Captaincy General of Cuba
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Captaincy General of Cuba Capitanía General de Cuba (Spanish) | |||||||||
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1607–1899 | |||||||||
Coat of arms
(19th century) | |||||||||
Anthem: Alfonso XIII (Regent)Maria Christina of Austria | |||||||||
Captain General | |||||||||
• 1764–1779 | Ramón Blanco y Erenas | ||||||||
Historical era | Early modern Europe | ||||||||
• Administrative reorganisation | 1607 | ||||||||
December 10 1899 | |||||||||
Currency | Spanish dollar, Spanish peseta | ||||||||
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Today part of | Cuba |
History of Cuba |
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Governorate of Cuba (1511–1519) |
Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535–1821) |
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Captaincy General of Cuba (1607–1898) |
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US Military Government (1898–1902) |
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Republic of Cuba (1902–1959) |
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Republic of Cuba (1959–) |
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Timeline |
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Topical |
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Cuba portal |
The Captaincy General of Cuba (
.The restructuring of the Captaincy General in 1764 was the first example of the Bourbon Reforms in America. The changes included adding the provinces of Florida and Louisiana and granting more autonomy to these provinces. This later change was carried out by the Count of Floridablanca under Charles III to strengthen the Spanish position vis-a-vis the British in the Caribbean. A new governor-captain general based in Havana oversaw the administration of the new district. The local governors of the larger Captaincy General had previously been overseen in political and military matters by the president of the Audiencia of Santo Domingo. This audiencia retained oversight of judicial affairs until the establishment of new audiencias in Puerto Príncipe (1800) and Havana (1838).
In 1825, as a result of the loss of the mainland possessions, the Spanish government granted the governors-captain generals of Cuba extraordinary powers in matters of administration, justice and the treasury and in the second half of the 19th century gave them the title of
History
Antecedents
Since the 16th century the island of Cuba had been under the control of the governor-captain general of
The conquest of Cuba was organized in 1510 by the recently restored Viceroy of the Indies,
In 1565 the Adelantado Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who was also Captain General of the Spanish treasure fleet which rendezvoused in Havana, established the first permanent Spanish settlement in Florida, San Agustín, initially bringing the province under the administrative control of Cuba, although due to distance and sea currents, Florida's government was granted the right to correspond directly with the Council of the Indies.
The Church played an important role in the Spanish settlement of the Americas. Furthermore, since governors, as representatives of the King, oversaw church administration due to the crown's right of
Establishment
In 1607 Philip III created the Captaincy General of Cuba as part of larger plans to defend the Caribbean against foreign threats. The first captain general was Pedro Valdés. Around the same time other captaincies general were established in Puerto Rico (1580) and Central America (1609). Cuba was divided into two governorships with capitals in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. The governor of Havana was Captain General of the island. In 1650 Cuba received a large influx of refugees when the English captured Jamaica and expelled the Spanish settlers in the colony.
In 1756 the construction of ships for the Spanish Navy began with the establishment of an Intendancy of the Navy in Havana, which functioned as a royal shipyard.
The British capture of the island in 1762 during the Seven Years' War proved to be a turning point in the history of Cuba and Spanish America in general. The British captured Havana after a three-month siege and controlled the western part of the island for a year. Britain returned Cuba in exchange for Florida in the Treaty of Paris. The events revealed not only the weaknesses of the region's defenses but also proved just how much the Cuban economy had been neglected by the Spanish. During the year they controlled Cuba, the British and their American colonies conducted an unprecedented amount of trade with the island.[1] A year earlier France had secretly ceded Louisiana to Spain in compensation for its losses as its ally during the war.
As a sign of the seriousness with which the government took the problems, the very year the Spanish retook control of Havana construction began on what would become the largest Spanish fort in the New World, San Carlos de la Cabaña on the eastern side of the entrance to harbor of Havana.
The Bourbon Reforms
Starting in 1764 the government apparatus of Cuba was completely restructured. A report on the island was created by
These reforms, especially the institution of the intendancy, initiated a dramatic social and economic transformation of the island during the last half of the 18th century and early 19th. Cuba went from being a defensive post in the Caribbean sustained by a subsidy from New Spain, the situado, to becoming a self-sustaining and flourishing, sugar-, coffee- and tobacco-exporting colony, which also meant that large number of
Territorial gains and losses
During the
The transfer of the Spanish part of
The Church also experienced growth. In 1787 a Diocese of San Cristóbal de La Habana was established, which included Florida and Louisiana in its territory. In 1793 the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas was established. Both were suffragan to the Archdiocese of Santo Domingo, but after the Treaty of Basel, it disappeared, so Santiago de Cuba was elevated to an Archdiocese with the above-mentioned dioceses suffragan to it, as well as the Diocese of Puerto Rico.
The 19th century
The
The death of Ferdinand VII brought about new changes. Regent María Cristina reconvened the Cortes, in its traditional form with three estates. In 1836, Constitutional government was reestablished in Spain, except this time the government in Spain, despite its liberal tendencies, defined the overseas territories as colonies, which should be governed by special laws. The democratic institutions, such as the Diputación Provincial and the cabildos, established by the 1812 Constitution were removed. The new Constitution of 1837 ratified Cuba's demoted status. However, the "special laws" by which the overseas areas would be governed were not drafted until three decades later, when a special Junta Informativa de Reformas de Ultramar (Overseas Informative Reform Board), with representatives from Cuba and Puerto Rico, was convened in 1865. Even then its proposals were never made into laws.
On 24 August 1821 the new Mexican Empire under Emperor Don Agustin de Iturbide, gave back the Island of Cuba and its Captaincy to the Spanish crown in good faith.[citation needed]
In the 1830s, judicial affairs were restructured. An Audiencia of Havana was created in 1838, with the jurisdiction of the Puerto Príncipe Audiencia limited to the east and center of the island. (The latter was temporarily abolished from 1853 to 1868.)
In 1851 the filibustering Lopez Expedition from the United States led by Narciso López and William Crittenden failed with many of the participants being executed. Three years later the territory was the subject of the Ostend Manifesto by which several American diplomats discussed a scheme to purchase Cuba from Spain, or even take it by force.
By mid-century a definite pro-independence movement had coalesced, and Cuba experienced three civil wars in thirty years that culminated in a US intervention and the island's eventual independence: the
Social dynamics
Population
The population of Cuba in 1899 when the Spanish rule had ended was 1,572,797 which was 9.2 times larger than the population in 1775 and during that year 171,620 people were reported living on the island.[3]
In Cuba, the western part of the island became the most developed due to Havana's port traffic and its ensuing commerce.[3] By 1763, Havana had a population of around 50,000 which made it comparable to Lima.[4] By the year 1790, Havana and the area surrounding it had a population close to 100,000 which made it the 3rd largest urban area in the Americas and was bigger than other cities in the Caribbean.[5]
Slavery and economics
Between 1790 and 1821, 240,721 slaves were imported to Cuba from Africa.[6] By the mid-19th century the slave population in Cuba was close to a half of a million with most working in the sugar industry.[7] Slavery in Cuba existed until being abolished in 1886.[8]
Cuba's sugar trade in the 19th century dramatically grew and along with it so did the usage of slavery and number of slaves on the island. By 1830, Cuba was the world's largest producer of sugar. Also in 1830 the United States became Cuba's biggest trading partner as the US was cut off from its previous supply in the British West Indies and Hispaniola. Initially, sugar plantations were built around ports and in particular Havana because overland transport was costly, slow and difficult taking the form of large ox-cart trains transporting sugar. A railroad network was developed as a result of overland limitations with the first railroad line being built in 1837 between Havana and Güines spanning 82 kilometres (51 mi). The railroad allowed for the sugar industry to grow farther. The length of Cuba's railroad network grew from 618 kilometres (384 mi) in the 1850s to 1,218 kilometres (757 mi) by 1860.[7]
With the elimination of the slave trade, imported Chinese Chinese contract laborers functioned as a replacement similar to other locations in the Caribbean. These laborers were exclusively male and recruited between the ages of 16 and 40 to serve for contracts ranging from 4 to 10 years. When Chinese laborers arrived in Cuba starting in 1847 they found themselves practically bound to the plantations and working under similar conditions to slaves whom previously worked their. When completing their contracts, some opted to stay in Cuba while others decided to return home to China. The practice of importing Chinese laborers lasted until the 1880s and 1890s.[5]
The telegraph was introduced to Cuba in 1851 and a telegraph network was soon made covering the whole island.[7] An underwater telegraph cable was installed between Florida and Cuba in 1867.[9]
Havana functioned as a port city and military outpost with several thousand soldiers and sailors being stationed there permanently.[5]
Gallery
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Coat of arms of the Captaincy General of Cuba (Savoyard rule, 1870 – 1873)
See also
- List of colonial governors of Cuba
- Piracy in the Caribbean
- British expedition against Cuba
- History of Cuba
Notes
- ^ As depicted on the main portal of the Palace of the Captains General in Havana, arms in use until the transfer of the island to the US
References
- ISBN 0-306-80827-7.
- ^ "Autonomic Constitution of 1897" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2012-06-29.
- ^ a b Forte, Javiher Gutiérrez (2022). "CHAPTER 10 Spanish Colonization's Mark on Cuba". (Post-)colonial Archipelagos: Comparing the Legacies of Spanish Colonialism in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. University of Michigan Press – via JSTOR.
- ^ Corbett, Theodore G. (1975). "Population Structure in Hispanic St. Augustine, 1629-1763". Florida Historical Quarterly. 54 (3) – via STARS.
- ^ a b c Knight, Franklin W. (2008). Migration and Culture: A Case Study of Cuba, 1750-1900 (PDF). Johns Hopkins University.
- ^ Murray, D. R. (1971). "Statistics of the Slave Trade to Cuba, 1790-1867". Journal of Latin American Studies. 3 (2): 134 – via JSTOR.
- ^ a b c Tomich, Dale (June 1991). "World Slavery and Caribbean Capitalism: The Cuban Sugar Industry, 1760-1868". Theory and Society. 20 (3) – via JSTOR.
- ^ Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher (2008). "Empires against Emancipation: Spain, Brazil, and the Abolition of Slavery". Review (Fernand Braudel Center) – via JSTOR.
In Cuba, planters and their metropolitan allies delayed a final emancipation law until 1886.
- ^ Hambright, Tom (2010). "KEY WEST & CUBA BECOME LINK FOR INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS: INTERNATIONAL OCEAN TELEGRAPH CO. IN KEY WEST". History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network. Retrieved October 1, 2023.
- ^ Zamora y Coronado, José María (1846). Biblioteca de Legislación Ultramarina (Vol. 5). Madrid: Imprenta de J. Martín Alegría. p. 105.
- ^ Real Academia Matritense de Heráldica y Genealogía (1993). Pendón de la Banda. Madrid: Instituto de España. p. 44.
Bibliography
- ISBN 0-87049-487-2.