Publisher's Synopsis
This is the story of Cuban tobacco, whose agricultural and industrial development was fashioned as deftly as a Havana cigar around overseas trading interests. It traces the growth of a tobacco oligarchy, peasant grower class and urban salaried workforce, alongside slave and indentured labour. Well into the 20th-century, an increasingly embattled industry catered to dwindling luxury markets and an unstable home market. Jean Stubbs penetrates the socio-political aspects of the radically changing nature and composition of peasantry and proletariat, including the interlacing of race, gender and skill, to take a closer look at areas of class action and national and class consciousness. This new edition expands on the 1985 original with a new Foreword and Preface, and other source material.
