1899 - Political Events

Political Events

France's President Faure dies suddenly at Paris February 16 at age 57 during a conversation in his study at the Elysée Palace with his mistress, Mme. Steinheil (née Marguerite Japy), having opposed a second trial for Captain Dreyfus. Emile Loubet, 60, is elected to succeed him. The Action Française right-wing political movement founded by Charles Maurras, now 31, gains support from the new Paris monthly review L'Action Française, edited by novelist-pamphleteer Léon Daudet, now 32, who rallies the defeated opponents of Alfred Dreyfus with royalist and nationalist invective. Former minister of the interior René Waldeck-Rousseau forms a new government in June as demonstrations and counterdemonstrations over the Dreyfus Affair jeopardize public order, a military court finds Dreyfus guilty of treason in September after a retrial forced by public opinion (see 1898), but some of the evidence against him is known to be forged and Premier Waldeck-Rousseau persuades the president to grant him a pardon September 19 in hopes of avoiding further controversy (see 1906).

A Philippine Republic is proclaimed in January (see 1898). Two U.S. privates open fire on Filipino soldiers outside Manila on the night of February 4; the Filipinos retaliate, and 60 U.S. soldiers are killed along with 700 Filipinos. The incident serves to rally support for the Treaty of Paris, whose ratification has been opposed by Andrew Carnegie (who has offered the United States government $20 million to grant the Filipinos independence), the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), the Anti-Imperialist League, and even publisher William Randolph Hearst, with some of the opposition inspired by reports of Americans having introduced prostitution in the Philippines and U.S. soldiers returning home with sexually transmitted diseases. The U.S. Senate votes February 7 to ratify the treaty, and a 3½-year war begins between U.S. troops and Filipino national forces led by Emilio Aguinaldo, now 28, and Manuel Luis Quezon y Molina, 21. Some 500 U.S. troops are killed in 2 months, 60,000 reinforcements are called up in August, Aguinaldo resorts to guerrilla tactics, and although U.S. forces secure Luzon November 24 many Americans oppose the "imperialist" war (see 1900). U.S. troops capture revolutionist Apolinario Mabini in December, he refuses to swear allegiance to the United States, and he is exiled to Guam, where he will be held until early 1903. The United States acquires Wake Island to complete a string of coaling stations for ships crossing the Pacific.

Japanese naval officer-statesman Hakashuka (Count) Kaishu Katsu dies at his native Tokyo January 21 at age 75.

U.S. Secretary of State John (Milton) Hay, 61, proposes an "open door" policy in China and receives support from the great powers. They will agree that all the imperialist countries shall have equal commercial opportunity in spheres of special interest (see 1900).

French officials in Indochina establish their governor in a residence at the Laotian city of Vientiane on the Mekong River and will make it their administrative capital, which it will remain (with an interruption by the Japanese in the 1940s) until 1953.

Spain withdraws from Cuba under terms of the Treaty of Paris, ratified by the U.S. Senate February 7. The United States has borne the cost of transporting 23,000 Spanish soldiers back to Spain, which cedes Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. Cuba gains her independence from Spain, which loses her last dominions in the Americas (see 1902; Platt Amendment, 1901).

Puerto Rican patriot Luis Muñoz Rivera resigns as president of the island's first autonomist cabinet as Washington ends the island's short-lived home rule. Muñoz Rivera goes to New York, where he will publish a magazine to make Americans aware of what is happening to his homeland.

Former Venezuelan dictator Antonio Guzmán Blanco dies in exile at Paris July 20 at age 70. A private rebel army headed by former cowhand Cipriano Castro, 30, and his lieutenant Juan Vicente Gómez attacks Caracas and seizes power as supreme military commander, beginning a new dictatorship that will continue until 1908. Castro has had no formal education, he became governor of his Andean province (Táchira) by gaining the support of a powerful general, was exiled to Colombia when the government at Caracas was overthrown in 1892, has amassed a large fortune through illegal cattle trading, and will increase that fortune in the next 9 years as he loots the country's treasury to finance his profligate lifestyle while having his political opponents murdered or sent into exile and putting down frequent rebellions (see blockade, 1902).

West Africa's Ashanti tribesmen stage their final uprising against the British (see 1896). Colonial officer Sir Fredric Hodgson has provoked the Ashanti by demanding that they surrender the Golden Stool of Friday that has been their sacred symbol of power for the past century. Hodgson wants the throne so that he may sit upon it as governor of the Gold Coast, but the tribesmen lay siege to his fortress, and it is 2 months before he and his wife can escape to the coast.

"The White Man's Burden" by Rudyard Kipling appears in McClure's magazine. The Times of London calls it "an address to the United States."

The Windsor Treaty signed October 14 between Britain and Portugal safeguards the latter's sovereignty over her existing African colonies and reaffirms the alliance that has existed since 1386 (see 1891).

A second Anglo-Boer War begins in South Africa October 12 as President Kruger of the Boer Republic acts to block suspected British moves toward acquiring the rich Transvaal with its gold mines (see 1896). Equipped with Krupp artillery, the Boers lay siege to Mafeking on the Transvaal-Bechuanaland border October 13, with 10,000 men under the command of General Pieter A. Cronjé, now 63, who sends 6,000 of his men 250 miles south to besiege Kimberley October 15. Colonel Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 42, has only 745 men plus 450 irregulars to defend Mafeking, and for artillery he has only four antique muzzle-loading seven-pound cannon and two improvised guns, an improvised armored train, plus seven medium and two heavy machine guns (the Boers initially have 10 Krupp 12-pound field guns plus a Creusot heavy gun, and they still have four of the field guns after the diversion of troops to Kimberley). The railway junction town of Ladysmith in western Natal comes under siege November 2; commanded by Petrus Joubert, now 68, the Afrikaan siege force has 20,000 men at Ladysmith at the outset, and its 40 guns include two Creusot 155mm heavy guns. The 13,745-man British force at Ladysmith is commanded by Afghan War veteran Lieut. Gen. Sir George Stuart White, now 64, and has 50 guns, including two 4.7-inch naval guns. The British are equipped with Vickers-Maxim weapons supplied by Turkish-born Greek arms dealer Basil Zaharoff, 50, who also supplies the Boers, making a fortune (see Maxim, 1883).

The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan is established by British general (Francis) Reginald Wingate, 38, who has served in the Egyptian intelligence and fought in several battles against the Mahdi in the 1880s. He engages the remnants of Sudan's surviving Mahdi warriors at Kordofan November 24 and the caliph (khalifah) Abd Allah is killed at age 53 (see 1898). Wingate is appointed governor general of the Sudan in December (he will serve in that capacity until 1916) and commander in chief (sirdar) of the Egyptian Army.

British forces in South Africa suffer humiliating reverses in December: a 2,300-man Boer force under the command of General J. H. Olivier defeats a 3,000-man British force under Lieut. Gen. Sir William Gatacre December 10 at Stormberg, a railway junction 50 miles south of the Orange River; a 7,000-man Boer force under the command of General Cronjé and General Jacobus De La Rey defeats a 14,000-man British force under Lieut. Gen. Lord Methuen December 10 to 11 at Magersfontein, 14 miles south of Kimberley; and when a 21,000-man British force under General Sir Redvers Buller, 60, tries to force a crossing of the Tugela River December 15 at Colenso, south of Ladysmith, it is repulsed with heavy losses by a 6,000-man Boer force under the command of General Louis Botha (see 1900).