Summary

This section encompasses the fourth through sixth chapters of Part I: The Colonial Empire. In Chapter Four, “Teddy Roosevelt’s Very Good Day,” Immerwahr turns his attention to the U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and his imperial ambitions. In the early 1890s, Roosevelt was disappointed to discover that the time of frontier country was ending. Instead, Roosevelt turned his sights to war, with Spain in the Philippines. In the Battle of Manila Bay, on May 1 1898, the U.S. sank or captured every single Spanish ship. Roosevelt then set out for Cuba, to fight Spanish in the hills outside Santiago. Immerwahr gives some reasons why the Spanish empire fell so quickly to the U.S., including the fact that the U.S. was a relative “latecomer” (70) in a long and protracted fight that had taken place within the Spanish Empire. In the end, Spain...