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====Spanish American War====
[[File: Spanish prisoners eating a meal HD-SN-99-01945.jpg|200px|thumb|left| Spanish prisoners after their capture in the Philippines]]
American had long planned this war and they launched a series of naval and amphibious assaults on the Spanish Empire. The US navy seized the island of Guam after a brief battle and then attacked the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, in the Philippines. The Spanish army was involved in a guerrilla war with Filipino patriots. The US navy attacked and destroyed the Spanish Pacific fleet and quickly destroyed it with little casualties, this meant that the Spanish forces were cut-off from any reinforcements and supplies and surrounded by guerrillas. The Spanish governor was obliged to surrender and American forces landed unopposed in Manila.
In the Caribean, a US expeditionary force landed on Puerto Rico and quickly occupied the island with only limited resistance <ref> Trask, David F., The war with Spain in 1898 (U of Nebraska Press, Nebraska, 1996), p. 124</ref>. There was more Spanish resistance on the island of Cuba. The American navy blocked the Spanish navy in the port of Santiago de Cuba, while the US expeditionary force landed on the south coast of Cuba. They intended to surround, the Spanish army and fleet at Santiago de Cuba and force them to surrender. The Spanish commander General Linares, established a defensive line centred on San Juan Hill. The US army during the Battle of San Juan Hill was able to break through the Spanish lines and besiege the Spanish in Santiago de Cuba, that had been suffering greatly because of an ‘outbreak of Yellow Fever’ <ref>Trask, p. 115</ref>. A month later the Spanish commander surrendered. The war lasts only ten weeks and Spain lost nearly all of its possession apart from isolated enclaves in Morocco, which it still holds to this day.
==== The impact of the defeat on Spain====
