Spanish-American War Thread

Using the white mans technology to defeat some primitive natives is not impressive at all

Fuck you

Who the fuck are you to judge what's impressive and what is not?

Most victories of the British Empire were against people more primitive than the Aztecs.

Anyways Spain had great victories against western Countries like France, Britain, Netherlands etc.

Put a bullet in your fucking head, literally

>redpill
The Media started it.
A literal textbook example of how untrustworthy the media is. And yet people forget about that some how.

I have a semi boner for the Spanish empire

It wasn't a large empire at all when the war happened, retard.

>Spanish """""empire""""

That's impossible. Compare Spain's population to France and Britain.

True, although Spain is still substantial being numner 7 seven in terms of population regarding European countries. Maybe if it worked with Portugal it would even the odds.

>Despite being one if the largest empires on the planet

Spain lost its empire after the French invaded in the Napoleonic Wars
The only colonies they had left by the time the Spanish-American War happened were those that war was fought over

This man speaks reason. If only an iberian union had happened.
Imagine an Iberian empire at the zenith of imperial spain?
By god.
In this timeline we didn't even get a post-colonial commonwealth

Why even live

That would just make the country even more poor and rural.

Why would you use decadent here?
English isn't my first language, but that doesn't make any sense.

I view being decadent as self-indulging, so how would they do that if they are poor.

>I have no idea what I'm talking about: the post
Spain had been in decline for centuries by the time of the Spanish American War. A series of retarded economic policies crippled the country's long term economic outlook, and it never recovered.

The American colonies ended up being a double-edged sword, with their most important imports (precious metals) being used to fund the Spanish imperial adventures in Europe while slowly but surely inflating the Spanish currency. The focus of the Crown seemed to be not developing or improving the country while its neighbors did, but on acquiring and holding onto possessions across Europe. So while the country stagnated, men and money were being thrown away in Italy and the Low Countries.

Meanwhile, the decision to expel the Jews and Moriscos eliminated a critical demographic that would have allowed Spain to modernize. These expelled groups likely would have helped the creation of a middle class, and, in the short term, the elimination of up to a third of the population in regions like Valencia had a major impact on the local economy. The Spanish crown tried to address budget shortfalls by selling titles, but all that did was weaken their authority for a short-term cash infusion (with titles being hereditary).

The impact of this decline is best seen through population. The population of Spain stagnated between 1500 and 1600 - The combined populations of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon were a little under 8 million, and a century later it was only 8 and a quarter million. By 1650, the population had declined to almost 7 million, stagnating around that through the start of the next century. Population did increase to 10 million by 1800, but compared to the rest of Europe, it was pathetic. France in 1806 and Britain in the mid 1800s had more people than Spain in 1950.

Subtle little shitpost there user

Yeah but we lost nothing and gained a lot out of it.

In terms of risk-reward ratio, we would've been stupid to not go to war.

You lost millions of dollars, thousands of lives and the moral superiority of not having colonies, you didn't even get the one you wanted (Cuba)

Actually we did get Cuba, then we let it go independent anyway because quite frankly, we just didn't want European influence there. Not to mention that up until the communist revolution, the reality is we basically controlled Cuba anyway through puppet dictators.

No, Teddy and the hawks wanted Cuba but congress managed to slip in an amendment guaranteeing its independence after the war, this is well recorded and I don't know how you don't know it

Teddy and his buddies were a bunch of boys who saw war as just a fun game. They even belonged to a club whose name I forget that was all about that. Besides considering how we treated the Philippinnes postwar it probably was for the best that we just let Cuba go.

>we
can this meme please stop, if you associate yourself with a country generations before your time you by default lose the ability to impartially view events, making you useless even by "paradox armchair historian" standards

Whoever said I wanted impartiality? Every historian pre-1970s put his own bias and moral judgements into telling history.

>im a diabetic burger who should be able to preach my biased shit everywhere, shitting up perfectly good threads
If you want to hear bias, go read a fucking fiction book moron

please go back to your containment board

You think John Keegan didn't insert his own bias? Or Voltaire? Or fucking Herodotus?

As historians detached from the time and place of the initial event and/or writing, we should aim to impartially analyse these works against others to create an as objective truth to a matter as possible.
Otherwise we end up with the same shitty memes being passed down generation to generation.

History used to not just be the facts, but moral lessons taken from it. That's why Voltaire wrote that “History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” That is a moral judgement because for much of human history, civilization DID make people soft and more vulnerable to the hardened steppe people.

>As historians detached from the time and place of the initial event and/or writing
Does that mean historians can't comment on stuff that happened only a decade earlier that they lived through, because they certainly aren't fully detatched from it. Yes there should be a bit of a cooldown, HG Wells famously said you can't write about a world-changing event as it's happening because there's too many forces in motion for you to be capable of seeing the big picture, but that didn't stop everyone from writing about WW1 in the 20s and 30s.

My question is, why would these americans willingly remove impartiality and consider events such as ww1 or the Spanish-American war in the same way those who lived at the time in their country would?
I dont see any German anons going:
>We wanted to repair the glory of the Germanic people and reunite the reich

Rich people from America used the media to carry the country to war for the economnic interests of the aristocracy, by taking advantage of a disaster that may very well have been the result of negligence or even self inflicted.

>the country to war for the economnic interests

really so how much money did thry make?

Last time I checked the war did cost the us billions...

It was the first war which showed America didn't really care about freedom.

High effort response to such obvious bait.

These.
Quiet frankly, there was no way Spain could've won here, I'd wager they only did it because just surrendering was too pathetic.
Did Spanish leaders even think they could win?

From what I remember, they did know, but they had to at least try.

Some dictionaries define it as a state of moral or cultural decline. In that sense, op's usage makes sense

Calm down, Juan.

Because it doesn't fit the "good guy USA" narrative

>Meanwhile, the decision to expel the Jews and Moriscos eliminated a critical demographic that would have allowed Spain to modernize.

Opinion discarded.
>Jews
>remaining middle class
>Moors
>literally allowing the people who conquered and enslaved your nation to remain

The current pop-culture opinion in Spain is that the spanish commanders were literal retards with too much bravado and delusions of grandeur and unironically believed that Spain was able to defeat iron ships with wood boats because glorious empire > irrelevant new world. Spaniards love self-hate, specially agsinst the state and institutions like the army.

What's probably true is that spaniard high command unironically preferred to get completely crushed instead of retreating or surrendering.

He means declining.

Moriscos were rural laborers. Jewish converts were allowed to stay.

Pretty sure it's confirmed that it was self-inflicted

So you're arguing that ejecting a third of the population of Valencia (and possibly even more near Granada and Andalusia) had no negative impact on the economy?

Even so, something like 100,000 Jews were expelled, and many of those fleeing persecution in Spain ended up having a significant impact on the economic development of the regions they fled to, particularly Italy.

I thought Spanish ships were during the war were mostly not wooden at that point. Though many were so-called unprotected cruisers that lacked armor.

To be honest I have no idea. As I clarified my version was just a tl;dr of spanish memes. It's like the Spanish Armada being called Invincible Armada in spanish historigraphy for literally no other reason than making it look even more ridiculous.

The spanish leaders knew that the war would be lost his start. They had to chose between giving his last ultramarine territories to US knowing the people would be angry towards the crown and government or start a war knowing you have almost 0 chance to keep your territories and expect a miracle to happen.

The spanish armada were inferior but not wooden ships, if I recall right the only wooden ships were in Phillipines and was because they gave them the older ships that Spain had. The main problem with the spanish ships were that they weren't prepared to fight and some of them could even shot i guess.

And yes, the leaders of Spain were retardeds but not all of them. Cervera who was the admiral of the fleet in Cuba knew that was impossible to win agains the american fleet and tried to avoid any fight waiting in Santiago de Cuba but in the end he has to obey the orders and left Santiago being destroyed by the american fleet. His plan in that battle was to run near the cost praying to escape or at least to be sunk where his men could reach the shore.

Also sorry for my potato english. I should practice more.

>Philippine American War

Is this the only insurgency the US has ever beaten?

It was fine.

There was the occupation of Haiti, the German population of the island were possibly planning on seizing control in 1914 or so after a series of revolutions so the USA rolled in, mowed everybody down, spent a couple decades building roads, and then went home.

Unless you consider the Mormon/Indian wars to be with insurgencies USA hasn't really been in a position to have to fight them until the new enlightened imperialism of the post civil war era.