A crisis of long distance. The decline of the culture of tobacco in the east of Cuba at the end of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The spectacular development of the sugar plantations, first in the western part of Cuba, later expanding to the rest of the island since the mid-eighteenth century, has dampened dramatically the knowledge that we currently have of sugar expansion, especially in the final stages of its demise in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This work intends to make a sketch of the main difficulties experienced by this crop in the eastern interior, since, as discussed below, the decline of this crop had some differences with the process developed in western Cuba, where the struggle for land raised by the expansion of sugar plantations significantly marked this period.