Welcome in everyone. I am so glad you're joining
us for today's deep dive. Today's Monday, March
23. 2026, and we have a really wild story for
you today. Yeah, we absolutely do. It's one of
those historical moments that sounds almost like
fiction. Right. I mean, we are talking about
how in 1898, the United States basically accidentally
conquered an entire empire just because someone
brought a map of the Pacific to a meeting about
the Caribbean. Exactly. It's wild. So for you
listening, we're unpacking a massive stack of
sources today. We've got this comprehensive Wikipedia
historical archive. And we're exploring a conflict
that lasted just 16 weeks. I mean, 16 weeks total.
But it completely detonated the existing global
world order. We are, of course, talking about
the Spanish -American War. Yeah, and our goal
today is really cut through the noise of what
is an incredibly dense and often misunderstood
period. We're going to synthesize exactly how
the U .S. transitioned from this relatively isolationist
republic into a massive global colonial power.
Which is a huge shift. A completely seismic shift.
And on the flip side, we're going to look at
Spain. We'll examine how this devastating empire
ending defeat paradoxically sparked a massive
cultural and economic renaissance over there.
OK, let's unpack this. Because I think we all
vaguely remember the high school history version,
right? Like, Cuba is fighting for independence
from Spain. The American newspapers whip everyone
into a total frenzy. A ship blows up, and boom,
we go to war. Right, the very abridged version.
Exactly. But to really understand this geopolitical
pressure cooker of the late 19th century, we
have to look at the money first. I know the US
had significant financial ties to Cuba, but...
How deep did those ties actually go at that point?
Oh, incredibly deep. I mean, by 1894, 90 % of
Cuba's total exports were going straight to the
United States. Right, 90%. Yeah, 90%. And the
US was providing about 40 % of Cuba's imports.
So American business interests essentially held
the economic reins of the entire island, even
though the Spanish empire technically held the
political and military authority. Wow. So they
were entirely economically dependent on the US.
Exactly. So when Cuban nationalists led by folks
like Jose When they launched this massive revolution
for independence in 1895, American capital was
immediately threatened. Right. The money was
on the line. Yeah. And Spain's response to that
revolution is really what sets the stage for
the whole conflict, because the Spanish prime
minister sends in General Valeriano Weyler, and
he institutes this policy of re -concentration.
Yeah. And it was just as horrific as the name
implies to basically starve out the Cuban guerrilla
fighters. Weyler forced massive swaths of the
rural population into these awful concentration
camps near his military headquarters. Just ripping
people out of their homes. Right. The sanitary
conditions were just abysmal. Starvation set
in, disease was rampant, and tens of thousands
of Cuban civilians died. It was a humanitarian
catastrophe. And so naturally, we've all heard
the stories about the yellow journalism of this
era. You have these publishers in New York, right,
like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst,
and they're just screaming about Spanish murderers
and their headlines because, let's be honest,
atrocity sells papers. It absolutely does. But
looking at the archive, that popular myth that
the newspapers alone basically caused the war,
it feels backward. because President William
McKinley and Wall Street were actually terrified
of going to war. Oh, yeah, they were actively
suppressing the push for it. You really have
to remember the context of the 1890s in America.
The U .S. had just suffered the Panic of 1893,
which was the severe economic depression. Right,
they were still recovering. Exactly. Wall Street
desperately wanted stability for that fragile
recovery. The last thing they wanted was the
unpredictable chaos of an armed conflict. Yeah,
wars are terrible for stable markets. Completely.
And then on a personal level, McKinley was the
last American president to have served in the
Civil War. He had literally seen the carnage
of Antietam firsthand, so he was deeply, deeply
committed to these Victorian ideals of pacifism
and arbitration. Okay, so if Wall Street and
McKinley were so anti -war, how did a tragic
ship explosion force the president's hand? Because
even when the USS Maine, you know, the American
cruiser, sent to Havana to protect U .S. citizens
when it explodes in the harbor on February 15,
1898, it kills over 250 servicemen. Yeah, an
absolute tragedy. But the Navy's own official
investigation couldn't definitively prove who
set it off. Like they knew it was an external
mine, but they couldn't pin it on the Spanish
government. So how does that lead to war? What's
fascinating here is the clash of underlying values.
McKinley spent months trying to negotiate a peaceful
end to those re -concentration camps. But Spain
was dealing with its own incredibly fragile political
system. Meaning what, exactly? Well, if the Spanish
monarchy just handed over Cuba, which, by the
way, they viewed as an integral province, not
just a colony if they just gave it up, the government
in Madrid would likely collapse in a revolution.
Oh, I see. So Spain's government was trapped.
Right. Spain couldn't deliver the promised humanitarian
reforms without risking their own survival. And
McKinley could no longer hold back the American
public's outrage over the Maine. The pressure
just blew the lid off. So the U .S. issues an
ultimatum. Spain declares war and the U .S. follows
suit in April of 1898. But I noticed in the archive
that the historiography on this, like how historians
actually view the motive for the war is really
split. It's thoroughly split. I mean, for decades,
the dominant historical consensus was that the
US went to war out of genuine moral fervor. It
was viewed as this noble humanitarian crusade
to stop the starvation in Cuba. Right, the rescue
mission there. Exactly. But later, political
scientists introduced a more realist perspective.
They argued that this moral outrage was essentially
a really convenient cover for an imperialistic
land grab. Of course. Yeah. They suggest it was
a deliberate move by a rising industrial power
to basically secure strategic naval bases, but
disguised as a rescue mission. Both views are
heavily debated. Well, here's where it gets really
interesting. Whichever lens you view it through,
the entire political focus, the entire moral
outrage of the public is centered squarely on
Cuba. It's a Caribbean crisis. Right. But then
the U .S. Navy executes this maneuver. that drastically
pivots the war to the completely opposite side
of the planet. It's like showing up to put out
a fire at your neighbor's house in the Caribbean,
but somehow you accidentally conquer a totally
different neighborhood in the Pacific Ocean.
I mean, How did we end up fighting in the Philippines?
That brings us to the Kimball Plan. The Kimball
Plan. Yeah. The Navy's pivot to the Pacific wasn't
improvised at all. It was a deeply calculated
mechanism. Two years before the war, in 1896,
a guy named Lieutenant Commander William W. Kimball
drafted this contingency plan for a hypothetical
war with Spain. Just in case. Just in case. And
the strategic logic was actually brilliant. Spain's
wealth came from Cuba, but its strategic vulnerability
was its outdated fleet guarding the Philippines.
So the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, who happens
to be Theodore Roosevelt, he basically pulls
this plan off the shelf and acts on it before
the war is even officially declared. He does.
He sends preemptive orders to Commodore George
Dewey, who is commanding the U .S. Asiatic Squadron
over in Hong Kong. And the directive was crystal
clear. He said, the moment war breaks out, prevent
the Spanish fleet from leaving the Asian coast
and launch offensive operations in Manila Bay.
And Dewey absolutely delivers. I mean, it's a
master class in naval warfare. On May 1st, Dewey
sails his modern steel ships in the Manila Bay
and just completely obliterates the antiquated
Spanish fleet in a matter of hours. It wasn't
even close. No. The technological gap is staggering.
The Spanish lose hundreds of sailors. And the
Americans, only nine wounded. Not nine dead,
nine wounded. It's an unbelievable statistic.
And if we connect this to the bigger picture,
Manila Bay was the exact moment the world woke
up to the reality of American naval supremacy.
They arrived on the world stage. Exactly. But
tactically, it created an immediate geopolitical
headache. Dewey controlled the water, but he
didn't have a landing force to actually take
the city of Manila. And suddenly, the harbor
starts filling up with the warships of other
European empires. Vultures circling the water.
Precisely like vultures. Specifically, a German
squadron of eight ships shows up. And the Germans
had their own imperial ambitions. They were hovering
there, just waiting to see if they could seize
the Philippines for themselves if the Americans
faltered. Oh, wow. Yeah, the German ships were
cutting in front of American vessels. They were
refusing to salute the flag. They were really
testing the limits of Dewey's resolve. Just actively
trying to provoke him. Exactly. But Dewey calls
their bluff, right? Yeah. He basically threatens
war if they don't back off. Yeah. And the Germans
finally stand down. Yeah, they eventually back
off. But the Americans are still stuck. They
need troops on the ground. So they bring in Emilio
Aguinaldo, a Filipino revolutionary who had already
been fighting the Spanish. And Aguinaldo assumes,
naturally, that the U .S. is there to help him
establish an independent Philippine republic.
Right, which becomes a huge issue later. Yeah,
a massive issue. But while US reinforcements
are sailing across the Pacific to join this messy
situation in Manila, they casually execute one
of the most bizarre military captures in history
at Guam. Oh, the Guam story is incredible. So
that happens on June 20th. The USS Charleston
sails into Guam's harbor and fires a few rounds
at the Spanish fort. Just to announce themselves.
Right. But instead of returning fire, two Spanish
officials actually row out to the American ship.
And they weren't coming to surrender, they were
coming to apologize. Because they literally didn't
know where it started. Exactly. The telegraph
tables didn't reach Guam at that point, so they
thought the Americans were firing a friendly
salute. That's amazing. They were rowing out
to apologize for not having any gunpowder to
return the courtesy. They're like, sorry, we
can't fire our cannons to say hello. And the
American captain has to tell them, actually,
we're at war. And you were all our prisoners.
Yeah, it's a completely bloodless capture, all
because of a logistics failure on the Spanish
side, which is wild. But that actually perfectly
transitions us back over to the Caribbean, because
while the Navy was executing these surgical,
almost flawless victories in the Pacific, the
army's invasion of Cuba was a completely different
story. I mean, it wasn't just outdated tactics.
It was basic logistics that failed. Right. Oh,
the logistical contrast is totally jarring. So
in the spring of 1898, The U .S. Army was basically
a frontier force. It had just over 24 ,000 regular
soldiers. Barely enough to call an army. Right.
But overnight, Congress authorized the absorption
of over 220 ,000 volunteers. Wow. And the military
infrastructure simply did not exist to outfit,
feed, transport, and house a force that size.
Because I mean, going from 24 ,000 guys to over
200 ,000 almost overnight, that's a logistical
nightmare. It was chaos. So when they finally
managed to land in Cuba in June, they walked
straight into a tactical nightmare. The Spanish
army is heavily outnumbered overall. But they
are dug into the hills around Santiago and they
are using the 1893 Mauser rifle. And the Mauser
was a huge deal. A massive technological leap.
It used stripper clips for rapid reloading and
it fired these high velocity rounds that the
Americans called Spanish Hornets because of this
terrifying supersonic crack they made when they
flew past. That's terrifying. Yeah. But more
importantly, the Spanish were using smokeless
powder. Which means they could fire from the
dense jungle foliage with without ever revealing
their positions. Exactly. Meanwhile, you have
these American volunteer regiments walking into
battle using old trapdoor Springfield rifles
that fire black powder. I mean, every time an
American volunteer pulls the trigger, they put
up a giant cloud of white smoke. Yeah, literally
painting a huge target on their own backs for
the Spanish snipers. It's almost suicidal. It
really was. And that technological disparity
is what made the frontal assaults at places like
San Juan Hill and El Cani on July 1st incredibly
bloody. I mean, over 200 U .S. soldiers were
killed and nearly 1200 were wounded charging
those entrenched Spanish positions. Wow. And
it's vital to correct the historical memory here
regarding who is actually taking those hills.
Right, because the mythology always points to
Teddy Roosevelt and his volunteer Rough Riders
charging up San Juan. Hill on horseback. But
looking at the sources, the real backbone of
that assault was the 9th and 10th Cavalry, right?
The Buffalo Soldiers? Yes. These were segregated,
highly experienced African -American regular
army units. They were the real pros. Absolutely.
They're covering fire, they're tactical discipline,
and just their sheer endurance were absolutely
critical to breaking the Spanish lines. Multiple
accounts from officers at the time noted that
without the Buffalo Soldiers, the volunteer regiments
would have been entirely pinned down and decimated.
So they take the heights. The Spanish fleet tries
to run the blockade and gets destroyed by the
U .S. Navy and then a short campaign in Puerto
Rico. follows. But here is the statistic that
really stops you in your tracks. We talk about
the Spanish hornets and the bloody charge up
the hill, but fewer than 400 US troops were actually
killed in combat during this entire war. That's
right. Over 2 ,000 died from disease. So my question
is, how does a rapidly rising industrial power
lose thousands of men to dirty drinking water
in their own training camps before they even
see a battlefield? It was an absolute epidemiological
collapse of those non -combat deaths. Eighty
seven percent were caused by typhoid fever alone.
Eighty seven percent. Yeah. And the vast majority
of that happened in the domestic assembly camps
right back in the United States in places like
Camp Thomas in Georgia. The army just had no
institutional knowledge of large scale camp sanitation.
They just didn't know what they were doing. No,
they were digging latrines right next to the
camp water supplies. They didn't understand the
role of flies as vectors for the bacteria. It
was a mess. General Shafter, who commanded the
forces in Cuba, he literally called his men an
army of convalescence because 75 % of the force
was eventually rendered unfit for duty due to
yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery. The situation
got so desperate that the War Department actually
tried leaving the African -American troops in
Cuba as an occupation force based on this incredibly
flawed racist pseudoscience that they were somehow
genetically immune to tropical diseases. Oh,
wow. Which is obviously false. Completely false.
Dozens of them contracted the fevers just like
anyone else. So it's a total medical disaster.
But I liked how the archive framed this. It was
essentially like we went to war with bullets
and came back with epidemiology. That's the perfect
way to phrase it, because the public outcry over
those typhoid deaths was so intense that it forced
a complete revolution in military medicine. It
directly led to the establishment of the U .S.
Army Typhoid Board. which was led by figures
like Walter Reed. Walter Reed. Yeah. They mapped
exactly how the disease spread through the camps,
which fundamentally changed global sanitation
practices. So the catastrophic failures of 1898
saved countless lives in the 20th century because
it basically birthed modern military hygiene.
So by August of 1898, an armistice halts the
fighting. It's been just 16 weeks. U .S. Ambassador
John Hay famously writes to Theodore Roosevelt
from London and calls it a splendid little war.
Right. But when the formal Treaty of Paris is
signed in December 1898, the terms dictate that
Spain relinquishes sovereignty over Cuba and
cedes Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
to the United States. With the stroke of a pen,
a 400 -year -old empire is dismantled. But wait,
I'm confused here. OK. Because before the war
started, Congress passed the Teller Amendment.
specifically promising the world that the U .S.
had no intention of annexing Cuba. So how did
we end up passing the Platt Amendment just a
few years later to basically take control of
it anyway? Like, how is that legally justified?
Well, you are hitting on the exact paradox that
defined the whole aftermath of the war. The U
.S. government realized that simply walking away
from Cuba would leave a strategic vacuum, so
they utilized a legal loophole. Okay, what kind
of loophole? The Platt Amendment didn't technically
annex Cuba. It made it a protectorate. Yeah,
it stipulated that Cuba couldn't sign treaties
with other nations without U .S. approval. It
granted the U .S. the right to intervene militarily
to preserve, quote unquote, Cuban independence.
And it forced Cuba to perpetually lease naval
stations to the U .S., most notably, Guantanamo
Bay. So what does this all mean? We went to war
citing human rights abuses by a colonial empire.
only to invent a legal framework to hold colonies
of our own. Because it wasn't just Cuba, right?
Right. What about Puerto Rico and Guam? The people
living there suddenly found themselves owned
by a country that prides itself on constitutional
rights. This raises an important question, and
it's exactly where the Supreme Court had to step
in with this series of rulings known as the Insular
Cases. The Insular Cases. Right. The fundamental
question they were trying to answer was, does
the Constitution follow the flag? Like, if the
US flag flies over Puerto Rico, do Puerto Ricans
automatically get full constitutional rights?
And the Supreme Court said no? They said no.
They engineered a brand new legal category called
unincorporated territories. Think of it as a
geopolitical waiting room. where the territories
were owned by the House, but the people living
there were not allowed to actually sit at the
dinner table. Wow. Yeah. The court ruled that
full constitutional rights did not automatically
extend to all places under American control.
It was a customized formula for American imperialism,
allowing the U .S. to govern overseas possessions
without incorporating their populations as equal
citizens. Which was the absolute height of hypocrisy
to critics at the time. You had figures like
Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie forming the Imperialist
League, arguing that a republic simply cannot
simultaneously be an empire. Right, there was
huge pushback. But domestically, you can't deny
the war was wildly popular. For the first time
since the Civil War, you had northerners and
southerners fighting a common enemy. You had
former Confederate generals commanding U .S.
troops again. It served as this massive, unifying
cultural moment that effectively ended the post
-Civil War fracture. It permanently altered the
American self -image. The U .S. went from this
isolationist, inward -looking nation to a country
that viewed itself as a global power, even as
it was, you know, fighting a brutal, multi -year
counterinsurgency war in the Philippines. against
Emilio Aguinaldo and the very revolutionaries
they had initially allied with. It's just wild.
I want to pivot to the other side of this equation
before we wrap up, though. What happens to Spain?
Because you'd naturally assume that losing a
400 -year -old empire in the span of four months
would utterly destroy the country. Yeah. But
looking at the archives... How does losing your
empire actually cause an economic boom? It comes
down to capital repatriation. OK, break that
down for me. So for centuries, the Spanish elite
had parked their wealth in colonial assets. We're
talking sugar plantations in Cuba, massive shipping
interests in Manila. When the empire collapsed,
all of that overseas investment suddenly became
incredibly vulnerable. So the wealthy elites
pulled their capital back to the Spanish Peninsula.
Oh, I see. They liquidated their empire and just
brought all the cash home. Exactly. And that
massive sudden influx of domestic cash is what
literally paid for the modernization of Spain.
It funded the creation of major financial institutions
like the Banco Hispano Americano, and it capitalized
the heavy steel and chemical sectors in places
like Bilbao and Catalonia. Furthermore, it forced
a profound cultural reckoning. Right, the Generation
of 98. Yes. Spanish intellectuals and writers
realized they could no longer hide behind this
myth of being a global superpower. The defeat
forced them to look inward, to critically examine
Spanish identity, corruption, and society. And
that sparked one of the most vital literary and
philosophical movements in Spanish history. Basically,
losing the empire was the trauma that forced
Spain to join the modern 20th century. That is
so fascinating. the primary takeaways for you
listening right now. In a span of just 16 weeks,
the map of the world was entirely rewritten.
Spain loses its 400 -year -old colonial grip.
The United States accidentally conquers a multi
-ocean empire stretching from the Caribbean to
the Pacific. A tragic medical failure bathes
modern military epidemiology. And the Supreme
Court invents a legal framework for unincorporated
territories that redefines American democracy.
Yeah, and the reason you should care about this
history is that the frameworks established in
those 16 weeks are the exact frameworks we are
still living with today. debates about U .S.
foreign interventionism or discussions regarding
the political status and voting rights of territories
like Puerto Rico and Guam or even the continuing
legal complexities of the naval base at Guantanamo
Bay, you are hearing the direct unresolved echoes
of 1898. And to leave you with one final frankly
bizarre legacy to mull over on your own. Wars
cost money, right? They always do. Always. Well...
To fund the military mobilization for the Spanish
-American War in 1898, the U .S. Congress passed
a temporary excise tax on long -distance phone
service. Now, in 1898, that only affected the
ultra -wealthy who actually owned telephones.
But when the 16 -week war ended, Congress simply
forgot to repeal the tax. Of course it did. That
temporary war tax to fight the Spanish Empire
remained on the phone bills of American citizens
for over a century. It was finally repealed in
August of 2006. It serves as a stark reminder.
The actions taken in the heat of conflict have
a funny way of outliving the wars themselves.
Thanks so much for joining us on this Deep Dive.