I'm not sure if this could be done by removing the USS Maine incident, or if it would require something more drastic earlier. My question is would a world without the Spanish American war be one without a Spanish Civil War? Would Spain be able to reform slowly without a conflict of radical views as long as they had overseas territories to distract them from problems at home? Would TR still emerge as president? What other war would signal the entry of the US as a global power? What would happen to the islands won and lost themselves?
What if no Spanish American War?
- Thread starter dcver
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there would probably be a Spanish Civil War anyway. Spain was falling apart.TR would be president later. He was picked for the VP spot because the Republican party machine thought he was a pain and they wanted to shut him up. I think his presidency is inevitable. The islands are a really good question... I think the Phillipines would end up becoming Japanese. There is a possibility of a Japanese war with Spain instead of Russia for control of the Phillipines. As for the Carribean, I can't really see them coming under US influence without the Spanish American War. The US would become a World Power after WW1 because TR would becom POTUS in 1912 instead of 1900.
I could see the Phillipines being sold to Germany, who badly wanted a colony, but the only thing the Caribbean can get is independence or American colonization due to the Monroe Doctrine. If the Japanese didn't attack the Philippines when the US controlled them, I doubt they will attack them if Germany controls them. Also, I think you need something more than just no USS Maine incident. There was already people demanding war in the USA over Cuba, and the American media was fueling the frenzy. What was the word for the media back then? There is a specific one the refers to how they basically lied in order to get the USA into a war frenzy. A better POD would be a more active Cuban resistance in the 1890's creates so much pressure that Spain just decides to abandon the colonies, selling their Caribbean holdings to America and Pacific holdings to Germany.
Eh, Japan attacked Germany's holdings in the Pacific in world war one. No reason to think they wouldn't take the Phillipines in this scenario.
As for Cuba, there was already an independence movement OTL. I don't see Spain being able to hold them back forever. They may be able to hold on to Puerto Rico perhaps.
Are you talking about the Yellow Press? If Spain and America didn't go to war how much longer could they hold Cuba and Puerto Rico anyway? Not long I imagine.
The Philippines would end up more or less balkanized,negros island and mindanao provinces declared independence.
Without being stabbed in the back by their US allies, the First Philippine Republic based in Luzon would eventually consolidate most of the archipelago under their oligarchy. With the exception of the Mindanao island group in the south.
AmIndHistoryAuthor
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True. 2/3 of Cuba was already under rebel control before the war. And Spain had already granted PR autonomy a month before the war broke out, leading to independence.
A Cuba not "freed" by US forces will still have to deal with US economic and likely political domination, but it won't be as extreme. One of the things the US did was order Afro-Cubans out of top positions in their military. (As a bad example for the segregated US military.) They also made the rebels give back all the plantations they seized and encouraged Spanish immigration to up the percentage of white population on the island. Neither of those likely happen without US intervention.
PR may continue as a Spanish protectorate, maybe like Belize was to the Brititish.
And it was war fever that drove an American public to accept the annexation of Hawaii, something most had rejected prior to war. How long could tho white-voters-only Republic of Hawaii continue on its own?
No. Spain began to (seriously) fall apart after the 98 disaster, wich started a whole chain of reactions (the Crown and goverment weakened, which led to the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, wich destroyed the reputation of the crown and led to the Republic, wich fell apart astonishingly fast and led to the war). Spain had problems, but they were no worse than those on, say, Portugal or Italy. (the lack of war, of course, does not prevent a fascist uprising)
The Caribbean, a few dozen kilometers form the US coasts, not coming under US influence? The Kingdom of Hawaii was two thousand miles away, and look what happened.
The Phillipines (and Puerto Rico -Cuba was a goner due to the revolution) would probably remain Spanish until the great independence movements post WWII than dismantled the European Empires. But Japan would conquer then anyway, and porbably more easily than the US phillipines... unless, of course, the AH cliché of a Fascist Spain comes tru on TTL. A German-Japanese-Italian-Spanish axis and lakced a Spanish Civil War would not only give the UK serious trouble in Gibraltar (and the Axis serious trouble once they had to defend the Spanish coast from invasion) but it would mena thna Japan had not need tp irritate the US invading the Philippines, held in allied hands.
And after the Great War, the Japanese might get a mandate over the Phillipines, and use that in the 1940s to take the East Indies, without having to neutralize the 7th Fleet. But Japan would still be bleed white in China.
Even without American military intervention, the Philippine revolutionaries were well on their way to kicking out the Spanish albeit on a longer timetable. The army of the First Philippine Republic had Manila surrounded by 1899 when the first shots of the Philippine-American War broke out.
Let's say that without the US intervention it might have taken a few years longer but the end result was inevitable nonetheless. Spanish forces in the archipelago peaked at 20,000 against a considerable segment of the Philippine's six million (give or take) inhabitants.