Cuban Sugar Boom

Sugar has been both Cuba’s greatest blessing and curse. Cuba’s sugar frontier was able to develop due to its environment, technology, and slave labor availability. It became an everyday lifestyle for the people that inhabited it. The failures of other industries in Cuba accelerated the growth of a booming sugar crop that lasted many decades and allowed for Cuba to become more prominent in the world. Despite the extreme success of the sugar industry in Cuba, it eventually fell due to societal, economic, and environmental changes within the country.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew sailed up the coast of Cuba. He described the valleys and mountains “full of tall, cool trees that it was a glory to see,” landscapes in which on saw

Expanding sugar mills dominated the landscape from Havana to Puerto Príncipe, expelling small farmers and destroying the island’s extensive hardwood forests. By 1850 the sugar industry accounted for four-fifths of all exports, and in 1860 Cuba produced nearly one-third of the world’s sugar. In the 1800s, Cuban sugar plantations became the highest world producer of sugar, thanks to the expansion of slavery and a relentless focus on improving the island 's sugar technology. The use of modern refining techniques was especially important because the British abolished the slave trade in 1807. After 1815, began forcing other countries to follow suit. Cubans were torn between the profits generated by sugar and a repugnance for slavery, which they saw as morally, politically, and racially dangerous to their society. By the end of the nineteenth century, slavery was abolished. However, leading up to the abolition of slavery, Cuba gained great prosperity from its sugar trade. Originally, the Spanish had ordered regulations on trade with Cuba, which kept the island from becoming a dominant sugar producer. The Spanish were interested in keeping their trade routes and slave trade routes protected. Nevertheless, Cuba 's vast size and abundance of natural resources made it an ideal place for becoming a booming sugar producer. (Lecture) When Spain opened the Cuban trade ports, it quickly became a popular place. New technology allowed a much more effective and efficient means of producing sugar. They began to use water mills, enclosed furnaces, and steam engines to produce a higher quality of sugar at a much more efficient pace than elsewhere in the Caribbean. The boom in the Cuban sugar industry in the nineteenth century made it necessary for Cuba to improve its means of transportation. Planters needed safe and efficient