r/AskHistorians - Reddit

There was no imperial ‘grand strategy’ to make Spain the centre of a world economy: indeed, such a plan would have been futile. Instead, Philip II devoted the ‘royal fifth’ – the monarchy’s share of the silver stream – to the struggle to uphold Spain’s pre-eminence in Europe against rivals and rebels.

For its part, the Soviet Union did what it could to promote anti-American, Communist regimes around the Western Hemisphere and succeeded in Cuba and Nicaragua. It had the advantage of aiding individuals and movements who were fighting against unpopular authoritarian governments that offered little to their people. But again the Soviet help was just

Cubans, Filipinos, and (to a much lesser degree) Puerto Ricans had fought Spain for decades, draining its resources and exhausting its morale. Yet little of this registered in the United States. Right after landing in Cuba—the landing enabled by the Cuban defeat of Spanish troops at Daiquirí—Roosevelt eyed his Cuban allies and judged them to be “ut

Clinton and Giuliani marched in a parade for Albizu, but did they know who he was? Very likely not. The epic battle between Muñoz Marín and Albizu in the fifties transformed Puerto Rican society, but it barely registered elsewhere. If mainlanders think about Puerto Rican history in that period at all, the image that comes to their mind is an entire