HIST 360
The Spanish-American Wars Spring 2010
Division II Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed LEAD 360
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This course contextualizes the Spanish-American War of 1898–often perceived as the United States’ initiation into the realm of imperialism–in the longer history of Spanish imperial decline and U.S. ascendancy in the Americas. It will explore the consequences of this geopolitical realignment from the perspective of the Spanish as well as Spain’s Latin American subjects who broke free from colonial rule only to find themselves, in one historian’s words, “under America.” Readings–including scholarly books, articles, and primary documents–will also investigate a wide range of U.S. perspectives on the nation’s rapid continental expansion in the nineteenth century that was facilitated by Spain’s retreat from the Americas. By 1898, the dissolution of the Spanish empire and the United States’ quest for hemispheric hegemony and world power culminated in the Spanish-American War and the advent of an American empire. The conflicts this war generated within U.S. society and between the U.S., Spain, Latin American and Caribbean nations, and the Philippines will constitute the focus of the second part of the course. This course fulfils the requirements of the Exploring Diversity Initiative, as students will examine the struggles that emerged within and between the countries in question over which groups would gain and lose social, economic, and political power and privilege as they confronted the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Spanish Empire.