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CUBAN INDEPENDENCE STRUGGLE.   Term Paper ID:29533 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Background of independence movements.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Background of independence movements. Long history of Spanish colonial rule. Strategic importance of the island. Insurgency from 1868 on. Spain's policy choices. U.S. intervention and Spanish-American War of 1898. Annexation of Cuba by U.S. Platt Amendment of 1901. American dominance until Castro-led Revolution. Outline. Paper Introduction: NOT QUITE INDEPENDENCE The Cuban Independence Struggle in the Late 19th Century Outline: I. Introduction Historical background Plan of the essay II. Insurgency Causes of insurgency Course of insurgency until 1898 III. Spain's Policy Choices Alternative inte Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Claimed for Spain by Christopher Columbus in 1492,it remained under Spanish rule until 1898, a period of just over 4 years. This plainly was how Gomez interpreted the offer, and heresponded with renewed effort for full independence. Such a status would have beennot unlike Dominion status in the British Empire, as that status operatedat the end of the 19th century: Cuba would have been autonomous in itsinternal affairs, though remaining aligned with Spain internationally.This proposal, however, was rejected entirely by the rebel leadership underMaximo Gomez, a veteran of the previous round of insurgency in the 187 s[Suchlicki 79]. Of the rest,the first-class battleships Oregon and Indiana, the second-class battleshipTexas, and the armored cruiser Brooklyn, all entered service in 1895-96,and the first-class battleship Iowa in 1897 [Conway's 139-41; 147-48]. Works CitedBenjamin, Jules Robert. If Cuba was not pacified, and quickly, an opportunity forintervention was certain to present itself, and Spain would be powerless toresist. If the Spanish were aware of the changing situation, however, so werethe insurgents, and this was one more reason for Gomez to turn down mereautonomy. The loss of one obsolescent second-classbattleship was no great blow to the United States Navy, and destroying herwas certain to be a casus belli, as indeed the mere suspicion proved to be. Insurgency Through the mid-19th century, tensions grew steadily between theSpanish government (itself unstable) and the Creole elite, Cubans ofSpanish descent. Thus both the Weyler campaign and the political offer of January,1898 can be seen as efforts to stabilize the Spanish position in Cuba whileit was still possible. Annapolis: Naval InstitutePress, 198 .Suchlicki, Jaime. Independence and Hegemony Cuba in the balance, 1898-2 2I. The clock was running out for Spain, and everyone on all sidesknew it. The Maine was also, however, a reminder of theincreasingly dominant weight of American naval power. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh,1974.Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 186 -19 5. Insurgency Causes of insurgency Course of insurgency until 1898III. Talk of annexing Cuba had been current among some circles in theUnited States throughout the century. By another interpretation, however, Spain was looking for a politicalmeans to capitalize on success. The situation "on the ground" thus favored Spain. Fromthis perspective, Madrid's offer might simply be an attempt to stave offthe inevitable. By the later part of the century, however, aCuban independence movement emerged, and the island was in a state of near-continuous insurgency from 1868 on. As recently as 1886, the U.S. American Battleships 1886-1923: Predreadnought Design and Construction. For the next decade, acivil war raged and no sooner did the Spanish suppress the initialinsurgency in 1878 than another broke out in 1879-8 [Suchlicki 72]. Intervention Remembering the Maine Growth of U.S. Some planters,notably Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, saw their own interests as lying inreform as well as independence. A modern work published by the United States Naval Institutesuggests as the most probable cause a spontaneous fire in coal bunkers,which touched off an adjacent powder magazine [Reilly and Scheina 31-32].Accidental explosions were a common hazard in this era; during World WarOne more battleships blew up at their moorings than were sunk in battle. naval power, and its implicationsV. TheAmerican naval base at Guantanamo, recently in the news as internment sitein the "war on terror," was also a fruit of the Platt Amendment. Even after this was quelled, tension remained. The war thus seemed fated to go on. With the Maine explosion, however, it ran out more quickly thananyone could have anticipated -- and to the cost of the insurgents as wellas that of Spain. The events of the Spanish-American war lie outside the scope of thisessay, but the war itself was decisive in transferring Cuba from the formalempire of Spain to nominal independence and the informal empire of theUnited States. Introduction Cuba had one of the longest histories of European colonial rule ofany place in the world. In addition to all these ships (andanother battleship that missed the battle of Santiago due to refueling),five more big battleships were under construction. It had clear social-revolutionary overtones, which could only bealarming to the Creole elite. Even when modernizationof the U.S. ThoseCubans who, in the earlier 19th century, had favored annexation by theUnited States very nearly got their wish [Benjamin 5-6]. Navy began in the 188 s, it at first proceeded very gradually,with small cruisers that would have been no match for the Spanish fleet. naval power. Only in the 19th century did it become a jewel in the crown of theSpanish Empire, the "Ever-Faithful Colony" that did not break away when themainland possessions did. What caused the Maine to blow up soon after her arrival in Havanawill never be known with total certainty. Cuba's liberation from Spain came not at the hands ofCubans but of the United States, and it came with a cost.V. U.S. Cuban history in the 1 1 years since formal independence can bedivided into two roughly equal periods: American dominance until 196 , andthe Castro era up to the present day. Moreover, battleships were not built in avacuum. However, the initial generation of Miami exiles isalso aging; they are unlikely to return in triumph to Havana as they solong hoped. Intervention However, as suggested above, a third interpretation is plausible aswell. In 1868, Cespedes proclaimed independenceand raised an insurgent army [Suchlicki 66-68]. Prior to theUnited States Civil War, many of the Cuban elite had favored annexation bythe United States, whose neighboring southern states shared a slaveeconomy. Cuba and the United States: Interventionism andMilitarism, 1868-1933. General Weyler's methods, though harsh,were after all succeeding in containing the insurgency and limiting itsscope. In spite of the two investigations, this claim is no longer takenseriously. yellow press.III. The remainder of this essay willexplore the circumstances in which the Cuban independence movement arose,its peculiar fate, and its consequences.II. NOT QUITE INDEPENDENCE The Cuban Independence Struggle in the Late 19th CenturyOutline:I. Sometime in the next decade or so, the nature of Cubanindependence will once again have to be determined. The idea that Spanish agents would have blown up the Maine was infact never very credible. Washington:Pergamon-Brassey's, 1986.----------------------- 9 If the situation on the ground favored Spain, the situation on theseas around Cuba increasingly did not. Introduction Historical background Plan of the essayII. Viewed in this light, the January 1898 offerwas an effort to decisively win over Cuban elite opinion from the insurgentcause by lightening the heavy hand of Spain.IV. Pittsburgh:University of Pittsburgh, 1983.Reilly, John C., Jr., and Scheina, Robert L. had no navy tospeak of it was only talk, but by 1898 the "window of opportunity" tosecure Spain's position in Cuba against its northern neighbor was slammingshut. Two successive Americaninvestigations, one at the time and another conducted in 1911, when theMaine's wreck was raised from the bottom of Havana harbor, both reached thepolitically appropriate conclusion: that the sinking had been triggered byan external device, i.e., a mine. For most of the last 3 years, Spain had been embroiled in warfare with Cuban insurgents. Spain's Policy Choices Alternative interpretations of the 1898 proposalIV. U.S. For much of that period, Cuba was a relative backwater, important for itsstrategic position on the sea route between Europe and the rest of SpanishAmerica, but of little value or importance for itself. Navy had consistedentirely of relics left over from the Civil War. The Spanish authorities were all too well aware of this sudden anddramatic growth in U.S. Marti waskilled in battle early on, but the war continued with the insurgentsgaining ground. Spain's monopolistic policies drained off much of theprofits of sugar plantations, and the slave owning growers feared thatSpain would give in to British pressure to ban slavery. After some resistance,the new Cuban national government acquiesced in it [Hernandez 97]. In 1896, Spain dispatched General Valeriano Weyler [Perez54-55], whose repressive measures earned him the title "Beast" Weyler inthe U.S. Spain's Policy Choices In January of 1898, the Spanish government made a new offer of apolitical settlement, proposing a plan under which Cuba would have broadself-government within the Spanish Empire. rightof intervention in Cuban affairs [Suchlicki 81-82]. New York:Mayflower Books, 1979.Hernandez, Jose M. The United States, which not long before had devoted its energiesto interior expansion in the West, was turning outward. Cuban insurgents might have had a motive to blow up the Maine (as wassuggested at the time), but Spain certainly did not. One interpretation is that the Madrid plan was asignal of Spanish war-weariness [Perez 153]. This became manifest in early 1898,when the United States battleship Maine entered Havana harbor on what wasbilled as a goodwill visit. Moreover, theinsurgency was by this time clearly more than strictly an independencemovement. Austin: University of Texas, 1993.Perez, Louis A. The United States and Cuba: Hegemony andDependent Development, 188 -1934. What the prospective outcome might have been from this point, hadSpain and Cuba been left to their own devices, depends heavily on howMadrid's "Dominion" proposal is to be interpreted. TheMaine herself was only completed in 1895. So long as the U.S. Independence and Hegemony The Platt Amendment of 19 1, written into the Cuban constitution,made Cuba in effect a "self-governing dominion" of the United States,limited in its foreign relations and compelled to acknowledge a U.S. In the context of the Cuban independence struggle, what is mostsignificant about the sinking of the Maine -- besides its effect on theoutcome -- is that such an outcome only became possible in the last coupleof years before 1898. Cuba From Columbus to Castro. Of the large American ships that defeated Admiral Cervera's Spanishsquadron off Santiago in 1898, thus determining the outcome of the war, theoldest was the armored cruiser New York, completed in 1893. With Castro, Cuba finally gainedsomething like real independence, but also at a heavy cost in isolation.Moreover, the Castro era seems unlikely to long outlive Castro himself, andhe is an aging man. Cuba Between Empires, 1878-19 2. Either of two basicinterpretions is plausible -- a third interpretation, also plausible, willbe considered below. Spain -- which only afew years previously had enjoyed overwhelming superiority -- could notpossibly match this force. Apparentvictory in 1878-8 had only given way to another round of insurgency. In 1892, Jose Marti,a Cuban exile in the United States, organized a revolutionary party, and in1895 full-scale insurgency broke out again [Suchlicki 78-79]. After the end of slavery in the United States their sentiment shiftedto independence, a sentiment shared somewhat paradoxically by reformistswho wished to see a more equable social order in Cuba. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.