The custom was brought to all Spain’s New World colonies, but its popularity suffered when Charles IV in 1805 tried to ban it (an act later annulled by his son Ferdinand VII). In the mid-19thcentury new bullrings were built in Havana (with a 10,000-seat capacity), Santiago, Puerto Principe, and Matanzas. In Santiago (and elsewhere) the …
As early as 1818, Americans, as well as the British, were buying interests in Cuban sugar and establishing themselves as merchants on the island. The many who owned sugar plantations included William Stewart, owner of La Carolina, near Cienfuegos, and J.S. Baker, owner of San José plantation. Throughout the 19th century, these American interests exercised significant …
Spain sided with France against the United Kingdom in the Seven Years’ War. Britain declared war on Spain on January 4, 1762, and launched an Anglo-American expedition to capture Havana, the third largest city in the New World, and essential to Spanish transatlantic communications (and the supply of wealth from the Indies to Spain). On …
The international abolition movement originated in England in the late 1700s for a mixture of humanitarian concerns and economic reasons (such as the increasing British trade with Africa), and resentment of French and Spanish occupation of the larger Caribbean islands. Slavery was outlawed in England and Wales by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield in 1772 and …
Steven Spielberg-directed film of 1997, named for the schooner of that name, which, on June 28, 1839, had left Havana to take 54 newly arrived slaves to Puerto Principe. Four nights later, led by Cinqué, these had mutinied, killing two crew members, and ordering the remaining three to sail to Africa. The sailors headed instead …
A royal license to participate in the African Slave Trade, given to any individual or group of any nationality, in the form of a contract to import a specified number of slaves in return for a royalty payment for each one sold, first issued in 1513, and widely available from 1514. In 1550 the asiento became the …
Charles V granted a rather baroque coat of arms to the new colony early in his reign. Cuba’s present arms date from the Ten Years’ War and they first occur on the insurgents’ $500 bonds of 1869. A lictor’s bundle of an axe and twelve rods (the Roman symbol of union and authority), crowned with …
