398 Spanish-American War mainland, Río Muni, was officially known as Spanish Guinea, and this was proclaimed as a Spanish protectorate on January 9, 1885 On July 30, 1959, Spanish Guinea was divided back into Fernando Póo and Río Muni (which included Elobey and Corisco), and these became two overseas provinces of Spain On October 12, 1968, the two were again merged to form the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, and five years later Fernando Póo was renamed Macias Nguema Biyoga after the president of the country It is now known as Bioko Justin Corfield makers’ desire to compete with European powers for markets and territory; and the desire of political leaders to distract the nation’s attention from pressing domestic issues, including a severe economic depression and an upsurge in labor and popular unrest More recent scholarship also emphasizes the desire of a new generation of political leaders, epitomized by McKinley’s assistant secretary of the navy Theodore Roosevelt, to prove their “manliness” by going to war, as their predecessors had done in the U.S Civil War Called the “splendid little war” by U.S Secretary of State John Hay, the war with Spain began in April and was concluded in August Altogether, some 5,660 U.S military personnel died in the war—460 in battle or of wounds suffered in battle, and 5,200 from disease Casualties among Spaniards, Cubans (in their war of independence), and Filipinos were much higher At the same time as U.S forces were invading Cuba, another contingent occupied Puerto Rico; the U.S military ruled Puerto Rico until the Foraker Act of 1900, which ended military rule and set up a colonial administration Puerto Rico became a U.S territory in 1917 with the Jones Act, a law that also made Puerto Ricans U.S citizens In 1898, in a war marking the emergence of the United States as a major imperial power, the United States wrested from Spain its remaining colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines The short-term trigger of the war was the events in Cuba, with the Cuban revolutionaries on the verge of defeating the Spaniards and achieving outright independence The sensationalist “yellow journalism” of the Hearst newspapers, which popularized the perception that the Spaniards were inhuman brutes committing atrocities against the childlike Cubans, had played a key role in laying the groundwork for U.S intervention in Cuba The explosion aboard the U.S battleship Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, which killed more than 260 people, provided the casus belli that the United States had sought On April 25 the U.S Congress, at President William McKinley’s request, declared war on Spain Historians generally agree that the longer-term causes of the war were rooted in the previous eight decades of U.S interest in acquiring Cuba; the late 19th-century process of European empire-building in Asia and Africa, which heightened U.S policy- THE PHILIPPINES In the Pacific, the U.S quickly defeated Spanish forces in the Philippines, though “pacifying” the colony proved far more difficult On May 1, 1898, the fleet of U.S Commodore George Dewey entered Manila Bay and destroyed the Spanish fleet anchored there; U.S forces occupied the capital city of Manila in July Soon afterward, a nationalist resistance movement against the U.S occupation erupted under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo The war against Aguinaldo’s forces lasted nearly four years, involved some 200,000 U.S troops, and resulted in the deaths of more than 50,000 Filipinos In March 1901 U.S forces captured Aguinaldo, severely weakening the resistance movement, and by 1906, U.S forces had triumphed The Spanish-American War formally ended in December 1898 with the Treaty of Paris, which granted the United States formal control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, in exchange for $20 million In the United States, debates swirled about the terms of the treaty and the fate of the conquered territories Some favored annexation, others independence, and still others various forms of formal and informal colonization After much debate, the U.S Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris on February 6, 1899 The precise nature of U.S rule that emerged in later See also Africa, Portuguese colonies in; slave trade in Africa Further reading: Bartlett, C J “Great Britain and the Spanish change of policy towards Morocco in June 1878,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 31 (1958); Hahs, Billy Gene “Spain and the Scramble for Africa,” Ph.D Thesis, University of New Mexico, 1980; Landau, Rom Invitation to Morocco London: Faber & Faber, 1950; ——— Moroccan Journal London: Robert Hale, 1952; Sundiata, Ibrahim K Equatorial Guinea: Colonialism, State Terror and the Search for Stability Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990 Spanish-American War