From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492 (review)

Environmental history is now a well-established field, yet studies about Latin America fall far short in number compared to those of other geographical locations. Given such a lacuna, any work that takes an environmental approach is welcome and timely. Thus, Reynaldo Funes makes a valuable contribution by employing environmental history in examining the spread of sugar cultivation in Cuba as a battle between the primordial forests and the ever-encroaching cane fields.

There is much to admire in this book, even for scholars (such as this reviewer) for whom sugar determinism is theoretically unsatisfying. The author draws on a wealth of primary sources, including archives in Cuba and in Spain, an exhaustive number of contemporary scientific materials, travelers’ accounts, journals, meteorological accounts, and newspapers. The title suggests a long chronological scope, but the first chapter is thin, covering the 270 years from 1492 through 1772 in just twenty pages. The bulk of this book deals with the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapter 2 sets up the battle between Charles III’s government and aspiring sugar producers hoping to expand their cultivation. Chapter 3 establishes the move toward private, unrestricted ownership of land, while chapter 4 (covering 1815 to 1876) shows how the battle moved from the use of wood for shipbuilding to its use for fuel for the ingenios. The final two chapters recount the familiar story of how technology led to the development of the great sugar refineries and how the U.S. market determined the course of production by the end of the century.

One of the attractive aspects of this book is that it counterpoises the inexorable march of sugar against heretofore-unstudied attempts to regulate Cuba’s forests and protect them from exploitation. The strongest chapters, chapters 2 and 3, make clear that the royal navy’s need for lumber for shipbuilding triumphed over the desires of the nascent commercial interests. In chapter 5, Funes points out that at the height of sugar expansion in the mid-nineteenth century, contemporaries in Cuba were futilely pointing out the dire consequences of monoculture on other Caribbean islands. Yet, even with a fresh approach, this work joins a crowded field. We already know quite a lot about sugar cultivation in the Caribbean, and now we know more about the subject in Cuba in exhausting detail. In addition, sugar determinism, by nature, implies inevitability and anachronistic assumptions. One such assumption attributes much more power to the proponents of sugar cultivation than they actually possessed and, logically, less power—even invisibility—to those not involved in promoting the crop. Because sugar producers ultimately became powerful in the nineteenth century, it is only logical to assume that they were also powerful in the previous centuries. Yet as other works have shown, such was not the case.

Only a few stylistic issues may be noted. Originally written in Spanish, the translation is excellent and makes for an engaging narrative except in a few instances, notably appendix 2. The data in that table erroneously state that the island receives a minimum of 400 meters (about 1,200 feet) to somewhere around 1,200 meters (3,600 feet!) of rainfall annually. Most likely this is a mistake in translating from the original Spanish, where a comma is used in numeric notation rather than the period used in English. An alternative might be that the original meant between 400 and 1,200 cubic meters. Either way, the figures as presented could mislead even some sophisticated readers. Another concern is that the work is written quite close to its sources, and many pages are filled with verbatim quotations taken directly from the original documents.

Readers interested in learning more about the sugar industry will certainly be pleased with this book, while scholars hoping for an exhaustive environmental history will come away disappointed. The latter group will need to wait a bit longer for scholarship that currently is being...