Hispano-Japanese War

The Hispano-Japanese War is a fictional conflict in Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 alternate history series. This is only a sideshow event, for which the author doesn't tell much about it.

After the victory of the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War (1861–1865), the southern states become independent with the support of Great Britain and France. Then, they tried to expand their territories to the south, pressuring Spain to yielding they her colony of Cuba. This little explained event, finalized one year in the 1870s with the Confederacy acquisition of Cuba (which will became a new State of the Confederacy in the future), probably came after a short war lost by Spaniards. Nevertheless, Spain retained the government of Puerto Rico and her other colonies.

Later, the weakening of Spanish army and the confused politics in the country attract the atention of Japan (which has just to obtaining Chosen and Formose from China) to the near Spanish colonies in the East Indies. This lead to a confrontation in the first years of 20th century (c. 1901-1905) between the two countries, that finalizes with the Japanese victory and the occupation of the Philippines and Guam by this country. Some time later, Spain sells her latest colonies in the Pacific, the Mariana Islands, to Germany (like she did in the actual Timeline).

The war is notorious for an event that occured after the Japanese conquered Manila: the brutal treatment of Spanish prisoners that was witnessed by a U.S. writer named Richard Harding Davis, who later wrote an account of the atrocities that made his name famous across the USA.

Finally, the success of Japan convinces the Russian Empire to not discuss the influence of Japan in Korea and China, for which the Tsar's Army does not abandon its bases in the Baltic Sea, and the Russian-Japanese War of 1905 never occurs.