International Law and Diplomacy of the Spanish-American War

 Drawing on the example of Le Fur's Etude sur la Guerre Hispano-Americaine de 1898, Envisagee au Point de Vue du Droit International Public (1899) and similar studies, Benton set out to provide an exploration of Spanish-American relations prior to and during the war. This work is critical, but it leans heavily toward a pro-American point of view. He concludes, for instance, that American military and diplomatic objectives were achieved to varying degrees, that at the end of the conflict Cuba was granted complete sovereignty, and that the treaty of peace was fulfilled. Most curiously for the modern scholar, he ends with the recognition that "the occasion of the recent intervention provided for in the Platt Amendment is outside the scope of this work" (291). Benton was a professor of History at Western Reserve University. [Google Books]