jan 1, 1898 - U.S. annexes Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam

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Dewey’s victory in Manila delivered what the planters wanted: Hawaii acquired strategic value as a halfway station to the Philippines. In July 1898, Congress voted for annexation, over the protests of Hawaii’s deposed queen. “Oh, honest Americans,” she pleaded, “as Christians hear me for my down-trodden people! Their form of government is as dear to them as yours is precious to you. Quite as warmly as you love your country, so they love theirs.” But to the great powers, Hawaii was not a country. One congressman dismissed Hawaii’s monarchy as “absurd, grotesque, tottering” and declared that the “Aryan race” would “rescue” the islands.

Further U.S. annexations took on their own logic. The navy pressed for another coaling base in the central Pacific; that meant Guam, a Spanish island in the Marianas. A strategic base was needed in the Caribbean; that meant Puerto Rico. By early summer, before U.S. troops had fired a shot in Cuba, McKinley’s broader war aims were crystallizing.

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