Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos

"Yes. We haven’t covered quite 100 years, but we’ve come a long way since Pratt in 1936—a long way in terms of how history has been studied. I’ve cited Pérez for two reasons. The major reason is that I’m using Pérez to signify a shift in attitude between his own work and the other four books that I’ve mentioned. The other books do not really have either the apparatus or a primary interest in seeing the world from the point of view of the recipients, that is to say those who experienced the weight of colonial rule. This is not the criticism it might seem because very few scholars were interested in this perspective until the 1960s. Until then, much of history of the rest of the world was assembled by the West from centres of power in Washington, London, Paris, et cetera that reached outwards. That was the conventional approach of the time. Well, what happened in and after the 1960s was a revolution that produced what is now known as area studies. The term summarises the huge research effort following decolonisation to write about indigenous or local peoples themselves rather than treating them as agents, victims, or fortunate recipients of alien influences and rule. So, Pérez represents one dimension of this new research as it applied to Cuba. His work is a distinguished statement of a much wider process of rewriting world history. Excellent examples could also be drawn from Hawaiʻi, The Philippines, and Puerto Rico, as well as, of course, from Africa and Asia. Nevertheless—and this is the second reason I’ve chosen Pérez—I don’t think anyone has contributed as much he has to any other part of the insular empire. In the course of half a century, he has written some 12 books on the history of Cuba and covered everything from bandits to the military and included the environment and culture, as well as standard political themes. You cannot write a word about Cuban history without citing Pérez. “Cuba was described as a ‘ripe fruit,’ that would eventually drop off into the hands of the United States” I’ve chosen this particular book because of the way it shows how the interaction between the US presence and its perception of Cuba produced misleading stereotypes that fed back into policy. Pérez demonstrates that the United States invented a series of mythical constructs of Cuba. The United States was not well informed about the realities of Cuba and didn’t take much trouble to inform itself better. Consequently, mistaken perceptions and appraisals created a form of reality that became a basis for action. I’ll give you some examples. In the 19th century, observers in the United States saw Cuba as an island that had drifted away from the mainland and ought to be reclaimed. The word ‘natural’ was frequently applied to support the assumption that Cuba was really part of the United States. The island was also seen as a ‘ripe fruit,’ to use a common phrase, that would eventually drop off the tree and into the hands of the United States. Then, in 1898, in order to justify the war with Spain, Cuba became a damsel in distress that needed to be rescued from the mediaeval, tyrannical rule of Spain. After 1898 and down to 1959 the United States wielded considerable influence in Cuba, which was effectively a protectorate. However, the Cubans did not always obey their protectors. And so the image changed again. Cubans became inferior. They had limited potential. They were undisciplined. They were rebellious. Consequently, they needed paternal help and guidance before they earned the right to manage their own affairs. In 1959, the Cuban Revolution signified their rejection of the forms of imperial subordination they had been subjected to. At this point, of course, previous attitudes became solidified. Cubans became ungrateful, rebellious, dangerous and even today deserve to be walled off and kept away from civilised countries until they have in some way repented and seen the light. President Trump’s decision to reaffirm a hard-line policy towards Cuba indicates that salvation still lies ahead in a very distant future. It is said that the president is not a great reader. It would greatly assist the formulation of US policy if someone would offer him a one-page summary of Pérez’s book. Indeed. A bit of both. I think that Cuba has become, through this long history of mutual misunderstandings, something of a special case because of what Washington regards as its obduracy combined with its proximity. Other islands have fallen into line to various degrees, but the Cubans failed to conform. It’s a great irony that their demand for self-determination was what President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed as a goal of US policy at the end of World War I. It’s also what the American colonists wanted in 1776. So, the precedents for what the Cubans are doing or trying to do are there in US history . It’s the practice of them that displeases Washington. But it would not do to overemphasise the Cuban case in terms of world history, because very similar attitudes marked all the great colonial powers from the late 19th century onwards. They all thought they were superior. They all thought they had a divine right to rule, and they all came to the conclusion, one way or another, that colonial subjects were ungrateful, obstructive and occasionally rebellious and that the colonial burden was indeed a heavy one. It had to be carried for as long as possible, but there wasn’t much benefit to be gained from it. So, you can take the Cuban case as being fairly typical of US attitudes towards all of its possessions, and those attitudes in turn link with those of the larger imperial powers, like Britain and France. Yes, if I think about my own work in relation to the great books I have mentioned, I would say that I’ve tried to do two things that are not fully covered by the available literature. The first is to set the United States in a broader Western context. The argument here is that, though the United States is of course distinctive in many regards, there is a commonality about its evolution from the 17th and 18th centuries to today that has been missed. To make this point, I interlace my chapters on the United States with chapters about what is going on in Western Europe in terms of the changing nature of the state from an agricultural, military-fiscal state to a modern, industrial, constitutional nation state and the accompanying struggles between progressives and conservatives. The kind of trends that we know as staples of modern European history were also operating in the United States and at much the same time. For example, when the United States acquired its formal empire in 1898, it did so at the height of ‘new imperialism’ in the late 19th century, when Britain, France and others were expanding or creating their own empires. So, there’s nothing exceptional about the participation of the US in a widespread Western undertaking. There’s no surprise either about the timing of decolonisation, except that it is not dealt with in books that offer syntheses of the subject. The US shed its empire after 1945 and at the same time as the decolonising process was getting underway everywhere else. In short, I try to show that US history, in its broad international contours at least, was part of a much wider Western developmental story. The second contribution I hope to make follows from what I’ve said about Pérez. I am now speaking as an Africanist who’s done field work in Africa in my younger, healthier, more athletic days. The point is that you cannot now write any kind of imperial history without taking account of the enormous work done on the indigenous history of the places that were colonised. Moreover, this is not just a matter of making the story complete. It is because the story, in being complete, alters the original message. That’s to say, the view from Washington and London was itself partly created by experience in Africa, India and elsewhere, which fed back into it. There is a sense, however unequal, that colonialism was jointly produced and was not simply an imposition from the outside world. It was that, but it was much more than that. In my book, I’ve drawn attention to the admirable and detailed work that has been done on Hawaiʻi, The Philippines, Puerto Rico and, as we have just seen, Cuba. This literature is part of the move during the last generation or so to write indigenous history. As yet, however, no one has put together the research on the imperial experience of all the major islands and linked the Caribbean to the Pacific. What I’ve done on this, I should say, is by no means definitive. And there are, I’m sure, many weaknesses that I have not yet fully perceived. Nevertheless, I have attempted to reflect in my study of American Empire approaches that would be taken for granted but also regarded as of great significance by historians working on Africa, India and other parts of the now defunct colonial world. You could say that it’s an attempt to write a global history for a globalised world."