John Lawrence Tone – författare

John Tone recounts the dramatic story of how, between 1808 and 1814, Spanish peasants created and sustained the world's first guerrilla insurgency movement, thereby playing a major role in Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsula War. Focusing on the army of Francisco Mina, Tone offers new insights into the origins, motives, and successes of these first guerrilla forces by interpreting the conflict from the long-ignored perspective of the guerrillas themselves.

Who defeated Spain? From 1895 to 1898, Cuban insurgents fought to free their homeland from Spanish rule. Though often overshadowed by the ""Splendid Little War"" of the Americans in 1898, according to John Tone, the longer Spanish-Cuban conflict was in fact more remarkable, foreshadowing the wars of decolonization in the twentieth century.Tone offers new answers to old questions concerning the war. He examines the origin of Spain's genocidal policy of ""reconcentration""; the causes of Spain's military difficulties; the condition, effectiveness, and popularity of the Cuban insurgency; the necessity of American intervention; and, Spain's supposed foreknowledge of defeat. The Spanish-Cuban-American war proved pivotal in the histories of all three countries involved. Tone's fresh analysis introduces new topics for discussion about the war in which the concentration camp was invented, Cuba was born, Spain lost its last American colonies, and America gained an overseas empire.