Anti-Colonial Revolution and US Intervention: The Guerra de los Diez Años in Cuba and the Irish American Press, 1868–1878

In 1875, a brutal war had been raging for seven years in Cuba, between the forces of the Spanish regime and nationalist rebels seeking independence. About a thousand miles further north, New York City’s preeminent Irish American newspaper, The Irish World, published by Patrick Ford, framed Ireland’s imperial status as a colony of the British Empire through a comparative, relational lens: Ford directly compared British rule in Ireland to Spanish rule in Cuba. Ford observed that the brutality of Spanish imperialism in Cuba was only matched by the cruelty of British imperialism in Ireland. He condemned Blas Villate y de la Herra, the 2nd Count of Valmaseda, the man tasked to “crush out every trace of rebellion in that ill-fated island,” as “the Cromwell of Cuba,” who had “inaugurated a policy similar to that of Cromwell in Ireland two hundred years ago.”1 The Irish World reminded its readers that “Spain was once as wealthy, as powerful, and almost as arrogant as England is today; yet Spain has fallen from her high estate.” He then informed his readers that “the British monarchy is traveling rapidly in the same downward groove.”2