Key to the New World

For decades, the history of colonial Cuba has attracted the attention of numerous scholars, who have explored the central role that the Spanish island played in what Dale Tomich has defined as the second slavery. However, a lot less has been written, especially in English, about what had happened before sugarcane infected the region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this sense, Luis Martínez-Fernández's book is a remarkable and very welcome contribution to the field. His work introduces the reader to the fascinating history of the biggest Caribbean island, from its geological formation (between 72.1 to 33.9 million years ago) to the consolidation of the colonial society in the late seventeenth century.The book is divided into eight topical chapters, arranged chronologically, which can also be read as independent essays. The study approaches the topic from three different levels: the macro level, which explores Cuba's reality in the wider context of the Atlantic world; the micro level, through which the author discusses the role and importance of certain places and spaces (such as the city of Havana); and finally the individual level, which deals with the captivating and often-surprising lives of some characters of Cuba's first two centuries of colonial life.The first chapter, “Geography and the Shaping of Early Colonial Cuba,” explores the crucial impact that geographical and climatic features had in the history of the island's societies and biodiversity. Chapter 2, “Indigenous Inhabitants,” provides a “dynamic picture” of the first inhabitants of Cuba and the prevalence and diffusion of certain cultural practices in later populations (p. 23). The third chapter, “First Encounters, Inventing America, and the Columbian Exchange,” places the history of Cuba at the very center of key historiographical debates on the ideological, cultural, and political implications of Europeans' first arrival to the region. Particularly interesting in this chapter is the comparative analysis of the personalities and competing visions of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci. Also in this chapter, Martínez-Fernández deals with Edmundo O'Gorman's classic notion of “la invención de América,” Alfred Crosby's idea of the Columbian exchange, and V. S. Naipaul's concept of Caribbean colonies being seen as a tabula rasa by the Europeans. Chapter 4, “The Manufacturing of Cuba,” deals with the conquest, the collapse of the indigenous population, and the early colonization of the island. The author convincingly develops the notion of the Spanish Caribbean as a “new frontier” in the minds of the colonizers and the importance of the Iberian reconquista as an intellectual model for the political and institutional organization of the New World. Chapter 5, “The Emergence of Creole Society,” offers the reader a compelling and accessible description of the colonial social pyramid (from the españoles at the top to the cimarrones at the bottom) and emphasizes how this rigid structure was nevertheless affected by other factors, such as gender, wealth, space, and lineage. The sixth chapter, “The Cuban Ajiaco,” uses Fernando Ortiz's classic metaphor to explore the complexity of Cuba's hybrid cultural byproducts that resulted from its unparalleled and unprecedented racial, ethnic, and social reality. To do so, Martínez-Fernández puts together the individual histories of various fascinating characters, mostly unknown. This allows him to paint an extraordinary picture of the island's colonial society, an example of social history from below at its finest. Chapter 7, “The Cockpit of Europe,” discusses the impact that pirates, privateers, and buccaneers had in the region during the endless wars and conflicts of the seventeenth century. Finally, the eighth chapter explores Cuba's introduction of sugar production during the 1600s. The author emphasizes how this early expansion of sugarcane and ingenios on the island did not alter significantly, at this point, Cuba's economy and society and was fundamentally disconnected from the later “sugar revolution” of the nineteenth century.Building on the foundational works of Fernando Ortiz, Leví Marrero, Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Louis A. Pérez Jr., Irene Aloha Wright, Alejandro de la Fuente, and Manuel Barcia, among others, the author demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the historiography in both Spanish and English. The reader will not find in this book unknown sources or groundbreaking theories; nevertheless, Martínez-Fernández's work is an exceptional, comprehensive, and accessible introduction to the history of Cuba until 1700. It will become an essential reference for scholars and students who want to better understand the history of the island, the Spanish Caribbean, Latin America, or the Atlantic world. A book like this one was very much needed, especially given that it is written in English, and will help historians to deepen and expand their knowledge of what was happening in Cuba before the sugar boom, the slave trade, and the collapse of Spain's empire transformed forever the pearl of the Antilles

Archaeology · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Indigenous · Cuban History and Society · History