Climate and Catastrophe in Cuba and the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution

THREE: It Appeared as If the World Were Ending

c h a p t e r t h r e e It Appeared as If the World Were Ending T he end of the Seven Years’ War in Europe and in the Americas brought momentous political and territorial changes. Great Britain emerged as the winner, while her primary rival, France, was vanquished. Spain was dragged into the war because of her commitment to her French relatives and suffered a major defeat when Havana fell in 1762. The Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1763 and resulted in territorial realignments in North America. France was forced to give Canada to Britain, and Spain relinquished the Floridas to secure the return of Havana. In compensation, France ceded Louisiana to Spain.1 By 1764, the once-extensive French empire in the Americas was reduced to the sugar-producing islands in the Caribbean and French Guyana , while France’s Bourbon cousin, Spain, had “added another desert to her empire.”2 Among the residents in the ceded colonies, the unwelcome change in sovereignty brought confusion and created resentment, and neither Britain nor Spain dealt efficiently with their newly acquired territories. Britain assumed control over Canada and, to prevent political and ethnic rivalries from developing between the French colonists and British North Americans , closed the frontier across the Appalachian mountains. In Florida, almost all of the Spanish residents evacuated to Cuba and were gradually replaced by British colonists.3 In Louisiana, Spain inherited a surly population of Frenchmen and attempted to placate them through economic and political concessions. While Great Britain celebrated its victory, a far different atmosphere pervaded the court of the Spanish monarch, Charles III. The fall of Havana generated a debate that would lead to sweeping reforms in virtually every area of imperial policy, the well-studied Bourbon Reforms.4 The immense body of literature about the administrative, political, fiscal, social, and cultural dimension of the Bourbon Reforms needs not it appeared as if the world were ending • 61 be revisited at length, except to note that virtually every study of Cuba depicts the return to Spanish rule as celebratory. The officials chosen to implement the royal wishes—Ambrosio Funes de Villalpando, the Conde de Ricla; Field Marshal Alejandro O’Reilly; and engineers Silvestre de Abarca and Agustín Crame (or Cramer)—had a clear mandate and unlimited authority to carry out their monarch’s wishes. Implementing these changes and especially ameliorating the food shortages in Cuba would prove to be a far more difficult task. For the first three years, 1763 through 1765, weather cooperated with the European powers, but by 1765, the return of the El Niño/La Niña sequence was evident throughout the Caribbean. Havana province experienced intermittent drought; Oriente province suffered through repeated drought/deluge sequences. Elsewhere, the interlocking provisioning system was strained by hurricanes in Puerto Rico, and Louisiana received the brunt of two storms. In many areas, the aftermath of disaster brought political unrest, particularly in the form of slave uprisings on other Caribbean islands. Of all the war-weary European nations with colonies in the Americas, France and Spain were the least prepared to deal with the escalating environmental crisis; the colonial subjects were at a loss to explain what was happening to them. Trial and Error: 1763–1766 On 30 June 1763, the Conde de Ricla received Havana from the British commander, and the following three years became a period of trial and error. The Bourbon reformers scored some notable successes in overhauling Cuba’s troop structure and beginning massive fortification projects around Havana. Fiscal reforms began with the arrival of an intendant, Miguel de Altarriba, in February 1765, and a new mail system under the auspices of an experienced administrator, José Antonio Armona, began the same year.5 Later Cuban officials would follow the lead of mainland officials and expel the religious order, the Jesuits, from the island in 1767. Yet the problem of adequately provisioning the population of Cuba would presentaperplexingparadox.Firstandforemost,thegoalwastofortifythe city to prevent such a disaster from ever happening again, but the massive militarization projects required a large increase in population. Ricla and O’Reilly brought 2,675 Spanish army troops, and an equal number of navy personnelarrivedwiththecommanderofthenavy,JuanBautisaBonet.6In 62 • it appeared as if the world were ending subsequent decades, thousands of Spanish troops were assigned to Cuba, many of whom ultimately stayed after their enlistments expired.7 Extensive construction projects required workers...