This is a study of the Military Government of Cuba from 1898 to 1902. Tracing and explaining the actions of General Leonard Wood's adminis tration during those years reveals how the United States Government re solved the questions of independence, strategic security, and economic inter ests in regard to Cuba. Leonard Wood, Secretary of War Elihu Root, Senator Orville H. Platt, and President William McKinley formulated and carried out policies that had a strong influence on subsequent Cuban-American relations. The broader aspects of this study, civil-military relations and American imperialism, are topics of importance to all citizens today. This is institutional and biographical history, written in the belief that a full ac count of the men, action, and circumstances will add to our understanding of the period when the United States emerged as a world power. I am indebted to Professors Gerald E. Wheeler of San Jose State College and Armin Rappaport of the University of California, San Diego, who di rected my research in the early stages, and to Professor Eric Bellquist of the University of California, Berkeley, for his criticism of the manuscript when it was in dissertation stage. To Professor Raymond J. Sontag I would like to pay special tribute for his guidance and inspiration through the years. The assistance of my mother, Mrs. Sue Hitchman, is deeply appreciated. My thanks go also to the staffs at the Library of the U. S.

This is a study of the Military Government of Cuba from 1898 to 1902. Tracing and explaining the actions of General Leonard Wood's adminis tration during those years reveals how the United States Government re solved the questions of independence, strategic security, and economic inter ests in regard to Cuba. Leonard Wood, Secretary of War Elihu Root, Senator Orville H. Platt, and President William McKinley formulated and carried out policies that had a strong influence on subsequent Cuban-American relations. The broader aspects of this study, civil-military relations and American imperialism, are topics of importance to all citizens today. This is institutional and biographical history, written in the belief that a full ac count of the men, action, and circumstances will add to our understanding of the period when the United States emerged as a world power. I am indebted to Professors Gerald E. Wheeler of San Jose State College and Armin Rappaport of the University of California, San Diego, who di rected my research in the early stages, and to Professor Eric Bellquist of the University of California, Berkeley, for his criticism of the manuscript when it was in dissertation stage. To Professor Raymond J. Sontag I would like to pay special tribute for his guidance and inspiration through the years. The assistance of my mother, Mrs. Sue Hitchman, is deeply appreciated. My thanks go also to the staffs at the Library of the U. S.

This is a study of the Military Government of Cuba from 1898 to 1902. Tracing and explaining the actions of General Leonard Wood's adminis tration during those years reveals how the United States Government re solved the questions of independence, strategic security, and economic inter ests in regard to Cuba. Leonard Wood, Secretary of War Elihu Root, Senator Orville H. Platt, and President William McKinley formulated and carried out policies that had a strong influence on subsequent Cuban-American relations. The broader aspects of this study, civil-military relations and American imperialism, are topics of importance to all citizens today. This is institutional and biographical history, written in the belief that a full ac count of the men, action, and circumstances will add to our understanding of the period when the United States emerged as a world power. I am indebted to Professors Gerald E. Wheeler of San Jose State College and Armin Rappaport of the University of California, San Diego, who di rected my research in the early stages, and to Professor Eric Bellquist of the University of California, Berkeley, for his criticism of the manuscript when it was in dissertation stage. To Professor Raymond J. Sontag I would like to pay special tribute for his guidance and inspiration through the years. The assistance of my mother, Mrs. Sue Hitchman, is deeply appreciated. My thanks go also to the staffs at the Library of the U. S.

Cuban independence arrived formally on May 20, 1902, with the raising of the Cuban flag in Havana - a properly orchestrated and orderly inauguration of the new republic. But something had gone awry. Republican reality fell far short of the separatist ideal. In an unusually powerful book that will appeal to the general reader as well as to the specialist, Louis A. Perez, Jr., recounts the story of the critical years when Cuba won its independence from Spain only to fall in the American orbit.The last quarter of the nineteenth century found Cuba enmeshed in a complicated colonial environment, tied to the declining Spanish empire yet economically dependent on the newly ascendant United States. Rebellion against Spain had involved two generations of Cubans in major but fruitless wars. By careful examination of the social and economic changes occurring in Cuba, and of the political content of the separatist movement, the author argues that the successful insurrection of 1895-98 was not simply the last of the New World rebellions against European colonialism. It was the first of a genre that would become increasingly familiar in the twentieth century: a guerrilla war of national liberation aspiring to the transformation of society.The third player in the drama was the United States. For almost a century, the United States had pursuedthe acquistion of Cuba. Stepping in when Spain was defeated, the Americans occupied Cuba ostensibly to prepare it for independence but instead deliberately created institutions that restored the social hierarchy and guaranteed political and economic dependence. It was not the last time the U.S. intervention would thwart the Cuban revolutionary impulse.

A century after the Cuban war for independence was fought, Louis Pérez examines the meaning of the war of 1898 as represented in one hundred years of American historical writing. Offering both a critique of the conventional historiography and an alternate