War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895–1898 (review)

There is no better study of this important war to date than this meticulously researched, cogently argued, and superbly written account. The war signaled the end of the Spanish American empire and the start of the United States of America as a world power. It also gave abortive birth to an independent Cuban state. As such, it has attracted enormous scholarly attention, especially from scholars in the participating countries. Some of the studies are exceptionally good. None however, provides the richly detailed perspective of this volume.

The sources are impeccable. Tone has gleaned important new information from private letters, garrison logbooks, hospital records, battle diaries, newspaper reports, and confidential administrative communication from the Archivo General Militar in Segovia, Spain, that only recently became available. He has also done extensive research in three other Spanish archives, three Cuban archives, as well as the archives of the History of Medicine, the Library of Congress, the Huntington Library, and the National Archives of the United States. The bibliographical base is excellent. Tone has provocatively reviewed the accepted outlines of the war by a large number of scholars impressively refining and contradicting their assertions as he recounts the political and military relations between Spain and Cuba between 1868 and 1898.

The signal achievement of this book lies in the even attention given to the three combative sides in the war. Almost every page bristles with original ideas about the troops and the conditions of warfare and the wider context of the later nineteenth century. The savagely brutal war that began in 1895 was, for different reasons, extremely difficult for both Cubans and Spaniards. Cuban insurgents mobilized about 40,000 soldiers and waged an erratic guerrilla campaign that was effective only for the first two years. They never had sufficient food, clothes, or ammunition to fight consistently or win an outright victory. The Spanish sent nearly 200,000 troops to Cuba, their largest single military overseas engagement. They also had the active support of approximately 60,000 local volunteers. Although better trained and better armed than the Cubans, tropical diseases such as dysentery, yellow fever, typhoid, malaria, and pneumonia ravaged the troops. According to Tone, "disease killed 22 percent of the military personnel sent to Cuba, accounting for 93 percent of Spanish fatalities" (9).

The book, written with engaging humor, offers brilliant, interesting insights about all the principal participants as well as their military technology and strategies. This realistic evaluation of the three contending forces undermines much conventional wisdom about the war. "Cuban independence," states Tone, "required the intervention of many people, and . . . was not inevitable but the result, at least in part, of historical accidents" (227). Theodore Roosevelt, for one, was fortunate to have encountered Spanish military technology and war strategy in so compromised a condition, or it could have been anything but "a splendid little war" for the invading Americans.