War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895-1898.
Eastman, Scott B.
War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895-1898, by John Lawrence Tone.
Envisioning Cuba Series. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina
Press, 2006. xiii, 338 pp. $35.00 US (cloth).
John Lawrence Tone's latest work continues the recent
historiographical trend that has resituated modern Spanish history.
Often relegated to the margins of the "Western world,"
contemporary Spain tends to be placed alongside supposedly
"backward" nations that failed in the race to industrialize,
modernize, and acquire imperial possessions in the late nineteenth
century. War and Genocide in Cuba successfully dispels the myths
surrounding the Cuban War of Independence and the so-called
"Disaster" of 1898 that led to the loss of the last remaining
Spanish colonies in the Americas, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Tone argues
that Spain's military was not an archaic institution out of touch
with the technologies and strategies of modern warfare, and that the
fluid political situation in Cuba was contingent upon a number of
determining factors, not least of which were the domestic crises faced
by fin-de-siecle Madrid. There is no inexorable march toward
independence in this account, as the role of autonomists on both sides
of the Atlantic receives considerable attention.
Tone's straightforward writing style and a focus on military
history inclines the text toward a popular audience. Diaries,
statistics, and archival sources account for the bulk of evidence,
giving the reader a tangible sense of what it was like to fight in some
of the most horrific battlefield conditions imaginable. The text does
not engage in protracted theoretical debates over the emergence of Cuban
national identity or postcolonialism; rather, the book's multiple
narratives provide various perspectives on the struggle and the
decimation of the island's people and economy. Arguably the most
important chapter, dealing with the issue of the forced relocation of
Cuba's rural population, appears toward the end. Tone demonstrates
that policies of reconcentracion emerged due to the exigencies of total
war, practiced by both the insurgents and by the Spanish. In sum, the
Spanish relocated half a million civilians between February 1896 and
November 1897. Approximately 170,000 people died, a tenth of the
island's population. The provocative title, however, misrepresents
the broad scope of this study. The book is a narrative history of the
war, and by no means maintains a focus on the concentration camps and
"genocide" throughout the entire text.
Tone firmly establishes the causal linkages between events in the
peninsula and in America, as a growing crisis of legitimacy confronted
the Spanish colonial government. For example, a program of limited
reform put forward by Spanish politician Antonio Maura in 1893 was
derailed by a military incursion into Morocco, a distraction which
proved costly. Parliamentary debate was cut off, and Maura resigned as a
result. Had such measures been implemented, Tone insists, the initial
uprising in 1895 might have been forestalled. Attempts to create a more
representative system of administration, together with the efforts of
autonomists, consistently complicated the anti-colonial struggles of
Cuban nationalists and their supporters in the United States. In August
1897, events in Europe again shaped the war in Cuba. The assassination of the Conservative prime minister Antonio Canovas del Castillo by an
Italian anarchist precipitated a change in Spain's government and
the termination of General Valeriano Weyler's command in Cuba.
Weyler's uncompromising policies, symbolized by reconcentracion,
came to an abrupt end. The subsequent Liberal government in Madrid
quickly passed an autonomy statute for Cuba and promised elections by
May 1898. Ironically, reactionary supporters of the Spanish state,
critical of increased autonomy for Cuba, sacked newspapers and fomented
unrest in Havana. It was precisely this atmosphere, verging on civil
war, which led the United States to send the battleship Maine into Cuban
waters.
Tone also examines the connections between guerrilla warfare,
regionalism, and nationalism--the same issues explored in his first book
on Napoleon's occupation of Spain in 1808. Arguing against those
who would posit unanimous resistance and heroic allegiance to the
nationalist cause, he concludes: "there is no evidence of a
widespread popular uprising in 1895. It would be more accurate to
describe the insurrection as the product of intense activity by a
committed revolutionary elite that had only limited support." He
finds evidence of a "deeply rooted sentiment of regionalism"
which hindered the mobilization of Cuban nationalist forces from the
start (p. 48). In addition, Tone emphasizes the geographical and ethnic
divisions of what might be termed "two Cubas"--the provinces
of Santiago and Puerto Principe in Oriente, and Cuba Espanola, the more
hispanicized urban society centred on Havana in the west. A fortified system of Spanish military outposts constructed during the Ten
Years' War (1868-1878) heightened a sense of the divide between
east and west.
Yet, the issue of ethnic and cultural cleavage during the War of
Independence in Cuba merits further study. Race and ideologies of racism
do not receive close scrutiny in spite of the fact that the majority of
troops in the Cuban Liberation Army "were young, single peasants of
African descent born in Cuba" (p. 95). How did notions of Cuban
national identity and racial identity coalesce during the war? Why was
Jose Marti's cross-class, multi-ethnic vision of nationalism such a
powerful mobilizing force in the east, yet at the same time a polarizing
ideology in the west? Is it fair to suggest that there were two
insurgencies, one Afro-Cuban and one Hispanic?
The book concludes by analyzing the propaganda surrounding US
intervention. Tone does not dwell on the aftermath of the war or on the
legacy of Cuban nationalism under the American Military Government or
the Platt Amendment. Rather the book contextualizes the US decision to
invade in light of the enduring Black Legend, the idea that the Spanish
presence in the Americas represented a descent into the barbarity and
cruelty of a bygone age. One US newspaper claimed that nothing would
satiate "the thirst for blood inherent in the bull-fighting
citizens of Spain" (p. 218). Therefore, the US had a moral
obligation to rid the hemisphere of the vestiges of Spanish rule. Tone
then highlights the irony of US forces decrying the Cuban insurgents in
the wake of victory. One general inveighed against the "degenerates
... no more capable of self-government than the savages of Africa"
(p. 283). This book challenges accepted notions of the Cuban War of
Independence and provides an important corrective to studies which have
fostered a nationalist interpretation of inevitable triumph. Tone meshes
military and social history into a readable account of a defining moment
in the history of the Hispanic Atlantic world.
Scott B. Eastman
Creighton University
