An Essay on the Spanish-American War

Hey there! I thought I'd drop by for a quick review on this today, and I'll see if I can add anything to BlueAfrica's excellent one. xD

The first thing I noticed was your introduction, particularly your first sentence. It was just rather bland. I know blandness is the name of the game for school essays, but if you have an introduction that's more nuanced and doesn't immediately hit the reader over the head with the topic of the paper, it really makes your paper stand out and will earn you a few extra points.

As for the rest of the introduction, I feel like you were trying to set the stage and give the context for the causes of the Spanish-American by talking about things like Manifest Destiny and American expansionism, but it wound up more confusing than anything. I think what you should just wind up saying would look like this:

At this time period, America, looking for ways to expand, practiced Manifest Destiny and imperialism. ---> This continued until the Spanish-American War. (Since this essay is primarily about the causes, you're saving the reasons why the Spanish American war was so impactful until your conclusion) ----> The Spanish-American war was caused by [insert your thesis here].

It'll be a couple sentences longer than what I just wrote, but not much. This would do a good job of setting the stage for your essay without doing the work of the body paragraphs, and I think it would also just be a lot less confusing and give the reader a clear idea of what you're going to talk about in your paper. Remember in an essay, the introduction is for telling the reader what you're going to tell them, the body paragraphs are for telling them what you said you were going to, and the conclusion is for telling the reader what you told them. It sounds redundant (and obviously don't just repeat it word-for-word or else it will be, but actually it makes for a coherent and clear essay.

I think my main other critique for the essay is that, as someone who hasn't studied that era of history for a while, it moves too quickly - I had a hard time following the chain of events. I think you could take a little more time explaining what each step in the build-up to the Cuban revolution was, and more explicitly linking the chains of cause and effect. (But delete the Christopher Columbus stuff - you don't need it.) Once you got into the second and third paragraphs, however, it was a lot easier to follow.

One last thing - I thought your conclusion was really good. It was a great example of how to not just restate the same thing in your conclusion that you did for the rest of the essay. Instead, you pushed beyond and suggested something that puts the essay back into its broader context - that's key in any good essay conclusion.

Although you've probably turned this in already, I hope my comments were still helpful! Keep writing.

Hi there!

So before I begin my review, I just wanted to suggest removing the identifiers at the top of this essay. While we are a site for young writers and are arguably safer than a lot of other websites, it's still Internet Safety 101 not to post your name, your hometown, or other identifiers that might allow people to figure out who and where you are in real life! I'd discourage you from posting any such information, even though I realize this essay is for a class and your teacher probably requires this information.

Moving on.

Introduction.

Right out of the gate, I see something of a conundrum, albeit one that's easily fixed. You titled your essay (not on the site, but after your headings about American history class and all that) "Effects of the Spanish-American War," but right away you have the sentence "there were a lot of causes and effects of the Spanish-American War." Do you intend the essay to discuss both the causes and effects, or just the effects?

Further down the paragraph, you have "you guessed it" - a humorous aside, but you generally want to avoid using "you" in formal essays. You could probably word this another way, if you wanted to include it; it is a nice bit of humor that could potentially make your essay stand out from others. So for example, you could say something like

The Spanish-American War was one over territory and imperialism fought by- as one might conclude from its name- Spain and America.

That's probably the best I can come up with, since it avoids both "you" and the passive voice.

Those are nitpicks your teacher might pick up on, but overall the biggest issue with the introduction is that it's trying to do too much. It sounds more like a summary of the essay to come than an introduction. I gather that this is your thesis statement.

The Cuban Rebellion, yellow journalism, and America’s involvement in the Philippines and Puerto Rico shaped the modern world by shifting power from Spain to the U.S. in one of the most critical wars in recent American history.

If this is what the essay is going to be about (I haven't read past the introduction yet), then you can hold off explaining what the Cuban Rebellion, yellow journalism, and America's involvement in the Philippines and PR are until the body of the essay. Once you've explained Manifest Destiny and America's desire to continue expanding, you can delete the middle bits of the introduction and link your thesis statement more directly to the idea of American expansion.

Body

The first paragraph, on the Cuban Rebellion, also feels somewhat scattered. You can probably skip past Christopher Columbus and dive right into "after 376 years of control by Spain, Cuba was ready for independence." I think a large part of the issue here is that you don't actually expand on the Cuban Rebellion at all; you just mention that it happened but was unsuccessful, and because of the seventeen-year gap between the end of the rebellion and Spain's mistreatment of Cuban people (though I suspect the mistreatment had actually be ongoing for quite some time), you fail to clearly link the rebellion with the mistreatment that ultimately led Cubans to cry out for help from the United States.

Consider also the fact that the Cuban Rebellion is one of the events that, in your thesis statement, you claim shaped the modern world by shifting power from Spain to the U.S. In the first body paragraph, I don't see that tie-in.

Of course I haven't read the next paragraph yet and assume this will all come together at the end, but each paragraph should have a clear focus that links it to your thesis statement.

The second body paragraph is generally stronger. I can clearly see a link between yellow journalism and the onset of the Spanish-American War, as well as what America stood to gain if they won or lose if they lost the war. I like the phrase "famous exaggerators" to describe Hearst and Pulitzer - another bit of humor, but also completely true. Your voice comes through in the essay, which is often difficult for people when writing formal essays.

I'm also starting to see that your intention with this essay is to describe the events that led to the Spanish-American War to then show how the war ultimately shaped the future of America as a world leader and superpower. If this is indeed your intention, then the essay needs a) a new title (since so far we're getting far more causes than effects of the war) and b) possibly a new thesis statement, or at least one that shows that the Cuban Rebellion, yellow journalism, and (?) I'm guessing American involvement in the Philippines and PR led to the war, ultimately shaping America's role as a world leader.

In 1998, Congress declared war on Spain

This is defo the wrong year, friend.

The Spanish-American Armistice ends the Spanish-American war. The United States of America receives Puerto Rico, Guam, Wake islands, Cuba and the Philippines in exchange for twenty million dollars.

Watch out for changing tenses!

Ugh, I just love seeing how typically American it is that America came to Cuba's aid after Cuba rebelled against Spain but then took Cuba as a territory rather than granting it independence because we didn't trust Cuba because it had rebelled.

Even though we are only a country because we rebelled against Britain.

~~omg America why do you do this~~

This third body paragraph goes back to feeling less focused and more like it jumps around. Additionally, while I can see that America gained new territories from the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, you may want to more clearly tie that in to the desire for expansion that you set up back in the intro.

Conclusion

Like the introduction, this is more a summary of the whole essay than a conclusion to it. You've already explained the steps that led to the war and how America benefited from it by gaining new territories. Considering that your thesis posits that this war "shifted power from Spain to the U.S." it would be better to wrap up by explaining what power we won from the war. What do these new territories mean to the U.S., economically and as a source of power? Are we now the main exporter of sugar? Can we command our price on goods made in the islands? Do we control some of the shipping lanes through the Caribbean? If this war was the most important in recent history in terms of what it did for globalization of the U.S., it needs to be clearer as to how it made the U.S. more powerful. At the very least, it would be a good idea to wrap up by mentioning that not only did we expand physically - with new territories and more land - but that our new territories also allowed us to expand financially or what have you.

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