Whose America?: The War of 1898 and the Battles to Define the Nation

by Virginia M. Bouvier

Overview

In the midst of the culture wars raging in the United States, this book recovers a part of U.S. history that some wish to forget—the war of 1898. With the war, U.S. policymakers terminated more than four centuries of Spanish colonial rule in the region and launched a paradigm for U.S.-Latin American relations that dominated the 20th century. The war inaugurated an era of profound change not only in U.S. policy toward Latin America, but also in regional cultures and identities within the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

Virginia M. Bouvier underscores the importance of the war in defining American identities. Contributors discuss such items as Spanish perspectives on the U.S. role in the conflict, the multiple and conflicted identities of the Cuban émigré community, and the capacity of gender discourse to explain Congressional actions. A final bibliographic essay reviews recent scholarship on the war. Scholars, students, and researchers involved with American and Latin American history will find this collection particularly valuable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275967949
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/30/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

VIRGINIA M. BOUVIER is Assistant Professor of Latin American Literature in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Maryland, College Park./e Professor Bouvier has published articles and monographs on female narratives on the California frontier, democracy and culture in Latin America, U.S.-Latin American relations, the war of 1898, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and human rights issues. She attended the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents in 1994 and worked as a National Historical Publications and Records Commission Intern on a documentary edition of the writings and correspondence of Emma Goldman.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Whose America? The War of 1898 and the Battles to Define the Nation by Virginia M. Bouvier
Historical Underpinnings of Foreign Intervention
Two Americas by Lester Langley
The War of 1898
U.S. Intervention and Monroeism: Spanish Perspectives on the American Role in the Colonial Crisis of 1895-98 by Sylvia Hilton
Contradictory Identities, Conflicted Nations: Cuban Émigrés in the United States and the Last War for Independence (1895-1898) by Lillian Guerra
Imaging a Nation: U.S. Political Cartoons and the War of 1898 by Virginia M. Bouvier
"Honor Comes First:" The Imperatives of Manhood in the Congressional Debate over War by Kristin Hoganson
Legacies of 1898
Legacies of Intervention: The Case of Cuba by Louis A. Pérez, Jr.
Intervention of Possession? Puerto Rico, The War of 1898, and the American Colonial Periphery by Francisco A. Scarano
The Anti-Imperialist Movement, 1898-1921 by Jim Zwick
Conclusions by Virginia M. Bouvier
Bibliographical Essay
Index

Editorial Reviews

Specialists in Latin American history and literature, all but one from the US, present eight essays from an October 1998 conference at the University of Maryland on what is called, among other things, the Spanish-American War and the Cuban War of Independence. One looks at the historical underpinnings of US intervention, and three at the legacies of the war. The others explore Spanish perspectives, Cuban immigrants to the US, political cartoons, and the imperatives of manhood in the congressional debate. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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