Enrique Dupuy De Lôme and the Spanish American War

Abstract

WE know little in the United States about the man who, as Spain's Ambassador in 1898, dared to call President McKinley “a low politician catering to the rabble.” The purpose of this article is to shed light on Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, his views, and his hitherto unstudied role as Spain's envoy during the critical period leading up to the Spanish-American War.The first striking characteristic about our subject is his very name, being French instead of Spanish. The genealogy of the Dupuy de Lôme family originated in France in the sixteenth century. There is record of a Jean Dupuy fighting against the Turks in one of the Crusades. The Spanish branch had, up to the nineteenth century, used only the Dupuy part of the surname. Then, as evidence of his great admiration of his French uncle, the designer of France's first cruiser, Dupuy chose to reestablish the full French surname by adding the de Lôme.