Tobacco on the Periphery: A Case Study in Cuban Labour History, 1860-1958

This is the story of Cuban tobacco, whose agricultural and industrial development was fashioned as deftly as a Havana cigar around overseas trading interests. It traces the nineteenth-century growth of a strong tobacco oligarchy, peasant grower class and urban salaried work force, alongside slave and indentured labour, and examines how a prestigious manufacturing country was transformed into an exporter of leaf. Visibly poor peasant agriculture concealed foreign and home capital which, whil...