History 261 Section 6B: Documents on the "Reluctant Empire" Debate
At the end of his book 1898, David Traxel asserts: "There is no question that the men [President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of War William Howard Taft] were sincere about their desire to be rid of the burden of empire" (317). Many scholars today would disagree with this conclusion, just as many Americans in the early 1900s debated the consequences and the morality of the rise of American imperialism.
1. For Section 6B, begin by reading these excerpts by two scholars who take a different position from Traxel:
**Louis A. Perez, "The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography" (1998) ("Historiography" refers to the production of historical knowledge and the debate among scholars regarding competing interpretations of the past)
**Nancy Mitchell, "Where Are the Cubans in this War?" (1998)
2. The Spanish-American War was the first major American military engagement to be portrayed through motion pictures shown to audiences back home. For the second part of this assignment, go to this Library of Congress webpage and watch about a dozen or so of the 68 brief motion picture features available, thinking about the portrayals of American, Spanish, Cuban, and Filipino soldiers and civilians. Make sure to take notes on your analysis so you can discuss these images in section.
**The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures
At this page above, click on each of the five boxes (War Begins, Cuba, War Ends, Philippine Revolution, Homecomings) and watch a few of the motion pictures that can be found at the bottom of the page.
3. Third, read these additional documents about the rise of the United States as a global power in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
**Queen Liliuokalani Protests Annexation of Hawaii (1897)
**Albert Beveridge, "The March of the Flag" (1898)
**President William McKinley, "The Acquisition of the Philippines" (1898)
**General Emilio Aguinaldo, "Manifesto" (1899)
**Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League (1899)
**Mark Twain (Anti-Imperialist League), "To the Person Sitting in the Darkness" (1901)
**"American Soldiers in the Philippines Write Home about the War" (1899-1904)