The 1895 War in Cuba and its consequences

Abstract

On 24 February 1895 most people in Cuba did not want a war of independence, because reforms for the island had been approved by the Madrid parliament. The reaction to the insurrection begun in Cuba on that date by the Spanish government of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was to treat all Cubans as rebels. In 1896 Cánovas sent general Weyler to Cuba, and by the end of 1897 he had stopped the advances of the insurrectionists, but the forced removal of the rural population into urban settlements that he decreed in order to prevent their assistance to the insurgents, led to thousands of deaths by hunger and disease, and in the United States public opinion began to clamor for intervention in Cuba to expel Spain, and this was advised by people like the Consul General in Havana, Fitzhugh Lee. The war begun in 1895 for the independence of Cuba had as consecuences the war of the United States with Spain in 1898 and its transformation into a world power with the colonies that it took from Spain in Asia and America.