From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba

In this award-winning environmental history of Cuba since the age of Columbus, Reinaldo Funes Monzote emphasizes the two processes that have had the most dramatic impact on the island's landscape: deforestation and sugar cultivation. During the first 300 years of Spanish settlement, sugar plantations arose primarily in areas where forests had been cleared by the royal navy, which maintained an interest in management and conservation for the shipbuilding industry. The sugar planters won a decisive victory in 1815, however, when they were allowed to clear extensive forests, without restriction, for cane fields and sugar production. This book is the first to consider Cuba's vital sugar industry through the lens of environmental history. Funes Monzote demonstrates how the industry that came to define Cuba--and upon which Cuba urgently depended--also devastated the ecology of the island.

The original Spanish-language edition of the book, published in Mexico in 2004, was awarded the UNESCO Book Prize for Caribbean Thought, Environmental Category. For this first English edition, the author has revised the text throughout and provided new material, including a glossary and a conclusion that summarizes important developments up to the present.

From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History since 1492
Reinaldo Funes Monzote is associate professor of history at the University of Havana. Alex Martin is an independent translator living in Maryland.
Funes Monzote's extensive, well-researched, and finely detailed study. . . . is destined to become a classic foundation to the environmental history of the Greater Antilles. --Canadian Journal of History

[A] fine environmental history.--New West Indian Guide

[A] very extensive examination. . . . Highly recommended.--Choice

A fascinating and timely book. . . . One that all politicians and policy makers need to read. . . . A well-crafted account. . . . More than an environmental history.--The Americas

A magisterial environmental history. . . . [With] comprehensive scope, original argument, and eloquent writing.--World Sugar History Newsletter

A major accomplishment. . . . A fascinating, provocative and substantive addition to Latin American environmental history.--Journal of Latin American Studies

A major contribution to the environmental history of Cuba and the Caribbean. . . . Will . . . serve as a guide to writers on the environmental history of other islands in the Caribbean and around the tropical world.--Journal of American Studies

A very fine book that provides a comprehensive environmental history of the occupation of Cuba since 1492 and its transformation from a mostly forested island to one dominated by sugar cane.--American Historical Review

An essential contribution to the wider fields of environmental and Latin American history. . . . The author's decision to make the forest the focal point of his analysis is innovative and effective.--Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies

An important study of the human-induced evolution of the Cuban landscape since the arrival of Columbus.--Caribbean Review of Books

Funes' book is one of the precursors of a growing literature that has been vigorously developing. . . . The quality of this book enriches Latin American environmental historiography.--Sixteenth Century Journal

Seminal. . . . [A] splendid example of the richness of Latin American environmental history.--Hispanic American Historical Review