United StatesThe Spanish–American War is the name most commonly used by English-speaking historians to describe the 1898 conflict between the Spanish and the United States. While many routinely include the indigenous struggles for independence in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands under this heading, the name Spanish-American War (explicitly suggesting the period of US military involvement, as it does) narrowly refers to the US sponsored punctuation to the late-nineteenth-century turmoil in the Spanish colonies.[6]
Ostensibly fought over the issue of Cuban independence, the short four-month war developed into a global conflict as the U.S. Navy sought to dislodge Spain from longstanding colonial outposts in both the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Its outcome—with temporary administrative authority over Cuba and indefinite colonial authority over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines ceded to the U.S. through the December 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris[7]—had long-range implications for both belligerent parties. For Spain, the conflict, thereafter referred to as “the Disaster,” contributed to the further weakening of the Restoration Government, the eventual rise of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, and Spain’s military insignificance in the twentieth century. The victorious United States, however, assumed its role as full-fledged Empire, with colonial possessions spanning the globe and a modern navy capable of defending them.
The combined traumas of the Spanish War of Independence, the consequent loss of most of Spain’s American Empire in the early 19th century, and two disastrous Carlist wars effected a new interpretation of Spain’s remaining empire. Liberal Spanish elites like Cánovas del Castillo and Emilio Castelar attempted to redefine the idea of empire to more neatly dovetail with the emerging concept of Spanish nationalism. As Cánovas makes clear in his address to the Ateneo in 1882, Discurso Sobre la Nación[8], the Spanish nation was a cultural and linguistic concept that tied Spain’s colonies to the metropole notwithstanding the oceans that separated them. Cánovas argued Spain was markedly different from rival empires like Britain and France. Unlike these empires, the dissemination of civilization was Spain’s unique contribution to the New World.[9] This popular reimagining of the Spanish empire had the effect of imbuing special significance to Cuba as an integral part of the Spanish nation. The new importance invested in maintaining the empire would have disastrous consequences for Spain’s sense of national identity in the aftermath of the war.
