The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World by Elena A. Schneider (review)

To most historians of Cuba, the British siege and occupation of Havana in 1762–1763 during the final months of the Seven Years' War constitutes a watershed moment. The dominant narrative, until now, has interpreted British actions during the occupation, however brief, as a catalyst to Cuba's modern political economy. According to this view of the occupation, the conquering British opened up previously unavailable trading opportunities, significantly increased slave imports, expanded credit, rationalized the labor force, and reorganized public institutions, thereby stimulating the Havana economy and prompting imaginings of even-greater prosperity. Once Spain reoccupied the city at the end of the war, Havana and its hinterland could not go back to the relative idleness of old. The Spaniards, recognizing this fact, tried to reconquer Cubans' loyalty through reforms that facilitated the transition to a more modern, export agricultural economy based on massive importations of enslaved African laborers.

Elena A. Schneider's landmark new study challenges most of these tenets as it affirms the central place of people of African descent to Cuba's history and takes a long-term view of the contexts of war, trade, and slavery. At the core of the book lie the questions of how the institution of slavery structured Cuban society at various points in its history and how that evolution reflected tensions between competing, yet intertwined, slave systems (e.g., between competing slaveholding Caribbean empires) as well as within each one.

Given these ambitious questions, centered on a short moment in time (the occupation) nestled in a much larger chronological context (centuries of imperial conflict, trade, and slavery), Schneider ambitiously organizes the narrative along short- and long-term sets of historical temporalities or time scales. The siege and occupation are discussed in the book's middle section, more than a hundred pages into the text, appropriately called "Events" (chapters 3 and 4; there are six total, plus the introduction and conclusion). Here she presents a detailed history of the largest-ever military campaign in Havana's history, with particular emphasis on the key roles played by militias of African descent. Chapters 1 and 2, "Antecedents," discuss from the sixteenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries—and chapters 5 and 6, along with the conclusion, are titled "Aftermaths," from the Spanish reoccupation in 1763 to the Aponte Rebellion of 1812. One could treat these four "bookend" chapters as a narration in conjunctural time, in Fernand Braudel's conception of the phrase.

Schneider's careful research and elegant writing take the reader on a sweeping journey through early Cuban history. In the "Antecedents" section, she argues for the long-standing British interest in Cuba, beginning in the 1500s and becoming more intense as Britain began carving out settlements and trading posts in the Caribbean and North America in the ensuing century. As Havana became a transshipment center for the Spanish empire's silver and other riches, the British increasingly came to see the well-defended city as the key to open that wealth for themselves. The two empires were not always in tension or conflict, however, and the trade both in slaves and in goods often became a source of mutual enrichment. Indeed, it was often impossible to separate tension from profit. The history of the asiento, granted by Spain in 1713 to the British South Sea Company for the exclusive supply of slaves to is possessions, is perhaps the clearest example of this. It was a business relationship fraught with tension at a time when the long-standing Anglo-Spanish rivalry was reaching an all-time peak. Enslaved Africans, Schneider argues, were key to this convoluted combination of greed and sword.

With its growing population and economy, Havana in first half of the eighteenth century became a kind of obsessive prize for the British. During the intense Anglo-Spanish rivalries of the early 1700s, the British elaborated detailed plans to snatch it away from Spain...