Spanish- American war Podcast

Eric DeFerniz welcomes listeners to the first episode of the Warriors of the World podcast and introduces the topic of the Spanish-American War. He explains the history of Cuba being under Spanish control and how Spain exploited its resources, leading to heavy taxation and poverty for the Cuban people. The United States, as a business partner of Cuba, became aware of the situation through media coverage and decided to help Cuba gain independence. The war lasted a few months and resulted in Cuba gaining independence and Spain giving up territories to the US. The Treaty of Paris also established rules for Cuba's future to prevent a similar situation. Hello, my name is Eric DeFerniz and welcome back to the Warriors of the World podcast. Actually, welcome to the first ever episode of the Warriors of the World podcast. For those of you who don't know, I'm a high school student and I'm currently in Mr. Ernest's U.S. history class. I'm pretty excited to talk to you all about today's first episode, the Spanish-American War. I've been researching this topic for a while now and I've got to tell you, there's a lot of interesting stuff. And I know, I know, we all want to learn about it. But before we get into that, I would like to thank our sponsor for today's video, Logitech, for making this whole thing possible. Have you ever felt like your voice just isn't being picked up like it's supposed to? Or that you're just not being heard clearly? Try Logitech microphones. With a bunch of different types and versions ranging from all sorts of prices, it's a great gift for loved ones or even yourself this holiday season. It's even what I'm using right now to record this. Once again, thank you, Logitech. And let's get right back in history. The Spanish-American War will absolutely turn the power rankings of the world on its head. Before we can get into that, we need to know why Spain and America would ever just fight each other in the first place. Over a hundred years ago, a little bit before 1898, Cuba was under the control of Spain. You might think that this meant that they were really good and that they would be protected and that they would be a part of a really big territory, but under their skin, it wasn't so great. Cuba was like a little piece of luscious land that was just home to just the citizens, no one else, and it was just really nice. And then Spain came in and saw it as a way to make money and gain power. For years, Cuba's resources were being used by Spain while leaving the actual residents with basically nothing. Even though the Cubans' resources were being taken straight out of their palms with their hands, they were still being heavily taxed on top of it. This made the question if Cuba could even get out of the situation at all, because if they didn't have any money, then they wouldn't be able to get resources for themselves or even maybe for the possibility to ally with another country and try to dodge the situation altogether and start anew. Luckily, this is where the United States stepped in. The U.S. was a form of kind of like a business partner with Cuba, because Cuba is where the United States got all their tobacco and sugar with all those industries, and they saw themselves as friendly and nothing bad to each other. Obviously, if the Cubans were being taxed like crazy and they were getting their resources snatched away, then this would be like a really big issue with the quality of stuff and how fast things would be made. But the U.S. couldn't just go ahead and go to war with someone like Spain just like that. But luckily, this is where the media really kicked things into high gear. A lot of journalism found out about Cuba and their situation and decided to put that all over the place, all over America. It wasn't too long until people saw what was going on and let their voices free. All over the United States, people were talking about Cuba and getting outraged about the situation and just wanted to help them any way they could. Hearing this, the United States knew that if they were to help Cuba fight for their freedom, which, spoiler, they did, then their people would not be against it. If anything, they'd be happy. The war only lasted a few months, but in those few months, a lot got done. Cuba finally gained their independence due to the Treaty of Paris. This treaty stated that Cuba would be its own territory and not be part of Spain anymore. It also stated that Spain would have to give up a couple of their territories and give them to the U.S. These three territories that were given away was the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. In the past, there were some bad things revolving the U.S. having control over the Philippines, but that's for another episode. The last thing that the Treaty of Paris did was that the U.S. set up rules for Cuba for the future so they wouldn't get into this situation again. These rules was that Cuba could not join another territory and that they couldn't get large sums of money because if they did, they wouldn't really be able to pay it back because of how far down they are in debt right now. And this concludes the first episode of the Wars of the World podcast. Thank you all for listening along, and I'll see you next week where we cover the topic of the Mexican War.