Cuban revolutionaries had staged revolts against Spanish colonial authority in the Ten Years' War (1868–1878), the Little War (1879–1880), and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). During the last war, Spanish General Valeriano Weyler established a policy of interning Cubans in camps he called "reconcentrados", which functioned as internment camps. The etymology behind the "re-" prefix is that formerly the Cubans lived in villages but now they were going to be redistributed into new villages under the hypocritical pretext that it was for their own protection. Spanish forces gathered Cubans who lived in the countryside and centralized them in camps, where they could be monitored. As a consequence, many Cubans died of disease and malnutrition. That policy did as much to paint the Spanish as barbarians to the Cuban natives and the United States as any other item of misrule by the Spanish.