The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World, by Elena A.?Schneider

摘要

The siege, fall, and occupation of Havana after a combined British naval and army assault in August 1762 is of signal importance because of its many repercussionsfor Cuba and the AtlanticWorld. Numerous accounts of the event have been written; the overwhelming majority have been in Spanish. English treatments largely consist of first-person accounts published to commemorate the bicentennial of the capture in 1962. Amazingly, there is no academic work written in English, so Elena A. Schneider’s synthesis fills an important gap. Yet this book does much more. First, it contextualizes thewatershed moment in a larger geographic scope and sets it in a longer chronological cycle than past analyses. Second, it confronts head-on many debates surrounding the causes and consequences of the event. Schneider centers her analysis on merchants (Spanish, Cuban, and British) and persons of African descent, both free and enslaved. Highlighting these two groups complements other studies that examine the plantation elites, the Spanish and Cuban military forces, and the economic interests in the Real Compa?ía de Comercio de la Habana and its successor, the Compa?ía Gaditana de Negros.