zurb-foundation-5/doc/pages/offcanvas.html

Foundation 5 for npm (no code modification from original repo)

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The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, the result of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. American attacks on Spain's Pacific possessions led to involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately to the Philippine–American War.[8]

Revolts against Spanish rule had occurred for some years in Cuba. There had been war scares before, as in the Virginius Affair in 1873. In the late 1890s, American public opinion was agitated by anti-Spanish propaganda led by journalists such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Hearst which used yellow journalism to criticize Spanish administration of Cuba. After the mysterious sinking of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor, political pressures from the Democratic Party and certain industrialists pushed the administration of Republican President William McKinley into a war he had wished to avoid.[9] Compromise was sought by Spain, but rejected by the United States which sent an ultimatum to Spain demanding it surrender control of Cuba. First Madrid, then Washington, formally declared war.[10]

Although the main issue was Cuban independence, the ten-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. American naval power proved decisive, allowing U.S. expeditionary forces to disembark in Cuba against a Spanish garrison already brought to its knees by nationwide Cuban insurgent attacks and further wasted by yellow fever.[11] Numerically superior Cuban, Philippine, and American forces obtained the surrender of Santiago de Cuba and Manila despite the good performance of some Spanish infantry units and fierce fighting for positions such as San Juan Hill.[12] With two obsolete Spanish squadrons sunk in Santiago de Cuba and Manila Bay and a third, more modern fleet recalled home to protect the Spanish coasts, Madrid sued for peace.[13]

The result was the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the U.S., which allowed temporary American control of Cuba, and ceded indefinite colonial authority over Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine islands[a] from Spain.[15] The defeat and collapse of the Spanish Empire was a profound shock to Spain's national psyche, and provoked a thoroughgoing philosophical and artistic reevaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of '98.[13] The United States gained several island possessions spanning the globe and a rancorous new debate over the wisdom of expansionism.[16]

The combined problems arising from the Peninsular War (1807-1814), the loss of most of its colonies in the Americas in the early 19th-century Spanish American wars of independence, and three Carlist Wars (1832-1876) effected a new interpretation of Spain's remaining empire.[citation needed] Liberal Spanish élites like Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and Emilio Castelar offered new interpretations of the concept of "empire" to dovetail with Spain's emerging nationalism. Cánovas made clear in an address to the University of Madrid in 1882[17][18] his view of the Spanish nation as based on shared cultural and linguistic elements - on both sides of the Atlantic - that tied Spain's territories together.

As many[quantify] historians have argued in the present and the past, Cánovas saw Spanish imperialism as markedly different in its methods and purposes of colonization from those of rival empires like the British or French. Spaniards regarded the spreading of civilization and Christianity as Spain's major objective and contribution to the New World.[19] The concept of cultural unity bestowed special significance on Cuba, which had been Spanish for almost four hundred years, as an integral part of the Spanish nation. The focus on preserving the empire would have negative consequences for Spain's national pride in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War.

In 1823, U.S. President James Monroe enunciated the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States would not tolerate further efforts by European governments to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas; however, Spain's colony in Cuba was exempted. Before the Civil War Southern interests attempted to have the U.S. purchase Cuba and make it new slave territory. The proposal failed, and national attention shifted to the Civil War.

The U.S. became interested in a canal either in Nicaragua, or in Panama, where the Panama Canal was built, and realized the need for naval protection. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan was an especially influential theorist; his ideas were much admired by Theodore Roosevelt, as the U.S. rapidly built a powerful fleet in the 1890s. Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897–98 and was an aggressive supporter of a war with Spain over Cuba.

Meanwhile the Cuba Libre movement, led by Cuban intellectual José Martí, had established offices in Florida[20] and New York to buy and smuggle weapons. It mounted a large propaganda campaign to generate sympathy that would lead to official pressure on Spain. Protestant churches and Democratic farmers were supportive, but business interests called on Washington to ignore them.[21]

Although Cuba attracted American attention, little note was made of the Philippines, Guam, or Puerto Rico.[22]

Historians see little popular demand for an empire, but note that Britain, France, Germany and Japan had expanded their overseas empires dramatically, in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.[23]

The first serious bid for Cuban independence, the Ten Years War, erupted in 1868 and was subdued by the authorities a decade later. Neither the fighting nor the reforms in the Pact of Zanjón (February 1878) quelled the desire of some revolutionaries for wider autonomy and ultimately independence. One such revolutionary, José Martí, continued to promote Cuban financial and political autonomy in exile. In early 1895, after years of organizing, Martí launched a three-pronged invasion of the island.[24]

The plan called for one group from Santo Domingo led by Máximo Gómez, one group from Costa Rica led by Antonio Maceo Grajales, and another from the United States (preemptively thwarted by U.S. officials in Florida) to land in different places on the island and provoke an uprising. While their call for revolution, the grito de Baíre, was successful, the result was not the grand show of force Martí had expected. With a quick victory effectively lost, the revolutionaries settled in to fight a protracted guerrilla campaign.[24]

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the architect of Spain’s Restoration constitution and the prime minister at the time, ordered General Arsenio Martínez-Campos, a distinguished veteran of the war against the previous uprising in Cuba, to quell the revolt. Campos’s reluctance to accept his new assignment and his method of containing the revolt to the province of Oriente earned him criticism in the Spanish press.[25]

The mounting pressure forced Cánovas to replace General Campos with General Valeriano Weyler, a soldier who had experience in quelling rebellions in overseas provinces and the Spanish metropole. Weyler deprived the insurgency of weaponry, supplies, and assistance by ordering the residents of some Cuban districts to move to reconcentration areas near the military headquarters.[25] This strategy was effective in slowing the spread of rebellion. In the United States, this fuelled the fire of anti-Spanish propaganda.[26] In a political speech President William McKinley used this to ram Spanish actions against armed rebels. He even said this "was not civilized warfare" but "extermination".[27][28]