Winds of Change

Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Bibliographic Data

ID2838224
AuthorsMatthew Mulcahy (Loyola College, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume82
Issue2
Pages365-367
Publication date2002-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofWinds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba, Louis A Pérez, 2001
VenueHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182168-82-2-365
OpenAlexW1584676808
LanguageEN

Louis Perez’s wonderful new book is a welcome addition to an emerging field of study. Natural disasters, especially hurricanes, have attracted little serious attention from historians of the Caribbean (or elsewhere, for that matter). Individual calamities often appear as dramatic scenes in larger studies of cities, colonies, and nations, but few scholars have considered hurricanes as important agents of change in themselves or explored the impact and meaning of the storms in any detail. Pérez addresses this oversight and in doing so makes an important contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century Cuba.The book focuses on three specific hurricanes that struck Cuba in 1842, 1844, and 1846. Pérez and other scholars argue that calamities are caused by social forces as much as natural ones, and that understanding the effects of disasters requires placing them in their larger social, economic, and cultural contexts. Pérez, thus, begins by tracing briefly the European encounter with these terrifying storms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then offers a succinct discussion of the structure of the Cuban economy in the years between the Haitian Revolution and 1840. He emphasizes the diversity of the Cuban agricultural sector, in which small farmers prospered alongside larger sugar, coffee, and tobacco planters, and the tremendous growth during this period that fueled optimistic expectations for the future. Those expectations, and the structure of the Cuban economy itself, were shattered and transformed by the 1840s hurricanes. Coffee plantations were the hardest hit. The widespread destruction and loss of crops, combined with increased competition from Brazil and a downturn in the world price of coffee beans, created losses from which many planters could not recover. As a result, land and slaves were shifted into sugar production and the island moved towards an increased dependence on sugar. These changes affected all Cubans, but the impact was felt most severely by those at the bottom of society, particularly slaves, many of whom were forced from the relatively benign coffee labor regime to the harsher world of sugar production. Not coincidentally, Pérez suggests, the number of slave rebellions increased during these same years.In addition to economic restructuring, the storms exacerbated growing tensions between Spain and Cuba. Local officials’ efforts to ease shortages of food and building supplies by removing tariffs met resistance from metropolitan authorities who had little interest beyond filling Spain’s coffers. Combined with the close proximity of supplies from the North American mainland, such actions further pushed Cuba into the commercial and political orbit of the United States. Hurricanes were not the only factors involved in these changes, but as Pérez notes, historians have not considered their importance in reshaping the political and economic geography of the island.The final chapter explores the relationship of hurricanes to the development of a Cuban national identity. Shared experience with disaster, Pérez maintains, was central to an emerging sense of solidarity and identity among Cubans that highlighted the ability to withstand and overcome hardship. This final chapter represents something of a break from the rest of the book, moving from the particulars of the 1840s storms to the problem of hurricanes generally, and from historical materials to literary evidence and a discussion of hurricanes as metaphor. It nonetheless forms a fascinating coda and suggests that the impact of hurricanes extended far beyond the tangled debris and immediate hardships wrought by them. Pérez’s vivid prose and insightful connections between hurricanes and larger themes and issues in Cuban and Caribbean history make the book ideal for classroom use. Perhaps more importantly, he has directed attention to an important but neglected field of study and illustrated some of the rich possibilities that await historians who follow his lead

Development economics · Diversity (politics) · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Geography · Meteorology · Natural disaster · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Storm · Cuban History and Society · History · Law

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