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3 Spanish-American War (1898–1899) and Philippine Insurrection (1899–1902) The Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, two successive turn-of-thecentury conflicts, are among the smallest wars covered in this anthology in terms of American fatalities. Nevertheless, they occupy an important place in American history. More than ever before, the United States claimed to be fighting on behalf of oppressed people outside its borders. And more than ever before, antiwar leaders attacked the U.S. government for subjugating the very populations the United States purported to liberate. The Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection also gave birth to two war-related terms used extensively in the twenty-first century. The first, ‘‘concentration camp,’’ or a place in which noncombatants are placed during war, is usually associated with Germany in World War II or Lord Herbert Kitchener’s policy during Great Britain’s Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa. However, the term is better attributed to the late nineteenth-century Spanish commander Arsenio Martinez Campos. In 1895, Campos was fending off a never-ending series of local insurgencies in the Spanish colony of Cuba.1 Looking for a permanent end to the Cuban independence struggle, the conflict that ultimately resulted in the Spanish-American War, Campos confidentially proposed to the Spanish government to ‘‘reconcentrate’’ the civilian inhabitants of the rural districts into camps.2 Although Campos conceded that the policy might lead to ‘‘misery and famine,’’ it would also, he explained, deprive the insurgents of food, shelter, and support, thereby bringing the war to a more rapid conclusion.3 While Campos did not carry out his policy, his successor, General Valeriano ‘‘Butcher’’ Weyler, did.4 The second term, ‘‘quagmire,’’ meaning a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position, was applied in the context of war by Mark Twain. Since then, it has come to be used frequently in that context.5 Speaking of the Philippine Insurrection, Twain stated in 1900 that ‘‘we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater.’’6 The United States declared war on Spain over Cuba on April 25, 1898. American involvement is usually attributed to the mysterious explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, the sensationalist ‘‘yellow journalism’’ of newspapermen Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, and American sympathy for a PAGE 54 ................. 18232$ $CH3 05-30-12 14:56:56 PS spanish-american war and philippine insurrection 55 burgeoning independence movement in Cuba and corresponding contempt for Spain’s brutal tactics in putting down the rebellion. Other causes may have been the island’s strategic position in the Caribbean and American financial interests in the island’s agriculture industry.7 Particularly because of its strong navy, the United States had complete military superiority over Spain, and ‘‘this splendid little war’’ was over in less than a hundred days.8 On August 12, 1898, Spain granted Cuba its independence and ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States. Over the course of the war, the American military suffered fewer than four hundred combat-related deaths.9 The greater cost came from environmental factors: there were approximately two thousand non-combat-related fatalities resulting from food poisoning, yellow fever, malaria, and other diseases.10 But even as the war with Spain ended, another war—this one far less ‘‘splendid’’ than the first—began. Under the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the Philippine Islands (as well as Puerto Rico and Guam) to the United States, and accepted $20 million in return. But by the time the United States and Spain signed the treaty on December 10, 1898, and the U.S. Senate ratified it on February 6, 1899, the Filipino nationalist Emilio Aguinaldo had proclaimed Philippine independence. Of the hundred and twenty-five thousand American troops that fought in the Philippines between 1899 and 1903, four thousand were killed.11 In addition, approximately twenty thousand Filipino insurgents died, and civilian casualties were heavy as well; John A. Larkin has written that the war cost the lives of ‘‘hundreds of thousands’’ of Filipinos from both injury and disease.12 The war involved open battles and guerrilla campaigns by both sides, and reputed American atrocities were eventually investigated in the U.S. Senate.13 The United States exerted less and less control over the Philippines over the following decades, and the country’s independence was formally recognized by the United...

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