Often a work’s title is an unsatisfactory reflection of the complexity of its arguments. Such is the case with Matt Child’s 1812 Aponte Rebellion, which pleasantly defies expectations of a rehashing of the armed struggle of Cuba’s free and enslaved people of color to liberate themselves from racial discrimination and bondage. Childs masterfully situates early nineteenth-century Cuba into the emerging historiography on diasporic African participation in the Age of Revolution. The work is at base an homage to two earlier historians, the late José Luciano Franco (who highlighted the centrality of black and mulatto agency in Cuban history) and David Geggus (who has generated a significant body of work related to revolts by slaves and free people of color in the Caribbean of this period). This combination allows The 1812 Aponte Rebellion to mark the move of studies of colonial Cuba away from more insular concerns toward a thorough...
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