The editors of this wide-ranging collection of eleven incisive chapters have set themselves the task of providing an introduction or, more precisely, a re-introduction, to the history of the Cuban republic. This is no small task. As the editors point out in their opening essay, the years bookended by the end of Spanish colonial rule in 1898 and the revolution of 1959 have often been dismissed, distorted, and misunderstood—when they have not been ignored—by generations of historians in Cuba, North America, and Spain. The editors have turned to historians from these three parts of the world to rescue the republic from facile description and analysis. They succeed in their mission, challenging scholars to re-examine the republican period for what it was, not for what it failed to be.
The collection’s introductory chapter sets the stage by exploring the historiography of the Cuban republic, which, they argue, generally focuses on the...