Samuel Finesurrey Ph.D.

This digital archive is an aid in understanding how British, Canadian and especially U.S. nationals managed and, on occasion, challenged informal empire in 1940s and 1950s Cuba. Cuba’s Anglo-American Colony in Times of Revolution documents how, in the context of revolution, contact between Cubans and U.S. nationals–as well as a smaller number of British and Canadian residents–reproduced existing hierarchies, while simultaneously creating new empathies. Cuba’s Anglo-American residents managed informal empire by developing and cultivating economic, political and cultural authority on the island. These privileged outsiders were able to exert dominance through socioeconomic partnerships with Cuban powerbrokers. However, Anglo-American educators, journalists, missionaries, politicians, executives, mobsters and philanthropists crafted a diverse, and often contradictory set of alliances with Cubans. In the context of revolution, where their Cuban colleagues, classmates, students, parishioners, friends and family risked their lives and their privilege for a “new” Cuba, a significant segment of Anglo-American residents entered into cross-cultural solidarities with revolutionary actors. Based on the personal commitments they developed with Cubans, many U.S., British and Canadian nationals residing in Cuba struggled for a socioeconomic and political transformation of Cuban society, both before the revolution ousted the Batista government and after the revolutionary government had consolidated power. This archive centers a new set of actors, institutions, and relationships in the narrative of the Cuban Revolution.