I know when people think of Cuba many people think of cigars, Fidel Castro, trade agreements, and how the cars look like they are from the 50s. You also think about Cuba as a not well-developed country and oppressed by their government and by the way they isolated themselves from other countries. Before all of these things, Cuba was a major part of the slave trade and the trade of local goods. Cuba relied primarily on the production of sugar cane (Trollope). Because it was a major import, slaves were brought over to help produce and harvest these goods. For about 350 years, the Atlantic slave trade provided the Spanish colony of Cuba with a continuing supply of young African American men (Love). But the British also profited from the trades and goods that Cuba had produced. Britain used Cuba for its supply of sugar cane and with these trades helped out Britain’s economy grow. But after the years of the Napoleonic War, British attitudes stiffened into opposition to the human traffic to Cuba and elsewhere in the New World (Love). Many other nations began to follow in the footsteps of Great Britain and try to stop the import of slaves into other countries. Eight years after the Constitutional Convention, the negotiations at Ghent American delegates agreed to join forces with Great Britain “to use their best endeavors” to achieve “the entire abolition of the slave trade” (Love). This all happened before the Civil War in the United States and its pretty impressive to see that other countries were not in favor of the slave trade that was going on in Cuba was against what people believed back before it was a big deal. Cuba began to suffer when countries were trying to get rid of slavery in Cuba, and stopping it from spreading to the new world. 

LOVE, ROBERT WM. “THE END OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE TO CUBA.” Caribbean Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2/3, 1976, pp. 51–58. JSTOR

Trollope, Anthony. “Cuba.” New England Review (1990-), vol. 31, no. 3, 2010, pp. 178–190. JSTOR