Publication date: 30th June 2023
This is the story of Cuban tobacco, whose agricultural and industrial development was fashioned as deftly as a Havana cigar around overseas trading interests. It traces the nineteenth-century growth of a strong tobacco oligarchy, peasant grower class and urban salaried work force, alongside slave and indentured labour, and examines how a prestigious manufacturing country was transformed into an exporter of leaf. Visibly poor peasant agriculture concealed foreign and home capital which, while creating some large plantations, used and even propagated a most extreme form of sharecropping. Well into the twentieth century, an increasingly embattled industry catered to dwindling luxury markets and an unstable, fluctuating home market with but a few relatively large, on the whole family, concerns and a proliferation of small sweatshop and outwork production.
Jean Stubbs penetrates the finer socio-political aspects of the radically changing nature and composition of peasantry and proletariat, including the interlacing of race, gender and skill, to take a closer look at areas of class action and national and class consciousness, be it through reformism, anarcho-syndicalism, revolutionary nationalism, socialism or communism.
This new edition expands on the 1985 original, adding other source material, with a new Preface and a Foreword by Victor Bulmer-Thomas
ISBN 978-1-914278-05-1 (paperback, £24.95/€27.95/$29.95), 978-1-914278-06-8 (hardback, £39.95/€44.95/$49.95), 978-1-914278-07-5 (eBook £7.99/€8.99/$9.99)
This new edition is available in Spanish (with a Foreword by Oscar Zanetti Lecuona):
ISBN 978-1-914278-08-1 (tapa blanda, £24.95/€27.95/$29.95), 978-1-914278-09-9 (tapa dura £39.95/€44.95/$49.95), 978-1-914278-10-5 (eBook £7.99/€8.99/$9.99)
All editions available on-line (Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc.) or through booksellers. A 25% discount is available for orders placed directly through Amaurea Press (contact us on sales@amaurea.co.uk). Booksellers interested in stocking this publication should contact us to discuss wholesale terms.
“A well-timed reprint of a masterful and highly readable historical account” (Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff)
“Marshals a profusion of sources for a profound analysis of a period that was fundamental for the history of this commodity in Cuba.” (Oscar Zanetti Lecuona)
“A model of careful research and judicious scholarship. The book will serve as a standard reference work on the subject for years to come.” (Louis A. Pérez, Jr.)
“A major investigation that gave tobacco its rightful place in Cuban history, from the pen of one who is today the premier tobacco historian of the Caribbean.” (Juan José Baldrich)
“Obligatory reading for understanding the history of tobacco manufacture and the struggles of the Cuban tobacco workers.” (Joan Casanovas)
“Provides an intersectional understanding of the politics of tobacco.” (Ratna Saptari)
“A gem in the historiography of the Cuban tobacco industry.” (Zoe Nocedo Primo)
“This book continues to be a classic.” (Vicent Sanz Rozalén)
For any enquiries related to this title, or Amaurea Press in general, please contact us at publications@amaurea.co.uk.
