The Situation of Puerto Rico in the First Half of the 20th Century

After 390 years of Spanish colonialism, Puerto Rico was ceded by Spain to the United States, as a result of the Spanish-American War and the Treaty of Paris. At the dawn of the 20th century, the situation on the Island was one of extreme poverty, high unemployment, and widespread illiteracy. Federal programs alleviated the situation on the Island but began to institutionalize a major problem: the evil of passively waiting for economic aid from abroad, instead of seeking to solve the problems by its own initiative.

The Caribbean, Carlos Finlay, Walter Reed, and Serendipity

This chapter reviews the role of expanding sugarcane plantations throughout the Caribbean in the movement of slaves, mosquitoes and disease, as world empires jockeyed for dominance in world sugar markets. It relates how increased sugarcane production and exports to Europe led to increased importation of slaves to work the fields. As the African embarkation point of slaves moved north to the Slave Coast, yellow fever and the mosquito Aedes aegypti came into play, though when England banned slaveholding, sugar production shifted to the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba. The brief Spanish-American War of 1898, over control of Cuba, cemented the fame of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt but resulted in more deaths from yellow fever than combat, with the outbreak continuing during the post-war occupation of Cuba. Serendipity played a significant role in the subsequent discovery of the cause of the disease, connecting the Yellow Fever Commission, led by Major Walter Reed, with Cuban physician, Dr. Carlos Finlay, whose early experiments pointed to mosquitos and others while a series of experiments by Reed's team showed Aedes aegypti was the vector.

William Crawford Gorgas and the Panama Canal

This chapter relates how yellow fever continued to cause casualties during the US occupation after the Spanish-American War ended and how Major William Crawford Gorgas created a successful strategy to eliminate the disease from Cuba by attacking mosquito breeding sites. It goes on to tell the story of the plan to link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, proposed earlier that century, with the Panama Railroad transporting military goods and soldiers, plus those seeking gold in California. A canal was proposed, but the first, French effort to build it cost hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of workers’ lives lost before capitulating to yellow fever in 1889. Subsequent US construction, begun in 1904, was soon threatened by disease. When Colonel Gorgas brought his yellow fever control plan to Panama he faced criticism from his superiors but gained the support of President Theodore Roosevelt. The chapter relates how his plan, though seemingly improbable, worked, defeating yellow fever, saving countless lives, and allowing the completion of the canal.

Prohibition against American Imperialism

As temperance has largely been synonymous with anti-imperialism the world over, Chapter 15 examines it during America’s imperial era: specifically the Spanish-American War and the conquest of the Philippines. It begins by charting the relationship between Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy and William Jennings Bryan, who became America’s most outspoken foe of both American imperialism and the exploitative liquor traffic. The anti-canteen movement arose in response to the increasing drunkenness and exploitation of American soldiers—as well as native Cuban and Filipino populations—by the liquor traffic backed by the US military. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the emerging Anti-Saloon League helped secure an anti-canteen law in 1901, effectively getting the US government to restrain its own predatory excesses. The chapter concludes with Bryan’s evangelical, social gospel progressivism, highlighting the shared community protection logic of prohibitionism and anti-imperialism.

Does Exclusion Follow the Flag? Merchant Sailors and US Imperial Expansion, 1895–1906

This paper examines how class conflict affected US imperial expansion between 1898 and 1906. It focuses on West-Coast-based white merchant sailors and relies on union publications, legislative records, and congressional testimony to reveal how domestic class conflict shaped the boundaries, both internally and externally, of the emerging US empire. The struggle of the sailors’ unions over these imperial boundaries illustrates the real-life consequences they held for working people. These were not just abstractions. These lines often determined the type of labor systems under which workers would toil. Specifically, this article centers on the American Federation of Labor's successful effort to apply the Chinese Exclusion Act to the United States’ empire on the Pacific in 1902 as well as the Sailor's Union of the Pacific's unsuccessful attempt to apply exclusion to US-flagged merchant vessels. With that in mind, I argue that the line between domestic and foreign or nation and empire was a contested space of racially inflected class conflict. For white working people, the most pertinent question in the aftermath of the Spanish American War was not, does the constitution follow the flag? But rather, does exclusion follow the flag?

The Great Rapprochement

This chapter examines Anglo-American relations during the great rapprochement (1895-1906). The bulk of the chapter draws on the primary and secondary historical record to evaluate how key British and American decision makers thought about each other’s intentions in five episodes: the onset and aftermath of the crisis over Venezuela; the events surrounding the Spanish-American War; the negotiations regarding a trans-isthmian canal; the inception and resolution of a dispute over the Canada-Alaska boundary; and Anglo-American relations in the Far East between the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese Wars. Were they confident that their counterparts had benign intentions—that is, did they trust each other—as asserted by intentions optimists? Or were they uncertain about each other’s intentions, which is to say that they mistrusted each other, as suggested by intentions pessimism? Having shown that London and Washington were acutely uncertain about each other’s intentions in each episode, the chapter concludes by describing the shape of the resulting Anglo-American security competition in the Western Hemisphere, before examining Britain’s decision to quit that contest in 1904-6.

Indescribable Beings

This chapter establishes literature for young people and school readers as prominent, visual media used by US and Puerto Rican writers, both those in the diaspora and Puerto Rico, throughout the history of the US and Puerto Rico relationship beginning in 1898 with the Spanish American War. This chapter analyzes several prominent picture books, and illustrated textbooks read in the US and PR, from a variety of authors including Ezra Jack Keats and Ángeles Pastor.

Preacher of Righteousness, 1886‒1901

From 1886 to 1901, Roosevelt became a historian, civil service commissioner, police commissioner, assistant secretary of the Navy, war hero, and vice-president. He was also forced to deal with his brother Elliott’s alcoholism, infidelity, and untimely death. In all these experiences Roosevelt sought to promote what he regarded as “righteousness.” His histories provided analysis of religious controversies while his work in the Civil Service Commission and police department illustrated his commitment to moral reform. His actions in the Spanish-American War won him a popularity that helped make him New York governor in 1898. Reluctantly, he agreed to run for vice-president in 1900. While Roosevelt did not recover much personal piety in these years, he gained a reputation as a moralistic preacher of righteousness.

Spain at the End of the 19th – beginning of the 20th Century in the Russian Socio-Political Discourse

The article studies the response of the Russian reading public to the socio-political situation in Spain at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century (the Spanish-American War, Tragic Week of 1909, the manifestation of regionalism and anti-clericalism, caciquism, the development of the ideas of socialism, working class movement). The author analyses common and different things in socio-political processes that were taking place in Russia and Spain of that period as well as the pe-culiarity of Russia`s perception of the Spanish events. In the `90s of the 19th century the Spanish-American War of 1898 acted as an impedi-ment to the dynamics of the image of Spain. The similarity of the socio-political situation, social upheaval in Spain and Russia of the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century increase the urgency of the “vision” of Spain by Russian society, make its perception in Russia more fragmented.