Coffee instead of Sugar: The global commodity Coffee and Slavery in Cuba (ca. 1790-1870)

The article traces the historical development of the coffee economy with slaves in Cuba between 1770 and 1870. Coffee cultivation did not come to Cuba until roughly 1770, so that initially, a slave-sugar economy developed on plantations around Havana. The great development impulse for coffee and slaves came with the revolution on Saint-Domingue/Haiti 1791-1803. Planters with their (former) slaves and slave women fled to Cuba. In Cuba, planters as well as slaves were called franceses (French). In Cuba, the new coffee zones and cafetales (coffee plantations) developed in the east, around Santiago de Cuba and the newly founded Guantanamo, but also in the west, in the Sierra del Rosario (Pinar del Rio) to Trinidad de Cuba and Matanzas, as well as in the east and south from Havana. With the enormous demand for coffee after 1814 due to Biedermeier capitalism in Europe and due to massive coffee consumption in North America, Cuba seemed to become a coffee slave economy. Coffee, like sugar, became a global commodity. Spaniards, Cuban elites and international speculators (including Swiss and Germans) also invested in Cuban coffee export until around 1830. According to the descriptions of contemporary travelers, coffee plantations were complicated rural and manufactory enterprises with a high demand for enslaved people. It was only because of several consecutive hurricanes in the 1840s, competition from other coffeeproducers in Latin America and Brazil, and the massive reduction in transportation costs that sugar became the leading slavery commodity in Cuba. Remains of coffee farming on plantations and with slaves were preserved until the end of the colonial period and beyond around Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo. Apart from that, coffee in Cuba became a plant of free farmers and a national drink