Winds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba (review)

Winds of Change: Hurricanes and the Transformation of Nineteenth-Century Cuba. By Louis A. Pérez, Jr. (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2001) 199 pp. $49.95 cloth $17.95 paper

The frequency and impact of hurricanes on the islands and mainlands of the Caribbean might create the assumption that these storms have been the subject of extensive historical study but that has not been the case. Although most historians are aware that hurricanes represent a continual danger to Caribbean societies, they also tend to see them as exogenous to the historical process, and thus not a legitimate topic of inquiry. The classic studies of hurricanes are devastation reports strung together chronologically rather than historical analyses. That situation has begun to change considerably in recent years. The present study ably demonstrates how the history of recurring natural phenomena can be integrated into the social and economic history of the Caribbean region.

Hurricanes can be approached from a variety of disciplines. There are substantial literatures about them in environmental studies, disaster-relief methods, sociology, folklore, and history. In Winds of Change, Pérez, after an introductory chapter on the hurricanes in Cuba's early colonial history, concentrates on the social and economic effects of three hurricanes that struck Cuba between 1842 and 1846 and transformed the island's economy during a moment of social tension and economic growth. The hurricanes of September 1842 and, especially, those of October 1844 and October 1846 all had trajectories that intersected near Havana. The cumulative result was unprecedented damage to the western areas of the island.

The effects were long-lasting. The Cuban economy had expanded in the early nineteenth century. By 1842, the value of coffee production in Cuba was about four times greater than that of sugar, but both had done well in the first three decades of the century—before the storms. Pérez describes in detail the effects. The perennial sugarcane fields suffered far less damage than the coffee groves, where new trees took three to five years before producing anew. Coffee production fell from more than 70 million lb. in the 1820s to less than 20 million by the 1860s, as land and slave labor shifted from coffee to sugar agriculture. Pérez tells this story of transformation well, paying considerable attention to regional differences and local effects. If a "sugar revolution" did, in fact, occur in Cuba, it was facilitated by the effects of the great hurricanes of the mid-1840s, which intensified regional differences and promoted a new agricultural balance between the island's mainstays, sugar, coffee, and tobacco.

This transformation had important social ramifications as well. The slave trade to Cuba declined in the 1840s under British pressure, and slave rebellions and rumors of them, like the "La escalera" plot of 1844, made planters particularly nervous. But the market for sugar was booming. After 1846, when slaves were in short supply, ruined coffee planters found their slaves in great demand on the sugar estates. At the same time, sugar planters also began to experiment with new sources of labor, like Chinese "coolie" workers. The nature and complexion of rural Cuba had been altered as a result of the economic transformation.

Pérez draws on his command of Cuban historiography and a limited set of archival materials for his main theme. He also provides some discussion of how the storms of the 1840s affected poorer Cubans and how the Spanish colonial regime failed to meet the challenge of disaster, as well as a cursory survey of Cuban literature and popular culture for other traces of the hurricanes' influence. But more remains to be done. For example, a history of Cuban science has yet to be written. It would include figures like Andrés Poey, the early Cuban scientist and meteorologist, or Benito Vind popular culture for other traces of the hurricanes' influence. But more remains to...