However, in practical terms, French law comprises three principal areas of law: Criminal laws can only address the future and not the past criminal ex post facto laws are prohibited. France does not recognise religious law as a motivation for the enactment of prohibitions. France has long had neither blasphemy laws nor sodomy laws the latter being abolished in Since , civil unions for homosexual couples are permitted, and since May , same-sex marriage and LGBT adoption are legal in France.
Some consider however that hate speech laws in France are too broad or severe and damage freedom of speech. Freedom of religion is constitutionally guaranteed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Nonetheless, it does recognize religious associations. The Parliament has listed many religious movements as dangerous cults since , and has banned wearing conspicuous religious symbols in schools since In , it banned the wearing of face-covering Islamic veils in public ; human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described the law as discriminatory towards Muslims.
France is a founding member of the United Nations and serves as one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights. Postwar French foreign policy has been largely shaped by membership of the European Union, of which it was a founding member. Since the s , France has developed close ties with reunified Germany to become the most influential driving force of the EU.
However, since , France has maintained an " Entente cordiale " with the United Kingdom , and there has been a strengthening of links between the countries, especially militarily. France is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NATO , but under President de Gaulle, it excluded itself from the joint military command to protest the special relationship between the United States and Britain and to preserve the independence of French foreign and security policies. However, as a result of Nicolas Sarkozy's pro-American politics much criticised in France by the leftists and by a part of the right , France rejoined the NATO joint military command on 4 April In the early s, the country drew considerable criticism from other nations for its underground nuclear tests in French Polynesia.
In , France was the fourth-largest in absolute terms donor of development aid in the world, behind the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Together they are among the largest armed forces in the world and the largest in the EU. While the Gendarmerie is an integral part of the French armed forces gendarmes are career soldiers , and therefore under the purview of the Ministry of the Armed Forces , it is operationally attached to the Ministry of the Interior as far as its civil police duties are concerned.
When acting as general purpose police force, the Gendarmerie encompasses the counter terrorist units of the Parachute Intervention Squadron of the National Gendarmerie Escadron Parachutiste d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale , the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale , the Search Sections of the National Gendarmerie Sections de Recherche de la Gendarmerie Nationale , responsible for criminal enquiries, and the Mobile Brigades of the National Gendarmerie Brigades mobiles de la Gendarmerie Nationale , or in short Gendarmerie mobile which have the task to maintain public order.
The following special units are also part of the Gendarmerie: There has been no national conscription since France has a special military corps, the French Foreign Legion , founded in , which consists of foreign nationals from over countries who are willing to serve in the French Armed Forces and become French citizens after the end of their service period. The only other countries having similar units are Spain the Spanish Foreign Legion, called Tercio , was founded in and Luxembourg foreigners can serve in the National Army provided they speak Luxembourgish.
France is a permanent member of the Security Council of the UN , and a recognised nuclear state since French nuclear deterrence, formerly known as " Force de Frappe " , relies on complete independence. The current French nuclear force consists of four Triomphant class submarines equipped with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. France has major military industries with one of the largest aerospace industries in the world.
France is a major arms seller, [] [] with most of its arsenal's designs available for the export market with the notable exception of nuclear-powered devices. Other smaller parades are organised across the country. The Government of France has run a budget deficit each year since the early s. As of [update] , French government debt levels reached 2. A member of the Group of Seven formerly Group of Eight leading industrialised countries, as of [update] , it is ranked as the world's ninth largest and the EU's second largest economy by purchasing power parity.
France has a mixed economy that combines extensive private enterprise [] [] with substantial state enterprise and government intervention. The government retains considerable influence over key segments of infrastructure sectors, with majority ownership of railway, electricity, aircraft, nuclear power and telecommunications. As of [update] , the World Trade Organization WTO reported France was the world's sixth largest exporter and the fourth largest importer of manufactured goods. Financial services, banking and the insurance sector are an important part of the economy. Three largest financial institutions cooperatively owned by their customers are located in France.
France is a member of the Eurozone around million consumers which is part of the European Single Market more than million consumers. Several domestic commercial policies are determined by agreements among European Union EU members and by EU legislation. France introduced the common European currency, the Euro in French companies have maintained key positions in the insurance and banking industries: AXA is the world's largest insurance company. France has historically been a large producer of agricultural products. Wheat, poultry, dairy, beef, and pork, as well as internationally recognised processed foods are the primary French agricultural exports.
Agriculture is an important sector of France's economy: It is third in income from tourism due to shorter duration of visits. France, especially Paris, has some of the world's largest and renowned museums, including the Louvre , which is the most visited art museum in the world 5. Disneyland Paris is Europe's most popular theme park, with 15 million combined visitors to the resort's Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park in With more than 10 millions tourists a year, the French Riviera French: With 6 millions tourists a year, the castles of the Loire Valley French: France has 37 sites inscribed in UNESCO's World Heritage List and features cities of high cultural interest, beaches and seaside resorts, ski resorts, and rural regions that many enjoy for their beauty and tranquillity green tourism.
The " Remarkable Gardens " label is a list of the over gardens classified by the French Ministry of Culture. This label is intended to protect and promote remarkable gardens and parks. France attracts many religious pilgrims on their way to St. France is the smallest emitter of carbon dioxide among the G8 , due to its heavy investment in nuclear power. Rail connections exist to all other neighbouring countries in Europe, except Andorra. French roads also handle substantial international traffic, connecting with cities in neighbouring Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Andorra and Monaco.
There is no annual registration fee or road tax ; however, usage of the mostly privately owned motorways is through tolls except in the vicinity of large communes. There are airports in France. Air France is the national carrier airline, although numerous private airline companies provide domestic and international travel services. There are ten major ports in France, the largest of which is in Marseille , [] which also is the largest bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Since the Middle Ages , France has been a major contributor to scientific and technological achievement.
Around the beginning of the 11th century, Pope Sylvester II , born Gerbert d'Aurillac, reintroduced the abacus and armillary sphere , and introduced Arabic numerals and clocks to Northern and Western Europe. They were both key figures of the Scientific revolution , which blossomed in Europe during this period. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is one of the earliest academies of sciences. Other eminent French scientists of the 19th century have their names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Hand transplantation was developed on 23 September in Lyon by a team assembled from different countries around the world including Jean-Michel Dubernard who, shortly thereafter, performed the first successful double hand transplant. France was the fourth country to achieve nuclear capability [] and has the third largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world.
It also owns Minatec , Europe's leading nanotechnology research center. The TGV has been the fastest wheeled train in commercial use since reaching a speed of As of [update] , 69 French people have been awarded a Nobel Prize [] and 12 have received the Fields Medal. With an estimated total population of France is also second most populous country in the European Union after Germany.
France is an outlier among developed countries in general, and European countries in particular, in having a fairly high rate of natural population growth: This was the highest rate since the end of the baby boom in , and coincides with the rise of the total fertility rate from a nadir of 1. As of January [update] the fertility rate was 1. Large-scale immigration over the last century and a half has led to a more multicultural society.
Cuba : A voir, météo, monuments - Guide de voyage - Tourisme
A law originating from the revolution and reaffirmed in the French Constitution makes it illegal for the French state to collect data on ethnicity and ancestry. There are also sizeable minorities of other European ethnic groups , namely Spanish , Portuguese , Polish , and Greek. France has a significant Gypsy Gitan population, numbering between 20, and , France remains a major destination for immigrants, accepting about , legal immigrants annually.
Thus, nearly a fifth of the country's population were either first or second-generation immigrants, of which more than 5 million were of European origin and 4 million of Maghrebi ancestry. According to the French Institute, this increase resulting from the financial crisis that hit several European countries in that period, has pushed up the number of Europeans installed in France. France is a highly urbanized country, with its largest cities in terms of metropolitan area population in [] being Paris 12,, inh. There are significant differences between the metropolitan population figures just cited and those in the following table, which only include the core population.
Rural flight was a perennial political issue throughout most of the 20th century. According to Article 2 of the Constitution, the official language of France is French, [] a Romance language derived from Latin. The French government does not regulate the choice of language in publications by individuals but the use of French is required by law in commercial and workplace communications. In addition to mandating the use of French in the territory of the Republic, the French government tries to promote French in the European Union and globally through institutions such as La Francophonie.
The perceived threat from anglicisation has prompted efforts to safeguard the position of the French language in France. Besides French, there exist 77 vernacular minority languages of France, eight spoken in French metropolitan territory and 69 in the French overseas territories. From the 17th to the midth century, French served as the pre-eminent international language of diplomacy and international affairs as well as a lingua franca among the educated classes of Europe.
For most of the time in which French served as an international lingua franca, it was not the native language of most Frenchmen: As a result of France's extensive colonial ambitions between the 17th and 20th centuries, French was introduced to the Americas, Africa, Polynesia, South-East Asia, and the Caribbean.
French is the second most studied foreign language in the world after English, [] and is a lingua franca in some regions, notably in Africa. The legacy of French as a living language outside Europe is mixed: On the other hand, many former French colonies have adopted French as an official language, and the total number of French speakers is increasing, especially in Africa. It is estimated that between million [] and million [] people worldwide can speak French, either as a mother tongue or a second language. According to the Adult Education survey, part of a project by the European Union and carried in France by the Insee and based on a sample of 15, persons, French was the first mother tongue of People who had other languages as their mother tongue made up the 5.
Religion in France [2]. France is a secular country, and freedom of religion is a constitutional right. Catholicism has been the predominant religion in France for more than a millennium, though it is not as actively practised today as it was.
French language
In some cases clergy and churches were attacked, with iconoclasm stripping the churches of statues and ornament. It recognises religious organisations according to formal legal criteria that do not address religious doctrine. Conversely, religious organisations are expected to refrain from intervening in policy-making. Secte is considered a pejorative term in France. The French health care system is one of universal health care largely financed by government national health insurance. In its assessment of world health care systems, the World Health Organization found that France provided the "close to best overall health care" in the world.
Average life expectancy at birth is 78 years for men and 85 years for women, one of the highest of the European Union and the World. Even if the French have the reputation of being one of the thinnest people in developed countries, [] [] [] [] [] [] France—like other rich countries—faces an increasing and recent epidemic of obesity , due mostly to the replacement in French eating habits of traditional healthy French cuisine by junk food.
Rates of childhood obesity are slowing in France, while continuing to grow in other countries. Nowadays, the schooling system in France is centralised, and is composed of three stages, primary education, secondary education, and higher education. In France, education is compulsory from six to sixteen years old, and the public school is secular and free.
While training and remuneration of teachers and the curriculum are the responsibility of the state centrally, the management of primary and secondary schools is overseen by local authorities. Nursery school aims to stimulate the minds of very young children and promote their socialisation and development of a basic grasp of language and number. Around the age of six, children transfer to elementary school, whose primary objectives are learning about writing, arithmetic and citizenship. Secondary education also consists of two phases. Health insurance for students is free until the age of France has been a centre of Western cultural development for centuries.
Many French artists have been among the most renowned of their time, and France is still recognised in the world for its rich cultural tradition. The successive political regimes have always promoted artistic creation, and the creation of the Ministry of Culture in helped preserve the cultural heritage of the country and make it available to the public. The Ministry of Culture has been very active since its creation, granting subsidies to artists, promoting French culture in the world, supporting festivals and cultural events, protecting historical monuments.
The French government also succeeded in maintaining a cultural exception to defend audiovisual products made in the country. France receives the highest number of tourists per year, largely thanks to the numerous cultural establishments and historical buildings implanted all over the territory. The 43, buildings protected as historical monuments include mainly residences many castles and religious buildings cathedrals , basilicas , churches , but also statutes, memorials and gardens. The origins of French art were very much influenced by Flemish art and by Italian art at the time of the Renaissance.
Jean Fouquet , the most famous medieval French painter, is said to have been the first to travel to Italy and experience the Early Renaissance at first hand. The Renaissance painting School of Fontainebleau was directly inspired by Italian painters such as Primaticcio and Rosso Fiorentino , who both worked in France. The 17th century was the period when French painting became prominent and individualised itself through classicism.
In the second part of the 19th century, France's influence over painting became even more important, with the development of new styles of painting such as Impressionism and Symbolism. Many museums in France are entirely or partly devoted to sculptures and painting works. During the Middle Ages, many fortified castles were built by feudal nobles to mark their powers.
During this era, France had been using Romanesque architecture like most of Western Europe. Some of the greatest examples of Romanesque churches in France are the Saint Sernin Basilica in Toulouse , the largest romanesque church in Europe, [] and the remains of the Cluniac Abbey. The kings were crowned in another important Gothic church: The final victory in the Hundred Years' War marked an important stage in the evolution of French architecture.
Following the renaissance and the end of the Middle Ages, Baroque architecture replaced the traditional Gothic style. However, in France, baroque architecture found a greater success in the secular domain than in a religious one. Jules Hardouin Mansart , who designed the extensions to Versailles, was one of the most influential French architect of the baroque era; he is famous for his dome at Les Invalides. On the military architectural side, Vauban designed some of the most efficient fortresses in Europe and became an influential military architect; as a result, imitations of his works can be found all over Europe, the Americas, Russia and Turkey.
After the Revolution, the Republicans favoured Neoclassicism although neoclassicism was introduced in France prior to the revolution with such building as the Parisian Pantheon or the Capitole de Toulouse. Under Napoleon III , a new wave of urbanism and architecture was given birth; extravagant buildings such as the neo-baroque Palais Garnier were built. The urban planning of the time was very organised and rigorous; for example, Haussmann's renovation of Paris. The architecture associated to this era is named Second Empire in English, the term being taken from the Second French Empire.
In the late 19th century, Gustave Eiffel designed many bridges, such as Garabit viaduct , and remains one of the most influential bridge designers of his time, although he is best remembered for the iconic Eiffel Tower. More recently, French architects have combined both modern and old architectural styles. The Louvre Pyramid is an example of modern architecture added to an older building.
The most difficult buildings to integrate within French cities are skyscrapers, as they are visible from afar. For instance, in Paris, since , new buildings had to be under 37 meters feet. The earliest French literature dates from the Middle Ages , when what is now known as modern France did not have a single, uniform language. There were several languages and dialects and writers used their own spelling and grammar. Much medieval French poetry and literature were inspired by the legends of the Matter of France , such as The Song of Roland and the various chansons de geste.
The Roman de Renart , written in by Perrout de Saint Cloude, tells the story of the mediaeval character Reynard 'the Fox' and is another example of early French writing. Michel de Montaigne was the other major figure of the French literature during that century. His most famous work, Essais , created the literary genre of the essay. Generations of French pupils had to learn his fables, that were seen as helping teaching wisdom and common sense to the young people. French literature and poetry flourished even more in the 18th and 19th centuries. During that same century, Charles Perrault was a prolific writer of famous children's fairy tales including Puss in Boots , Cinderella , Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard.
The 19th century saw the writings of many renowned French authors. Victor Hugo is sometimes seen as "the greatest French writer of all times" [] for excelling in all literary genres. The preface of his play Cromwell is considered to be the manifesto of the Romantic movement. The Prix Goncourt is a French literary prize first awarded in Medieval philosophy was dominated by Scholasticism until the emergence of Humanism in the Renaissance.
Descartes revitalised Western philosophy , which had been declined after the Greek and Roman eras. French philosophers produced some of the most important political works of the Age of Enlightenment. In The Spirit of the Laws , Baron de Montesquieu theorised the principle of separation of powers , which has been implemented in all liberal democracies since it was first applied in the United States.
Voltaire came to embody the Enlightenment with his defence of civil liberties, such as the right to a free trial and freedom of religion. In the 20th century, partly as a reaction to the perceived excesses of positivism, French spiritualism thrived with thinkers such as Henri Bergson and it influenced American pragmatism and Whitehead 's version of process philosophy. France has a long and varied musical history.
It experienced a golden age in the 17th century thanks to Louis XIV, who employed a number of talented musicians and composers in the royal court. After the death of the "Roi Soleil", French musical creation lost dynamism, but in the next century the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau reached some prestige, and today he is still one of the most renowned French composers. Rameau became the dominant composer of French opera and the leading French composer for the harpsichord. French composers played an important role during the music of the 19th and early 20th century, which is considered to be the Romantic music era.
Romantic music emphasised a surrender to nature, a fascination with the past and the supernatural, the exploration of unusual, strange and surprising sounds, and a focus on national identity. This period was also a golden age for operas. French composers from the Romantic era included: Later came precursors of modern classical music.
Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy are the most prominent figures associated with Impressionist music. Debussy was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his use of non-traditional scales and chromaticism influenced many composers who followed. The two composers invented new musical forms [] [] [] [] and new sounds.
Ravel's piano compositions, such as Jeux d'eau , Miroirs , Le tombeau de Couperin and Gaspard de la nuit , demand considerable virtuosity. More recently, the middle of the 20th century, Maurice Ohana , Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Boulez contributed to the evolutions of contemporary classical music. French music then followed the rapid emergence of pop and rock music at the middle of the 20th century. In the s and s decade , electronic duos Daft Punk , Justice and Air also reached worldwide popularity and contributed to the reputation of modern electronic music in the world.
Among current musical events and institutions in France, many are dedicated to classical music and operas. It is noted for having a strong film industry, due in part to protections afforded by the French government. France remains a leader in filmmaking, as of [update] producing more films than any other European country. Apart from its strong and innovative film tradition, France has also been a gathering spot for artists from across Europe and the world.
For this reason, French cinema is sometimes intertwined with the cinema of foreign nations. Conversely, French directors have had prolific and influential careers in other countries, such as Luc Besson , Jacques Tourneur , or Francis Veber in the United States. Until recently, France had for centuries been the cultural center of the world, [] although its dominant position has been surpassed by the United States.
Subsequently, France takes steps in protecting and promoting its culture, becoming a leading advocate of the cultural exception. S and Israel, voted against it. Fashion has been an important industry and cultural export of France since the 17th century, and modern "haute couture" originated in Paris in the s. Today, Paris, along with London, Milan, and New York City, is considered one of the world's fashion capitals, and the city is home or headquarters to many of the premier fashion houses.
The expression Haute couture is, in France, a legally protected name, guaranteeing certain quality standards. The association of France with fashion and style French: But France renewed its dominance of the high fashion French: The French perfume industry is world leader in its sector and is centered on the town of Grasse. In the s, the elitist "Haute couture" came under criticism from France's youth culture.
The s saw a conglomeration of many French couture houses under luxury giants and multinationals such as LVMH. The most influential news magazines are the left-wing Le Nouvel Observateur , centrist L'Express and right-wing Le Point more than Like in most industrialised nations, the print media have been affected by a severe crisis in the past decade.
In , the government launched a major initiative to help the sector reform and become financially independent, [] [] but in it had to give , euros to help the print media cope with the economic crisis , in addition to existing subsidies. In , after years of centralised monopoly on radio and television, the governmental agency ORTF was split into several national institutions, but the three already-existing TV channels and four national radio stations [] [] remained under state-control. It was only in that the government allowed free broadcasting in the territory, ending state monopoly on radio.
In , the government created global news channel France According to a BBC poll in , based on 29, responses in 28 countries, France is globally seen as a positive influence in the world's affairs: According to a poll in , the French were found to have the highest level of religious tolerance and to be the country where the highest proportion of the population defines its identity primarily in term of nationality and not religion. The French Revolution continues to permeate the country's collective memory. In addition, Bastille Day , the national holiday, commemorates the storming of the Bastille on 14 July A common and traditional symbol of the French people is the Gallic rooster.
Its origins date back to Antiquity, since the Latin word Gallus meant both " rooster " and "inhabitant of Gaul". Then this figure gradually became the most widely shared representation of the French, used by French monarchs, then by the Revolution and under the successive republican regimes as representation of the national identity, used for some stamps and coins. French cuisine is renowned for being one of the finest in the world. France's most renowned products are wines , [] including Champagne , Bordeaux , Bourgogne , and Beaujolais as well as a large variety of different cheeses , such as Camembert , Roquefort and Brie.
There are more than different varieties. The plat principal could include a pot au feu or steak frites. French cuisine is also regarded as a key element of the quality of life and the attractiveness of France. By , the Michelin Guide had awarded stars to French restaurants, at that time more than any other country, although the guide also inspects more restaurants in France than in any other country by , Japan was awarded as many Michelin stars as France, despite having half the number of Michelin inspectors working there.
In addition to its wine tradition, France is also a major producer of beer and rum. Since , France hosts the annual Tour de France , the most famous road bicycle race in the world. French martial arts include Savate and Fencing. France has a close association with the Modern Olympic Games; it was a French aristocrat, Baron Pierre de Coubertin , who suggested the Games' revival, at the end of the 19th century. Both the national football team and the national rugby union team are nicknamed " Les Bleus " in reference to the team's shirt colour as well as the national French tricolour flag.
VOYAGE AU CUBA
Football is the most popular sport in France, with over 1,, registered players, and over 18, registered clubs. The top national football club competition is Ligue 1. It is the premier clay court tennis championship event in the world and the second of four annual Grand Slam tournaments. Rugby union is popular, particularly in Paris and the southwest of France. Stemming from a strong domestic league , the French rugby team has won 16 Six Nations Championships, including 8 grand slams ; and has reached the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup 6 times, going on to the final 3 times.
Rugby league in France is mostly played and followed in the South of France, in cities such as Perpignan and Toulouse. The Elite One Championship is the professional competition for rugby league clubs in France. In recent decades, France has produced world-elite basketball players, most notably Tony Parker. The national team has won two Olympic Silver Medals: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For other uses of "La France", see Lafrance disambiguation. For other uses of "France", see France disambiguation. Republic with mainland in Europe and numerous oversea territories. Great Seal of France. Show map of Europe. Source gives area of metropolitan France as , km2 , sq mi and lists overseas regions separately, whose areas sum to 89, km 2 34, sq mi. Adding these give the total shown here for the entire French Republic.
The CIA reports the total as , km2 , sq mi. Gaul , Celts , and Roman Gaul. Francia , Merovingian dynasty , and Carolingian dynasty. List of French monarchs and France in the Middle Ages. Kingdom of France , Capetian dynasty , Valois dynasty , and Bourbon dynasty. France in the 19th century and France in the 20th century. France in the twentieth century. Administrative divisions of France. Centre- Val de Loire. Pays de la Loire. Foreign relations of France. Bastille Day in Paris.
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List of French inventions and discoveries. Demographics of France and French people. Largest cities or towns in France census. Urban area France and Urban unit. French language , Languages of France , and Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. France portal French language and French-speaking world portal. The overseas territories are not part of the French telephone numbering plan; their country calling codes are: All five are considered integral parts of the French Republic. Archived from the original on 5 April Archived from the original PDF on 15 September Population by sex, rate of population increase, surface area and density" PDF.
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Retrieved 31 January Archived from the original on 7 December Archived from the original PDF on 12 March The collapse of sugar production in the black republic of Haiti meant the consolidation of a plantation economy in Cuba, which became the number one producer of sugar in the world.
At the same time, the image of the Haitian revo- lution less than fifty miles from the Cuban coast aroused a sense of fear among Cuban whites surrounded by a growing number of slaves. On the other hand, voices of slave victory in Haiti stirred among Cuban slaves the feeling that freedom was possible. In this section, Ada Ferrer brings fresh insights to existing historiography1 by showing how Cubans had access to detailed news on Haiti and that several contacts existed between the dying slave society of the French Saint-Domingue and Cuban society in which slavery was becoming more solid.
Ferrer argues that, far from being vague, both the fears and the hopes that Haiti aroused were based on real experiences of Creole elites and Cuban slaves. Just as many Spanish American colonies had fought for and achieved independence by and slavery was abolished in the British Caribbean 1 David B. Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, ; David P. Duke University Press, One significant example of how slavery had become the most controversial issue in Cuba before is the public Cuban debate over the Spanish project of sending Cuban freedmen, emancipados, to the African colony of Fernando Po.
This relatively unknown example, discussed by Irene Fattacciu in this section, sheds light on the competing and contradictory colonial policies that Spain imposed upon its first African possession and its last American one. The case of Fernando Po is also rather telling of Cuban creoles attitudes towards freedmen: Unlike the United States where the white elite obtained the independence and shaped the institutions of the new country by maintaining slavery and racial inequality, and unlike Haiti where slaves achieved independence and the white planter class was forced to leave, the ideal Cuban nation would be a raceless and socially egalitarian country.
Yet, as Loredana Giolitto shows in this section, for- mal equality coexisted with racial prejudice and discrimination. Pittsburgh University Press, ; Rebecca J. Scott, Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, Princeton: Race, Nation and Revolution, Chapel Hill: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, Centro de Estudios Martianos, ; Louis A.
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The Florida Experi- ence Tucson: Arizona State University, Ferrer Chapter 1 Cuba in the Age of the Haitian Revolution At the end of the eighteenth-century, the island of Cuba witnessed a transformation both internal and external. Externally, the new changes brought the island into unprecedented commercial engagement with the world.
Dating such transformations is always somewhat artificial, but we can name, for example, the opening of the slave trade as the opening move. To understand this moment of transformation and this particular encounter of Cuba with the world at the end of the eighteenth century, an encounter that would profoundly shape Cuban society in nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we must place those changes in the context of the sweeping revolutionary transformations that engulfed the region in the same moment.
Then, in the small but prosperous colony of French Saint-Domingue, less than fifty miles from the Cuban coast, a world built upon slavery, co- lonialism, and racial hierarchy was turned upside down. This new society, born of a process never contemplated before, stood right in the middle of the Caribbean sea, a short sail from islands ruled by European governors and inhabited, sometimes overwhelmingly, by enslaved Africans1.
In Cuba, sugar planters and colonial authorities saw the devastation of their neighboring colony and looked at their own society with fresh eyes. Publicly and private- ly, they professed fear and terror that the scenes of the Haitian Revolution would be repeated in their own territory. But, for the most part, the men with the power to decide the future course of the Spanish colony resolved to live dangerously. They imported an ev- er-growing number of Africans and amassed greater and greater wealth in sugar.
They sought, in other words, to emulate Saint-Domingue, but to contain Haiti. In Cuba, however, the example of Haiti was hard to contain. The dis- tance between the two islands was short and well-travelled. Early in the revolution, slave owners from the French colony arrived by the thousands, carting slaves, seeking refuge, and telling stories of black vengeance and physical desolation. Throughout the conflict, French forces defeated by former slaves evacuated through Cuba, as local residents watched with great interest. In the decades that followed Haitian independence, Cubans heard repeated rumors about imminent Haitian invasions into Cuban terri- tory.
Cuban plantations increasingly resembled those in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Slaves were subjected to increasingly brutal labor and disciplinary regimes and sometimes responded by envisioning risings like the ones of their counterparts in Haiti. In Cuba, then, the Haitian revolution produced a potentially powerful contradiction: Here, the example of black revolution and the rise of black enslavement unfolded in the same context and at the same time.
This essay takes the simultaneity of these two developments as its start- ing point, and attempts to tell the multifaceted story of the entrenchment ti: University of Tennessee Press, ; and, of course, C. James, The Black Jacobins: Allison and Busby, Grounded in Cuba, the study tacks back and forth between the two islands, to tell the overlapping sto- ries of freedom and slavery being made and unmade — simultaneously and each within view of the other. To understand the transformation of Cuban slavery occurring in the shadow of the Haitian Revolution I contend that we need to explore the social and intellectual history of the idea of Haiti in Cuba.
How was the violent destruction of slavery by the enslaved themselves understood and discussed in a society where a similar model of slavery was taking root? What news of the Saint-Domingue revolution circulated in Cuba? Through what specific points of contact?
With what language and images? And with what resonance? Asking such questions allows us to better understand questions about the material and cognitive encounters and connections between the simultaneous destruction and expansion of slavery in the nineteenth century.
An Unlikely Source, An Impossible Alliance Material daily links between the Haitian Revolution and Cuban soci- ety produced distinct streams of information or news that traveled from one colony to the other. In this paper, I will examine three such sources of Haitian news in depth. I chose these three in particular because they high- light on the one hand how rich and detailed was the information about the revolution that arrived in Cuba and — on the other — the capacity of that in- formation to reach different social sectors in Cuba.
The first source of information I will analyze involves the movement of people between the scenes of the Haitian Revolution and Cuban society. Tens of thousands of French refugees left the turbulence of revolution in Saint-Domingue to resettle in Cuba. But rather than focus on this migra- tion, I focus instead on movements in the other direction. People in Cuba actually traveled to the scenes of revolution and brought back first-hand accounts of revolutionary events in which they themselves were directly implicated.
When Spain declared war on France in February , that war came quickly to the island of Hispaniola, where these two countries shared a border that had already been a hot zone since the start of the revolution in Saint-Domingue. These forces came to be called the black auxiliaries; they retained their own internal organization, but now received arms, pro- visions, and orders from the Spanish military administration.
As a result of this pact, by mid, almost every major slave and former slave lead- er was fighting for Spain against France. Relying on the services of these black auxiliaries, Spain came to control a large swath of territory formerly held by France and, in , even appeared poised to take the capital city of Le Cap, surrounded by what had been — and many hoped could be once more — the richest sugar country in the world. There, these men from Cuba became intimately enmeshed in the revolution that would turn Saint Domingue into Haiti. They complained that former slaves seemed to flaunt their newfound power and Spanish vulnerability.
In the language and tone of written communication between black leaders and Cuban com- manders, this sense of role inversion shows up clearly. White officers wrote to former slaves addressing them as friends and exuding deference. New black officers wrote letters incessantly requesting supplies of all kinds, stamping their missives with images of trees of liberty topped with crowns sustained by naked black men3.
The inversion of roles was given material form and official sanction in military ritual and ceremony. Armona says the stamp was used on a letter from Biassou, which he received on the 12th of that month, and which he forwarded to the Captain General. For a discussion of slave royalism and the on-the-ground compatibility of royalist and republican motifs, see Dubois, Avengers, At the ceremony, it was the officers of two Cuban regiments who awarded the medals.
Men from the Cuban regiments, who gathered to witness the concession of this highest honor, played the military music, paraded with the medal recipients, and joined the two black officers in a lavish two-hour meal prepared in their honor4. The encounter between the Cuban officers and the rebel slaves represented a clear inversion of roles, and everyone who witnessed and participated in it seemed to see it as just that.
Just as palpable as this inversion of roles, however, was the struggle of these same Cuban commanders to apprehend and in a sense classify the novel political, military, and social landscape that lay before them. Confronted with a large army of rebel slaves only nominally under Spanish command, Armona and others had trouble figuring out how to approach and address them. Armona, for example, routinely recorded such discrepancies. He mentioned that they referred to themselves as generals, brigadiers, and lieutenants. He seemed about to record a difference in the way the Spanish named these same leaders, but then added, sheepishly almost, that he and his colleagues called them that, too.
Here the documents produced out of the routine and material contacts be- tween slave rebels and white commanders reveal the traces of competing ways of naming the history represented by this revolution. The alliance between the slave rebels and the Cuban officers reminds us that the contact between colonial Cuba and revolutionary Saint-Domingue involved significantly more than Haitian news passively making its way to Cuban ports.
What we have here is rather something much more sustained and meaningful. The Marquis de Casa Calvo, for instance, came from one of the wealthiest sugar families in Havana. There, he acquired slaves to ship back to his planta- tions in Cuba; he purchased sugar-making equipment from French planta- tions being destroyed by his allies, and sent that back to Havana as well.
These Cuban officers and soldiers had contact with slave insurgents and leaders, corresponding with them, sometimes eating and celebrating with them, and eventually — after Toussaint broke with the Spanish and allied with the French — suffering mili- tary defeat at their hands. After taking part in those unprecedented events, they returned to Cuba.
Other soldiers and officers returned to Cuba bringing with them slaves purchased or taken from Saint-Domingue. All came back with stories and memories they might have felt eager to share freely in a society they hoped was the antithesis rather than the precursor of the revolutionary upheavals they had just witnessed.
Through these Cuban officers and soldiers the world of the Haitian Revolution met the world of the sugar revolution in Cuba, that is, the as- cendancy of slavery and the slave trade, and of sugar and large scale plan- tation agriculture. The Circulation of Haitian News in Black Havana But in the world of burgeoning slavery in Cuba, there were other ways to hear and learn of revolutionary Saint-Domingue.
Sometimes it is possible to discern the specific routes of transmission; other times we can only see See Ada Ferrer, The Making and Unmaking of Slavery: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, 6 manuscript in preparation, chapter 3. Part I — The Making of the Cuban Republic 29 the evidence that people in Cuba were avidly consuming the news, with- out being able to discern how they knew. Just two weeks after the start of the Haitian Revolution, in early September , authorities in Havana grew alarmed when they learned that people of color in the area were sacrificing pigs in honor of the slave insurgents.
The prospect raises the possibility that Havana was home to some version of a Bois-Caiman ceremony, the famous if disputed ritual beginning to the revolution, in which Haitian conspira- tors took blood oaths and sacrificed a black pig as preparation for the war they were about to commence7.
Whether or not such ceremonies were taking place in Havana, as authorities feared, the prospect alone makes it very likely that just days after the turmoil erupted in Saint-Domingue, people in Cuba — and specifically people of color — knew about those events and were thinking and digesting them actively. Indeed, in casual street encounters between free urban blacks and local whites, in confrontations between masters and slaves, in heated exchanges between black suspects and white interrogators, Cuban people of color regularly referred to the Haitian Revolution as something they knew about and perhaps hoped to emulate.
Slaves recruited others to conspiracy by urging them to do as their counterparts had done in St. While the regular invocations of Haiti by slaves and free people of color leave no doubt that they learned and used knowledge of revolutionary events, on their own they do not tell us how and from what sources they acquired that knowledge. There were, of course, many sources: But among the many possible sources, some are potentially surprising. One such source is the Gaceta de Madrid, the official newspaper of the Spanish government in Madrid. According to Captain General Someruelos, this posed a significant problem.
He lamented that the news- paper was so readily available: A transcription of the letter also appears in Someruelos to Sec. Here were stories of the revolutionary terror in Paris, of abolitionist debates in Britain, of war in Europe. And in regular snippets and sometimes in longer pieces taken mostly from French, British, and US newspapers, the story of the Haitian Revolution unfold- ed in incredible and dense detail, from the first article on the attacks of August to the repeated installments about black military victories in Indeed, by the end of the conflict, the Gaceta was even publishing articles and reprinting translated documents that gave significant insight into the ideas of the black insurgents.
It published the words of the emerg- ing Haitian leadership. The issue of the gazette that had prompted the complaint by the Captain General, in fact, contained two translated proclamations by Haitian lead- ers. In both documents, the black leaders invited refugees who had fled the colony to return and live peacefully under the new system. But their invita- tion also entailed a very clear and explicit threat.
The God who protects us, the God of free men, commands us to extend towards them our victorious [vencedores] arms. But those who, intoxicated with a foolish pride, […] [those who] think still that they alone form the essence of human nature, and who pretend to think that they are destined by heaven to be our owners and our tyrants, [we tell them] never to come near the island of Santo Domingo, because if they come, they will find only chains and deportation These words made manifest the power of new black leaders, who for- bade the return of Saint-Domingue to its colonial ruler and who were will- ing to admit only those refugees who deigned to live under a government of former slaves and in a society without slavery.
Just one week after Someruelos penned his attack on the publication and circulation of this document, a new proclamation appeared in the pag- es of the gazette. This time it was the Haitian declaration of independence, signed by Dessalines on January 1, , and published in the gazette six months later on June We know that other copies of the Haitian declara- tion of independence had already reached Cuba aboard French ships and that authorities on the island had done their best to have them confiscated, and then translated and sent to Madrid But in spite of the attempts to limit its circulation, in June the declaration was translated, published, and 10 Gaceta de Madrid, 23 de Marzo de Part I — The Making of the Cuban Republic 31 circulating, even among black Cubans, who Someruelos argued were able to acquire the gazette with little difficulty Thus, we know that people of color in Cuba were able to read the Haitian declaration of independence, a proclamation of former slaves who had vanquished their masters by force of arms.
It was not only that people of color learned of Haitian news-according to the gazette itself: It was also that with repetition and circulation, the example ac- quired more and more substance. What circulated, however, was not just vague examples or even rich narratives of retribution and justice. With the publication and circulation of such declarations, it was also the very intel- lectual production of the revolution that circulated. That critique was read with appetite and fascination and urgency by men of color who gathered around Havana to hear and talk of it.
There is, of course, no way to answer this kind of question with any degree of certainty. But asking it is important. If we think of the history of slavery globally, we see that its destruction in Saint- Domingue as a result of revolution coincided temporally with the entrench- ment of slavery precisely in places like Cuba, southern Brazil, and parts of the United States South. In Cuba, slaves living through and embodying that entrenchment heard news of revolutionary Haiti and appear to have thought about it in relation to their own enslavement and their own pros- pects of freedom.
In this final section of the paper, then, rather than focus on routes of transmission for revolutionary news, I experiment with think- ing about the ways in which enslaved people in Cuba consumed and in- voked the Haitian Revolution. To examine how slaves might have understood the Haitian Revolution, we have a valuable resource in the thousands of pages of judicial testimony taken from enslaved men and women in moments of suspected or actual 13 The Spanish gazette does not appear to have published the Haitian Constitution of , even though it was published by several international gazettes and newspapers.
When conspiracies were revealed or suspected, and when rebellion erupted, planters and authorities collaborated to find answers. They brought before them men and women, guilty and innocent, and asked them question after question. Witnesses answered, and scribes paraphrased those responses in the third person. The testimonies from any number of such incidences amounts easily to thousands of pages, some with surprising insights into Cuban slavery precisely at the moment of its expan- sion and precisely at the moment in which the Haitian example circulated.
In these testimonies, enslaved men and, much more rarely, women sometimes invoked the Haitian Revolution with great regularity, some- times not at all. When Haiti came up, it did so in three ways, all of which reflected the ways in which slaves in Cuba not only knew about the revolu- tion, but also used it to think about their own enslavement and to engage the political currents of their time. First, Cuban slaves talked about the Haitian Revolution in very gen- eral terms, which highlighted a strong sense of admiration and, often, a desire to emulate the bold move of their Haitian counterparts.
This was, of course, the fear of both planters and authorities. The words of captured slaves, then, were not entirely comforting. Haiti was for their servants clearly an example to hold up. The leaders of the conspiracy were three enslaved men. The first was a Saint-Domingue-born slave who allegedly boasted to others that he had participated in the revolution; another was a Cuban Creole who could read and write; the third a Congolese man, perhaps recently arrived.
Some of the enslaved questioned in connection to the plot, confessed to telling oth- ers that, if they rose up, killed the whites, and took the fort in town, they would be free like their counterparts in Haiti, who had taken back the land from the whites. Sometimes this kind of invocation became a sort of dare: For these slaves, Haiti signified not only the mur- der of whites or the end of slavery, but a more general victory as well: The second type of Haitian invocation in the slave testimonies is a bio- graphical one, when slaves talked about specific Haitian leaders they ad- mired.
Part I — The Making of the Cuban Republic 33 black revolutionary leaders resounded among the population of color in Havana like the names of well-known conquerors. The testimony of slaves would seem to prove him right. Haiti also came up in third form. In many of these alleged conspira- cies and rebellions, the accused made regular reference to aid coming di- rectly from Haiti. This claim — present not only in Cuba but elsewhere in the Atlantic World — was not a vague expression of sympathy or admira- tion for Haiti or Haitian leaders, as we have seen in some of the examples above, but rather a concrete if generally unfounded assertion that they believed that this society which they so much admired stood ready to com- mit money, arms, and forces for their own liberation.
Sometimes the al- leged aid was in the form of a ship waiting off the coast with men and munitions. Sometimes it was in the form of emissaries of Haitian leaders bringing proclamations of freedom for local slaves. Such assertions in the testimony allow us to glimpse a potentially strong sense of solidarity, in which enslaved people in Cuba or elsewhere might imagine themselves to be, on the one hand, emulators of Haitian rebels and, on the other, ob- jects of Haitian benevolence and of active Haitian foreign policy.
One instance in which claims about Haitian aid gathered consider- able momentum was during the Aponte rebellion, the most widespread and ambitious conspiracy in Cuba in this period Its leader was a free black carpenter who recruited slaves and free people showing potential rebels a book of pictures he had made, which included images of scenes and people from Saint-Domingue. Others who were implicated appear to have seen or carried printed pictures of Henri Christophe, the revolu- tionary leader who became president and later king of the northern part of Haiti in University of North Carolina Press, , Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity Durham: See especially Las conspiraciones de y La Habana: Conspirators thus drew bold and explicit links between their efforts and both the history and present state of Haiti.
But they also went further, asserting that this link was reciprocal: Several key witnesses testified that there were 5, Haitians waiting either in the hills of Monserrate Havana or on boats off the harbor ready to swoop in and fight for the freedom of Cuban slaves as soon as the rebellion began. Even more witnesses asserted that there were one, two, or several Haitian officers in Havana with orders from King Henri Christophe to negotiate and, if necessary, fight for their freedom Seemingly fantastic claims about Haitian assistance emerge, in fact, in many slave conspiracies and rebellions across the Americas.
Some histori- ans have accepted such claims and incorporated them into narratives about an unwavering Haitian commitment to an expansive New World freedom, despite a glaring lack of evidence. Others, to the contrary, have dismissed them as spurious, as products of either overactive imaginations or of loose or drunken talk. Rather than focus on the question of the reality of Haitian assistance, it may be more fruitful to explore when, why, and under what specific circumstances, Cuban or other slaves believed Haitian assistance was imminent.
What might have enslaved and free people of color in Havana had in mind when they spoke of Christophe sending delegates or troops on behalf of their own freedom? Might such claims have referred to anything specific? First, while there were no formal political relations between Spain or its colonies and independent Haiti, just two years before the rebellion, Christophe and the Governor of Havana had had sustained communication about the possibility of exchanging delegates or representatives. It is impossible to know the extent to which this back 17 See, for example, the careo judicial confrontation between Aponte and Ternero, in ANC, AP, leg.
It is interesting to think about a possible connec- tion here, but we are still a long way from understanding a certain origin for the assertions about Haitian assistance for Cuban slaves. During their several-month sojourn in Havana they appear to have had contact with local people of color, who, according to the testimony of the sojourners, dis- played great interest in their military uniforms.
Haiti, in the testimony, was a state that carried the promise of emancipation to slaves like themselves in other colo- nies of the region. What might have made witnesses so sure that Haiti was engaged in a policy of international anti-slavery and that they themselves would be its beneficiaries? Early in , news began arriving in Havana about new and daring acts by Christophe in the north, who was intercepting slave ships bound for Cuba, liberating the Africans on board, bringing them to Haitian soil as free men and women, and sending the crews and empty ships on their way.
If the news circulated, we can be sure that one of its key points of transmission would have been the docks, where the arrival of empty slave ships, whose original human cargo had been taken to Haiti, would have found a most attentive audience. As is well known, many of the figures questioned in as- sociation with the Aponte conspiracy were men who frequented the docks, as workers or simply as residents of a bustling port city. Many further tes- tified to having heard news of the current conspiracy and of Haiti itself at the docks. It was in fact at the docks were Haitian artifacts and images cir- culated from hand to hand.
The fate of the Santa Ana, which was taken to the port of Gonaives, may be linked to the history of the famous village and ritual center of Souvenance, a few miles from that city. In oral and popular history, the origins of the place are associated with a slave ship whose human cargo was liberated and taken to that area in roughly this period. To my knowledge, no one has worked on the Haitian capture of slave ships, and it is thus impossible at this point to know how widespread or rare the practice was, whether it affected other slave holding powers, the extent to which such acts were carried out by north or south, or the fate of those Africans aboard the ships captured.
See Leslie Griggs and Clifford Prator, eds. University of California Press, , and Conclusion If we return to our original question of how the Haitian Revolution was apprehended in a Cuba that was just making the transition to full-fledged slavery, we see now how insufficient it is to speak simply about vague notions of fear and hope.
Whatever sense of fear or hope may have been sparked in Cuba by the Haitian Revolution would have likely drawn on ample raw material, on detailed narratives, and suggestive stories avail- able to residents of Cuba regarding those events. Likewise, the oft-repeated assertion that Creole elites feared that any attempt at political indepen- dence would awaken the population of color, perhaps makes more sense when we know that some of that elite had first-hand experience with un- successful attempts to mobilize and then contain former slaves in support of elite political goals.
Cuban men deployed on the Saint-Domingue-Santo Domingo border had been defeated by some of those slave forces in Cuban residents had opportunities to witness defeated whites evacu- ate the French colony and then to read the proclamations of their black victors.
The fears or hopes allegedly inspired by the Haitian Revolution would have been shaped by these very concrete contacts and experiences. But what of the enslaved and free people of color specifically? Undoubtedly, the example of the Haitian Revolution gave lo- cal resistance, conspiracy, and rebellion new momentum.
Even though no rebellion came close to assuming the proportions of the Haitian example, and even though in most cases actual rebellion was thwarted, it is clear that the Haitian Revolution, and Haiti itself, became part of the cognitive world of the enslaved, who engaged it as possibility and goal and invoked it as metaphor for freedom or radical change. But for them clearly it was more than just a symbol, Haiti was also a living, active agent, a viable state with the potential to have an impact on their own lives.
They consumed and thought about the most current information available to them, develop- ing and sharing interpretations with one another about the meanings of the Haitian Revolution in relation to their own world. The traces of this intellectual process are audible in the voluminous slave testimony. In this light, slave testimony about Haiti emerges less as vague abstraction or groundless hope. Fattacciu Chapter 2 Cuba and Fernando Po in the Second Half of the 19th Century [The Cubans] could have taken this island from the Spaniards if they had tried […] but there was no organization among them at all, and so little caution that everybody knew their escape plan1.
As climate and tropi- cal diseases made colonization difficult, the colonial administration decided the Afro-Cuban population would have a better chance of adapting to the weather and helping to develop the cultivation of cane and cacao there2. This was the first contact between the two Spanish colonies, and it would not be the last. In and , the Spanish government renewed its request to Cuban authorities for another group of emancipados to be sent to the island.
However, for reasons to be explained below, the project was never realized. Subsequent expeditions from Cuba to the African is- land, in and , would no longer carry emancipados but instead po- litical prisoners involved in the battle for independence3. A study of the relations between Fernando Po and Cuba in the late 19th century suggests different reflections regarding the historiography of the 1 John Holt, The Diary of John Holt, Liverpool: Young, , Ceiba, , As full access to Cuban newspapers and periodicals has not yet been possible, the research has been based on sources consulted in Spain.
On the one hand, it could help to reconsider the role of the emancipados in the Spanish colonial eco- nomic system by putting the issue of slavery and its role in Cuba not only in relation to US and Spanish interests, but also to other colonial realities of minor importance and dependent on Cuba. On the other hand, examin- ing the polemic aroused by the project in Cuban public opinion at the time could contribute to the reconstruction of the different opinions, hopes and contradictions that linked the issue of and discourse on slavery with Cuban nationalism in the period before Finally, episodes of emancipados and political prisoners being transferred to Fernando Po by force opened up the issue of the competing and contradictory colonial policies that Spain prac- ticed towards its first African possession and its last American one.
The few scholars who have dealt with the Cuban presence in Fernando Po have been specialists in African studies and have therefore focused more on the actual experience of Cubans on the island than on the reasons for and organization of the expeditions4. Their interests have been founded on the colonization process in Fernando Po, especially the reasons for the delay in its occupation and the scarce interest of the Spanish government in de- veloping a precise plan to exploit its resources and develop its potential.
In the present study, the main objective is to contribute to an understanding of the contradictory interaction between the economic interests of the Spanish Crown; the Spanish need to take control of their possessions in Guinea on the one hand and maintain political control over Cuba on the other; and the collision between nationalist sentiment and the fear of a racial war in Cuba.
It would be impossible to understand the atypical colonization pro- cess involving the only Spanish possession in Africa without taking Cuba and its history into consideration. Cuban sugar was the main trade of what survived of the midth-century Spanish empire, and its production still required the exploitation of slave la- bor. Cuba became the driving force behind a huge growth in the demand for commodities and slave labor6. For this reason Spain became increasingly in- 4 On the subject see: Universi- dad de Valladolid, Texas University Press, ; and Re- becca J.
Most importantly, a base in Africa provided an opportunity to procure slaves directly for Cuba without foreign middlemen. The first intersection of Cuban interests with the colonization of Fernando Po concerned the British-Spanish negotiation of As Spanish interest in the island had been minimal until the midth century, British authorities had installed an anti-slaving base there. Between and , the British government, which had evacuated the island in , opened negotiations to buy the African island, but failed in its attempt. Initially it had seemed that the Spanish government was greatly interested in ceding their forgotten possession.
However, it closed negotiations in the face of Cuban opposition. Cuban planters opposed the cession because a British settlement in that area would have posed a difficult obstacle to their illicit slave trade. However, the colonization plans they drew up at the time subordinated the develop- ment and government of the island to Cuban economic interests. When the Spanish government decided to take definitive possession of Fernando Po, the British engagement to fight slavery and the fear of violent protest among black settlers convinced Spain not to introduce slavery to the island.
A royal order of proclaimed all slaves arriving there to be free, therefore making Fernando Po an anomaly among Spanish colonies. The idea of colonizing the African possession with Cuban emancipados had already been part of Spanish plans in the s when L. It was believed this initiative could have two important and positive consequences: It had become clear that slavery and the racial issue were the keys to Cuban independence.
A growing number of Cubans therefore started to advocate the ending of the slave trade and even the gradual abolition of slavery. It was in this climate that the first expedition of emancipados was organized and carried out in the early s. The Problem of the Cuban Emancipados in the 19th Century The problem of the emancipados and their use as a slave-labor or hard- labor force remained a recurring issue that intersects with the histories of both Cuba and Fernando Po.
The surplus of slaves that was reached in Cuba during the first half of the 19th century put the island in a contra- dictory situation: Spain signed the second treaty to abolish the slave trade in While this treaty granted a mutual Right of Search and authorized the condem- nation and dismantling of vessels equipped for the slave trade, its most important consequence was probably the problems it caused for the ad- ministration of emancipados9. The treaty signed in had already declared that slaves liberated by the British antislavery squadron had to be received on Cuban territory and that the Spanish government had to grant a certificate of emancipation to these recaptured Africans.
Spain, which still covertly approved of the ille- gal importation of slaves, now had to face the sudden emergence of a class of freedmen whose status was guaranteed by international agreement. There were already more than 5, of these recaptives, or emancipados, in Cuba in , but the major preoccupation for Spanish authorities was the exponential growth of their number Here their status was ruled by an annex, the Reglamento para el buen trato de los negros emancipados.
The most important article in the Reglamento was the fourth, according to which the Spanish government was obliged to assure the freedom of emancipados, as well as promote their moral and religious education 8 Matarranz, De la trata, Tavera, , , doc. Part I — The Making of the Cuban Republic 43 and instruction so they could be in the condition to earn a living.
The census reports the presence of 6, emancipados on the island, many of whom were declared free in 4, This new class of Afro- Cubans was viewed as a more disruptive threat to the maintenance of the slave order than the pre-existing class of Cuban freedmen: If those who have redeemed themselves from slavery by their honor, or by their savings which have been the fruit of proper conduct are feared in the towns because of their excessive numbers compared to the whites, how much more are they to be feared if we add to them negros […] who lack the- se qualities?
And how much greater would be the danger if the incendiary spirit of Independence is communicated to the slaves, making a common cause, following the example of those of Santo Domingo? The evocation of the Haitian revolution, often recalled by Cuban rep- resentatives in the Cortes and by advocates of slavery in the debate over abolition, was used as an excuse for the inhuman treatment reserved for emancipados.
In the following decades, emancipados suffered all forms of abuse. By the end of the s, their situation, ratified by the Reglamento de emancipados in , was worse than that of slaves While one possible solution to the difficult Cuban emancipado situation was another expulsion of the most active and dangerous elements from the island, Cuban interests completely clashed with the needs of Fernando Po. Cuba would be the main beneficiary of such an initiative, as is evident from the fact that Fernando Po authorities had already refused to receive emancipados from the United States in In this sense, the Cuban situ- ation was peculiar, as it encouraged both emigration and immigration of black labor.
The illicit slave trade was meant to procure the labor force nec- essary for the sugar economy, while a reverse emigration scheme would free Cuba of its emergent class of emancipados. Johns Hopkins University Press, , Transferring Emancipados from Cuba to Fernando Po, On 7 March , the first Real Orden was sent to Cuba asking for emancipados to be sent to Fernando Po, a petition that remained unattend- ed and was repeated in another Orden of 5 April The dis- pute delayed the organization of the expedition for two years, and an analysis of the composition of the group that was eventually sent from Cuba reveals the extent to which these emancipados matched the expectations of either side.
Authorities in Fernando Po had expressed their opposition to the project from the beginning. In an attempt to prevent Cuban authorities from taking the opportu- nity to expel criminals and dangerous elements, the Ordenes contained several requirements. The most important request, however, concerned their professional skills: If, on the other hand, emancipados had to be recruited as volunteers for the expedition, as stated in the Ordenes, what were they offered to attract them to the other side of the ocean?
In order to settle on the island, emancipados with the requested professional skills were promised complete freedom in addition to a salary — the same given to the previous settlers from Spain; they were further- more promised land to cultivate. Ri- vadeneyra, , 29 and Part I — The Making of the Cuban Republic 45 advantages if they decided to stay on the island at the end of their contract Four months after the publication of the recruitment announcement, he communicated that no emancipados had yet asked to participate and that it would consequently be necessary to recruit them without their consent In spite of the doubts expressed by the governor of Fernando Po25, who protested against the idea of sending black criminals to a developing colony and lament- ed the unattractive conditions offered to volunteers, the order was renewed on 26 October With regards to the demo- graphic composition of the group, a report on the expedition drawn up in includes a list of the emancipados, indicating their age and original provenance The large majority of them were young males from ten to thirty-six years of age, while the few women included in the expedition were between eleven and sixteen years old But what can the data tell us about the criteria adopted by Cuban authorities to recruit emancipados for the expedition?
The scarce professional skills of the emancipados sent from Cuba already give us an idea of how little the requests of Fernando Po had been taken into account in their selection. By looking at the age and provenance of the participants, one could argue that the majority of them, who were very young, were probably recently arrived and emancipated slaves bozales.
In the documents written by Fernando Po authorities, there are not many other explicit references to the composition of the expedition, apart from a final note by the governor in charge in , A. Vivar, regarding the laziness and poor nature of the Cuban emancipados Another serious problem posed by the composition of the Cuban group was the scarcity of women. There were only twenty-five of them — a fact that, together with the general scarcity of women on the island, made it difficult to celebrate marriages as encouraged by Spanish authorities.
Nevertheless, as the merchant John Holt noted ironically in his diary, barely a month af- ter their arrival already twenty-one marriages had been celebrated Adapting to life in Guinea was difficult from the beginning for the eman- cipados. While accommodations were arranged for the twenty-one married couples in , the rest of the Cubans had to wait until when housing blocks were built on a patch of land west of Santa Isabel.
But how did the emancipados react to their transfer to Fernando Po and how did they adapt to their new life? Many did not expect to be forced to work and were especially unwilling to accept that almost half their salary fifty reales per month would only be paid at the end of the contract, af- ter five years. In order to correct such misleading ideas, the governor promulgated the Reglamento de emancipados, upon which the Cubans were instructed every Sunday The group then went on to contribute to the development of different granjas in which tobacco, cof- fee and especially cacao were to be cultivated When their five years under the jurisdiction of the Fernando Po govern- ment came to an end, many emancipados expressed the desire to go back to Cuba.
However, none of them could: Moreover, it was decided that the children of emancipados would be under the protection of the gover- nor until their legal age, and therefore had to stay on the island In the end, the only capital the Cubans received from the authorities was the Congo neighborhood, and from the descriptions we have of the situation there, the exchange was not in their favor.
However, Domingo Dulce, who replaced F. Moreover, he com- plained in his letter that emancipados received worse treatment in Guinea than in Cuba, and refused to send any more expeditions under such conditions While this refusal marked the failure of the larger project to transfer the emancipado population to Guinea, it did not mark the end of the colonial proj- ect to transform Fernando Po into a penal colony for dangerous Afro-Cubans and political dissidents.
Subsequent expeditions from Cuba to the African is- land, in and , would no longer carry emancipados but instead politi- cal prisoners accused of being involved in the battle for independence. Moreover, Spain sent to Cuba Francisco de Lersundi, a reactionary captain-general who prohibited public meetings and clamped tight political censure over reformist literature. Spanish authorities had already been using different measures of repression to contrast nationalist efforts: Before the radical- ization of the clash over independence, the main goal of deportation had been to re-Hispanicize Cuba through the expulsion of emancipados.
Then, in and , the majority of deportees were undesirable Creoles — includ- ing insurrectionists, political undesirables, reformists and dissidents. Some ninety Cubans arrived in Guinea in and another were deported in These were the last of the expeditions, since Spanish au- thorities subsequently abandoned the project of using Fernando Po as a pe- nal colony. From the little information we have on the first group, it seems that, as in , they were mainly black Cubans from the lower classes: Most of them were colored: The deportees were decimated by the poor hygienic conditions and yel- low fever.
Those who survived were shipped off to Madeira, where their traces were lost after Portuguese authorities refused to receive them Saluvet, Los deportados a Fernando Poo en Matanzas: We have more in- formation on this expedition, since the diaries of two of the prisoners who arrived that year, Francisco Xavier Balmaseda a nationalist writer and Juan B. Saluvet, allow us to reconstruct their experience on Fernando Po in detail. The fact of belonging to the Cuban upper class assured these prisoners of a better destiny than that reserved for participants in previous expeditions.
Spanish authorities did not put much effort into trying to retain the Cuban deportees, who organized several plans to escape, probably because of the scarcity of food caused by the excess foreign population. Though Holt shows some sympathy towards the Cubans, he blames their failure to take over the island on their laziness and lack of organization, which he wrote was also what had prevented them from reaching independence for their country Fundamentally, the plan to take control of Fernando Po failed because the Cubans preferred to escape it.
The majority of prisoners succeeded, or they managed to obtain a transfer; only some remained there after com- pleting their sentence. Preliminary Conclusions As we have seen in the case of the relations between Fernando Po and Cuba in the second half of the 19th century, slavery remains a central issue in the struggle over empire and nationhood.
The struggles for and against slavery, and for and against independence in Cuba, took place in a society shaped by centuries of European colonization and the African slave trade. The contours of this world can therefore only be understood by taking into account the complex interactions between Africa, Europe and the Americas.
This new class of Afro-Cubans represented a powerful threat to the maintenance of the slave order since they had lived much of their lives outside the strict control of that system, there- fore Cuban authorities tried — illegally — to reduce them again to the condition of slavery. Slavery and the African slave trade always figured centrally in the Cuban nation-building process, not least because slaves themselves took up arms to fight for liberation.
The project to make Fernando Po a penal colony for political dissidents or a relief valve for Cuban emancipados failed for a number of reasons: Who were those in favor and those against its organization? The interests of Cuban elites and those of the Spanish colonial administration seem to coin- cide on this occasion, but one could argue it was likely for opposite reasons. As is evident from this quotation, if for the Cuban elite in favor of inde- pendence the worst obstacle to its realization was precisely the fear of a racial war, colonial authorities, on the other side, feared the possibility of a coalition between slaves and political dissidents.
For the implicit and unsolvable contradic- tion present in the opposing intentions of the three parties involved, the colo- nization plan for the Spanish possession in Africa had been destined from the beginning to disappoint authorities in Spain, Cuba and Fernando Po. University of Pittsburgh Press, , ; Id. Ciencias Sociales, , Karolinum, , Univer- sity of North Carolina Press, Sin embargo sus proyectos no cobraron fuerza ya que discreparon con su militancia en el Partido Moderado y tropezaron con la realidad social de muchos negros y mulatos.
Ocuparon entonces Cuba para impedir la llegada al poder del Partido Liberal. Race, Nation, and Revolution, Chapel Hill: Cuba entre y La Habana: Ciencias Sociales, , ; Ferrer, Insur- gent Cuba, Einaudi, , Pedro Ivonet fue veterinario de la Guar- da Rural en la provincia de Oriente. Ambos murieron asesinados en el levantamiento de Ver Helg, Our Rightful, De hecho los datos hoy disponibles discrepan mucho entre ellos.
Otros antepusieron la lucha por la igualdad racial a cualquier otra perspectiva. Interestingly enough, these technologies were not imported onto the island from the colonial motherland but from the United States and Britain. While facing the con- straints of the US blockade on collaboration with US institutions and pub- lications, Cuban scientists operated in conjunction with Soviet and West European research centers throughout the Cold War era. In , the Instituto para el Desarrollo de la Maquinaria designed the 1 On earlier scientific research in Cuba: Academia de Ciencias, On the reforms in the educational field following the Revolution: Da Capo, , But economic necessity also drove Cuba to diversify its economy out of its dependence on sugarcane and investment in scientif- ic capacity thus became a priority2.
Although subject to controversy over costs and access, Cuba joined the World Wide Web in Cu on-line, 14 December , www. El movimiento era general1. Ciencias So- ciales, Junta de Fomento, Legajo , n. El primer Director de la Escuela fue el norteamericano Robert Simpson9. Estados Unidos declara el bloqueo a la Isla, impidiendo la entrada de alimentos y municiones y cortando el servicio postal. Cuba La Habana: De estos, eran cubanos y 63 norteamericanos. Walker, un ingeniero de la South Eastern Railway Co.
El cable tuvo una impor- tante consecuencia: Este financiamiento no fue casual. Esta es su verdadera esencia como negocio. Al mismo tiempo, el General William F. Ambos, representaban los intereses de la International Ocean Telegraph Company. El 10 de septiembre , empieza a funcionar el cable submarino, sien- do este el primero que comunica dos naciones del hemisferio occidental. Ciencias Sociales, , iii. El trazado com- pleto de la ruta era: Baracca Chapter 5 Physics in Cuba: Cuba boasts a high number of physicists, science graduates and doctors — among the highest in the world with respect to its population.