1996/05/01 by Thomas G. Paterson · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #American Literature and Culture #Cuban History and Society #American and British Literature Analysis
paper · doi:10.2307/494551
openalex publication_date 1996/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
AS SPAIN, THE UNITED STATES, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines approach the centenary of the 1898 war, scholars in all of these countries are reexploring the event that drew the United States into the Caribbean and Pacific as never before, elevating it to global-power status in an age of dynamic imperialism.' In recent years in the United States and abroad, historical studies have plumbed questions of American power, intentions, core motives, ideology (including gender-based, age-based, and race-based thinking), decisionmaking and leadership, politics, and public opinion, as well as the relationship between domestic and foreign crises and the ultimate failure of diplomacy.2 This article discusses these books and articles and suggests ways to approach the key questions and contexts of the role of the United States in the multinational 1898 war. The long title-Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War-is used here in order to represent all of the major participants and to identify where the war was fought and whose interests were most at stake.3 The tag Americans have given this conflict-the Spanish-American War-reveals United States biases that have essentially written Cubans and Filipinos out of the story. The first American biased assumption suggests that the Cubans and Filipinos accomplished little on their own in their quest for indepen-