
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Choice Outstanding Academic Title
The story of a tycoon in the sugar industry and an in-depth view of Cuba's economy before the Revolution
Sugar Baron is the story of Manuel Rionda (1854-1943), who immigrated from Spain to Cuba as a boy of 16 to become a dominant operator in the international sugar trade and to stand at the crossroads of U.S.-Cuban economic relations. Through an examination of Rionda's career as founder of the Cuba Cane Sugar Corporation and of New York's major sugar brokerage firm, Muriel McAvoy gives us an in-depth history of Cuba's sugar industry and its economy during the first half of the 20th century.
McAvoy examines the dilemmas of development and the constraints of financial dependency, probing the inside story of how both Wall Street's and Cuba's political elite viewed the crucial economic problems facing the island and how they attempted to solve them. In great detail, she elucidates conflicts among the various economic sectors in both Cuba and the United States, providing unique and often corrective insights.
Stressing the significance of the Cuban elite in furthering and profiting from the development of Cuba as a sugar enclave, Sugar Baron shows that Rionda and the other hacendados did much to ensure that a single export would dominate their island's economy, enriching themselves in the process. Challenging the view that U.S. capitalism reduced Cuba's businessmen to helpless pawns, McAvoy provides a clearer view of the responsibility for events between the Spanish-American War and the triumph of Castro's revolution.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Merchant at the Crossroads
- 1. Business with Aliens
- 2. Head of the Mouse
- 3. Tarafa and the Genial Shark
- 4. Cuba Cane
- 5. A Fixed Price
- 6. Tail of the Lion
- 7. The Steel Gray Battleship
- 8. Visible Hands
- 9. Receivership and Reorganization
- 10. Empty Saddlebags
- 11. From the Wolf, a Pelt
- The Roads Taken
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author