Colonial Cuba

Yesterday, we launched a three-day learning cruise to Cuba by sizing up the nation's current numbers. Today and tomorrow, we're reviewing Cuban history, from ancient times to Fidel Castro's rise.

Cuba is a Caribbean island roughly the size of Pennsylvania, strategically located just 90 shark-infested miles (145 shark-infested km) from Florida. Its earliest inhabitants arrived thousands of years ago and lived an island-style hunting and gathering life (which sounds a lot better than, say, an Arctic-style hunting and gathering life).

By the late 15th century, the island was home to perhaps 100,000 people, most of whom lived in thatched houses and survived by hunting, fishing, and working simple farms. Then, in 1492, a mysterious stranger named Christopher Columbus showed up and started charting Cuba's coast.

Spanish Spoils

Columbus may have "discovered" Cuba, but he thought the place was an Asian peninsula. Cuba's colonial era really got going in 1511, when Spanish settlers led by the conquistador Diego Velázquez began to arrive in force--and promptly forced the native Cubans to do their bidding.

By the 1550s, European guns, germs, and greed had savaged the indigenous population, which fell to perhaps 3,000 people. Meanwhile, stories of easily mined precious metals enticed many Spaniards to the American mainland. To keep their own mines and farms working, Cuba's remaining Spaniards relied increasingly on African slaves.

The 17th century produced epidemics, pirate raids, colonial power grabs, and a racially mixed Cuban population. Few Spanish women settled in Cuba, and African slaves were legally empowered to buy their freedom. Before long, biracial babies were common, and so were fertile mixtures of music, language, and other cultural traditions.

Sugar Highs and Lows

During the 18th century, sugar became Cuba's main cash crop, and the plantations that produced it began to expand. Other foreign trade picked up, too, especially after the British captured Havana in 1762. The British gave the port back to Spain after just 10 months, but Havana's importance as a commercial center continued to grow.

So did Cuba itself. Over the next century, the island's population increased nearly tenfold. The biggest boom came after 1791, when a slave revolt in Haiti destroyed many of that nation's sugar plantations--and so made Cuba the world's chief sugar producer.

By the mid-19th century, Cuba's slave-powered plantations fed steam-powered sugar mills that generated nearly one-third of the world's sugar. For sugar tycoons, life was sweet. For slaves, it was miserable. For others, including a population of free blacks nearly as large as the population of slaves, it was somewhere in between.

South of South Beach

As "Big Sugar" boomed, some U.S. planters took a keen interest in Cuba, which traded more with the United States than with mother Spain. In 1848, the United States offered to buy Cuba for $100 million. In 1854, the offer increased to $130 million. But Spain wasn't selling.

Of course, Cuban revolutionaries had their own ideas about who should own Cuba. Eventually, they won Cuba's independence with help from the United States--which sent Spain packing from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the Spanish-American War of 1898. Cuba's colonial era ended. But America's influence waxed as Spain's waned, and a new era of contentious relations began.

Tune in tomorrow for the final leg of our Cuban expedition, when we'll explore the old Cuban republic and track Fidel Castro's rise.