Precolonial and Colonial Cuba: Indigenous Societies through the Wars of Independence
This domain tests three linked questions: who lived in Cuba before 1511 and how; how the colony was organized around sugar, slavery and fortification; and why independence took thirty years to approach before US intervention truncated it in 1898.
Indigenous societies and the conquest
Guanahatabey groups in the west lived by fishing and gathering; Ciboney and Taíno communities in the centre and east grew yuca in conucos, made casabe and organized yucayeques under caciques. Hatuey, burned at Yara in 1512, is the emblematic case of early resistance. Diego Velázquez founded seven villas between 1511 and 1515, from Baracoa to Havana and Santiago. Encomienda, mining and epidemic disease destroyed the indigenous population within decades; enslaved Africans were imported from the 1520s.
Sugar, slavery and reform
Havana became the gathering point of the treasure fleets, ringed by El Morro, La Cabaña and San Severino. Britain took Havana in 1762 and returned it in 1763 for Florida, opening trade; the Haitian revolution of 1791 then made Cuban sugar spectacular, and the island became one of the world's largest exporters on enslaved African labour. Britain imposed the 1817 treaty against the trade, but smuggling continued until abolition in 1886, after the 1870 Moret law and the 1880 patronato. Reformists-Varela, Del Monte, Saco-sought change inside the empire; autonomy arrived too late.
The wars of independence
Céspedes freed his slaves and launched the Ten Years' War at La Demajagua on 10 October 1868. The Pact of Zanjón (1878) ended it without independence or abolition; Maceo's Protest of Baraguá rejected the peace and the Guerra Chiquita (1879–80) failed. Martí built the Partido Revolucionario Cubano in 1892, signed the Montecristi manifesto with Gómez in 1895 and died at Dos Ríos on 19 May 1895; Maceo fell in 1896, and Weyler's reconcentración killed civilians by the tens of thousands. US intervention in 1898 ended Spanish rule but produced occupation, and the Platt Amendment of 1901 preceded the Republic of 1902.
Worked example
Prompt: why did 1868 fail where 1895 advanced? Rank causes. Long term, 1868's leadership was regional and planter-based, split over slavery and annexation. Medium term, Zanjón divided the movement. Short term, Martí's party supplied money, organization and a single programme, and the 1895 invasion carried the war into the sugar west. Note that 1898 requires an external cause-US intervention-which explains the outcome, not the insurrection.
Traps
Dating abolition to 1880 (that is the patronato; abolition is 1886); placing the Platt Amendment inside the 1940 Constitution; treating 1898 as independence, when the Republic begins in 1902; and reducing precolonial Cuba to the Taíno alone.