A faithful depiction of the Battle of Manila Bay, when Commodore Dewey surprised the Spanish squadron at Cavite at dawn on May 1, 1898. The flagship Olympia led the American assault. Only the Spanish flagship had steam up to sortie; the rest of her squadron was sunk at its moorings in a lopsided U.S. win that set the tone for the 109-day conflict. The 6-ship American squadron steamed slowly up and down alongside Cavite waterfront, raking shipping and forts with a deadly fire from its 4, 6, 5, and 8-inch guns. The early victory made Dewey a much-ballyhooed American hero; the margin of this original lithograph has a cameo portrait of him in a fancy cocked hat. Not all chroniclers of the battle were so scrupulous as this artist; the fight was commonly shown as a thrilling gunnery duel on the high seas, with both fleets moving at speed and shooting at point-blank range. While patriotism was not a fresh, new emotion in 1898, "jingoism" was a newly coined expression, derived from the lyrics of a London music hall song:We don't want to fight, but by jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the guns; we've got the money too.
That sentiment was echoed in a bit of popular doggerel that blossomed forth on the pages of American newspapers soon after the Manila Bay victory was announced:
Oh, it's Dewey! Dewey! Dewey!
He's the hero of the day;
And the Maine has been remembered,
In the good old-fashioned way!
Navy contracts and the availability of the Bessemer process had jump-started America's steel and shipbuilding industries in the 1880s and 1890s; by 1900, America led the world in steel production and exports. Now it was time for the New Navy to boost growth beyond the lower 48 states. Much as Alfred T. Mahan had predicted, the U.S. Navy was the indispensable link enabling the expansion of America's influence and dominion. At its beginnings a disparate assortment of small republics strung along the Atlantic seaboard, the nation had grown to span the continent; now it took its place as a vigorous world power, fulfilling the fond predictions of the prophets of Manifest Destiny. The frontier was declared closed in 1890. Increasingly as the 1890s rolled by, the U.S.A. turned to writing a new sort of history -- the history of overseas empire, trade, and big-power rivalries.
The Spanish-American War of 1898 was a classic exercise in imperialism. It was not to be the U.S.'s first adventure in empire building, nor its last -- though significantly, the neocon ideologues so influential in the Bush régime extolled the McKinley administration as their model. Historians remember the McKinley years for reflexive reverence for unrestrained capitalist excess, machine politics, a short, popular war, and the meteoric rise of Teddy Roosevelt. I suppose Karl Rove could argue that 3 out of 4 ain't bad; but few would argue that Rove's boss made a wise choice of war. In choosing historic parallels, Iraq more closely resembles Vietnam than the victorious 109-day war against Spain. If our arguments swayed Karl and his master from their obsession, however, that in itself would constitute an historic "first."
By contrast, Spain was a push-over for the U.S. Cocky and vigorous, newly armed with a modern steel navy and supplied with all the necessities for a "splendid little war," the U.S. swaggered into the fight with spirits whipped up to a frenzy by the "Yellow Press" of Hearst and Pulitzer. But these media moguls did not originate the buzz around imperialism. It was in the air as never before during the 1880s and 1890s. In that bygone time, the British Empire at its height sprawled across more than 10 million square miles, inhabited by an estimated 387,400,000. In the Eighties, the European powers had entered a crazed competition to gobble up all the remaining unclaimed lands in Africa, partitioning the continent by treaty in 1885 and 1898, while new colonies blossomed across coastal Asia and the Pacific island chains as well. Prominent British imperialists extolled the civilizing virtues of the White Man's Burden to young Theodore Roosevelt and other influential Americans. A war with somnolent Spain seemed like an easy win -- and it was, in the short term. Concern for the long-term consequences of their tactics did not seem to bother most American citizens of the time. Cuban independence was the call to arms for the American people: bringing the benefits of democracy and free markets to Cuba.
To most Americans, glory and democracy provided sufficient cause. But not to the vocal minority spearheaded by Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League. These citizens of conscience were quick to point out the ugly methods used to gain the country's foreign-policy objectives. The League urged that high-sounding ideals were used to cloak America's hidden agenda: indirect control of the region, with the Marines held in reserve as a threat to any who dared disrespect Uncle Sam. This was the true meaning of Roosevelt's maxim: Walk softly, and carry a big stick.
This 1904 cartoon by W.A. Rogers neatly summarizes Teddy's Latin American policy. The Caribbean has been turned into a (North) American lake with the help of the U.S. fleet. The presence of the USS Debt Collector proves that the use of credit as a means of control was already common at the time. The World Bank and IMF would come later. Courtesy the Granger Collection, New York.
Helping the Cuban people realize their freedom had been the rallying call to war in the U.S. A numerous army was landed on the island in June but after its signal victory at San Juan Hill, outside Santiago, on July 1, U.S. forces were largely immobilized by malaria and the muggy tropical climate. During the 109 days of fighting, the American military cooperated admirably with the local insurgents (who had been on the verge of winning before the U.S. intervention). But after victory, the U.S. repudiated its promise to the Cubans, occupying their island for 4 years and granting independence only with many strings attached via the Platt Amendment of 1903. This instrument, signed off by the puppet government of Cuba, gave the U.S. the right to run Guantánamo Bay indefinitely as a naval base (a "lease in perpetuity"); the right to send in the Marines at will; and the right to determine Cuba's foreign and fiscal policies. During the occupation American interests snapped up sugar plantations and land at distressed prices, and allied themselves with the island's conservative landholding élite, establishing a pattern followed to this day throughout the Third World.
After setting up a suitably repressive and pro-U.S. puppet régime, America withdrew to run Cuba as a client state, intervening 15 times and invading the island 4 times in the next 36 years. (In the same period the U.S. took over Nicaragua 5 times; Honduras, 7 times; the Dominican Repubic, 4 times; Haiti, twice -- including an occupation that lasted from 1915 to 1934; Guatemala, once; Panamá, twice; Mexico, thrice; and Colombia, 4 times.) For many U.S. citizens, Cuba became a sort of Latin Las Vegas, seeming almost as much a part of the American sphere as the Florida Keys. American mafiosi on the lam often settled in Cuba temporarily and seemed to fit right in with the local culture of Yanqui plunderers and profiteers. In 1898, Guam and Puerto Rico were annexed outright. They remain U.S. territories to this day -- famous as the site of sweatshop garment factories which need not conform to federal workplace safety standards, but which may sew in the "Made in USA" label nonetheless.
The Hawaiian Islands had seen their queen deposed by a coup led by Anglo sugar planters in a premature bid to unite with the U.S. in 1893. In Washington, President Grover Cleveland refused to grant them recognition; indeed received Queen Lili'uokalani with great ceremony. In a great example of cultural insensitivity, the queen had been imprisoned and held under house arrest, denied access to her beloved ukuleles for some 3 years. But in August 1898, immediately after the war, McKinley flashed the green light for recognition and the Hawaiian Islands became U.S. territory by treaty with the U.S. businessmen who had usurped the Hawaiian state. Lili'uokalani continued to campaign for a restoration until her death in 1917, but money spoke louder than justice in Washington's corridors of power.
A spirited Japanese woodblock print of the Battle of Manila Bay. The Japanese warships in port were cheering on the Americans, and some of that bloodthirsty spirit comes through here. Print courtesy the MIT Museum. Click here to see impressive enlarged view.
Meanwhile on the other side of the world, a situation similar to Cuba's had come about in the Philippines. The Filipino insurgents had been close to winning their long war against Spain when Commodore Dewey butted in and injected the U.S. into the situation. On July 25th an army of 12,500 under Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt landed to receive the Spanish surrender. The Filipino insurgents, however, were not keen to exchange one colonial master for another. When soon after the U.S. began to land an 11,000-man occupation army and take over regional commands from the Spaniards, the Filipino rebels incited a long guerrilla war against the Americans. This rebellion, known in the U.S. as the Philippine Insurrection, was suppressed brutally over a period of 4 years. There were an estimated 300,000 - 600,000 civilian casualties; mopping-up operations continued through 1913. American warships including Olympia, New York, Baltimore, and New Orleans were turned to shore bombardment, slaughtering native insurgents and anyone unlucky enough to meet up with a shell, for a prolonged period. Even Teddy Roosevelt, who had agitated for the war and based his political career on his heroism in it, grew uneasy with the enormous casualty count of this colonial conflict. Spasmodic violence continued to rip the islands right through 1913, the first year of William Howard Taft's presidency. The Philippine archipelago remained a U.S. colony until 1946. Many Filipinos were heroes of resistance to the 4-year Japanese occupation, and the U.S. granted full independence soon after its victory over Japan, though it refused to grant veterans' benefits to Filipino soldiers and has never ceased to meddle in internal Philippine politics since independence.
With all the empire building going on in 1898, the U.S. took immediate steps to further develop its fleet and naval support facilities such as supply depots, coaling terminals, telegraph stations, drydocks, machine shops, and support vessels. By the time of WWI, the U.S. had made a massive investment in imperial support facilities. The keystone in this imperial infrastructure was the Panama Canal, completed by the U.S. beginning in 1904 and opening in summer 1914, just as hostilities were erupting in Europe. The coup plotting which resulted in the birth of the Republic of Panamá on Nov. 3, 1903 would do credit to the Dulles Brothers; but it was all hatched by TR and his henchmen working in the very first years of the 20th century. And despite its corrupt beginnings, the Canal has been a durable foundation of U.S. economic strength. It has been a great naval convenience as well; the USS Oregon's voyage around the Horn was one of the last of these epic voyages in the U.S. Navy. After the Canal opened, transit between oceans became a one-day operation consisting of going through the locks. When a Panamanian came along who insisted the sovereignty of the Canal Zone revert back to Panama (Omar Torrijos), right-wing operatives brought Torrijos' plane down in a CIA-approved hit. The Canal Zone reverted to Panamanian sovereignty in 1999, but the U.S. largely continues to pull the strings. As recently as 1989 the U.S. resorted to another full-bore invasion of the tiny country to enforce its will on a reluctant population.
The result of America's turn-of-the-century empire building was a global network of military and commercial power; at left, an 1898 cartoon exults in the country's growth without probing the means by which its global influence was achieved. The U.S. was now recognized by Europeans as a burgeoning world power, and looked upon by the British as a junior partner in civilising the non-Anglo world (and reaping a rich profit in the bargain). Latin America was designated an American sphere of influence by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904). Over the next 30 years and less straightforwardly since, American bankers assumed critical control over many of the Latin countries; U.S. firms like United Fruit held more sway than the nominal governments in many of these quasi-colonial "nations," with the Marines only a phone call away if the natives got restless. Hence, the "banana republic," ever vulnerable to the pressure of "gunboat diplomacy." To the west, the U.S. projected its power across the vast Pacific through its unsinkable bases in Hawaii and the Philippines.
The Philippine facilities particularly were used as a staging area for activities in China, intended to 'open the Chinese market' and deliver 200 million hungry customers to American business. Never mind that, in that impoverished and backward land, few had the resources to become paying customers; the myth of the infinite pool of eager customers justified a permanent military presence from 1900 (the Boxer Rebellion) through 1949. Regardless of business' success in penetrating the Chinese market, American firms had lucrative operations extracting the country's mineral wealth: Herbert Hoover made his fortune as an engineer for the Kaiping Mines in Shandong, for one example. Naked greed was masked by the more acceptable motivation of saving souls (the missionary lobby) and opening markets (the Open Door ideologues) to justify a decades-long presence of gunboats, fleet warships, and Marines. Perceived American interests in China drove U.S. policy in the Pacific and brought the country into constant, chafing contact with Japan. Ironically, with its modern economy Japan became a far more important U.S. trading partner than China. Under the pressure of foreign intervention, China imploded politically and remained chaotic and disorganized for the first half of the century, incapable of fully controlling her own destiny or, indeed, feeding her own people.
In Washington, D.C., naval success in the Spanish War opened the Congressional spigot to fund further growth of the U.S. fleet and its facilities. Browse through our U.S. New Navy pages to study the weird warships that ushered in "The American Century."
