The island of Cuba was inhabited by various Native American cultures prior to the arrival of the explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. After his arrival, Spain conquered Cuba and appointed Spanish governors to rule in Havana. The administrators in Cuba were subject to the Viceroy of New Spain and the local authorities in Hispaniola. In 1762–63, Havana was briefly occupied by Britain, before being returned to Spain in exchange for Florida. A series of rebellions between 1868 and 1898, led by General Máximo Gómez, failed to end Spanish rule and claimed the lives of 49,000 Cuban guerrillas and 126,000 Spanish soldiers. However, the Spanish–American War resulted in a Spanish withdrawal from the island in 1898, and following three and a half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902.
In the years following its independence, the Cuban republic saw significant economic development, but also political corruption and a succession of despotic leaders, culminating in the overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista by the 26th of July Movement, led by Fidel Castro, during the 1953–1959 Cuban Revolution. The new government aligned with the Soviet Union and embraced communism. In the early 1960s, Castro's regime withstood invasion, faced nuclear Armageddon, and experienced a civil war that included Dominican support for regime opponents. Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968), Castro publicly declared Cuba's support. His speech marked the start of Cuba's complete absorption into the Eastern Bloc. During the Cold War, Cuba also supported Soviet policy in Afghanistan, Poland, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The Cuban economy was mostly supported by Soviet subsidies.
With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 Cuba was plunged into a severe economic crisis known as the Special Period that ended in 2000 when Venezuela began providing Cuba with subsidized oil. The country has been politically and economically isolated by the United States since the Revolution, but has gradually gained access to foreign commerce and travel as efforts to normalise diplomatic relations have progressed. Domestic economic reforms are also beginning to tackle existing economic problems which arose in the aftermath of the special period (i.e. the introduction of the dual currency system).
Pre-Columbian (to 1500)
Cuba's earliest known human inhabitants inhabited the island in the 4th millennium BC.Allaire, p. 678 The oldest known Cuban archeological site, Levisa, dates from approximately 3100 BC.Allaire, p. 686 A wider distribution of sites date from after 2000 BC, most notably represented by the Cayo Redondo and Guayabo Blanco cultures of western Cuba. These neolithic cultures used ground stone and shell tools and ornaments, including the dagger-like gladiolitos.Allaire, p. 688 The Cayo Redondo and Guayabo Blanco cultures lived a subsistence lifestyle based on fishing, hunting and collecting wild plants.
The Indigenous Guanajatabey, who had inhabited Cuba for centuries, were driven to the far west of the island by the arrival of subsequent waves of migrants, including the Taíno and Ciboney. These people had migrated north along the Caribbean island chain. The Taíno and Ciboney were part of a cultural group commonly called the Arawak, who inhabited parts of northeastern South America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Initially, they settled at the eastern end of Cuba, before expanding westward across the island. The Spanish Dominican clergyman and writer Bartolomé de las Casas estimated that the Taíno population of Cuba had reached 350,000 by the end of the 15th century. The Taíno cultivated the yuca root, harvested it and baked it to produce cassava bread. They also grew cotton and tobacco, and ate maize and sweet potatoes.Historia de las Indias (vol. 3). Biblioteca Ayacucho: Caracas (1986). pp. 81–101.
Spanish conquest
Christopher Columbus, on his first Spanish-sponsored voyage to the Americas in 1492, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus, who was searching for a route to India, believed the island to be a peninsula of the Asian mainland. Columbus arrived at Cuba on October 27, 1492, and he landed on October 28, 1492, at Puerto de Nipe.Gott, Richard (2004). Cuba: A new history. Yale University Press. Chapter 5.
During a second voyage in 1494, Columbus passed along the south coast, landing at various inlets including what was to become Guantánamo Bay. With the Papal Bull of 1493, Pope Alexander VI commanded Spain to conquer and convert the pagans of the New World to Catholicism.Bakewell, Peter. A History of Latin America. Blackwell Publishers. pp. 129–130. The Spanish began to create permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola, east of Cuba, soon after Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean, but the coast of Cuba was not fully mapped by Europeans until 1508, by Sebastián de Ocampo. In 1511, Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar set out from Hispaniola to form the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, with orders from Spain to conquer the island. The settlement was at Baracoa, but the new settlers were greeted with stiff resistance from the local Taíno population. The Taínos were initially organized by cacique (chieftain) Hatuey, who had himself relocated from Hispaniola to escape Spanish rule. After a prolonged guerrilla campaign, Hatuey and successive chieftains were captured and burnt alive, and within three years the Spanish had gained control of the island. In 1514, a south coast settlement was founded in what was to become Havana. The current city was founded in 1519.
Clergyman Bartolomé de las Casas observed a number of massacres initiated by the invaders, notably the massacre near Camagüey of the inhabitants of Caonao. According to his account, some three thousand villagers had traveled to Manzanillo to greet the Spanish with food, and were "without provocation, butchered".Las Casas, A Short Account, p. 29 The surviving Indigenous groups fled to the mountains or the small surrounding islands before being captured and forced into reservations. One such reservation was Guanabacoa, today a suburb of Havana.Thomas, Hugh. Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (2nd edition). p. 14.
In 1513, Ferdinand II of Aragon issued a decree establishing the encomienda land settlement system that was to be incorporated throughout the Spanish Americas. Velázquez, who had become Governor of Cuba, was given the task of apportioning the land and the Indigenous peoples to groups throughout the new colony. The scheme was not a success, however, as the natives either succumbed to diseases brought from Spain such as measles and smallpox, or simply refused to work, preferring to move into the mountains. Desperate for labor for the new agricultural settlements, the Conquistadors sought slaves from surrounding islands and the continental mainland. Velazquez's lieutenant Hernán Cortés launched the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico from Cuba, sailing from Santiago to the Yucatán Peninsula. However, these new arrivals also dispersed into the wilderness or died of disease.
Despite the difficult relations between the natives and the new Europeans, some cooperation was in evidence. The Spanish were shown by the Natives how to nurture tobacco and consume it as cigars. There were also many unions between the largely male Spanish colonists and Indigenous women. Modern studies have revealed traces of DNA that renders physical traits similar to Amazonian tribes in individuals throughout Cuba,"Cuban Site Casts Light on an Extinct People" . Anthony DePalma. The New York Times. 5 July 1998. Retrieved 8 December 2012. although the native population was largely destroyed as a culture and civilization after 1550. Under the Spanish New Laws of 1552, Indigenous Cuban were freed from encomienda, and seven towns for Indigenous peoples were set up. There are Indigenous descendant Cuban (Taíno) families in several places, mostly in eastern Cuba. The local Indigenous population also left their mark on the language, with some 400 Taíno terms and place-names surviving to the present day. For example, Cuba and Havana were derived from Classic Taíno, and Indigenous words such as tobacco, hurricane and canoe were transferred to English.
Colonial period
The Spanish established sugar and tobacco as Cuba's primary products, and the island soon supplanted Hispaniola as the prime Spanish base in the Caribbean.Peter Bakewell. A History of Latin America. Bakewell Books. p. 74. African slaves were imported to work the plantations as field labor. However, restrictive Spanish trade laws made it difficult for Cubans to keep up with the 17th and 18th century advances in processing sugar cane until the Haitian Revolution saw French planters flee to Cuba.Thomas, Hugh. Cuba: A History. Penguin, 2013 p. 89 Spain also restricted Cuba's access to the slave trade, instead issuing foreign merchants asientos to conduct it on Spain's behalf, and ordered regulations on trade with Cuba. The resultant stagnation of economic growth was particularly pronounced in Cuba because of its great strategic importance in the Caribbean, and the stranglehold that Spain kept on it as a result. Colonial Cuba was a frequent target of buccaneers, pirates and French corsairs. In response to repeated raids, defenses were bolstered throughout the island during the 16th century. In Havana, the fortress of Castillo de los Tres Reyes Magos del Morro was built to deter potential invaders.Gott, Richard (2004). Cuba: A new history. Yale University Press. p. 32. Havana's inability to resist invaders was dramatically exposed in 1628, when a Dutch fleet led by Piet Heyn plundered the Spanish ships in the city's harbor.Gott, Richard (2004). Cuba: A new history. Yale University Press. pp. 34–35. In 1662, Christopher Myngs with a small fleet from Jamaica captured and briefly occupied Santiago de Cuba on the eastern part of the island.
Nearly a century later, the British Royal Navy launched another invasion, capturing Guantánamo Bay in 1741 during the War of Jenkins' Ear. Admiral Edward Vernon saw his 4,000 occupying troops capitulate to raids by Spanish troops, and more critically, an epidemic, forcing him to withdraw his fleet to British Jamaica.Gott, Richard (2004). Cuba: A new history. Yale University Press. pp. 39–41. In the War of the Austrian Succession, the British carried out unsuccessful attacks against Santiago de Cuba in 1741 and again in 1748. Additionally, a skirmish between British and Spanish naval squadrons occurred near Havana in 1748.