“Imperial Masculinity” Revisited: The Image of the Male Body in the Cultural Production of War and Empire during the Spanish-American War of 1898

In the heightened spirit of militarism following the declaration of war against Spain in 1898, American men enlisted in numbers far exceeding President McKinley’s call for 125,000 volunteers.  Photographs and political cartoons testified to the muscle and military aptitude of American manhood.  In light of the US acquisition of Spain’s remaining empire at the war's conclusion, scholars have interpreted these images as the cultural production of “imperial masculinity” – a celebration of American masculine vigor aligned with a larger ideological purpose of expanding the US global reach.  This paper complicates this understanding by tracking the makings of masculinity in American print and visual culture during and immediately after the war.  Initially, based on press accounts of US motivations, most Americans understood the goal of the Spanish-American War as a humanitarian endeavor to secure Cuban independence, and not as a quest for imperial gain.  This was the dominant paradigm of thought during the early phase of the war when American masculinity was presented in the martial ideal.  In the war’s final weeks, however, as the imperial prospects transformed the meaning of US intervention, press coverage shifted to military mismanagement and the debilitated state of the returning American soldiers/sailors, many of whom never saw combat.  Images of American male bodies began picturing weakness and affliction, leading some to question America’s military capacity.  Over the course of the war, the male form also became a platform for cartoonists to debate imperial acquisition through the icon of Uncle Sam, with images ranging from physical empowerment to grotesque engorgement, as well as offering alternative visions of a more domesticated, gentle paternalism.  Carefully historicizing the dominant images of masculinity circulating in the war period within the shifting political frameworks of the war will reveal a multivalent dynamic between constructions of masculinity, the war, and imperialism.