The editors, translators, and publishers of this new book have done the world an enormous favor. They have given Latin Americanist historians, geographers, and political scientists, as well as many other scholars, a newly translated version of a very important work, making it available in a better form than offered in previous editions, especially in English. Alexander von Humboldt's classic Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (1826) was such a monumentally insightful study when it was first published and has remained so for these many generations since. In it we learn so many things about early nineteenth-century colonial Cuba, including the island's biogeography, agriculture, and society, as well as, of course, Humboldt's unabashed contempt for slavery. This welcome new edition will hopefully enable many future scholars to gain Humboldt's insights directly from his own words, and it can now be added to other important works on him by such...

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