Assignment task: Interpretation: Causes of the Spanish-American War
A: The decade of the 1890's which witnessed the final crisis of the long continued friction between Spain and her Cuban colony marked also the appearance of a new type of journalism in New York City. While a number of veteran newspaper men were grimly attempting to maintain conservative standards, a new school in newspaper making with its reckless headlines, "popular" features, and sensational appeals to the masses reached many read- ers previously impervious to the comparatively staid sheets of the old order.... The outbreak of the Cuban revo- lution came at an opportune time for the newspaper
The sensational newspapers were fully alive to the public's excited interest... and made frantic efforts to get or manufacture the news, and to present it in the most lurid fashion.... The Spanish-American War... was a popular crusade. Neither the business interests of the nation nor the Government executives desired it. The public, aroused by the press, demanded it.-Joseph E. Wisan, The Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1934
B: The Philippine crisis is inseparable from the [Spanish American War] crisis, and the war crisis itself is insepa- rable from a larger constellation that might be called "the psychic crisis of the 1890's." Central in the background of the psychic crisis was the great depression that broke... and was still very acute when the agitation over the war in Cuba began.... These symptoms fall into two basic moods. The key to one of them is an intensification of protest and humanitarian reform.... The other is one of national self-assertion, aggression, expansion. The tone of the first was sympathy, of the second, power.. I suspect that the readiness of the public to over-react to the Cuban situation can be understood in part through the displacement of feelings of sympathy or social protest generated in domestic affairs; these impulses found a safe and satisfactory discharge in foreign conflict. Richard Hofstadter, "Manifest Destiny and the Philippines," 1952
Questions:
Q1. Explain the differences between Interpretation A and Interpretation B:
Q2. Specific Historical Evidence to Support A (not mentioned in passage):
Q3. Specific Historical Evidence to Support B (not mentioned in passage):