“There’s Nothing Like Having Good Influence in Madrid!”: Fraud and Immorality in Cuba, the “Pearl of the Antilles”

Abstract

This chapter seeks to examine the deep-rooted presence of corruption in Spain’s most prosperous colony in the Caribbean: Cuba. In the nineteenth century, the island developed a highly prosperous slave plantation economy that was, nevertheless, seriously curtailed by rampant levels of corruption. While some of these fraudulent practices exploited Cuba’s deep integration into the global economy, the structural reasons behind the phenomenon were linked to the institutional framework of the Spanish empire. Indeed, the high levels of corruption in this colony can only be fully understood by examining the clientelistic networks that spanned the two sides of the Atlantic, and through an analytical approach that examines the metropolis and colony together. The analysis of corruption in Cuba is thus used as a platform from which to examine the transatlantic dynamics of imperial rule, as well as the tensions and resistances that pervaded it, in a global comparative context.