Railroading in its heyday

A new history of the causes of the American Civil War, highlighting the role played by ordinary men in the secession debate and process.

The histories of Cuba and the United States are tightly intertwined and have been for at least two centuries. In Race to Revolution, historian Gerald Horne examines a critical relationship between the two countries by tracing out the typically overlooked interconnections among slavery, Jim Crow, and revolution. Slavery was central to the economic and political trajectories of Cuba and the United States, both in terms of each nation’s internal political and economic development and in the interactions between the small Caribbean island and the Colossus of the North. Horne draws a direct link between the black experiences in two very different countries and follows that connection through changing periods of resistance and revolutionary upheaval. Black Cubans were crucial to Cuba’s initial independence, and the relative freedom they achieved helped bring down Jim Crow in the United States, reinforcing radical politics within the black communities of both nations. This in turn helped to create the conditions that gave rise to the Cuban Revolution which, on New Years’ Day in 1959, shook the United States to its core. Based on extensive research in Havana, Madrid, London, and throughout the U.S., Race to Revolution delves deep into the historical record, bringing to life the experiences of slaves and slave traders, abolitionists and sailors, politicians and poor farmers. It illuminates the complex web of interaction and infl uence that shaped the lives of many generations as they struggled over questions of race, property, and political power in both Cuba and the United States.

This collection of research from Cuba scholars explores key conflicts, episodes, currents, and tensions that helped shape Cuba as a modern, independent nation. Cuba in the nineteenth century was characterized by social struggle. Slavery, Spanish colonial rule, and racial tension permeated every corner of Cuban life—from urban dwelling to house of charity, from sugarcane field to tobacco vega, from seaport to railway—and furnished a lively spectacle for the privileged foreigner gazing upon Cuba from afar. Chapters discuss topics including slavery, gendered forced labor, indentured labor, agricultural economics, industrial development, newspaper and print culture, and the origins of the "Cuba Threat." The volume links key aspects of Cuba’s history, such as social conflict and economic underdevelopment, to present a detailed analysis of Cuban civil society in the 1800s. Social Struggle and Civil Society in Nineteenth Century Cuba appeals to general readers and scholars in a range of disciplines, including history, women’s studies, economics, architectural preservation, media studies, and literature.

This volume presents a social history of life in mid-19th-century Cuba as experienced by George Backhouse (and his wife, Grace), who served on the British Havana Mixed Commission for the Suppression of the Slave Trade. Documented with extracts from the Backhouse's correspondence, diaries and other contemporary papers, Martinez-Fernandez paints a detailed picture of the Cuban slave trade, its role in the sugar industry, and the interrelated contradictions within Cuba's economy, society and politics. The Backhouse story provides addition al insights into important aspects of life in the "male" city of Havana, social antagonisms between Britons and North Americans, interactions with European social circles, religious tension, and the reality of tropical disease. Drama is added to the narrative in the author's description of the tragic and mysterious murder of George Backhouse in August 1855, possibly the result of a slave traders' conspiracy.

Through Other's Eyes is a collection of twenty-seven published accounts of Montgomery, Alabama, covered the thirty-six years between April 1825 and May 1861. With two exceptions, the stays in Montgomery were quite short. Each account is preceded by biographical information about the author. The accounts were written by both famous and obscure travelers—American and European political and military personages, ministers, gentlemen scientists, authors and periodical correspondents, lecturers, entertainers, and even by what were professional travelers. In general, they wrote for commercial reasons; travel books were popular in the nineteenth century. Besides the inevitable comments on the horrible state of accommodations and food, and the trials of travel by stage coach, steamboat, and railway, they commented on slavery, of course, but also on natural history, agriculture, gambling and drinking, Montgomery's hinterland, and Alabamians. The comments on the latter were both complimentary and not. Europeans and Americans tended to have differing opinions. Although the travelers' assessments were made hurriedly and tended to focus on differences rather than similarities—probably to promote sales—they do provide a captivating insight into antebellum Montgomery. Through Other's Eyes is a companion volume to The Very Worst Road: Travellers' Accounts of Crossing Alabama's Old Creek Indian Territory, 1820-1848.

"Women and the Colonial Gaze" examines the way images of women have been used by colonizers and subject peoples to define the colonial relationship.

Catholicism has long been recognized as one of the major forces shaping the Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic) during the nineteenth century, but the role of Protestantism has not been fully explored. Protestantism and Political Conflict in the Nineteenth-Century Hispanic Caribbean traces the emergence of Protestantism in Cuba and Puerto Rico during a crucial period of national consolidation involving both social and political struggle. Using a comparative framework, Martínez-Fernández looks at the ways in which Protestantism, though officially "illegal" for most of the century, established itself, competed with Catholicism, and took differing paths in Cuba and Puerto Rico. One of the book's main goals is to trace the links between religion and politics, particularly with regard to early Protestant activities. Protestants encountered a complex social, economic, and political landscape both in Cuba and in Puerto Rico and soon found that their very presence, coupled with their demands for freedom of worship and burial rights, involved them in a series of interrelated struggles in which the Catholic Church was embroiled along with the other main forces of the period--the peasantry, the agrarian bourgeoisie, the mercantile bourgeoisie, and the colonial state. While the established Catholic Church increasingly identified with the conservative, pro-slavery, and colonialist causes, newly arrived Protestants tended to be nationalistic and to pursue particular economic activities--such as cigar exportation in Cuba and the sugar industry in Puerto Rico. The author argues that the early Protestant communities reflected the socio-cultural milieus from which they emerged and were profoundly shaped by the economic activities of their congregants. This influence, in turn, shaped not only the congregations' composition, but also their political and social orientations.

First popularized by newspaper coverage of the Underground Railroad in the 1840s, the underground serves as a metaphor for subversive activity that remains central to our political vocabulary. In Going Underground, Lara Langer Cohen excavates the long history of this now familiar idea while seeking out versions of the underground that were left behind along the way. Outlining how the underground’s figurative sense first took shape through the associations of literal subterranean spaces with racialized Blackness, she examines a vibrant world of nineteenth-century US subterranean literature that includes Black radical manifestos, anarchist periodicals, sensationalist exposés of the urban underworld, manuals for sex magic, and the initiation rites of secret societies. Cohen finds that the undergrounds in this literature offer sites of political possibility that exceed the familiar framework of resistance, suggesting that nineteenth-century undergrounds can inspire new modes of world-making and world-breaking for a time when this world feels increasingly untenable.