In 1717, 1720 and 1723 tobacco farmers rebelled against a monopoly imposed by the Spanish government. In the 1723 uprising, government troops killed scores of the protesters. The tobacco farmers also responded clandestinely to the monopoly as they illegally exported as much as 75% of the island’s tobacco crop. The government also legislated similar monopolies on other island products. As a result food shortages became common in the first half of the 18th century and Cuba’s economy collapsed.
The 19th century was one of rebellion in Cuba. In 1791, Africans saw possibility of freedom as they looked to the neighboring colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti now). Under the leadership of freed slave Toussaint L’Ouverture the slaves in the French colony erupted into revolution and after winning freedom formally in 1804, formed an independent state ruled by people of African descent.
The whites in Cuba and the rest of Spanish America got their taste of freedom when Napoleon Bonaparte installed his brother on the throne of Spain. The Spanish people fought Napoleon’s brother with the help of the British and everyone was too busy to deal with Spain’s American colonies, leaving them mostly free to make their own policy decisions. When Napoleon was defeated and the Spanish monarch restored to power he tried to regain control over the colonies. The colonials, who had gotten used to making their own decisions did not take well to this. Thus, unsurprisingly, the 19th century featured innumerable revolts and rebellions in Cuba.
Slaves regularly revolted in small outbreaks throughout the island. In 1843, as many as one thousand Afro-Cubans, slave and free alike, were executed on suspicion alone after a large, planned uprising in Matanzas. These continuous slave revolts were one reason why conservative (white) Cubans did not seek independence from Spain in the early 19th century.
The first white uprising calling for independence occurred in 1809.
It was quickly crushed by the Spanish, as was every other uprising until
1868. Influential criollos (whites born in Cuba) strongly opposed
independence. Slavery held a prominent position in Cuban society and white
fears of slave insurrection combined with fears of Cuba turning into another
Haiti kept the slave owners from supporting independence from Spain (and
more importantly, independence from her troops). The sugar industry grew
rapidly during this period, largely because Haiti had stopped its sugar
production with its 1791 revolution and Cubans filled the gap. These plantation
owners were not willing to risk their position and wealth with rebellion.
In 1867, liberal ideas of reform flourished in Cuba. The first trade union had been formed in 1866 and cigar workers held a strike the same year. The press was relatively free. However, in Spain the liberal government fell in 1867 and a new conservative government in Spain chose to quash the reformist spirit in Cuba. Military tribunals were given more power, presses critical of the Spanish were shut down and political meetings were banned. Spain also raised taxes and imposed duties that caused foreign products to cost four times what Spanish goods cost. This caused the US to raise protective tariffs up against Cuban goods. Recession, already hitting the island hard, increased drastically with the advent of these measures and many people who had previously opposed rebellion now began supporting the idea.
On October 10, 1868 a group of criollos from eastern Cuba declared independence from Spain, beginning what came to be known as the Ten Years’ War. This uprising attracted at least 40,000 rebellious troops by the early 1870s. The rebels included people from most classes of society, free and slave Afro-Cuban, and whites of all classes except the Peninsulares (Spanish-born people living in Cuba). The rebels, trying to gain support from the slave-owners in the western part of the island as well as from Afro-Cubans, proclaimed a manifesto in support of gradual emancipation for slaves with indemnification for their owners. The war stalled as the various groups of rebels splintered over ideological differences. In 1878 most of the insurgents relinquished their arms and agreed to the treaty of Zanjón with Spain. The treaty included eight articles, most of which assured that the insurgents would not be persecuted by the Spanish after capitulating, along with one article guaranteeing freedom for the slaves who had fought with the insurgents.
Hard times continued in Cuba. After the Peace of Zanjón, Cuba was allowed to send representatives to the Spanish Parliament; however, laws were enacted which limited voting for those representatives almost exclusively to Peninsulares. Even then these representatives held little power. The Spanish government also increased taxes on the island to help pay for the debt Spain had racked up during the Ten Years War.
In the early 1890’s trade boomed in Cuba for the first time since the Ten Years' War because of an 1891 reciprocal trade agreement between Spain and the US which allowed free entrance of Cuban raw sugar into the US (in return for Spain making some tariff concessions to the US). Unemployment went down and profits soared.
Then, the US, suffering from an 1893 recession, enacted trade barriers, placing tariffs on Cuban sugar. Madrid responded by placing protectionist duties on all foreign products entering Cuba. This coincided with a worldwide fall in the price of sugar. Suddenly Cuba’s economy fell sharply and unemployment rose massively. Prices also skyrocketed.
The Autonomist party proved unable to make inroads into the government of the island. For example, three of every four mayors on the island were Spanish and of 32 positions in the ayuntamientos (city council) of Havana, Peninsulares held 29 of them. This failure of non-violent reform left the population on the island with no hope that progress against the corruption and inequality on the island would occur. The islanders’ frustration with this political inequality showed in June 1890 when they organized a demonstration in Havana to protest an electoral bill which was "outrageous, degrading, and bodeful of evil to Cuba." The demonstration was made on horseback with a "rapidity really military."
In February of 1895, full-scale war broke out in Cuba again.