The Social Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Cuba

Sherry Johnsons revisionist study contributes to a new understanding ofcolonial Cuban history in several ways. Most important it challenges existinginterpretati... » 

Sherry Johnsons revisionist study contributes to a new understanding ofcolonial Cuban history in several ways. Most important it challenges existinginterpretations of Cuban history by advancing an alternative to the sugar isforever thesis. In doing so Johnson provides answers to fundamental questionsregarding Cuban identity in the 19th century.Johnson advances a wealth of demographic data to document the contribution ofthe military particularly military spending to social spatial and economicchange on the island long before sugar became the principal engine of itseconomy. She also shows how immigration had an impact on the elite and middlingranks analyzes family life in the city and explains how the consequences ofreform resonated to the lowest ranks of Cuban society.In addition she establishes how the death of the Spanish monarch Charles IIIin 1788 brought a brutal purge of Cuban society and a new detested captaingeneral to power in 1790. The political repercussions of this hated regime werefelt well into the 19th century she argues in the genesis of a populardiscourse against Spanish colonialism sugar and slavery. «