AN AMERICAN EMPIRE

On January 25, 1898, one of the most modern ships in the United States' navy steamed into the harbor of Havana, Cuba. The ship was a cruiser called the Maine. A war was being fought in Cuba at this time and the Maine had been sent to Havana as a demonstration of American power. Three weeks later, on the night of February 15, a huge explosion shook the city. The Maine was blown to pieces and 260 of its crew were killed.

To this day, the cause of the explosion that destroyed the Maine remains a mystery. Some believe that it was set off by an accidental spark in the ship's magazine, or ammunition store. At the time, however, many Americans believed that the explosion had been caused by an enemy mine.

The man who made this claim most loudly was a newspaper owner named William Randolph Hearst. "THE WARSHIP MAINE WAS SPLIT IN TWO BY AN ENEMY'S INFERNAL [hellish] MACHINE," read the headline in one of his newspapers on February 17. The story which followed made it clear that to Hearst the "enemy" in the headline was Spain. Most Americans agreed with him. This was not because they had any proof. It was because they wanted to believe it. Let us see why.

In 1867 the United States had bought Alaska from Russia. Apart from this it had brought no additional land under its rule since gaining control of California and the Southwest in the Mexican War of 1846 to 1848. In the 1890s, however, a new spirit started to enter American foreign policy. These were years when Britain, France and Germany were busy claiming colonies, foreign lands which they could rule and exploit. Some Americans believed that the United States should do the same. Colonies overseas meant trade, wealth, power and prestige. "A policy of isolation did well enough [was all right] when we were an embryo nation, but today things are different," said Senator Orville Platt in 1893. "We are the most advanced and powerful nation on earth and our future demands an abandonment of the policy of isolation. It is to the ocean our children must look, as they once looked to the boundless west."

Many Americans agreed with Platt. Politicians, businessmen, newspapers and missionaries joined together to claim that "the Anglo-Saxon race" - by which they meant Americans as well as North Europeans - had a right and a duty to bring western civilization to the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. How? By making them accept "Anglo-Saxon" rule or guidance.

From 1895 onwards feelings of this kind were focused more and more upon Cuba, which lay only ninety miles from the American coast. Many Americans had invested money in sugar and tobacco plantations there. But at this time Cuba was a Spanish colony.

In 1895 the people of Cuba rose in rebellion against their Spanish rulers. The rebels raided and burned villages, sugar plantations and railroad depots. To cut off the rebels' supplies, Spanish soldiers moved thousands of Cuban civilians into prison camps. The camps became badly overcrowded. As many as 200,000 people died in them of disease and hunger.

Hearst and another American newspaper owner named Joseph Pulitzer published sensational accounts of the struggle in Cuba. Day after day millions of Americans read how, according to Hearst and Pulitzer, Cubans were being badly treated by the Spaniards. By 1898 many Americans felt that the United States should do something to help the Cubans. It was to show its sympathy for the rebels that the American government sent the Maine to Havana.

When the Maine blew up, people began calling for war with Spain. "Remember the Maine" became a battle cry. In April President McKinley demanded that Spain should withdraw from Cuba, and a few days later Spain and the United States went to war.

The Spanish-American War was fought in two parts of the world. One was Cuba; the other was the Philippines.

The Philippines was another big Spanish colony near the coast of Southeast Asia. It was said that President McKinley had to search a globe to find out exactly where it was. But he saw that the islands would be useful for the United States to control. From bases in the Philippines American soldiers and sailors would be able to protect the growing number of American traders in China.

The first battle of the Spanish-American War was fought in the Philippines. American warships sank a Spanish fleet that was anchored there. A few weeks later American soldiers occupied Manila, the chief city in the Philippines, and Spanish resistance came to an end.

American soldiers also landed in Cuba. In less than two weeks of fighting, the Spanish were again defeated. Other American soldiers occupied Puerto Rico, another Spanish-owned island close to Cuba. In July the Spanish government saw it was beaten. It asked the Americans for peace.

When peace was signed, Spain gave most of its overseas empire to the United States - Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and a small Pacific island called Guam. At the same time the United States also annexed Hawaii. Hawaii was a group of islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Before this it had been independent, but Americans owned profitable sugar and pineapple plantations there.

In less than a year the United States had become a colonial power, with millions of non-Americans under its rule. Some Americans were worried by this. After all, they, too, had once been a colonial people. In rebelling against British rule they had claimed that colonial peoples should be free to rule themselves. So what about the Cubans? And what about the Filipinos? Filipinos who had fought for independence from Spain were soon fighting against American occupation troops. How could Americans fight against such people without being unfaithful to the most important traditions and values of their own country?

Most Americans answered this question by claiming that they were preparing underdeveloped nations for civilization and democracy. "I'm proud of my country," said a Methodist minister in New England, "patiently teaching people to govern themselves and to enjoy the blessings of a Christian civilization. Surely this Spanish war has not been a grab for empire, but a heroic effort to free the oppressed and to teach millions of ignorant, debased human beings how to live."

There was some truth in the clergyman's claim. The Americans built schools and hospitals, constructed roads, provided pure water supplies and put an end to killer diseases like malaria and yellow fever in the lands they now ruled. They continued to rule most of them until the middle years of the century. The Philippines became an independent country in 1946. In 1953 Puerto Rico became self-governing, but continued to be closely tied to the United States. In 1959 Hawaii was admitted as the fiftieth state of the Union.

Cuba was treated differently. When Congress declared war on Spain in 1898 it said that it was only doing so to help the Cuban people to win independence. When the war ended, Cuba was soon declared an independent country.

But for years Cuba's independence was just a pretense. Before the Americans took away their soldiers in 1902 they made the Cuban government give them land at Guantanamo Bay on the Cuban coast. A big American naval base was built there. The Cubans also had to accept a condition called the Platt Amendment. This said that the United States could send troops to take control of Cuba any time it believed that American interests were in danger - in other words, whenever it wanted.

It did so many times. In 1906, for example, President Theodore Roosevelt set up an American military government in Cuba to stop a revolution. This ran the country's affairs until 1909. In 1912, 1917 and 1921 American marines were again sent to stop revolutions in Cuba. For many years the country continued to be little more than a protectorate of the United States.

Bryn O'Callaghan: An illustrated history of the USA; Longman, Harlow, 1990/1996, page 84 ff.