Cuba en la época de Ezpeleta (1785–1790)

Abstract

José de Ezpeleta was a prominent royal official in both America and Spain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He first came to America as a junior officer in the Regiment of Navarre during Alejandro O’Reilly’s 1763–65 reformist mission to Cuba; he later gained prominence owing to his distinguished performance under Bernardo de Gálvez on the Gulf Coast during the War of the American Revolution. Serving after the war as interim governor of Louisiana and West Florida with the rank of brigadier, he secured an appointment as governor and captain general of Cuba in late 1785, a position that he occupied through April of 1789. Promoted to field marshal, Ezpeleta followed his Cuban appointment with six years as viceroy of New Granada. Thereafter, he remained in Spain where, at the ranks of lieutenant general and finally captain general, he served in multiple capacities, including president of the Council of Castille. Ezpeleta’s work as governor of Cuba is the focus of Juan Bosco Amores in the present volume.The mid- and late 1780s were a kind of ellipsis, or lull, between the commotion occasioned by Cuba’s prominent role during Spain’s intervention in the War of the American Revolution, and the frantic transformations occasioned by the destruction of rival Saint Domingue’s sugar economy. Not surprisingly, this period has heretofore attracted little scholarly attention. Yet it too was a time of important change, in part owing to the capable leadership of Ezpeleta. A model of the enlightened, progressive official that so often emerged during the time of Charles III, Ezpeleta was an effective proponent of the centralizing tendencies of Bourbon government. As captain general, a viceroy without title, he defined a powerful leadership role for his office, while reforming the island’s local administration and cod ifying its practices. An apostle of material progress, he worked heroically, albeit not always successfully, to beautify and sanitize Havana, and to improve Cuba’s transportation system. Married into the habanero elite, he nurtured the politically and economically constructive interplay between crown and patriciate that he had inherited from his predecessors, a theme that runs throughout the book. These years saw Cuba accelerate its transformation into a key component of the imperial complex.In conducting this study, which began as a doctoral dissertation under the direction of Luis Navarro Garcia at the University of Seville, Juan Bosco Amores seemingly leaves no stone unturned. His exhaustive research encompasses the appropriate archives of both Spain and Cuba and an impressive array of published materials.A three-and-one-half-year governorship, even when discharged by a distinguished figure such as José de Ezpeleta and in a place as significant as Cuba, would not ordinarily justify a study of this length; but this is much more than a simple account of Ezpeleta’s administration. The text is brimming with information about the island during the final third of the century, and it is rare to find a page that does not contain something new. The first topics covered encompass basic realities: a general overview of the island’s position as gateway to the empire, its demography, social structure and slave system, the economy and trade, and the church and culture. The second half of the book details Ezpeleta’s trials and achievements as royal administrator, as an aggressive advocate of enlightened material progress, and as captain general encharged with sustaining the immense reformed military complex that he had inherited. While Amores necessarily emphasizes Havana, he has also marshalls considerable ground-breaking data on Santiago and the other sectors of the island.Several examples will illustrate the diversity of the information contained in this volume. Illuminating is the treatment of the slave trade during the murky period between the departure of the Cádiz Company in 1780 and the deregulation of 1789, as Amores details the ad hoc arrangements that ensured an expanding labor supply for the growing sugar industry. In the section on the economy, Amores persuasively argues that, contrary to common belief, tobacco flourished, even in the face of an aggressively advancing sugar industry. Confusion has arisen from the failure to distinguish between the ups and downs of the royal monopoly and the free market that operated despite it. Institutional arrangements, exceedingly complex in the case of Havana, are clearly defined, including the captain general’s relationship to the army and marine intendancies, the governorships of Santiago, Louisiana and Florida, the deputy (teniente) governors, and the capitanes and tenientes de partido. Ezpeleta’s General Instruction for the latter is contained in the appendixes.Juan Bosco Amores is to be congratulated for this impressive effort. The book is encyclopedic in its information on late-eighteenth-century Cuba. It should be obligatory reading for those interested in the island’s history and in the greater eighteenth-century empire.