The End of the Spanish Empire, 1898-1923 PDF
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THE END OF THE SPANISH EMPIRE, 1898-1923 The End of the Spanish Empire 1898-1923 SEBASTIAN BALFOUR CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD 1997 Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0X2 6dp Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan tOxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Sebastian Balfour 1997 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Balfour, Sebastian. The end of the Spanish empire, 1898-1923/Sebastian Balfour, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Spain—Politics and government—1886-1931. 2. Spanish-American war, 1898—Influence. 3. Public opinion—Spain I. Title. DP243.B28 1997 946'.071—dc20 96-26833 ISBN 0-19-820507-4 3579 10 8642 Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham Preface Everything is broken^in this unhappy country; there is no government, no electorate, no political parties; no army, no navy; all is Action, all decadence, all ruins... So wrote a mournful Spanish newspaper, El Correo, on 7 February 1901, two years after Spain lost the last of her old colonies in America following a catastrophic war with the United States. The Disaster of 1898, as the defeat was soon called, came as a profound shock to most Spaniards, many of whom had deluded themselves that America was no match for Spain. For some thereafter, it became the original sin from which derived the crisis of Spain in the first part of the twentieth century. For quite the opposite reason, the Spanish-American War of 1898 is a landmark in the history of the United States and of those Spanish colonies which broke away from the metropolis as a consequence. Yet while there is no shortage of American and Cuban histories of the war, there are hardly any global accounts based on Spanish sources. Still less are there any comprehensive studies of the consequences on Spain of the loss of Empire. None the less, 1898 looms almost as large in Spanish historiography as that other fateful and much more trumpeted year of 1492. This book seeks to fill that gap. Its main focus is on the Disaster and its domestic repercussions yet it also locates these within the wider param eters of early nineteenth- and mid-twentieth-century Spanish history. Although touching on these chronological extremities, it is set almost entirely within the period of 1895 to 1923, that is from the outbreak of the last independence struggles in the Spanish colonies to the end of the liberal monarchy or Restoration system. It is axiomatic to the analysis which follows that the loss of the Empire contributed to the fall of this political system. The book is framed on one hand by a prologue which sets out to paint the imperial background before this period and on the other by a short epilogue which describes the survival of a residue of imperial ideology until the middle of the twentieth century. The structure that has been adopted is mainly chronological; Chapter 1 is a largely narrative account of the colonial wars and the Spanish-American War. Chapter 2 deals with vi Preface the immediate aftermath in Spain of the Disaster. Chapters 3 to 6, on the other hand, adopt a thematic approach, examining in ^urn the reactions of sections of Spanish society to war and disaster within the period of 1898 and 1909: the middle classes, the popular masses, the Catalans, and the military. The four themes play a crucial role in the subsequent analysis of the period between 1910 and 1923. The chronological narrative is re sumed in the second half of Chapter 7 and the final chapter is a com pressed analysis of the crisis of the Restoration state between 1913 and the military seizure of power in 1923. One hundred years or so after the event, the passion and dismay that greeted the Disaster have long dissipated and historians can now more coolly evaluate its multiple meanings and legacies. The centenary of the Spanish-American War makes a reappraisal of the end of the Spanish Empire an even more urgent and exciting enterprise. Acknowledgements A number of friends? colleagues and relatives helped in the preparation of the book. My thanks go firstly to Paul Preston for suggesting the theme and urging me to undertake it. José Alvarez Junco generously agreed to read many of the chapters in draft form and gave warm encouragement. Frances Lannon and Martin Blinkhorn gave some valuable advice at an early stage. I am also indebted to Pep Benaul, Muriel Casals, Lola Elizalde, Enrique Moradiellos, Carlos Navajas, Inés Roldan and Paco Romero who read individual chapters or helped to locate sources or gave expert comments on specific issues or on the wider analysis contained in the book. I am also grateful to my stepfather, Sir William Glock, for reading through the whole manuscript as a layman and making his e*v*er incisive observations about sense and style, and to my daughter Rosa Balfour for so ably preparing the bibliography for publication. Above all, I want to thank my wife Gráinne for her unfailing support and patience throughout the enterprise and for her acute comments on parts of the original draft. I owe a debt of gratitude to the British Council for enabling me to do research in Spain and to meet Spanish historians working on the same theme through a grant under the Acciones Integradas scheme. At the Oxford University Press, Tony Morris was, as always, encouraging and generous as History Editor, and Anna Illingworth guided the manuscript through the initial stages of publication with great efficiency. There are many others, at work in libraries, archives and elsewhere, whom I have not mentioned but who helped in different ways in the preparation of this book. To all of them, I extend my warmest thanks. Table of Contents List of Figures x List of Maps xi Prologue i i The Colonial Wars and the Disaster of 1898 11 2 The Aftermath of Disaster 49 3 Regenerationism: The Revolt of the Middle Classes 64 4 Dancing with Corpses: Popular Responses to War and Disaster 92 5 Between the Mobs and the Troops: The Catalan Challenge 132 6 The Rifle Without a Target: The Military in the Aftermath of the Disaster 164 7 The Revolution from Above 188 8 The Fall of the Restoration System 1914-1923 211 Epilogue Right-wing Regenerationism and The Imperial Myth 230 Sources and Bibliography 235 Index 263 List of Figures i A cartoon illustrating the US going to war with Spain 32 2 The Spanish fleet at Cavite 35 3 The attitude of the Great Powers 47 4 The Spanish lion facing the American pig 62 5 A caustic depiction of the regenerators strangling Spain 69 6 ‘Saint Spain, ex-virgin and martyr’ 101 7 St George killing the pig 102 8 A satirical view of elections in Spain at the turn of the century 105 9 The Discovery of America, ‘How it began, how it ended’ 115 10 The cartoon from ¡Cu-cut! that provoked military retaliation 180 Acknowledgements to the illustrations Figures 1 to 7 inclusive are taken from La Campana de Gracia^ a Catalan Republican periodical. Figure 8 is from El Cardo and Figure 10 is from ICu-Cutl. The author would like to thank the Arxiu Historic de la Ciutat de Barcelona for permission to reproduce Figures 1 to 7 and 9 to 10, and the Biblioteca Nacional for permission to reproduce Figure 8. Note The illustrations have been selected mainly for their dramatic and satirical qualities. While they depict attitudes widely held at the time, it is not intended by their inclusion to suggest that they represented a cross section of public opinion.
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