Alejandro de la Fuente Knihy

Set in the 1550s, the narrative explores Havana's evolution from a vulnerable coastal village to a fortified port city by 1610, thriving under Spanish rule. Alejandro de la Fuente utilizes local Cuban sources to detail this transformation, highlighting Havana's emergence as a key Atlantic hub for shipping and commerce. The study delves into the interplay between local ambitions and imperial designs, while also contextualizing Havana within the broader frameworks of slavery and colonial economic systems in the Americas.

Becoming Free, Becoming Black offers the first comparative study of law, race, and freedom in the Americas from the sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. Slaveholders linked blackness and slavery in the law, but by the mid- nineteenth century the social meaning of blackness varied over time and under different legal regimes.