American History Hit - The Spanish-American War

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

In April 1898 the United States declared war on Spain. By the end of the war that December, the Spanish had lost their centuries-old colonial empire and the US had emerged as a power in the Pacific.Join Don as he speaks to Christopher McKnight Nichols, Professor of History and Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies, The Ohio State University. Nichols' latest book, co-edited with David Milne, is ‘Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories’.Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. The cruiser USS Olympia lobs shells at the old fort in the Malate district of Manila here in the Philippines. It's August 13, 1898, and American forces have the city surrounded.

Admiral George Dewey and his fleet are in the bay. Major General Wesley Merritt has troops positioned around the city. It seems the Spanish, occupiers of the Philippines for over 300 years, are facing a tough fight if they mean to maintain control of Manila. But their resistance is strangely minimal. Artillery fire from Spanish fortifications is token, scattered, and weak. It's almost like they're hardly trying. It's almost like this battle has been faked.

It is American history hit. I am Don Wildman. Thanks for joining us. Today we will speak of a brief but consequential war that pitted a once expansive imperial power against an emerging America seeking to stretch its global standing. It is a conflict that doesn't receive the historical attention it richly deserves, given that overwhelming victory granted the United States new territorial possessions across two oceans and ushered it towards a bold new century with tremendous influence in place.

If not for the Spanish-American War, the 20th century would perhaps not have become the American century it is so often called. The reasons supporting this proposition are the stuff of today's conversation with Christopher Nichols, Professor of History at the Ohio State University, where he occupies the Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, specializing in the history of United States relationship to the rest of the world. His most recent book and edited work is ideology in U.S. foreign relations. Hello, Chris, welcome. Great to be here with you, Don. The Spanish-American War lasts for only a matter of months. Officially begins April 1898.

Hostilities over in mid-summer. I mean, a treaty signed in December. It was seven months long. famously called by Secretary of State at the time, John Hay, a splendid little war. It's a fight over Cuban independence primarily. But how much had the U.S. been spoiling for a larger war with the Spanish at this time? You know, there's no doubt the U.S. in this period, the 1880s, 1890s was spoiling for a war. That it was the Spanish, took some by surprise.

Because in that era, you know, many of the American politicians who were agitating for conflict for the U.S.'s growth as a military power. a larger navy. They were looking to countries like Germany who were more of a peer rising power. There's a note that I found in the Teddy Roosevelt papers, for instance, where he said he'll take a war with Spain, but what he wanted was a war with Germany. Wow. But really, you know, conflict with Spain over Cuba stretches back to Thomas Jefferson's time. There were attempts to buy the island. There were attempts to seize the island. And Spanish colonialism and Spain on the border had been a security threat for the U.S. for most of its history. Sure. The Monroe Doctrine, 1823. So for 75 years, by the time of the Spanish-American War, we were still, you know, but for the civil

war and the Mexican-American War, this was a primary concern of us to sort of spread our influence throughout, especially the Caribbean. The Spanish Empire has been there for hundreds of years since the conquistadors, and rebellions were a regular feature of life. Americans really don't understand the depth of the Cuban story in terms of that struggle and the desire for an independent the nation. Americans then really supported that idea. I mean, they related totally, didn't they? They did. Yeah, you know, there's a couple elements there. Americans today absolutely didn't and don't understand that. You know, the long history of Cuban revolution against the occupation by the Spanish. I mean, think about this. It goes back to 1492, right? Yeah. So just in the 19th

century, there were something like five major revolutions. You know, and American observers in the 1890s and in 1898, we're looking at a revolution that really the next one that began in 1895 with very famous sort of intellectuals from Cuba generating interest, generating enthusiasm, and most importantly, sympathy and empathy from Americans, people like Jose Marti, very famous thinker who was killed when he comes back from exile in 1895 from the U.S. to be part of the revolution to help lead it. And so Americans are deeply sympathetic in thinking about the the kind of ravages that the Spanish are placing onto the Cuban people. They have these policies, Reconcentrato policies, concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans are dying in the 1890s

in these camps. American politicians go and observe them. The yellow press, of course, is a huge part of this moment. And there they're sensationalizing what's going on in very vivid terms with political cartoons, and particularly in terms of a kind of concept of manhood in this period, where, you know, for the U.S. to be a good sort of Uncle Sam male protector in the hemisphere, you see all these images of a feminized Cuba being ravaged by these horrible, you know, Spaniards and often depicted in deeply racialized and problematic ways. And it resonates with Americans. It resonates with American politicians who arguably didn't want to be in a war with Spain, despite what Teddy Roosevelt said. And McKinley administration does try arbitration and other things. But their sort of their hand is

forced in some ways by the public perceptions about how bad Spanish rule was. Yeah. The backdrop is very complex. And one of the big themes also is colonialism around the world. I mean, you're coming out, we're at the end of a century, really two centuries in which England, France, Germany, all of these powers are now stretched around the world, having claimed major colonies in all kinds of continents. America has not done that. And that's a big missing element, a big piece of the puzzle missing for a lot of Americans, politicians especially. Yeah, you're so right. You know, Don, go back again to Jefferson.

In one sense, there's this concept that he uses the phrase empire of liberty about 1780 as the U.S. is expanding across the hemisphere, the continent first, you know, that there would be this kind of set of proactive, strong, robust foreign policies that would ensue after the U.S. got an sufficient amount of strength to push a kind of Republican empire out there throughout the hemisphere. By the end of the century, by the end of the in the 1880s and 1890s, Americans are looking around the world at the French, at the Spanish, particularly the British empires, and thinking, okay, we can do that. And there's kind of a term that you see in some of the popular press at the time that the U.S. could be a better imperial ruler than the British.

We could be a better. The U.S., they would say, you know, we could do this better. We could be more Republican. We wouldn't be a monarchy. We would, you know, help the peoples of these countries. And then there's a huge divide about whether or not there's capacity for self-rule amongst Cubans or Filipinos in particular. And that's a huge sticking point in the anti-imperialist leagues debates starting at the end of 1898 and moving into the early 1900s. It's really an outgrowth of manifest destiny, isn't it, where you end up with this, you know, sea to shining sea, America finally in the late 1800s. And the need to protect that new coast is a big deal. And the Spanish being out there in the United States. And the Spanish being out there in

the Philippines and other, and Guam and places like that, are a direct threat to, to that vulnerable place. And so a lot of this becomes an almost preemptive strike against them in order to preserve our security, I suppose. Yes. Yeah. In the sort of founding generation, you can find some really interesting sort of strategic thought about the problem of Cuba if it's Spanish. And if it's independent, the U.S. didn't have a worry. And the problems related to other islands and other bordering countries. And then, you know, the other element of this is, you know, isn't just the sort of defensive or strategic piece of this, but it's the offensive projection of power, if you want to go there, or commercial and cultural dimensions, right? So the Americans are

thinking about getting these bases in the Pacific to reach the Asian markets, to reach China. But there's certainly an enormous amount of sympathy. You could argue that the war of 1898 is the first U.S. humanitarian intervention. And it's the first thing in McKinley's war address in April 1898. it's this critical juncture for Americans, sort of putting their blood and treasure where their mouths are about having some sympathy for other peoples and groups who are being ruled against their will and suffering and who want democracy and then stepping up. But of course, then the U.S. holds Cuba as a protector for a few years and there's a lot more of that story, which we'll get into, I'm sure. But there is the empire piece too, right? And so you have to hold the two sort of like a double helix of DNA

that they're wrapped around each other. There's the humanitarian impulse and the generosity, and then there's the empire and the world stage and world power. Did we have any colonies at the time, I forget? No, not officially. No, this is the first foray into colonies, although there were guano islands and guano access that the U.S. had the ability to take and use,

but not colonies in that sense. The geography is fascinating. Even refreshing it for myself, you've got Cuba, which is right off the Florida coast, of course, and that's a huge island. But that lands with Hispaniola, that being the next one, which is split between Haiti and Dominican Republic. And then there's Puerto Rico. And it's all one long line, archipelago, really. And all of that will become part of this, most of that will become part of this story. It's incredible. Another factor, which I found fascinating and preparing for this, was the oncoming Panama Canal, the plan for a canal across the isthmus of Central America.

And if that was being done, which of course took a long time to happen, then America would need to be. protect that because it would be the central feature. And so this becomes part of the thinking. There's just a lot of chess pieces in play. Yes. And again, this goes back several generations. The sort of founders were thinking that the U.S. would need to be part of that Ismian canal and that in order to control access to it and the importance of the naval routes, you had to have some of these islands and deep water ports. And so that logic from the early 19th century holds in 1898 and is very much a part of the thinking moving forward into the next century. Yeah.

The war happens, as I mentioned, in several theaters. This has always confused me. How much the U.S. was prepared? How much was the U.S. prepared to fight this war, given the global preparations that had to have been made? I mean, to put a naval fleet, as we'll hear in a moment, in Kong Kong, and then have one ready in Tampa, this is a major. The geography, this is breathtaking.

It is. On the one hand, the U.S. is able to project power in multiple, domains across the world in what has to be understood as a global conflict. At the same time, mobilization is terrible. Lots of troops die. More in the core of the year 1898 in the war with Spain, more troops die of non-combat. Yellow fever, right? Yellow fever, botulism because the food is so bad, influenza. They don't have standardized weapons. You have these volunteers like the rough riders, and then you have a host of other kinds of units. You've got all black segregated units.

So groups that haven't fought together side by side, you've got this sort of reconciliation of north and south, which is a piece of this, the generational change of Americans fighting together and a foreign conflict. But, you know, the broader thing is this had been gamed out. There was some sense that a war with Spain might happen. So there's some kind of myths that it's because Teddy Roosevelt

sends this message to Dewey that he's ready to steam to Manila. But that's already in the strategic. planning for the U.S. Navy. He does activate that and it happens that he's the most senior person in the office when it goes out, but it doesn't really matter. That's not, that's not Teddy Roosevelt being a more brilliant grand strategist than anyone else. The U.S. had planned and thought about this, again, four generations because the U.S. had been trying to negotiate to buy Cuba, you know, for years. It costs like $100 million under James Polk in 1848. Then they went up to an offer of 130 under Pierce in the 1850s and on and on and on. I could go with a long list of this.

And that was based on that Monroe Doctrine Thinking, isn't it? Exactly, yes. And so the ability to project that power then came right with that even before the American Civil War. The phrase that's most readily associated with this is, Remember the Maine, which is referring to the USS Maine, which was posted in February of 1898, in response to the rioting and the problems that were resulting from this Cuban independence movement. We were projecting power in the Havana Harbor with this battleship, or cruiser, I suppose. And this was meant to remind people where this conflict sat, which was right off our coast. And then what happens? And then it blows up.

Spectacularly in the harbor and sinks, killing almost everybody on board. 200 plus sailors. Yes. Yeah. And immediately everyone jumps to the conclusion that it was a mine. And you can see this in the private correspondence of your Teddy Roosevelt, your Henry Cabot Lodge, a Republican junior senator from Massachusetts, who was an arch expansionist and friend of Roosevelt. And on and on, we could make a long list. Everyone's jumping to this conclusion.

And a minor investigation then concludes that the explosion must have come from outside the hull. Right. But. And they did this interestingly. It's almost like the airplane thing. They actually read the bending of the metal. You know, it's a serious investigation eventually. There's many of them.

But they kind of depend. It's a forensic investigation of where did this explosion come from. It's fascinating. Yes, you're exactly right. But the big butt there is who planted the mine. if that was what caused it. And, you know, obviously, if you think about the possibilities here, in order to generate the enthusiasm and the sympathy of the U.S., there's some thinking that it could have been Filipino revolutionaries. It could have been Cuban revolutionaries. It could have been

others. And then, of course, there's the more common sort of conspiracy thinking here that the Spanish did it because this was a projection of power sending this new naval ship into the, into Havana Harbor. And, you know, it's important to take one step back. why is it there? It's not just projecting power in the sense that we're maybe flippantly describing send your big vessel in there, but rather there were some 8,000 or so Americans. There are lots of American business. And that's a big part of this, too, that the disruptions of all these revolutions are undercutting American trade and commerce and threatening American lives. And that's a new development as well in the late 19th century. The U.S. government is now protecting Americans abroad

in a new way. And this gets the U.S. into a lot of trouble in the 20th century, but also becomes an expectation that Americans have, and frankly, you know, people of other countries do as well. If you get in trouble in another country, you think that you can have recourse to your diplomats, to your embassies. This is new for the U.S. and the U.S. is, the main is one of the first efforts like this that happen, usually involving ships. Sure. And along comes yellow journalism. I mean, the phenomenon of the late 19th century into the 20th century, the beginnings of these tabloid journalism stoking the fires, William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, those wars between those New York newspapers, and they wage this war through these sort of fabulous accounts of what

this is all about. This is a kind of, this isn't new, of course. It goes back to the broadsides, but the level of media in the country has now reached a point where they can really inflame the populace and influence politics. Absolutely. It is, you know, one of the first modern media wars in some ways. There are journalists there on the ground. They're actually, they're in vessels. They're often armed, these journalists. They're in some ways partisans. They are interviewing folks. There's a woman, Evangelina Icosnos, who becomes the sort of martyr figure for Cuban suffering.

And they interview her regularly. There's photos of her in mourning gear. There's all kinds of accounts of the atrocities on the island of Cuba in particular, fanning the flames of patriotism and of war and conflict. And there's some famous accounts, too, that Hearst and Pulitzer would say that they bought the war, that it was their war. I think that's a little, you know, historians and political scientists push back on that. You know, the media did not cause this conflict, but certainly part of fanning the flames.

Sure, yeah, in the beginning of a whole new era in America as far as the media is concerned. President McKinley, I mean, the tiny of this is fascinating because the USS Maine goes down, sinks in the Havana Harbor in February. The war doesn't happen until April. What is that pause for? What happens during that time? McKinley actually negotiates an armist, doesn't he? Yes, yes. So let's run through that. So there's this, the publication in the yellow press of something called the DeLone letter, and Riccrate DeLome, the minister, the Spanish minister to the U.S. had said in this private letter that McKinley was a bitter to the crowd and a weak man. And that started to upset folks in February of 1898. Obviously, McKinley, it made him less interested in negotiating. Then you have the main. There's a rapid push. So that's within a week. You have the main explosion.

just by mid-February into March, then it looks like there could be a war declaration in March. And what McKinley is trying to do through arbitration is to have a ceasefire, essentially, and to have the Spanish stop the reconcentration policies, which they agree to, and have some level of home rule, which they agree to, but it's unclear what the shape of that is going to be because they still want to rule the island of Cuba. Sugar there is incredibly lucrative. And there's a lot of attempts to sort of save face in these negotiations. The Spanish don't want to give up their empire at the end of the day. That's a critical juncture here.

And another piece of this is that there have been revolutions in Spain in the 1820s. Lots of those folks left. They fled to places like Cuba. And they fear another revolution in Spain. Arguably, because they lose this conflict, the next revolution in Spain doesn't happen until the 1930s, as we know. But there was incredible tumult in the Spanish government, too. And that's part of the problem here.

who's the U.S. negotiating with, who's running the military, the Navy. So if you have in the Philippines, for instance, there's a sense that more ships and more troops will be sent to save a beleaguered and besieged garrison in Manila, and that no one ever sent. And in fact, they changed the leadership several times there. I mean, it's a deeply problematic set of diplomacy and military strategy from the Spanish side. But McKinley is trying to negotiate some conclusion, short of war that will help Cubans and not get the U.S. into a conflict. Yeah, yeah. But, On it comes, and this happens when Congress authorizes force in April of 1898, but it also passes what's called the Teller Act, which will play out throughout and towards the end of this story, which articulates the complex view of Cuba versus the Philippines, which is not covered in this act. It's really all about Cuba. Tell me, define the Teller Act, please.

So I just grabbed the key section to it, and it says the U.S. hereby disclaims. disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island Cuba except for the pacification thereof and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people. Interesting. What does that mean? The U.S. will not colonize Cuba. Wow.

That's a big deal, especially for the 20th century, isn't it? Exactly. At that key moment of engaging in the conflict. Yeah, exactly. But how does that reflect poorly on our view of the Philippines? Well, one, in that sense, the U.S. reserve no right pushed no anti-imperialist goals there in the Philippines. But another element of that is that, frankly, the U.S. policymakers did not anticipate annexing or having a protectorate status over the Philippines. Famously, McKinley is said to not have known where the Philippines were on a map.

There's a great account. It's probably apocryphal. It's after his assassination. It comes out. But that McKinley dropped to his knees and prayed to God to figure out what he should do with the Philippines. Should they be annexed? Should they be saved? Could they be thrown back out for recolonization by another European power?

And his conclusion was the U.S. had to take it because of the strategic concerns and because of the sort of Christian mission dimensions of the importance of the U.S. in the Philippines. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. Okay, so let's talk about the fighting, which begins right in the beginning of May 1898. I mentioned before, this is fast and furious. This happens over a couple of months. Most wars, we'd be talking about the preparations and aftermath and then leave the huge amount of the interview for all the events. This is so fast, it's only in four different places. The Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and most notably Cuba.

Okay, so in the Pacific, undersecretary of Navy at the time, we mentioned this, Teddy Roosevelt. He's not president. This is Teddy Roosevelt long before he's president, and even vice president to McKinley. This is the first term. He has a battle-ready fleet moved to Hong Kong, which is a British protectorate in those days, to prepare for an attack on the Philippines. It's a preemptive move, basically. As it happens, Commodore George Dewey sails this what's called the Asiatic Squadron into the Bay of Manila and attacks the fleet that is basically at anchor in that bay, correct? Yes.

And so that's, as I said, it's part of the naval planning in case of likely hostilities with the Spanish. So that's what was activated there. And of course, you know, it's a some of the contemporaries call it a grab bag fleet that the Spanish have. Lots of wooden vessels very easily sunk, not well trained. But it's an enormous fleet. And one thing that's interesting in that moment is that German, British, and other vessels are there on the horizon watching to see, you know, how this will unfold. And if you had been a betting, say, European navalist in 1898, you would not have bet that the U.S. would so readily dispatch the entire Spanish fleet, even though they were there essentially, you know, at harbor. And this was a surprise. And if you're thinking about the big, the big takeaways of this conflict, the U.S. has now fought and won a war with Spain. And the U.S. is a legitimate rising power, even if the Spanish were a waning power, not a great military power. But yes, so this takes Dewey by surprise. It takes Europe. observers by surprise. Now they have to figure out, well, okay, how do we get troops to the Philippines,

right? So they only have the Navy there. They don't have, they have a handful of Marines to bring on shore and that's it. So they have to figure out how to ship out and mobilize from San Francisco enough troops to take at least the city of Manila. And then the thinking in that moment is, okay, we want the deep, the U.S. thinking is we want the deep water harbor at Manila for trade and probably not none of the other, you know, hundreds and hundreds of islands across the Philippines. And that rapidly changes just in the course of this year, as you're saying. I hadn't considered the fact that there were also shore batteries that had to be knocked out. You know, that's that initial marine attack that comes with the Navy.

And all that has to be destroyed before they can then bring in the larger military force, which is about 15,000 troops who are sent in to take control of it. This successfully isolates the Philippines there. But meanwhile, in Cuba, we attack from the south. we come up from below first hitting Sienfuegos, which was an interesting little episode there. They have to cut communications to Spain. I didn't even know they had this. They had a cable, a couple of cables running from Cuba all the way back to Spain so they could literally telegraph to each other.

The first step in the process is cut these cables, which is a very dangerous mission. Yes, yes. You know, I'm so glad that you brought that up. You know, we think about this sort of conflict as some antiquated moment in world and military. history, but here you see a kind of strategic military operation for undersea cable cutting. You know, look, Edison, this is taped. This is filmed. You can see at the National Archives, there's Edison's footage of actual U.S. troops disembarking.

You know, so this is a filmed conflict. It's one that relies on transatlantic and trans-Pacific telegraphy. You know, another way to think about this, too, is McKinley has a war room set up in the White House. It's the first time that a president has sort of real-time information about a conflict. He's getting information, sending out communicates as a commander-in-chief in this kind of thing we think of today. Right. They have to cut the communications because they want to wage a series of surprise attacks. And one of the attempts here by the U.S. military is to not allow the Spanish to regroup in one central place on the island of Cuba, but rather keep them isolated.

They're essentially guarding a bunch of different cities on the coast. They've ceded most of the interior territory to the revolution. at this point. You know, it's funny. I don't even think of the Spanish as a major military force back then. It's interesting. I just think of it as a lot of colonies, which, of course, had to have troops in them, but I never thought of them as a great military power after, you know, Cortez. It's so funny how we have this sort of image in our minds. But obviously they were. The attack then moves to Santiago. This is the famous attack, you know, that comes, that Teddy Roosevelt plays a part in. But interesting other players are involved. The Buffalo soldiers, for one thing. This is a fascinating episode. There's so much here that plays out, you know, that just sort of pops up because of the timing of all of this. Buffalo soldiers were the black troops that were volunteered to fight in this war because they wanted recognition, because they saw it as a good way to fight Jim Crow, essentially. And they fight under Jack Pershing, who becomes the big Supreme Commander of World War I. Yeah. Pershing eventually becomes, holds the highest command until Eisenhower in U.S. military history. Exactly. You know, Pershing famously says in the Battle of San Juan Hill, this is the rough riders moment and all that, that it was this sort of glorious moment at the top of the hill where all these different units, you know, in a rough shot, not particularly well-planned out manner, all mingle. And you see Buffalo soldiers and rough riders who are volunteers and regular military and sort of new conscript types, new draftee types.

You know, there isn't a draft in this moment, but people who just leapt up and just. decided to take up arms but joined the army. And so you had all the, and you had seasoned folks who had been in the Indian wars and much older officer corps, some of whom were in the civil war. So it's this fascinating polyglot. And for someone like Pershing, it tells you what the U.S. military, what the U.S. society is capable of in a kind of pluralistic sense to use a contemporary language. But also, for many of those in that moment, it gives a sense of how problematic this decentralized kind of command could be, that you have a lot of improvisation. You know, there's a moment in this. I mean, I don't know if you want to go through the

blow by blow, but there's a moment in this where Teddy Roosevelt decides to head off because he sees another battle with about five of his soldiers and winds up depleting their ability to do anything, and they have to be saved. There's a couple different accounts of whether or not, you know, it was one guy with a gatling gun who saved them or whether or not they were just really drained from charging up and down hills for a while in ravines. So there's a whole lot of this kind of thing. So they're charging up the Battle of San Juan Hill, we should just say the obvious, right into Spanish fire. Right. Downward fire from the geographic heights. Not exactly, you know, certainly there's glory in facing that, but not exactly the kind of strategy that a Persian type would want.

The battle for San Juan Hill stands apart as a sort of autonomous event. Of course it's not. It's part of this whole campaign. But I want to identify why it becomes so famous, namely for Lieutenant Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, who actually deserves the person. for the courage and boldness of this maneuver. This is, they're called the Rough Riders. There's a lot of men on their foot, but it was a cavalry unit, right? Yeah. Yes. And so he organizes, first of all, backing up. The man resigns from his post as Undersecretary of War, goes back to New York and organizes

his own all-volunteer unit, which is, I guess he calls the rough riders, or they are called, and off they go as part of this whole, as you say, polyglot army. That's all these different kinds of things. By the way, this will result in a real reorganization of the American military, right? I mean, they'll have to get their act together for the 20th century. Yes, for sure. And so, you know, one question here is in terms of armaments, the U.S. are using these KRAG rifles. They're not as fast repeating and not as reliable as what the Spanish have, for instance. There's the mobilization problem. There's incredible problems with food and canned food. Then obviously we talked about, you know, the disease, they're mustering in Florida in swamps, essentially. It's really horrible. The letters of Teddy Roosevelt, you know, he's pleading and trying to get better food sent to his guys actually paying out of pocket in some cases. Same with some of the other military commanders. He wanted a commission in the army. He winds up going this route for a variety of reasons. And actually, you know, one of the other consequences here is he asked for the exact same thing

again in World War I. He wants to be commissioned into the army or to put together a rough rider type regiment. But, you know, I think the bigger picture is you're right. So when the troops are actually in the field, some of these engagements, while they're not as strategically thought out as, you know, one might want in the sense of charging uphill, the U.S. military performs very well despite all these many myriad problems. And the Spanish don't. So another piece of this that you see in the reporting in the moment. The Spanish military, they have lots of regulars there, but many have been fighting this revolution for years. Exactly. This is the latest one just starting in 1895, but those who are there. And then they've got a lot of conscripts. And these conscripts are

ready to put up the white flag. Sure. Pretty regularly. And that's why things happen pretty quickly. I mean, it's important to note, we come in at Guantanamo Bay, which to this day is a base. That's why it is our base because it was made there by that arriving force and we staked a flag, even now while it's Cuba. At the same time, so this is over in the middle of July. Hostilities really end there. But in August, something happens in Manila, which is called the mock battle. What does that refer to the mock battle of Manila? This is great.

And I'm so glad that you brought this up. We've talked through Cuba. There's a series of these engagements, mostly centering around cities. the U.S. military performs pretty well, the Spanish hold out. In the Philippines, there's really just one area left for Spanish hold in Manila. It's this area, the intramuros, the heavily fortified interior of Manila, Manila Bay. And they're surrounded by Philippine revolutionaries, the Spanish there. And there's some issues with their leadership very rapidly with Dewey there. They're negotiating a separate peace with the Americans. They do not want to surrender to

the Filipinos, right, underscore that. The same thing is true for the Spanish in Cuba. They do not want to surrender to what they see as these insurgents. And there's heavily racialized racist language about this, right? They see them as little brown brothers or as no better than boys in the street, even though we're talking about some of the leadership are great intellectuals and actually often have mixed heritage with Spanish. In any case, in, so the mock battle is this attempt by the leadership there in negotiations with Dewey's camp, then two different leaders of the Spanish, and an army general by the name Wesley Merritt, who brings in a lot of the San Francisco-based troops that we were talking about earlier. And on the morning of August 13th, they have this

mock battle where the British vessel fires off some initial salvos, and then their band plays some music. Dewey fires on the, like the oldest fort that the Spanish are very happy to have destroyed. And through some heavily orchestrated. retreats and pushes forward with very few casualties. Suddenly the Americans are into the intramuros. Those fortifications have been knocked down. And the Filipinos are looking at this and saying, oh, we see that this is a mock. We see this was not actually a conflict. We see what has happened here. Now Americans have taken their glory, essentially. And it sets up very well what's the next step in February of 1899 when the Americans turn those guns on the Filipinos and vice versa.

I thought that it was more of a face-saving maneuver for the Spanish to not be defeated by the Filipinos, but rather by the white army that was us. That's absolutely right. Yes. Yeah. And they are essentially defeated anyway. They're in this tiny place for about 10,000 people. 70,000 are there. And they can't hold out that much longer. The Filipinos have turned off the water. So they need to move rapidly. And so it is face-saving. for sure. In the main intermediary, it's a really a fascinating little thing that the Belgian envoy is going back and forth between the Americans and the Spanish to try to figure out how to make this mock thing work. And there are some casualties because they hold very tightly the secret

of the mock. And so American troops do fire on Spaniards and kill a bunch of them. And then there's some counterfire. And one battery, one artillery battery didn't get the word. And they're desperately trying to get the word to them to stop firing. So there are some casualties in this moment, but generally speaking, they're able to pull off this mock battle, which then signs over the Philippines to the U.S. Yeah. I'll be back with more American history after this short break. And the seafire really takes hold in late summer in August, and from that time on, the

negotiations begin. That's why we say this is such a splendid little war, according to at the time, because it's such a short amount of hostilities. Really, the main show is the negotiation as to how we're going to dismantle this, these Spanish possessions, put them in. the hands of the Americans and now becomes the dilemma of what do the Americans do with this. And that is so much the theme of American military and diplomatic society for so long afterwards into the 20th century. It's incredible. So as a result, in the aftermath for Spain,

this is a pivot point for this country. I mean, this is a war-weary, you know, colony-weary, guerrilla warfare-weary country that has sort of gone to the fray. And so as a result of losing their possessions, losing this war, a whole new kind of change happens in Spanish culture. And nationalism is a big part of that, leading to many events of the 20th century. Right, right. Yeah, you know, there's bitter disappointment, a sense that the government failed across the board, but it's a turning point. So as I was saying, look, Spain is roiled with possible revolution. It looks like another civil war could happen. After this moment, there's a kind of reconciliation of power and culture and an effort to build a kind of Spanish cultural social

movement that galvanizes people in the ways that we tend to think of the arts of the early 20th century. It is a turning point for the country. They're giving up on, you could argue, sort of the last vestiges of an empire that they couldn't really control that wasn't helpful to them. That was an albatross around their neck in terms of total cost and bases and all this kind of stuff, right? Yes. It comes at this inflection point, which is no doubt a catastrophe for the country as well. So, you know, it's a little of both there. And here's another weird little fact that I know of that maybe you don't know. As a result of the preparations for the Spanish American War, which were tremendous, a big foreign war, huge amounts of supplies were made. Private

enterprise was involved. Gigantic amounts of war goods became Army-Navy surplus. This is the birth of the Army Navy store. Bannerman here in New York. I've covered this story for TV, creates the first Army Navy surplus store in New York City and becomes, you know, very, very wealthy, selling off the military wares that weren't used in the war. It's a fascinating, weird little obscure fact. Oh, I love it. Yeah. You know, one reason for that, too, is that the troops refused to wear some of the gear because it was too heavy. Yeah. Interesting. They didn't have tropical uniforms. So they refused. They stayed at boxed. And I wonder if that's true for some of the other. other goods that the Army Navy stores in surplus. Oh, God, you could buy anything. You could

get whatever you wanted. So America becomes a global power as a result of this, unlike it was before. Another aspect of this is the unity that happened because some Confederate soldiers, you mentioned this, the Confederate officers were suddenly fighting with ex-union officers. There's a sort of unifying element to this as far as American society is concerned. The Marines have a new developed role in the military. African-American soldiers have made themselves known. It's a really interesting long list of events that has to do with pushing us into the 20th century as a new kind of country. 100%. Yes. This is the first war to defeat European power other than the British. It comes at a pivotal moment in the U.S.'s rise to world power, commercial and cultural engagement

with the world, military power. This is a fundamental altering of the political and diplomatic mix of how Americans think about their role in the world. The question after this is, you know, should the U.S. play a leadership role in the world and what should that leadership role look like? It sets the stage for the U.S.'s entry into World War I, although that takes a long time as well. And then, you know, there's the long tail of this, however, is one to continue thinking about. The unity, some of the elements of unity are also of a peace with this unity. There's the Anti-Imperalist League. You know, it brings together Mark Twain and W.E.B. Du Bois and Jane Adams and Andrew Carnegie. you know, that Americans don't like the idea of ruling, quote, alien people against their will.

This is the last of the annexations that the U.S. has. So there's this burst of annexations, but then there's a real pushback, this countervailing force in American society. Was this worth it? What does it mean to have a humanitarian intervention? The early 20th century is full of these questions as the U.S. sends Marines to customs houses all across the Caribbean. You get a Roosevelt corollary where the U.S. can now intervene more. You know, the addendum to the teller amendment is the Platt Amendment, which is why the U.S. has this sacrosanct right to Guantanamo Bay, which is still with the U.S. today, still holding detainees from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, for instance, to the long tail is right up to our current moment. Exactly.

The notion of an American empire, was there a moment where we said, okay, we're not going to have that traditional empire? We don't want colonies to worry about, but we are going to have another kind of empire. Did that develop and evolve more organically? It develops and involves pretty organically here in this moment, the 1890s into the 1900s. There isn't a cohesive sense, if you look at the records of policymakers, presidents, you know, McKinley and Roosevelt and others, that there's a vision, that there's a known sort of colonization strategy. And one piece of evidence for this is there's no consensus on what the people who are ruled will look like or be like. In other words, are these territories like the other territories? like Ohio was back in the Northwest Ordinance days or, you know, Hawaii is in that moment when it becomes a territory.

There isn't a sense if Filipinos are going to become American citizens or not, or for that matter, Puerto Ricans. And it's not until 1917 that there's a clarification of the citizenship status of those in Puerto Rico, for instance. And so, you know, this is halting steps of empire. It absolutely is empire and colonial. You have an insular kind of office in the way that the British did, running these places and governors. But it's an open question as to what the sort of shape of this empire will take. And Americans from citizens who oppose it or don't even notice it to the politicians are slowly building a set of questions and expectations of this. And I think that's

why your point is such a good one about, you know, the U.S. holds a kind of protectorate status over the Philippines until 1946 after World War II. And one of my arguments always is not a single person annexing the Philippines in 1898 thought that that would be the case. It really is a continuum of the othering of the world, isn't it? And the way we have traditionally done that throughout all these conflicts, and then in general, of course, even within our own country. But that progression of not othering the world is kind of underscores all the changes that happen in terms of diplomacy and the way we behave in the world. I think that's right. You know, the other critical sensibility about other

in the 1890s and turn of the 20th century is this sort of white man's burden element. This concept of Anglo-Saxonism was everywhere. And then it divided very unevenly across people who thought that those who were ruled, those alien or other people had self-capacity for government. And it could be, say, great American citizens in the future at some point. And those who thought that they were subjects and that this was some new form of ruling people, you know, because that sort of Anglo-Saxon empires, or in the U.S. case, you know, Republican empire, a new better. And, you know, in some ways that sticks with the sort of political rhetoric for the rest of the century,

this othering, you know, it may not be as repugnant as the Anglo-Saxon racism of the turn of the 20th century, but you get this othering of people as if they're not present when there's an intervention or they're less important. Yes, yes. The othering becomes marketplaces. And we develop the marketplaces, which is a whole different kind of empire. Professor Christopher Nichols has been our guest today. He teaches and works at the Ohio State University. I said that wrong, the Ohio State University. His most recent book can be purchased Ideology in U.S. Farrelations.

It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us, Chris. Great to be here with you, Don. Thanks so much. Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to

powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode. By hitting like and follow, you help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.