In this ambitious volume, Dominique Goncalvès explores the relationship between the Cuban planter elite and the political powers in Madrid during the final third of the eighteenth century and the first third of the nineteenth. The central question concerns the reasons for Cuban stability at a time when continental Spanish America found itself embroiled in its struggles for independence. Published by the Casa de Velázquez, the center for French study and research in Madrid, this work began as a dissertation under the direction of Professor Michel Bertrand of the University of Toulouse with critical methodological support from Jean-Pierre Dedieu of Lyon. Goncalvès researched for some three years in the archives of both Havana and Seville as well as in a number of secondary repositories. The result is an impressive, deeply documented effort on Cuba’s “ever faithful” behavior.
Goncalvès divides his work into three sections. The first is based on a...
