ABSTRACT
The Last Kingdom of the Indies: Cuba, 1801-1836 The remarkable development of material culture in Cuba between 1800 and 1868 has been analyzed in a beautifully illustrated book, Cuba entre la opulencia y la pobreza (Madrid: Aldaba Ediciones, 2004), by Ismael Sarmiento Ramírez. Coffee was introduced in Cuba by French colonists fleeing the slave rebellions that took place in present-day Haiti between 1791 and 1804, and Cuba became a major exporter of coffee.1 Sugar production in Cuba grew enormously after the royal government began to protect it in the last decade of the eighteenth century. It expanded east from the Havana area and brought wealth to smaller cities like Matanzas and Trinidad. The cultivation of sugar cane and the production of finished sugar near Trinidad expanded over an area covering three valleys that became known as El Valle de los Ingenios (“The Valley of the Sugar Mills”). The wealth produced by sugar and slave labor in that area enriched several clans, such as that of the Iznaga family, who became prominent in Cuba and abroad. These local magnates built in Trinidad palatial homes and public buildings like Teatro Brunet, on whose account today this city is considered a World Heritage site.2 Tobacco was the largest Cuban export after sugar. Cuban tobacco leaf was sold as a commodity, and Cuban hand-rolled cigars became luxury manufactures. Skilled cigar makers were a labor aristocracy. In 1864, workers at the Viñas cigar factory in Bejucal hired a reader to read to them while they rolled cigars. It was at Bejucal in that year, in the factory of Facundo Acosta, that a reader first mounted a platform for his reading.3 This practice became a widespread self-improvement measure that Cuban cigar workers later on introduced in the United States of America, at Key West, Tampa, and New York City. Economic growth encouraged the introduction of new means of transportation in the island. The first steamboat appeared in 1819, a concession granted to Juan O’Farrill. As early as 1823, three steamboats plied regularly between Havana, Matanzas, Cárdenas, San Juan de los Remedios, and Bahía Honda. In the early 1830s, the first railroad was constructed in Havana with support from the Spanish Crown. A loan of $2 million was raised from a British financing company to be paid for by a specific import/export tax, for a rail line from Havana to Güines that was completed in 1837. By 1860, there were nearly 400 miles of railway in Cuba.4
