Description
Book SynopsisLouis A. Pérez Jr. examines Cuba’s Wars for Independence in the second half of the nineteenth century, focusing specifically on those everyday black, white, and creole Cubans who remained loyal to Spain.
Trade Review“A work of deep reflection and wide research,
Colonial Reckoning proposes a new framework for understanding the nineteenth-century Cuban wars for independence. Louis A. Pérez Jr. demonstrates that these were in many ways civil wars, during which Spain recruited tens of thousands of Cubans to fight against the insurrection and for the maintenance of Spanish sovereignty. Pérez argues that there emerged after independence a fractured nationality in which a seemingly disloyal portion of the population was figuratively written out of membership in the nation. That habit of mind, he suggests, at times emerges in different forms in Cuba today.” -- Rebecca J. Scott, author of * Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery *
“Louis A. Pérez Jr. accomplishes what few authors do when covering such well-known topics as Cuban independence: he takes a story we know well and not only provides a new interpretation depth of analysis but reframes it to show that independence was as much a civil war to the death between Cubans as it was a call for
Cuba Libre.” -- Matt D. Childs, author of * The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Rethinking the Paradigms of National Formation 1
1. Something to Fear 11
2. Half Defeated upon Arrival 40
3. To Confront Impossible Odds 97
4. Neither Victor nor Vanquished: Reckoning Deferred 169
Notes 195
Index 265
