American-Spanish War Causes

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The American-Spanish war was caused by several long terms causes, which could be grouped into humanitarian and economic reasons. Regarding the humanitarian concerns, the Americans sympathized with the condition of Cuban as a result of the Spain’s colonization. Specifically, the Americans were so upset with General Valeriano Weyler who put the Cuban population into reconcentration camp (Reconcentrado) in order to stop the Cuban’s uprising. In this concentration camp, 25% of Cuba’s population died from disease, starvation, and brutal treatment form Spanish soldiers. The news about the Weyler’s barbarous actions were hyped by Yellow Journalism by exaggerating and twisting the news headlines, arousing more sympathies from the Americans toward Cubans. Apart from this humanitarian reason, the economic situations also triggered US’s intervention in conflicts between Cuba and Spanish. As indicated in lecture, the Americans worried about their sugar productions in Cuba. This was because the US-Cuba sugar trades worth $100 million per year and these trades were totally collapsed because of the Spanish-Cuban war. The …show more content…

The first is the leak of DeLome Letter from Spanish minister in Washington, Dupuy du Lome [1] to the press. This letter criticized President McKinley for being “weak” and labelled him as a “would-be politician” and a “jingoist” [2]. This letter was considered an insult to the president and the nation and further outraged the Americans toward Spain. The second immediate cause is the explosion of U.S.S Maine in Havana harbor which killed 2 officers and 258 crewmen. Even though the culprit behind this was unknown, the Yellow Journalism had successfully shaped public opinions to blame Spain for this incident and to demand the war with Spain. This then led to the declaration of the war by Spain on US by Spain on April 24, 1898 and by US on Spain on April 25,