengthened its hold over the Caribbean region by effectively controlling the now nominally independent Cuba. After the Spanish-American War, comments about the Caribbean as ‘an American lake' were not far from reality.

These imperial acquisitions did not come without a hefty price. Indeed, the Filipinos, under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, rejected the transfer of their country from Spain to the United States, and a prolonged guerrilla war erupted in February 1899. Over the next three years, American forces fought in a far more ferocious campaign than the one they had just concluded against the Spaniards.

The rise of an American empire at the turn of the century also prompted a debate in the United States about the nature of its foreign policy and how such moves as the acquisition of the Philippines could be justified. The so-called anti­imperialists, headed in the 1900 presidential campaign by the Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan, protested against the acquisition of overseas territories as a betrayal of the nation's traditions. The imperialists, meanwhile, used a whole set of arguments to defend their position, ranging from invoking the ‘white man's burden' to pointing to the need to prevent the European imperial Powers from stepping into the power vacuum left behind by Spain's decay. As William McKinley convincingly defeated Bryan in the 1900 presidential elections, it appeared that the imperialists had received a popular mandate for expansionism. And yet, as later events were to show, American imperialism in the twentieth century was to be very different from that of the Europeans. In fact, already in 1901 a special Congressional Commission recommended that the Philippines should be not formally absorbed into the United States, but granted independence after an undetermined period of American rule.