Thinking about Empire: The Administration of Ulysses S. Grant, Spanish Colonialism and the Ten Years' War in Cuba

Abstract

This article examines the attitudes of leading policymakers in the United States toward the Spanish Empire in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–78). It suggests that while many in the US objected to Spanish imperial practices, concerns about trade alongside ideological predispositions regarding nonintervention and race led the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, under the direction of Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, to develop a series of policies that in effect supported colonialism in Cuba while attempting to ensure that the US would benefit from any change in rule there. The article argues that despite an apparent desire for the US to remain neutral during the conflict, the Grant administration in fact formulated its responses based on a narrow conception of Spanish colonial control that demonstrated an increasing sense of moral superiority over both colonizer and colonized.