Rethinking Past and Present in Cuba

This collection of essays and research articles has been designed, by its breadth of expertise and discipline, to pay suitable homage to the seminal influence and contribution made by the late Alistair Hennessy towards the development of Cuban studies. For that reason, it includes a judicious mixture of the old and the new, including several of the leading and internationally well-established experts on Cuban history, politics and culture, but also some up-and-coming researchers in the field; that mixture and the combination of topics (some addressing the past directly, others assessing the present within a historical context) reflects Hennessy’s own cross-disciplinary and open-minded approach to the study of the history of Cuba. 

Preface. In memory of Alistair Hennessy   
Antoni Kapcia

 1. Spanish republicanism and the colonial empire: Alistair Hennessey and Spain's democratic revolution
Christopher Schmidt-Nowara

2. Rethinking pathways to the Cuban past
Louis A. Pérez, Jr.     

3. The origins of Cuban socialism
Fernando Martínez Heredia

4. Persuading parliament: Rafael María de Labra, Spanish colonial policy and the abolitionist debate (July 1871)
Catherine Davies

5. Ethnic whitening processes and the politics of race, labour and national identity in colonial Cuba: a case study of Irish immigrants, 1818–45
Margaret Brehony                             

6. From Hispanic essays to modern reporting: the evolution of Cuban journalism, considered through the figure of Justo de Lara
Jordi Garrell       

7. The changing shape of Cuban cinema: a report and a reflection            Michael Chanan

 8. A mixed economy of labour in a changing Cuba
Steve Ludlam

9. What’s in a name? Emigrant Cubans since 1959 and the curious evolution of discourse
Antoni Kapcia                   

10. Decentering cubanidad. Commodification, cosmopolitanism and diasporic engagement shaping the Cuban migration to post-1989 Western Europe
Catherine Krull and Jean Stubbs