The historical debate over the Spanish-American War of 1898 is being reopened on both sides of the Atlantic. Until comparatively recently historians gave confident answers to the questions of the causes and consequences of the war. Moral assumptions about America's true mission were never very far from the surface of the interpretations which had won general acceptance in the United States. America's involvement in world affairs and more especially the acquisition of an empire was viewed as a perversion of her mission. There existed a consensus of opinion among historians that President McKinley and his administration were not in control of policy; that they were swept forward by a tide of public feeling, by political considerations, and by Congressional pressures they found impossible to resist. It was believed that war had been foisted on the American people by those who manipulated public opinion, by mass hysteria cleverly fomented by sectional interests, by the newspapers, by business pressure groups, and by jingo senators. Responsibility for the acquisition of the Philippines was uncritically ascribed to a junior member of the administration, Theodore Roosevelt, who when Assistant Secretary of the Navy, it was alleged, had plotted the whole thing with his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Rigorous research is challenging every one of these assumptions. The strategic aspects of American foreign policy, and more particularly the influence of naval officers on national policy, have been seriously studied by only a few historians, whose work has as yet little affected the ‘classical’ textbook versions of American policy before the war with Spain.
Mass Hysteria, Manufacturing Crisis and the Legal Reconstruction of Acceptable Exercise during a Pandemic
