Cast in Deathless Bronze
Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the Origins of American Empire
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- $36.99
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- $36.99
Publisher Description
In 1898, when war with Spain seemed inevitable, Andrew Summers Rowan, an American army lieutenant from West Virginia, was sent on a secret mission to Cuba. He was to meet with General Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban rebels, in order to gather information for a U.S. invasion. Months later, after the war was fought and won, a flamboyant entrepreneur named Elbert Hubbard wrote an account of Rowan’s mission titled “A Message to García.” It sold millions of copies, and Rowan became the equivalent of a modern-day rock star. His fame resulted in hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, radio shows, and two movies. Even today he is held up as an exemplar of bravery and loyalty. The problem is that nothing Hubbard wrote about Rowan was true.
Donald Tunnicliff Rice reveals the facts behind the story of “A Message to García” while using Rowan’s biography as a window into the history of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, and the Moro Rebellion. The result is a compellingly written narrative containing many details never before published in any form, and also an accessible perspective on American diplomatic and military history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this history of late 19th-century American expansionism, Rice debunks the popular story of Andrew Summers Rowan's secret 1898 mission to Cuba, using the young army lieutenant as a lens for examining U.S. military actions during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars. Rowan's intelligence-gathering expedition centered on a meeting with the Cuban rebel leader Gen. Calixto Garc a iguez. Two months later, writer and "megalomaniac" Elbert Hubbard transformed the event into a largely fabricated but wildly popular account, rocketing Rowan to widespread renown. Despite Hubbard's central role in apotheosizing Rowan, Rice engages only briefly with the author and his text, preferring instead to focus on broader U.S. imperialist developments. Following Rowan from his early days at West Point to his later command during the Moro Rebellion, Rice interweaves personal and national history to outline major shifts in expansionist activity under McKinley and Roosevelt. This book is not a biography: Rice scrupulously attends to detail, but he offers limited analysis of Rowan's character or the significance behind his exploits. Readers who thrill to the particulars of life in military camps will find much to enjoy here; those hoping for a sustained critique of U.S. diplomacy may be less satisfied.
