On Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century

Havana is such an interesting city—although early Spanish records portray it as a mere stop-over, meant for refueling and organizing rations, by the late eighteenth century, it was of such importance that the British felt the need to conquer it. By the nineteenth century, Cuba loomed large in the American (United Statesian) imagination of southern slaveholders. By the twentieth century, it was probably the most single important city in the Caribbean (excepting Miami, or New Orleans in the nineteenth century). How did this happen?

Fuente argues that, although it was a “mere stop-over,” its status as a temporary point for rest turned it into a critical node in the Spanish colonial empire. Ships constantly traveled through the port, and the city was built up in a way to cater to sailors who had either completed a long voyage across the Atlantic or would soon do so after departing from other Spanish American cities. Those who were coming from other points in the Americas brought large amounts of silver—largely from the silver mines of Mexico, while the city developed a large (free) labor force consisting largely of African slaves—slavery and its production looms really large here, as the wealth produced on sugar plantations largely supported Havana after its construction through Mexican silver. Between these two factors, Havana was able to cultivate a level of prosperity that few other port cities could. It helped that Havana was so defensible—in part by its position, but also in the way that inhabitants developed immunity to malaria and yellow fever (as covered in Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914).

In spite of the problems that Cuba faces, Havana is one of those cities that I’ve really wanted to visit since President Obama re-initiated relations with the Cuban state. I know that much of this is due to the prominence of instagramming and romanticizing a city that has faced tragedy at the hands of Castro’s regime, but it also seems relatively unique—as unique as a single city can be, at least. Fuente does and excellent job here explaining how that came to be.