Alfonso XII of Spain - Between A Rock and A Hard Place

Between A Rock and A Hard Place

The first son of Isabel II lived an adolescence marked by the crisis that led to the overthrow of his mother in 1868. The Military and the parties were weary of 30 years of instability. This led to Prime Minister Miguel Prim, to seek a change of dynasty.

The dethroning of queen Isabel II meant a vacuum that was profited by the Bank of New York and some Cubans opposed to the projected extension of the 1837 Abolition Act to finance a Texas style "independence" revolution known as the Cuban 10 Years War (1868–78) lost by the Cubans. The aim was to secede Cuba from Spain, and annex it as a US state as Florida had been in 1824 through the Adams-Onis Treaty. and Texas in 1845.

The Spanish parliament chose amongst several candidates, including a French Prince, which led to the Franco-Prussian War, when Bismarck refused to have another Frenchman in the Spanish Throne. Finally Amadeus of Savoy, Duke of Ostia, was elected by Parliament as new King of Spain.

However, king Amadeus could do little within the rarefied peninsular political climate. The Puerto Rican activist Julio Vizcarrondo had moved the Spanish Abolitionist Society from San Juan de Puerto Rico to Madrid at the request of premier Miguel Prim, himself a former Puerto Rico governor. The Cuban slavers counteracted with a fierce media campaign and political action committees in Madrid and the coastal comecial cities with great economic and family ties to the Antilles. While in Puerto Rico slavery was 2% of the population and blacks were less than 11%, Cuba was 30% black and slaves wee the backbone of the plantation economy. In Cuba peninsular Spaniards began to boycott Cuban products made by slaves, and the issue turned nationalistic. From insular v. peninsular it turned Spanish against Cuban. Then New York Intervention made more sense.

When King Amadeus finally had the bill in his desk, which would extend the 1837 Abolition Act to the Antilles, he was put on notice of a coup financed by Cuban plantationers and industrialists if he signed. As a result, he simply abandoned Spain, sick and tired, never to return.