Spain's rule in the Philippines comes to…

Spain's rule in the Philippines comes to an end as a result of United States involvement with Spain's other major colony, Cuba.

American business interests are anxious for a resolution—with or without Spain—of the insurrection that had broken out in Cuba in February 1895.

Moreover, public opinion in the United States has been aroused by newspaper accounts of the brutalities of Spanish rule.

When the United States declares war on Spain on April 25, 1898, acting Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt orders Commodore George Dewey, commander of the Asiatic Squadron, to sail to the Philippines and destroy the Spanish fleet anchored in Manila Bay.

The Spanish navy, which had seen its apogee in the support of a global empire in the sixteenth century, suffers an inglorious defeat on May 1, 1898, as Spain's antiquated fleet, including ships with wooden hulls, is sunk by the guns of Dewey's flagship, the Olympia, and other United States warships.

More than three hundred and eighty Spanish sailors die, but there is only one American fatality.