Empire By Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century
Ivan Musicant
One of the reasons I spent much of the latter end of my undergraduate career studying English, and not history, is because historians are incomparably proficient at making the amazing strands of the past fall flat. My love for history and its most human of stories has not, however, ceased, and a recent work assignment processing the papers of one Russell Alexander Alger (embattled Secretary of War at the beginning of the McKinley administration) led me to pick up this weighty, but promising, book on the Spanish-American War. Author Ivan Musicant's refreshingly accessible, informative, and enjoyable history of the under-appreciated conflict has not solely redeemed the Hobsbawms of the world, but nonetheless illustrates that popular history can indeed be well-researched, competently written, and far more effective than the thesis-chasing strains enjoyed in more erudite circles. Strangely, however, the thesis offered in the book's first and final chapters, though scarcely (if ever) alluded to in between, may have actually helped drive the book, though it does not lack for momentum and indeed navigates well between multiple theaters of war and tangled webs of diplomacy and international negotiation.
Regardless, Musicant seems to believe, undoubtedly rightly so, that the Spanish-American war dropped empirical concerns into America's lap, but offers little support throughout his story of the war. While a lighter touch is much appreciated around these parts, and the book seems to travel along just fine without an overbearing thesis, it is interesting to see how the author's perception of his argument differs from a consistent tone that initially seems to be just-the-facts, ma'am. Let this not prevent you from reading Empire By Default, however; the book is far from dry and offers an engaging account of war on the precipice of the calamitous quagmire of 1914 and under the increasingly important auspices of the navy and intra-military cooperation. Indeed, all of the pieces are here for the enterprising reader to chew on and digest at will, and Musicant subtly drops several hints throughout the narrative that will entice those interested in looking at the larger tides of history. It is perhaps no accident, given this subtle drive that pulses quietly beneath the surface, that the emergence of the United States Navy is the opening shot and steady ammunition of the book, which traces the history of a single, small-scale, and brief war while subtly considering the implications that would resonate to the present day. Much appreciated is the contextual background Musicant provides, which takes up a healthy chunk of the opening book and reads, at times (and one must believe accidentally), almost as a thriller while readers wait to discover just how and when the final straw is dropped upon the soon-to-be belligerents.
Also appreciated is a healthy attitude of amusement taken up by the author, which stops gracefully short of becoming either patronizing or downright silly but which colors the narrative nicely. Readers may be forgiven for shaking their head upon finishing this book, which tends to highlight with the slightest of literary smirks the very WTF nature of the whole enterprise. The overall effect is, in a nutshell, "How did anyone ever win this war?" with neither Spaniards nor Americans receiving exceptionally kind treatment (though Spain does get by far the worse of the blows). Yet this attitude does not hijack the narrative, and instead serves in its way to highlight the impossibility of objectivity in the historical narrative while delivered amongst an obviously well-researched and thorough outline of events both at the front and behind the scenes. Aside from a lack of a strong, permeating thesis (which does the book both good and ill, I believe), the only major complaint to be levied at the author may be his tendency to allow sentences to get away from him amid a flow of commas and dependent clauses that lose original meaning. These, however, are reasonably infrequent, can usually be parsed, and do not greatly mar the reader's experience. And it is truly strange that this history, placed so well in the context of the 1890s, seems to outright ignore the following decades as the implications of the war are either ignored, dropped (as in the baffling disappearance of the Philippines after a series of tantalizing hints and implications), or lost in a short series of sweeping, thesis-like generalizations. Though its conclusion does the foregoing 650 pages little justice, Empire By Default represents a superb effort to reconstruct the woefully neglected and immensely influential "splendid little war," one that will reward both casual readers and those who will look beyond the text to imagine the conflict's lasting implications upon the upcoming 20th century.
Grade: A
Ivan Musicant
One of the reasons I spent much of the latter end of my undergraduate career studying English, and not history, is because historians are incomparably proficient at making the amazing strands of the past fall flat. My love for history and its most human of stories has not, however, ceased, and a recent work assignment processing the papers of one Russell Alexander Alger (embattled Secretary of War at the beginning of the McKinley administration) led me to pick up this weighty, but promising, book on the Spanish-American War. Author Ivan Musicant's refreshingly accessible, informative, and enjoyable history of the under-appreciated conflict has not solely redeemed the Hobsbawms of the world, but nonetheless illustrates that popular history can indeed be well-researched, competently written, and far more effective than the thesis-chasing strains enjoyed in more erudite circles. Strangely, however, the thesis offered in the book's first and final chapters, though scarcely (if ever) alluded to in between, may have actually helped drive the book, though it does not lack for momentum and indeed navigates well between multiple theaters of war and tangled webs of diplomacy and international negotiation.
Regardless, Musicant seems to believe, undoubtedly rightly so, that the Spanish-American war dropped empirical concerns into America's lap, but offers little support throughout his story of the war. While a lighter touch is much appreciated around these parts, and the book seems to travel along just fine without an overbearing thesis, it is interesting to see how the author's perception of his argument differs from a consistent tone that initially seems to be just-the-facts, ma'am. Let this not prevent you from reading Empire By Default, however; the book is far from dry and offers an engaging account of war on the precipice of the calamitous quagmire of 1914 and under the increasingly important auspices of the navy and intra-military cooperation. Indeed, all of the pieces are here for the enterprising reader to chew on and digest at will, and Musicant subtly drops several hints throughout the narrative that will entice those interested in looking at the larger tides of history. It is perhaps no accident, given this subtle drive that pulses quietly beneath the surface, that the emergence of the United States Navy is the opening shot and steady ammunition of the book, which traces the history of a single, small-scale, and brief war while subtly considering the implications that would resonate to the present day. Much appreciated is the contextual background Musicant provides, which takes up a healthy chunk of the opening book and reads, at times (and one must believe accidentally), almost as a thriller while readers wait to discover just how and when the final straw is dropped upon the soon-to-be belligerents.
Also appreciated is a healthy attitude of amusement taken up by the author, which stops gracefully short of becoming either patronizing or downright silly but which colors the narrative nicely. Readers may be forgiven for shaking their head upon finishing this book, which tends to highlight with the slightest of literary smirks the very WTF nature of the whole enterprise. The overall effect is, in a nutshell, "How did anyone ever win this war?" with neither Spaniards nor Americans receiving exceptionally kind treatment (though Spain does get by far the worse of the blows). Yet this attitude does not hijack the narrative, and instead serves in its way to highlight the impossibility of objectivity in the historical narrative while delivered amongst an obviously well-researched and thorough outline of events both at the front and behind the scenes. Aside from a lack of a strong, permeating thesis (which does the book both good and ill, I believe), the only major complaint to be levied at the author may be his tendency to allow sentences to get away from him amid a flow of commas and dependent clauses that lose original meaning. These, however, are reasonably infrequent, can usually be parsed, and do not greatly mar the reader's experience. And it is truly strange that this history, placed so well in the context of the 1890s, seems to outright ignore the following decades as the implications of the war are either ignored, dropped (as in the baffling disappearance of the Philippines after a series of tantalizing hints and implications), or lost in a short series of sweeping, thesis-like generalizations. Though its conclusion does the foregoing 650 pages little justice, Empire By Default represents a superb effort to reconstruct the woefully neglected and immensely influential "splendid little war," one that will reward both casual readers and those who will look beyond the text to imagine the conflict's lasting implications upon the upcoming 20th century.
Grade: A
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