The Spanish-American War of 1898: Crisis and Collapse of the Spanish Empire
Colonial War and the crisis of 1898
During the reign of Fernando VII (1808-1933) most of the Spanish colonies in America had gained independence, forming a series of independent republics ruled by the minority of Spanish descendants, the Creoles. After the independence movement had Spain just as the American colonies in islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, which together with the Philippines in Asia, were the last remnants of the great Spanish Empire at the time of the Habsburgs. In 1823 U.S. President Monroe had supported the movement for independence in a famous speech where the phrase America for the Americans made their country’s policy towards the rest of the territories of the continent, which were considered as areas of interest to United States .
Since the mid-nineteenth century the Cuban economy was greater than U.S. Trade with Spain. The outbreak of the Revolution of 1868 in Spain encouraged this move, but all that is offered from Spain were liberalizing measures that Cuban independence, Creoles and mestizos, constituted deemed insufficient and demanded an independent republic. But the Spanish island residents, who enjoyed a monopoly, refused to accept any measure liberalizing and Madrid demanded a harder line against the separatists. The conflict degenerated into a war of ten years, the so-called Great War (1868-78) ended with the Peace of Zanjon (1878) signed by General Martinez Campos after achieving peace in the island. Spain, and grant pardon to the insurgents agreed to allow some of the Cuban intervention in the internal government of the island. Some leaders of the independence movement, as Maceo rejected the Peace and continued to work for independence from exile with more or less covert support of the United States, but the stillness remained in Cuba until 1895.
But peace was only a truce because society on the island was still divided between the Spanish, who wanted the unit, the monopoly and protectionism, the Creoles, who wanted autonomy within the Spanish sovereignty and free trade, and mestizos who wanted independence from Spain. Any attempt to reform in either direction collided with the interests of a sector of Spanish society and Maura, Minister of the Colonies in 1892, presented an autonomy plan for Cuba and Puerto Rico to put the natives on the part of Spain, but the prime minister, Canovas, pressured by the men of the Conservative Party, I do not get the project forward.
Faced with this situation in 1895 war breaks out. Be led by José Martí, ideologue and leader of Cuban independence movement, was deported in Spain during the previous conflict, after which he had moved to the U.S. Where he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party and came into contact with other leaders of the Cuban independence movement as Gomez and Maceo. After his death in a confrontation with the Spanish in the same year, the war will continue led by Gomez and Maceo (the latter died in 1896 in a confrontation). These are going to choose a tactic of guerrillas in rural areas avoiding confrontation with the Spanish army, much higher. Martinez Campos was sent again to quell the rebellion, but his failure was replaced by Weyler, who holds a harsh repression that succeeds in reducing the guerrillas. Cánovas takes this a better position to introduce some reforms, but not enough (1897).
This same Sagasta Canovas was assassinated and assumes the government, which decided to bestow autonomy in Cuba. But the climate of tension in the island increased by the opposition of the Spanish residents in Cuba to these measures.Then when the U.S. Decides to intervene directly in Cuba by sending the battleship Maine, they say, protect the interests of American residents. When the Maine was blown up, nobody knows until the day it happened, it unleashed a violent campaign to press for war with Spain. The American President McKinley demanded that Spain’s surrender of the island upon payment of $ 300 million. Given the refusal of Spain United States finally declared war in 1898.
In Spain both the public as most of the admirals ignored the very fact that the American fleet was far superior to the Spanish, and embarked on this war with an optimism unconscious. The government is more aware of reality, could not deliver the island, considered by most of the Spanish as part of the nation, without a struggle. Admiral Cervera, in charge of running the fleet, publicly denounce this, but attacked as a coward and traitor, went to Cuba convinced that the destruction was waiting for the fleet.
It was. The Spanish fleet was annihilated in Santiago de Cuba, while U.S. Troops invaded Cuba and Puerto Rico.
The other colonial setting were the Philippines, which had also emerged of an independence movement and he also showed Americans as liberators.
In the Philippines, the fleet was destroyed in an hour but resisted the city of Manila a few months). Spain, before the disaster, sued for peace. By the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, more or less veiled, came to depend on U.S..
In the economic field but missed the colonial markets, the domestic industry soon recovered and the repatriation of American capital enabled the rapid development of Spanish banks.
But in the ideological disaster was a terrible disappointment and raise the voices of the Regenerationists, considered the political power system of the Restoration as a flawed and ill. This ideology existed within two trends: a critical regeneracionismo within the system, represented by Silvela or Maura, ministers of the Conservative Party, who accepted the general validity of the system but criticized the negative aspects and outside the system regeneracionismo with figures such as Joaquín Costa criticizing the whole system.
Disappointment was also reflected in the pessimistic attitude of the intellectuals of the so-called generation of ’98.