Consequences

Chapter 6 links the Aponte slave rebellion in Cuba, which took place fifty years after the siege of Havana, with the wide-ranging impacts of the British invasion and occupation. After Spain regained Havana, Spain took unprecedented measures to promote transatlantic human trafficking, including the annexation in 1778 of what would become its only sub-Saharan African colony, Equatorial Guinea, as well as the tightening of ties to the Spanish Philippines, which was seen as an essential source of goods for exchange in the slave trade. Its Enlightenment-inspired reforms also included new efforts to promote the military service of Spain’s black subjects in both Cuba and greater Spanish America. In the decades that followed the Seven Years’ War, the men of African descent who had defended Cuba from British attack in 1762 sought the continuation and expansion of their many roles buttressing Spanish colonialism; however, white elites in Havana wanted new departures in Spanish imperial political economy and persuaded policymakers in Madrid to grant them. Their efforts remade the political economy of the island, more severely restricted the traditional privileges of free black soldiers and all people of African descent, and ultimately contributed to the outbreak of the Aponte Rebellion.