The sap of the empire. Sugar, trade and colonial relation in Cuba

Abstract

In the third decade of the 19th century, the Spanish American Empire had been reduced to the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico. From that moment on, sugar constituted the sap of an empire, which although it was not built in the same way as those of other European powers, it was nevertheless very consistent with its own specific conditions. The first part of this paper, based upon the book Los Ingenios, analyses the workings of the Cuban sugar industry at a time when the producers of this island were the main suppliers of the global market, defraying the maintenance of the colonial empire with the wealth obtained. The second part examines the trade relations, the debates and the policies surrounding them. These trade relations were both the key to the maintenance of Spanish power on the island and the source of the colonial income that justified it.