The Ten Years War: the First
Transformation of Cuba
The Ten Years’ War, although failing to
produce independence for Cuba, nevertheless did produce profound socio-economic changes with in Cuban
society. Prior to the outbreak of this bourgeois war for independence,
Cuba was a slavocracy dominated
by sugar and tobacco plantations. In 1968, with sugar production on the
decline and taxes on the rise, Cuba’s planter class were beginning chafe
under Spanish colonial rule. Louis A. Perez, Jr. pointed out that the
creoles elite “changed the means of opposition from the political to
military did not signify a fundamental change in the reformist character
of Cuban ends.”
Yet, the war, despite the best efforts of its elite leadership, did put
into motion socio-economic forces that lead to the end of slavery and
inciting a long period of transformation and modernization of Cuba’s
economy.
The damage and disruption cause to
Cuba’s sugar production but the Ten Years’ War was further heightened by
the decline of Cuba’s share of the global market. With the disruption
of production in Cuba, sugar consumers were forced to look else where to
meet their demand. Hawaiian sugar and an increase in sugar beet
production in Europe caused Cuba’s share in the global market following
the war years to shrink for from twenty five percent to eleven percent
by the end of that decade of warfare.
To add to the economic chaos, tens of thousands of slaves enter the free
labor system follow the war and emancipation in 1886, swelling the ranks
of the unemployed.
Capitol and credit were scares in postwar Cuba. Thus, Cuban elites
turned to the U.S. to modernize the mean of production and make Cuban
sugar competitive on the new world market. In 1891, the Foster-Canovas
trade agreement facilitated the inflow of investment. American
investment between 1890 and 1893 increased for 54 million to 79 million
dollars, twelve times as must as Spanish investment in the island.
For More information:
http://faculty.rmwc.edu/bbullock/335pdf/tarrago.pdf
http://www.fiu.edu/~history/kislakprize/Harris.htm
