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Edgerton, Robert B. Remember the Maine, To Hell with Spain: America's 1898 Adventure in Imperialism. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2005. 225pp. $109.95
Robert Edgerton, a noted anthropologist and member of the UCLA faculty for more than forty years, has written extensively about the small wars of empire that dot the historical landscape of the nineteenth century. Among the better known of his works is Like Lions They Fought, an examination of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, which no collection on the subject should be without. He would, therefore, seem to be eminently qualified to explore the historical and cultural aspects and ramifications of the Spanish-American War.
Like many conflicts of the era, the Spanish-American War has until recently been under-examined and largely forgotten. Yet it remains one of America's more important armed conflicts. The war marked the emergence of the United States upon the world stage as a major, externally focused power. It was, in many ways, the physical manifestation of the strategic thinking of Alfred Thayer Mahan. The war left the United States with a physical as well as commercial empire, forever altering the lives of millions of peoples, as well as the development of state power in the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia. The war occurred when both the U.S. Navy and Army were in the process of revolutionary...