The University of Wisconsin Press

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Latin American Studies / History - American

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The United States in Cuba 1898–1902 Generals, Politicians, and the Search for Policy David Healy The island of Cuba, in 1963, threatened the safety, not only of the United States but also of the rest of the free world. Why has the former protectorate of the United States become such a trouble spot? In this book, David F. Healy recounts the story of the men who were responsible for decisions during the first U.S. occupation of Cuba in 1898—decisions which helped shape future actions in Central America and the Caribbean. In a careful, balanced, probing analysis of Cuban-American relations from 1898 to 1902, Mr. Healy provides us with a detailed picture of the actors and events during this highly critical period. When the battleship Maine went down in Havana harbor in 1898, plunging the United States into war with Spain, the policy of this country toward Cuba was a jumble of inconsistencies. President McKinley wished the United States to retain a free hand in imposing a political settlement on both Spaniards and Cubans. But a strong element in Congress wanted to recognize the Cuban insurgents as the legal government of Cuba, competent to work out the Cuban problem for themselves. Nor could the generals heading the occupation forces agree, Leonard Wood favoring an indefinite occupation of Cuba ending in its eventual annexation, while James Harrison Wilson favored the negotiation of a customs union with Cuba, binding her economically to the United States, and then ending the occupation quickly while retaining a United States protectorate over the island. In a notably clear and well-organized account, Mr. Healy shows how a plan of action gradually emerged from this tangle of personalities, motives, and cross-purposes. Cuba and the Philippines, he believes, were the twin laboratories in which the nation’s policy-makers worked out the answers to the problems of American expansion beyond its shores, and in the long run it was the Cuban solution which the United States chose to adopt for general use. Mr. Healy’s book is therefore of prime interest to historians, students of government, and anyone who is concerned with our activities in Cuba or Central and South America for the light it casts on this significant formative period in American foreign policy. David Healy is professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His other books include Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1917; US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s; and Gunboat Diplomacy in the Wilson Era: The U.S. Navy in Haiti, 1915–1916. For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

Published 1963 272 pp.    6 illus. This title, cloth ISBN 978-0-299-02930-2, is out of print, but David Healy's US Expansionism has been reprinted.

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