{"title":"Havana at the Crossroads","authors":"Elena A. Schneider","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 2 casts a “Havana’s-eye view” on the way its residents positioned themselves inside and outside both the British and Spanish empires during the decades that preceded the British invasion. Well before the British war fleet began its siege of Havana, contraband and the British-dominated slave trade had already transformed the city into a hybrid space, mutually constituted with its British American neighbors. The African peoples brought to Cuba in predominantly British slaving ships were bought and sold as goods, yet, upon arrival, they and their descendants were also regarded as future loyal Spanish subjects, vital economic contributors, and crucial defenders of the king’s realms in a climate of heightened imperial war and rivalry. Havana’s merchants and landowners built a successful economy that profited from both trading with the enemy and making war against them through privateering and wartime transimperial trade. The prevailing patterns of war, trade, and slavery help to explain the reactions of individuals in Havana to the British siege and occupation of their city.","PeriodicalId":184433,"journal":{"name":"The Occupation of Havana","volume":"183 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122695572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Imagining the Conquest","authors":"Elena A. Schneider","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 1 gives a history of British expansion into Caribbean waters claimed by Spain and developing conflict over commercial access to and political control over the island of Cuba. A deep-seated obsession with capturing Havana developed as early as the sixteenth century, during these years of English and later British advance. In the early eighteenth century, the British-dominated slave trade to Spanish America and the contraband traffic that accompanied it led to conflicts with Spain that precipitated a cycle of wars. The Spanish monarchy sought exclusive political and commercial control over its overseas territories, yet, to its dismay, the local dynamics of these wars led to even more regional autonomy and integration for its overseas possessions. Through a cycle of eighteenth-century wars targeting Spanish America, British subjects developed closer commercial ties with Havana, and British commanders gained better knowledge of how to attack the city with each failed attempt.","PeriodicalId":184433,"journal":{"name":"The Occupation of Havana","volume":"114 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132411667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A City under Siege","authors":"Elena A. Schneider","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This middle section of the book, on the invasion and occupation, treats the two phases of the central events in Cuba as separate but parallel processes, with their own protagonists and outcomes. Chapter 3 focuses on the critical role of people of African descent during the siege. British war commanders had counted on a formidable defense of Havana from the Spanish soldiers stationed there, but what surprised them was the vigorous part played by free and enslaved people of color on the front lines of the defense. Not all people of African descent present at the siege acted in support of either the British or the Spanish war effort. But in general blacks in Havana made the siege so protracted that the British almost failed; its armies ended up losing more men to a virulent yellow fever outbreak than they had in the entire Seven Years’ War in North America. The defense of Havana was so fierce that it took down a massive British army and severely limited plans for the occupation.","PeriodicalId":184433,"journal":{"name":"The Occupation of Havana","volume":"99 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114977824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spanish Reoccupation","authors":"Elena A. Schneider","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"The final section of the book moves across the fifty years after the occupation, exploring Spain’s efforts to reconstitute its authority in Havana and the many reverberations of the occupation throughout broader Atlantic and global systems. The actions of individuals in Cuba during this crucial episode of fighting and occupying revised understandings in the metropole that would go on to shape new policies with global ramifications. The exemplary service of black soldiers in defending Cuba from attack helped to convince the Spanish state of the “utility” of Africans for achieving its imperial ambitions and the wisdom of procuring, on its own, more populations of African descent for its overseas colonies. In addition, disloyalty among elites during the occupation convinced Spain that the way to tie the island better to its sovereign was to make more enslaved Africans available to these eager buyers.","PeriodicalId":184433,"journal":{"name":"The Occupation of Havana","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124066692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“La dominación inglesa”","authors":"Elena A. Schneider","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469645353.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 focuses on Havana elites during the city’s eleven-month occupation by British forces. Eager to trade for goods and enslaved Africans with their frequent commercial partners, Havana’s elite residents ended up betraying those who had fought so hard to ward off the British attack. During the occupation, they cozied up to the British commander Lord Albemarle and seized commercial opportunities in the hybrid space they so often occupied, where layers of British and Spanish empire overlapped. Ultimately, Albemarle’s army was too weak and his governing practices were too corrupt for the occupation to have a lasting economic impact on Havana, but in the meantime the city’s leading merchants and landowners managed to shape the period of British rule to their own advantage.","PeriodicalId":184433,"journal":{"name":"The Occupation of Havana","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133687453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}