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The Americas 60.2 (2003) 308-309



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The Social Transformation of Eighteenth-Century Cuba. By Sherry Johnson. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Pp. x, 267. Notes. References. Appendixes. Index. $55.00 cloth.

At first glance, this book bears a strong similarity to Allan J. Kuethe's, Cuba, 1753-1815: Crown, Military and Society (1986). Despite several shared themes and topics, however, Sherry Johnson's monograph is based upon abundant original research conducted in archives on the island and in Spain as well as new conceptual frameworks drawn from the emerging field of Atlantic history. In short, it offers a provocative assessment of those key decades of the Cuban past before sugar cultivation and "national ideology" became fully established in the nineteenth century. The book's nine chapters tell the intricate story of how Spanish imperial administrative pressures intersected with local demographic and economic developments to produce "a unique social dynamic as early as 1763" (p. 2) and, by extension, a colonial society unlike any other in the Western Hemisphere by the end of the eighteenth century. Along the way, Johnson boldly takes issue with numerous myths and conventions of existing Cuban historiography.

Between 1763 and 1800, Johnson argues, significant social and spatial change occurred in and around Havana. This was due far less to expanding sugar cultivation—it was tobacco that still fueled growth, she maintains—than to immigration from the peninsula prompted by the Bourbon reforms. For Cuba, given the fall of [End Page 308] Havana to British and Anglo-American invaders in 1762 and its return to the Spanish the following year, these reforms were overwhelmingly military in nature.

The arrival of thousands of European officers and soldiers, their decades of intermarriage with the Cuban creole elite, and their permanent retirement on the island, created a colony linked much more closely to the metropolis than any other on the Spanish American mainland. Much like the British West India lobby in Parliament, Cuban interests exerted substantial influence at the highest levels of government in Spain. Such accommodation guaranteed loyalty to empire, at least until Luis de las Casas nearly upset the apple cart in 1790. For Johnson, this Captain General is the villain of his age. Las Casas simply did not understand that the Spanish army in Cuba was one of cooptation, not occupation and, as a result, he came close to unraveling the recently established social compact. By blatantly promoting commercial (sugar) interests, Johnson argues, the Captain General, with assistance from Alejandro O'Reilly and Francisco de Arango, alienated the entrenched military community and elite. Not only do her conclusions "directly challenge a century and a half of celebratory history that sees the O'Reilly-Las Casas-Arango faction as proponents of positive and enlightened ideas for the benefit of the island" (p. 188); there is also the clear implication that Spain could have lost Cuba in the 1790s. However, the timely appointment of Joaquín Beltrán de Santa Cruz, the Conde de Jaruco (and later the Conde de Mopox) saved the day. As a player with feet in both elite camps, he proved to be the "driving force in restoring post- Las Casas Cuba" (p. 168). The presumed near-loss of the "ever faithful isle" a century before 1898 might have been analyzed a bit more fully but, in fairness, that is not the primary focus of this book.

As the former paragraph illustrates, Johnson tells many complex stories involving complicated twists and turns. Her early chapters are peppered with insights relating to the "human dimensions" of military reform, such as the enhanced legal status of military widows, as well as sustained attention to the fifteen percent of free society that was made up of families of color. There is an evocative tour of the city of Havana in chapter two, while chapters four and five offer informed appraisals of the goings-on at the Spanish court. Johnson casts a wide net indeed, which is why this book should be of interest to an audience much larger than Cuban specialists. Yet, at the same time, she...

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