Havana and the Atlantic in the sixteenth century /

Fuente (Univ. of Pittsburgh) collaborated with two Cuban scholars, Garcia del Pino and Iglesias Delgado, and utilized information from Havana's notarial archives, town council records, and parish registers that were heretofore largely unavailable to scholars from the US. After the destruction of the town by French corsairs in 1555, the Spanish, recognizing the need for a port on the north coast of Cuba to service fleets bound for Spain, rebuilt a bigger, more heavily fortified port city with money from Mexico's treasury and African slave labor. By 1610, Havana was the ninth largest city in Spanish America, with an array of urban institutions and services and a racially and ethnically diverse population. Havana prospered through its connections to transatlantic commerce, participation in the circum-Caribbean trade, and position as a port for goods from Cuba's interior. The book makes a contribution to Atlantic history, describing a 16th-century Atlantic economy dominated by the Iberians and less dependent on plantation production and slavery than in the 18th century. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. V. H. Cummins Austin College