1 May 1898, Manila Bay. Commodore Dewey's squadron, sent from Hong Kong, finds the Spanish ships at anchor off Cavite and sinks them in a morning of gunnery practice. No American ship is lost. Then Dewey waits on the water with a city he cannot occupy. A fleet is not an army.
Why then
The United States has gone to war with Spain over Cuba, after the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbour and the press blamed Spain. The Navy's plans already marked the Philippines as a target if war came. Filipino revolutionaries under Aguinaldo have been fighting Spain since 1896.
What they wanted
Dewey needs the Spanish squadron gone before troops arrive. Aguinaldo's revolution wants Spain out and no new flag in its place. The bay answers only the first.
What changed
Spain sells the islands for twenty million dollars, and the United States takes Puerto Rico and Guam as well. The war against Spain becomes a war against the Philippine Republic, 1899 to 1902, that kills around 200,000 Filipinos, most of them from disease and hunger. At home they call 1898 a splendid little war.
Still argued
Louis Pérez argues Washington took over a Cuban war of independence and renamed it; Paul Kramer shows how race shaped the American war in the Philippines. Daniel Immerwahr asks why Americans forgot the empire at all.