Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.11.2.0362
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Pages: 362-363
• Author: James A. Baer

362 book rEVIEWS

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 11.2 WInter 2019

Brad K. Berner, The Spanish-American War: A Documentary History with

Commentaries (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickenson University, 2014), hb 251

pp. ISBN: 9781611475746

Reviewed by James A. Baer1

Editor Brad K. Berner has compiled documents from a variety of sources to pro-

vide multiple perspectives on the Spanish-American War. The eight chapters

span pre-war years, beginning in 1895, to post-war developments stretching

until 1901. The documents include letters from Spanish and US soldiers (includ-

ing young Carl Sandburg), diplomatic correspondence, military proclamations,

newspaper articles and later reflections. They represent the points of view of

Spaniards, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos and Americans. Berner has an intro-

duction that identifies three significant aspects of this conflict. The Spanish-

American War, he writes, was a mass-media war, driven by newspapers and

newly introduced newsreels that reflected technological as well as entrepreneur-

ial changes in the United States. Second, the war, initiated as a civilising mission

to liberate Cubans from Spanish domination, became a war of empire, changing

the role of the United States on the world stage and making President McKinley

‘the first modern commander-in-chief’ (p. 6). And, third, Berner states that it

was a war of race that brought additional people of colour under US control.

The tangled history of race in the United States guided American troops abroad.

‘American soldiers, engaged in what would become a bloody three-year war

with Filipino nationalists, began to call the Filipino insurgents “niggers”’ (p. 8).

Kalman Goldstein, in the foreword, says Berner has ‘revealed what have

become the unintended guiding parameters of our foreign affairs ever since’

(p. xiii). However, this thesis remains undeveloped, except for occasional allusions,

such as pointing out that the US war against Filipino insurgents was ‘America’s first

Southeast Asian war’ (p. 213), without specifically mentioning Vietnam. Each

chapter has a short introduction that provides context for the documents to follow,

and a paragraph to introduce each individual document. These commentaries are

helpful in identifying the issues to be addressed, although sometimes the document

provides little additional information beyond that already stated.

The value of this book is the breadth of coverage. Some histories of the

Spanish-American War often focus on narrow topics: Theodore Roosevelt and

Admiral Dewey are two key individuals often studied. However, the claim in the

foreword that this war is less studied (p. ix) is exaggerated as there are a number

1 James A. Baer is Emeritus Professor of History at Northern Virginia Community

College.