Mas se perdio en Cuba: Espana, 1898 y la crisis de fin de siglo (review)

Más se perdió en Cuba: España, 1898 y la crisis de fin de siglo. Edited by Juan Pan-Montojo. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1998. Maps. Tables. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. 528 pp. Paper.

This is an edited volume in which six authors treat from different yet coordinated perspectives the impact of the war of 1898 on Spain, its dwindling empire, and Spanish society, economy, politics, culture, and national identity. It is a distinguished example of the copious publications in Spain on the occasion of the centennial of the Spanish-American War.

The introduction to the volume by Juan Pan-Montojo reiterates the dominant consensus among Spanish historians who participated in this commemorative event. According to this almost official, revisionist consensus, the war was not a national "disaster." Recent analyses of the international context place the war of 1898 within a broader historical process. When Spain lost its colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific, there was no major negative consequence in Spain itself; there was no political revolution, social upheaval, or economic crisis in Spain after 1898. The Spanish intellectuals' reaction to the war was an expression of other European thinkers' overall confused stance against the idea of progress characteristic of the fin-de-siècle. The Spanish liberal establishment of the nineteenth century was not the failure it has been portrayed to be. Thus present-day Spaniards need to reconsider the legacy of the collective memory of the war.

This abstract argument is an ingenious filter that distorts, however, a necessary reevaluation of the international perspective in the study of the war. Instead of creating a less nationalistic commemoration, key Spanish historians have bonded to reinforce a more positive view of the Spanish liberal establishment's legacy. This liberal legacy has made, without doubt, important contributions toward the modernization of Spain that unfortunately have been derailed since the 1920s and 1930s. However, the serious flaws of a colonial policy supported by influential interest groups and closed political cliques should not be forgotten. After the war, the critical historical analysis of the liberal system received an important impulse. The generation of the "disaster" was not a misled, confused or blinded group despite their sometimes blatant exaggerations. They pointed at real institutional problems in post-1898 Spain although some among them proposed illiberal solutions.

Christopher Schmidt-Nowara's contribution is the most international and intercolonial of all the other essays in the volume. It approaches the issue of the Spanish colonial crisis and decline from a long-term perspective of the factors leading to the war. Schmidt-Nowara combines a lengthy overview and description of events with theoretical insights. His main argument is that nineteenth-century Spanish colonialism was a different, reenergized imperial version that lost its opportunity for reform. The nationalist and racist bases of this new colonialism contributed to its rising costs to Spain. This first chapter--together with the second chapter by Manuel Pérez Ledesma who describes with solid facts the diverse and fluctuating impact of the war propaganda and recruitment among different Spanish social sectors and socioeconomic organization between 1895 and 1899--serve to place the war in its international and Spanish national historical contexts for the subsequent, neorevisionist chapters.

After establishing some valid points the essays in this volume overextend their arguments and narratives. Juan Pro Ruiz writes a lengthy yet well-informed essay on the factions and tensions that managed to minimize the internal political crisis produced by the war's loss. Despite contrary evidence presented in other essays in the volume, Juan Pan-Montojo proceeds with his argument of the light effects of the war on the economic sphere, based on a long-term structural analysis of modernization in nineteenth-century Spain. In an elegantly written essay, Carlos Serrano focuses on the literary contributions of the generación del 98. Finally, Jos&eacute...