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

A historian of Spanish military history, Tone analyzes an understudied subject. U.S. historians neglect the Cuban-Spanish War; Cubans offer suspect interpretations; and Spanish scholars largely ignore it. The scarcity of Cuban records and the inaccessibility of Spanish sources have inhibited investigation. The latter materials are now open, and Tone is an early user. He seems to hold left-liberal views (see p. 12) but avoids the tendentiousness often ascribed to "new left" revisionists. His skillful research leads to revisions of past interpretations emanating from various ideological perspectives, including some from the left.

Tone's comprehensive inquiry stresses the impact of Spanish domestic politics on the Cuban revolt. He sketches growing U.S. involvement but gives little attention to U.S. trade and investment. He dismisses the influence of nationalism on the Cuban insurrectos, preferring to emphasize the authoritarian leadership of Generals Máximo Gómez, Antonio Maceo, and Calixto García. These officers waged guerrilla warfare, avoiding pitched battles and adopting scorched-earth measures, especially destruction of tobacco and sugar, the most practicable means of gradually undermining Spanish authority. Their tactics forced sympathetic Cubans to seek safety in urban areas, thereby depopulating much of the countryside. To help clarify armed actions, Tone offers improved statistics for the size, characteristics, and casualties of the opposing forces. He chronicles the malign effect of tropical disease on both sides, and comments extensively on racial issues that affected the war.

The Cubans achieved notable success in 1896, departing mountainous Oriente province and passing through the trocha (gateway) from Júcaro to Morón. It featured fortifications to prevent an invasion of the prosperous western provinces, the stronghold of Spanish émigrés and pro-Spanish Cubans and site of the cultivation of tobacco and sugar. Captain General Arsenio Martínez de Campos attempted to provide security everywhere, a tactic that scattered his troops and exposed the countryside to widespread destruction of agriculture.

In 1897 the leader of the governing Spanish Conservative Party, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, an impassioned supporter of the empire, sent General Valeriano Weyler to restore order in Cuba. Weyler adopted workable tactics. To immobilize the insurgents he improved the defenses of the eastern trocha and constructed others on the line west of Havana. He then organized field armies to pacify the island province by province.

To weaken the insurgency in the countryside, he ordered reconcentration of rural civilians to urban areas. By the end of 1897 he largely neutralized the Cuban army.

Weyler, however, could not provide adequate necessities to the reconcentrados who suffered terribly from disease and starvation. War correspondents publicized this catastrophe widely, stirring powerful protests, especially in the U.S., which gradually increased its pressure on Madrid to grant reforms. The journalists failed to explain that Cuban operations contributed to rural depopulation and the appalling death rate.

In July 1897 an anarchist assassinated Cánovas, and the Liberal Party of Práxedes Sagasta, which favored reforms, soon promulgated a proclamation of autonomy, hoping to end the insurgency and forestall U.S. intervention. The Cubans flatly rejected this olive branch, recognizing the imminence of victory. When Spain refused McKinley's insistence on Cuban independence, the U.S. intervened in April 1898 and soon forced Spain to accept Cuban independence. Tone dismisses the claims of Cuban nationalist scholars, notably Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, that Cuba does not owe its independence to the U.S. He does not analyze the claim of his patron Louis A. Pérez, Jr., and others that 1898 merely constituted a transition from Spanish imperialism to equally damaging U.S. imperialism.

Tone disputes the view that Spain accepted war despite the likelihood of defeat because otherwise a revolution would destroy the constitutional monarchy. He argues that many Spaniards, however mistakenly, assumed that Spain could defeat the U.S. The nation possessed a respectable navy; the Americans lacked a powerful army; and patriots deemed the...