The Cuban War of Independence

Abstract

Of the three central foreign policy events of Grover Cleveland’s second term—the Hawaiian revolution, the Venezuelan Border Dispute, and the Cuban War of Independence—the latter would have the most tangible impact on the evolution of U.S. foreign policy and the creation of an American empire. If the Venezuelan Border Dispute had demonstrated a new American assertiveness in foreign policy rhetoric and ideology, the Cuban rebellion, which began in 1895, would prove to be the trigger for actions that would fundamentally change the position of the United States in global affairs. As the central cause of the War of 1898, the Cuban War of Independence can safely be called a turning point in U.S. history. This being the case, it is easy to overlook the fact that the revolution in Cuba endured for more than three years before the United States finally intervened, with two of those three years coming under the leadership of Cleveland and Olney—a fact that has led one biographer to suggest that Cleveland’s role has been “treated as an unimportant prologue to the Cuban policy of the McKinley administration.”1 Indeed, it would be Cuba that formed the culmination of the Cleveland administration’s foreign policy, both as the last problem they faced in office and as the final evolution of the administration’s policy template.KeywordsForeign PolicyDemocratic PartyPolitical ReformSpanish GovernmentAmerican Foreign PolicyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.