William H. Taft and the United States Intervention in Cuba in 1906

CUBA, THE Pearl of the Antilles, has perhaps loomed larger on the political and economic horizon of the United States than any other compact area of territory which has not come permanently under the American flag. Ever since the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, the United States has retained an abiding interest in the fate of Cuba. This was true because of obvious geographical factors of propinquity and strategic location in the Caribbean, considerations of trade and commerce, and emotional reasons interwoven with the interminable political turmoils so endemic to the island. During the greater part of the nineteenth century, a kind of uneasy balance of power produced a situation in which the United States, Great Britain, and France acquiesced in the retention of Cuba by Spain. And while the United States looked forward to the day when the strategic isle would fall into its possession, domestic slave politics followed after the Civil War by the problems of reconstruction, westward expansion, and industrialization, as well as naval limitations throughout most of the nineteenth century, combined to postpone this seemingly inevitable development. Relations between Spain and the people of Cuba were marked by endless clashes. The volatility of the Cuban temperament and the political clumsiness of the Spanish government combined to produce tensions which on three occasions since 1848 resulted in revolts. The third of these revolts began in 1895, and due to the indignation and the unrest which it produced in the United States, this struggle between the Cuban insurgents and the Spaniards was merged eventually into a war between Spain and the United States. This war, which was brief and decisive, suddenly placed the United States in military occupation of Cuba. In acquiring control of Cuba the United States inherited lnot only a strategic position in the Caribbean, but a prostrate island with manifold social, economic, and political problems. Successive Republican administrations faced the task of assuming

Intervention (counseling) · Political science · Psychiatry · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Cuban History and Society · Latin American and Latino Studies · Medicine · Psychology · Gerontology

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