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The University of North Carolina Press
304 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 11 illus., 18 tables, 9 figs., notes, bibl., index
Envisioning Cuba
Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century
Havana in the 1550s was a small coastal village with a very limited population that was vulnerable to attack. By 1610, however, under Spanish rule it had become one of the best-fortified port cities in the world and an Atlantic center of shipping, commerce, and shipbuilding. Using all available local Cuban sources, including parish registries and notary, town council, and treasury records, Alejandro de la Fuente provides the first examination of the transformation of Havana into a vibrant Atlantic port city and the fastest-growing urban center in the Americas in the late sixteenth century.
De la Fuente argues that Havana was much more than a port servicing the Spanish imperial powers. Analyzing how slaves, soldiers, merchants, householders, and transient sailors and workers participated socially, economically, and institutionally in the city, he shows how local ambitions took advantage of the imperial design and how, in the process, Havana was turned into a Caribbean trading center with a distinctly Mediterranean flavor. By situating Havana within the slavery and economic systems of the colonial Atlantic, de la Fuente also contributes to the growing focus on port cities as contexts for understanding the early development of global networks for economic and cultural exchange.
"Provides remarkably broad coverage of a town undergoing dizzying transformation of its economy, demography, social structure, politics, urban form and racial order. . . . A major accomplishment."
-- H-NET
"A contribution to Atlantic history. . . . Recommended."
--Choice
"A most welcome addition to the emerging field of Atlantic studies and to Cuban historiography. . . . Sets the ground and leads the way. . . . An invitation for more Atlantic-oriented urban studies and conversations."
--William and Mary Quarterly
"An exciting and pioneering work. . . . Meticulous research in reconstructing Havana's initial economic, population, and urban growth."
--Colonial Latin America Review
Interest in modern Cuba has deflected scholarly attention away from the early history of the island. This excellent book reopens the history of early Cuba. It is a wonderful and singular re-creation of the history of Havana and of Cuban society based on a meticulous analysis of the earliest extant records. While there is much new here on slavery and commerce, as one would expect, there is also considerable new information on landholding, social organization, mining, and a host of other themes. De la Fuente's book will change our understanding of how the Hispanic Caribbean and the early Atlantic world developed. It establishes de la Fuentes reputation as a historian of the colonial world and one of the few who writes with equal authority on both colonial and modern Cuba.
--Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University
De la Fuente supplies, for the first time in any language, a comprehensive and thoroughly researched history of the establishment and growth of Havana, one of the New Worlds great cities. The mass of fascinating information contained in this work represents a major development of the broad picture sketched out by other historians of the early transatlantic exchanges. This well-written book should appeal to anyone interested in a colorful corner of the Caribbean, and it will be necessary reading for students of empire and slavery.--Robin Blackburn, University of Essex
Cloth: $40.00
© 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
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