Nature, Culture, and Race in Colonial Cuba: Nature, Culture, and Power in Colonial Cuba

A new and necessary examination of how nineteenth-century Cuban white elites viewed the natural world, material culture, and political power as intertwined

In the decades before the Cuban wars of independence, white elites exploited the island’s natural history and culture to redefine racial identity and reassert authority. These practices occurred in the face of challenges to their political power from Cubans of mixed race and as Cuba’s dependence on sugar led to ecological and economic p...