Splendid Liberators: Heroism, Betrayal, Resistance, and the Birth of American Empire

The epic stories of little-remembered rebels against imperialism are resurfaced in this sweeping saga of the Spanish American War from journalist Jackson (The Thief at the End of the World). At the end of the 19th century, Spain’s brutal colonial rule over Cuba and the Philippines prompted revolutionaries in both nations to make overtures to America. They “realiz[ed] too late that they’d exchanged one master for another,” Jackson writes. Drawing on records he collected in both countries, Jackson spotlights fascinating episodes of resistance. These include the captivating story of David Fagen, an enlisted man in the all-Black Buffalo Soldiers, who witnessed such “ferocious racial hatred” from white fellow soldiers—against both civilian populations and enlisted Black Americans—that one night he “stuffed as many revolvers into a gunnysack as would fit” and joined the Filipino rebellion. “David Fagen became a wraith, a legend,” Jackson writes—taunting notes from him began to appear outside American garrisons, antagonizing the officers and exhorting the enlisted men to join the Filipino cause. Military leadership grew obsessed with hunting him down; a local eventually claimed to have killed Fagen, but many believed that this itself was a ruse of Fagen’s design. While collating astounding stories like these, Jackson shows how the conflict became the template for every one of America’s “small wars” that followed, from Vietnam to Iraq. It’s a vigorous and clear-eyed accounting of the brutality that birthed the “American Century.” (Oct.)