7 ATLASES
History of Cuba in maps
Cuba as it appears in 7 interactive history atlases, from 1750 to 2015: Cuba. Each era below lists who ruled the land and when control changed, linked to the dated map that shows it.
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What was Cuba before it was Cuba? The sections below follow this land through every era covered by the Maps of History atlases: who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed. Each line links to the dated map. Modern borders serve as an approximation, as each atlas says on the map itself.
Cuba (Spanish) · Industrial Revolution
On Spain’s sugar island, industrial demand encouraged the expansion of slavery. Steam-powered mills and railways served plantations worked by enslaved Africans and indentured Chinese laborers; slavery finally ended in 1886. Cuba shows how industrial technology and slavery could coexist and even strengthen one another.
| Colony or dependency — the opening position |
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Cuba · Age of Revolutions
Cuba’s elite sought to prevent a revolution like Haiti’s. As Haiti burned, Cuba absorbed its sugar market and refugee planters, importing more enslaved Africans in fifty years than in the previous three centuries. Fear of “another Haiti” led the elite to choose Spanish garrisons over independence. Slavery continued until 1886, and Spain retained its “ever-faithful isle” until 1898.
| Colonial possessions — the opening position |
AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Cuba · Haiti and Kenya independence
Cuba gained from the collapse of Saint-Domingue. Planters who fled the revolution brought coffee to the east around Santiago, while a sugar boom around Havana after 1791 made the Spanish island the new center of Caribbean slavery. The revolution’s example traveled too: José Antonio Aponte, a free Black carpenter, used images of Haiti’s leaders in a conspiracy in 1812. He and his comrades were hanged. Slavery survived in Cuba until 1886, and independence from Spain came only in 1902, under American supervision.
| Under colonial rule — the opening position | |
| Other states and societies |
HAITI AND KENYA INDEPENDENCE: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Spanish Cuba · American Civil War
The outcome of the war mattered to Spanish Cuba, where sugar production depended on slavery. Havana also stood second only to Nassau as an entrepôt for blockade runners. The Confederacy’s defeat politically doomed the slave systems that remained in the hemisphere, but their end came later: Cuba’s enslaved people were not fully freed until 1886, and Brazil’s until 1888. Appomattox ended slavery in the United States. Across the Americas, the struggle over slavery continued.
| Neighbors & the outside world — the opening position |
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Cuba · WWI
| The Entente & Allies — the opening position | |
| The Entente & Allies |
Cuba · Cold War
Cuba lay ninety miles offshore, yet in three years it moved from a US-aligned dictatorship to a Soviet missile base. It became the scene of the era’s closest brush with catastrophe (Ch. 6). Castro also made foreign policy on his own initiative: Havana sent 36,000 troops to Angola (Ch. 8). Moscow’s subsidies ended in 1991, but the regime survived, shown in charcoal on the final map.
| US-aligned states — the opening position | |
| Soviet-aligned states | |
| Communist, outside Moscow’s bloc |
COLD WAR: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
Cuba · Feminism and the Tunisian Revolution
| Right won in law — the opening position | |
| Partial or unequal; treaty signed only; transition | |
| No reform yet / outside this story | |
| Right won in law |
FEMINISM AND THE TUNISIAN REVOLUTION: EVERY CHAPTER AND MAP →
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