Running from Albion

Jonathan Curry-Machado examines the motives and experiences of migrants to Cuba from the British Isles in the 19th Century

Migrants from the British Isles played a hitherto little recognised part in the development of Cuban society and economy in the nineteenth century. Although not a numerically large migration, British and Irish merchants, professionals and, above all, workers had a significance for Cuba out of proportion to the numbers involved. They contributed to the development of Cuba's international commerce, to both the outlawing and the hidden continuation of slavery, to the technological development of the sugar industry, and to the modernisation of the island. However, there is little evidence of a 'British' community existing, and the 'British' identity of the migrants was at best ambiguous and more often than not subsumed within a broader definition of what it meant to be 'white' and 'foreign' in Cuba at this time. The article draws on extensive original archival research in Britain and Cuba.

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"I am not surprised that great numbers . . . are anxious to emigrate," commented James Bright, MP, to the Glasgow Council of Trades in 1858. "If I were younger, and in their position, I should strain every nerve to enable me to find a home in the United States, or in one of the British colonies." Although dwarfed by the mass, nation-building migrations to North America and Australia, migrants from the British Isles also travelled to a wide range of other destinations, including Cuba. Although relatively few in number, these played a disproportionately large part in the affairs of the island during this period. They were concentrated in parts of the country that were of greatest significance to the Cuban economy; and were also engaged in occupations that were crucial to Cuba's development. Immigrant merchants had an important role in Cuba's international maritime trade, and also in the introduction of machinery, railways and other innovations. Immigrant professionals contributed to the modernisation of Cuba, and the introduction of new scientific approaches. While representatives of Britain campaigned against the ongoing employment of slaves, and the continuing illicit slave trade, immigrant planters escaped the abolition of slavery in the British Antilles to establish themselves with their slaves in the Cuban countryside. But the migration from the British Isles was above all working class. Although the immigration included labourers, domestic servants and sailors, the majority arriving in Cuba were artisans: in particular engineers coming to install, operate and maintain the steam engines that were being introduced into the sugar mills, mines and railways. Nor were they just men. A substantial proportion of the migrants were women, and those from the British Isles showed greater propensity to active involvement beyond the confines of the home than other white women in Cuba at this time.

Although at an official level all these migrants were categorised as 'British', in fact there is little evidence that they formed a distinct community, defined in terms of nationality. To be 'British' was, rather, a label of convenience - either for profit, or to escape from difficult circumstances. Where it might be advantageous, even migrants who had no legitimate claim to the title would claim British subject-hood; and in the course of everyday life, even those who were British born and bred were likely not to overtly assert their Britishness. Not only did the migrants themselves have an apparently ambivalent attitude to their national identity, but so too did the authorities, both Spanish and British. While contributing to the development of Cuba's international commerce, the outlawing and hidden continuation of slavery, the technological development of the sugar industry, and the modernisation of the island; the 'British' identity of the migrants was at best ambiguous and more often than not subsumed within a broader definition of what it meant to be 'white' and 'foreign' in Cuba at this time.

Although as many as 20,000 'British' were resident in Cuba in the course of the nineteenth century (Pérez de la Riva 1979, p.21), census figures suggest that at any one time their presence was considerably smaller (Table 1). At the beginning of the 1840s there were still just 327 'British' residents in Cuba (Sociedad Económica 1844). It was in this decade that a new wave of immigration began to occur. By 1847, the number of residents originating in the British Isles had almost doubled to 605 (Cuadro Estadístico 1847), and had doubled again by 1862, when some 1,244 were recorded as living in the island (Armildez de Toledo 1864). Over the following decades, this number gradually dropped (in large part probably the result of the island's independence wars, with the accompanying disruption to economic activities as well as the heightened physical risk of remaining on the island), with just 666 recorded as living in Cuba by 1899 (US War Department 1899). However, many migrants are likely to have been invisible to these censuses, either because of the seasonal nature of their employment (as was the case of many who worked in the sugar mills) (Curry-Machado 2003), or because the nature of their presence in the island would have led to them not being counted as actually resident (as was the case of the many 'Irish' navvies who formed an army of labourers alongside the slaves in the construction of the Cuban railways) (Zanetti and García 1987; Moyano 1991). 'British' migrants were not uniformly distributed about the island. There was a larger community of 'British' migrants in Havana than elsewhere, this being both the political capital, and also the most important commercial centre and principal port of entry into Cuba. In Matanzas, the rapid rise in a 'British' presence can be traced to the rapid expansion of the sugar industry in the middle years of the century. This can also been seen in the increase seen in the number of migrants in Las Villas province, which gradually increased in importance as the sugar frontier pushed inexorably eastwards. Although Oriente did not share in the sugar boom until the start of the twentieth century, there were important centres of economic growth: in particular Santiago de Cuba, where most of the 'British' migrants in the province were concentrated. Many of these played a prominent role not just in the commerce of sugar and coffee from the local plantations, but also in the exploitation of the substantial copper reserves to be found in the region (Portuondo 1996).

Table 1. Distribution of 'British' residents by province

(Source: Cuadro Estadístico, 1847; Armildez de Toledo 1864; US War Dept 1899)

The British had briefly occupied Havana and the surrounding countryside in 1762, towards the end of the Seven Years' War. However, it was not until later in the eighteenth century, as a result of liberalisation measures permitted by Carlos III, that non-Spanish migrant merchants began to establish themselves on the island. As a result, there were already a few of British origin settled in Cuba at the start of the nineteenth century. The most prominent 'British' migrants were merchants - many of whom exploited their foreign connections in order to provide a channel through which the sugar, coffee, copper and other Cuban products could be sold on the international market, and at the same time bring into the island foreign capital, and a variety of manufactures (Ely 1961), not readily available from Spain. Many of the railroads in the island were constructed with the British funds that were partly secured through their intervention with merchant bankers in London (Zanetti and García 1987). They also helped to provide a link with the engineering companies of Clydeside and Merseyside, that were producing steam-driven machinery for use on the sugar plantations, and which helped to revolutionise production in Cuba during the middle years of the century (Curry-Machado 2007a, 2009). Some of these merchants came to be very prominent within Cuban society. Most notable were Drake Brothers, which became one of the most important commercial houses in Havana and Matanzas; and likewise the Brooks, in Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo. Such 'British' merchants were considerably more visible than their relatively sparse numbers would suggest. In the 1840s there were just 13 merchant houses in Havana of British origin. However, these (in particular Drake Brothers, DeConinck, J C Tennant and Villoldo Wardrop) dominated the consignment of ships for both export and import (Crawford 1848).

With time, some of the wealthiest merchants began to move into landowning. In the case of the Drake family, this was partly facilitated by their close alliance with the foremost of Cuban aristocratic families, the Del Castillos. They came to be at the forefront of the extension of sugar cultivation beyond Matanzas into the central region of the island. James Drake and his sons (1841-2) were amongst the first pioneers of the unused lands around the River Sagua, and were responsible for the opening of the river's first steamboat service. Others came into possession of estates through their ownership of the mortgages, to which planters had to increasingly resort in order to be able to afford the expensive new steam machinery they needed to install to remain competitive (Storey, Spalding & Co 1850-2). There was also a more shadowy presence of 'British' landowners in the region of Gibara and Holguin, with the migration to Cuba of a number of 'British' planters, in particular from the Bahamas and accompanied by their slaves, in response to slave emancipation in the British territories. When James Thomson (1844) managed to escape, he provided an eyewitness account of what was occurring: 'During this period I saw great numbers of English people, and in that whole neighbourhood nothing else is spoken but English.'

It was not only as landowners that 'British' migrants became established in the Cuban countryside. The first big wave of immigration began around 1818, partly attracted by the generous grant offered of land, tools and provisions, and promoted as a result of the growing concerns amongst elite white Creoles both about the increasing black presence in the island's population, and the outlawing by the British authorities of the slave trade. During 1818-19, 251 British and Irish adult male migrants entered Havana and Matanzas (around one in seven of the total immigrants) (Sociedad Económica 1819-20), though these figures would have been swelled by women and children, and those arriving either at other cities or directly to the new colonies being established around Nuevitas and Caibarién in the centre of the island, or Guantánamo in the East.

The 'British' were also prominent in professions, and thereby contributed to the introduction of modern ways of thinking into the island. This was especially true of the doctors and dentists. A substantial number of medics listed in the Guía de Forasteros were British or Anglo-American in origin (Guía de forasteros 1839-40); and possibly the most famous of nineteenth century Cuban doctors was of British descent: Carlos Finlay, the discoverer of the cause of yellow fever, was the son of Dr Edward Finlay, a Scottish surgeon who migrated to Cuba early in the nineteenth century (Santa Cruz 1940, Vol. 5, p.189). However, despite the prominence of such middle-class individuals, by far the greatest number of 'British' migrants were working class. Of those who arrived during 1818-19, 95% were workers, the majority professing an artisanal trade: mostly carpenters, and others engaged in industries related to construction and industry (Sociedad Económica 1819-20). Most readily found employment in the burgeoning sugar and coffee plantations that were increasingly hungry for foreign skilled workers to make up for the lack of such workers in Cuba. By the 1840s, some of these had succeeded in doing well for themselves: Joseph Leaming, a mason from Leeds, had become the manager of a coffee plantation near Matanzas (Crawford 1844); and Theodore Phinney, who originally arrived in Cuba as a carpenter, had later progressed to become the owner in his own right of several sugar and coffee plantations (Knight 1841).

In 1835, work began on the first railway in Cuba, between Havana and Güines - thirteen years before the first such line in Spain itself. The chronic labour shortage on an island that had grown dependent upon slave labour had to be partly met with the importation of foreign labourers, many described as Irish. However, it was the engineer on the sugar plantation that characterised 'British' labour migration to Cuba in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1840, the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País commented that, due to the absence of the necessary engineering skills in both Spain and Cuba, 'every mill, every steam ship, every locomotive on the railway has to have beside it an intelligent foreigner who directs and inspects the machine' (Sociedad Económica 1840). As a result of this, large quantities of foreign engineers, many from the British Isles, travelled to Cuba. This reflected the importance of British engineering companies in the provision of sugar-milling equipment and steam engines. Engineers represented by far the largest single occupational group applying for domicile in Cuba during the mid-nineteenth century (Curry-Machado 2003, 2007b & c). Such skilled workers bound for the plantations found themselves in a relatively privileged position. They could expect to be provided with a small house on the estate, and possibly a couple of slaves to look after their personal needs (Moreno Fraginals 1978, Vol.1, p.306). Many of the engineers were able to save considerable amounts of money from the considerable salary they could command, and it was common for them to spend the summer months in the United States, following the grinding season, where they would go 'to have a good time' (Hazard 1871).

Although the majority of 'British' migrants were male, about one third were female - although, largely as a result of the influx of skilled male workers in the middle years of the century, in the 1860s the proportion became slightly less than one in five (Cuadro Estadístico 1847; Armildez de Toledo 1864; US War Dept 1899). Many of these women came as the wives or daughters of male migrants. However, although the nineteenth century was an age of restrictions for, in particular, white women in Cuba, those of foreign birth (and particularly those coming from the British Isles or North America) were generally excluded from such controls. A North American visitor to Havana in the 1880s observed that:

Foreign women were likewise more likely to obtain employment, in particular as teachers or domestic servants - largely depending on their class origins.

As the Cuban economy became oriented towards the English-speaking world, there was an increasing demand for English language classes. Newspapers of the time abounded with advertisements for English courses and schools, and it seems that it was more likely to be a woman than a man who was imparting the lessons. In the census of 1899, just three 'British' men in the whole of Cuba gave 'teacher' as their occupation, compared with 18 women (8% of the total number of 'British' women living in the island at the time) (US War Dept 1899). These teachers were not just imparting lessons in established schools, or by private appointment to wealthy families. They were also setting up new schools, as with a Girls School in Trinidad, established and directed by Anastasia Wanworth (Guía de Forasteros 1840, p.115). In fact, the methods that were being introduced into the new public schools being established by the Sociedad Económica (1820-3, p.62), followed the English Lancaster and Bell model.

Domestic service provided employment for many foreign working class women. Again, this was an occupation where women were more likely to be found than men. In 1899, of the 67 'British' servants recorded, 41 were women (US War Dept 1899). But, as with every other area of Cuban social and economic life, a hierarchy existed within domestic service, and it seems that it was one that would have placed many of these 'British' women in a privileged position amongst their peers, not least because of race (Martínez-Fernández 1998, pp.35-7). Working class women from the British Isles did not just find domestic employment in houses, but might also work as washerwomen. Even here, despite the unglamorous and generally invisible nature of such an occupation, race continued to dominate identity. Mary Gallagher, an Irish woman long resident in Havana, might have been looked down upon and abused by the authorities for being a mere washerwoman. But she was white, and owned a slave - and when she found herself in difficulties was able to seek the help of socially better-placed British migrants (Turnbull 1841).

Despite the apparent prominence of 'British' migrants, it is difficult to discern a distinct 'British' community in Cuba, and such that there was, was complicated by the highly ambiguous allegiance towards such an identity displayed not just by the migrants themselves, but also by the authorities. Claims made to national community were generally only done so for convenience - either in times of crisis, or in order to make commercial gain; rather than out of a genuine, deep-rooted sense of national identity.

'British' merchants were not tied to specifically British interests. Although they utilised the positive commercial image generated by a British surname, when it came to trade their priorities were much more purely defined by free market concerns. When the London merchant bankers, Frederick Huth & Co, needed to have agents acting on their behalf, in the overseeing of debts contracted by various other landowners and merchants, they turned to the Drake brothers (Huth 1842); and many of the British ships coming into Havana in the period were chartered by their house. However, in 1841, just three percent of their sugar and two percent of their coffee was being sent to Britain (Drake Bros 1841), at a time when around 14% of Cuba's overall exports were going there. In fact, after the United States, the company was trading more heavily with Spain, France, Germany and even Russia, than with the country in which the family supposedly had their origins. The Brooks in Santiago de Cuba maintained certain trappings of English-ness: importing tea (Brooks 1852a); and travelling from time to time to Britain (Brooks 1855). However, like the Drakes, the Brooks showed little commercial concern for their country of origin, playing a much more important role in the penetration of North American produce and capital than of British. Thomas Brooks served not as British, but as United States consul in the 1850s (Brooks 1852b), and was barred from serving the British state in this capacity due to the considerable number of slaves that the family owned (Clarke 1842). The Brooks family continued to represent United States commercial and consular interests in the province until around the turn of the century.

While middle class migrants of British origin might make use of a supposed British identity for commercial gain, working class migrants may have been more likely to claim British status in times of crisis. Though the support of prominent compatriots might have at times been sought, it was generally to the British consuls that the migrants in distress would turn. Thus in 1844, a number of British-born sugar estate and railway workers were imprisoned, accused of complicity in the 'Escalera' conspiracy that the Spanish authorities claimed to have uncovered amongst the slave and free-coloured population (Curry-Machado 2003, 2004, 2007b; Paquette 1988). Although the British Consul General (Crawford 1861) provided what assistance he could, he complained that it would be considerably easier for him to provide such help, if it was not for the fact that such migrants very rarely made their presence known to him, and then only in such extreme circumstances:

Spanish law confused the situation still further. In a Royal Order of 1817 it was stated that after five years of residence, those that wished to remain would have to swear allegiance to the Spanish Crown and laws, and renounce any protection they might expect to receive by virtue of being of foreign birth; this was later extended to specifically state that no recourse would be allowed to the diplomatic assistance of the country in which they were born. In practice, the full letter of the law was rarely put into effect - partly because of its strict demands that all foreigners in Cuba had to be Roman Catholic - until a situation arose in which the migrant sought assistance from the Consul, who might be told by the Spanish authorities that the British state could have no jurisdiction, since the individual concerned had long since become Spanish; and if they had not declared themselves Spanish, then they should have done, and must either subject themselves to the law, or else leave the island. Following one such case, the British Consul (Tolmé 1837) sarcastically pointed out:

Eventually the British government itself became tired of the claims to British subjecthood at times of distress by the burgeoning numbers of British and Irish workers who had migrated. In 1856, the government warned:

That the new restrictions made no mention of merchants who had lived abroad for many years, and who periodically needed official representation to help their business interests provides a clear indication of just how inclusive the British state considered 'British'-ness to be.

The question of what to be 'British' in Cuba meant was further complicated by the fact that many who would probably in normal circumstances not just not consciously seek to assert a national identity, but who might even have a certain antipathy to such an identity, nevertheless were quick to claim to be British when the need arose and they thought they might benefit from so doing. Most of the Irish navvies working in the construction of Cuban railways seem to have already emigrated from the British Isles to North America. They were then contracted in the United States to travel to Cuba to work for a period. However, the conditions they found themselves working under were, in many circumstances, barbaric - in some cases leading to death, due to the harsh punishments meted out. Yet, despite the fact that these were migrants who not only had left Britain behind, but - as Irish Catholics - may never have considered themselves truly British in the first place, rather than applying for help from the United States Consul, they turned immediately to the British Consul when they found themselves unable to stand the conditions any longer, and wanted assistance in returning home (not to Ireland, or Britain, but to the United States).

There were others who claimed a British identity to try to secure official help when they probably had no legitimate claim. This was particularly the case with sailors, whose identity was sufficiently mobile to enable them to shift national colours almost at will (Linebaugh and Rediker 2000). In 1841, John Williams was imprisoned in the Royal Prison in Havana, having been discovered on the beach, without papers, near Bacuranao. It proved almost impossible to determine what nationality he really was, since he himself variously claimed to be both English (from the crew of HMS Pilot) or North American (from the American ship Louisa), depending upon which Consul he was soliciting assistance from (Gobierno Superior Civil 1842). That same year, the British Consul pleaded the case of two other sailors - William Ewing and Henry Nowell - who had been arrested on charges of robbery from the house of Daniel Warren, the North American-born licensed shipping agent in Havana. He asserted that, since they were English, he had every right to defend their case. However, the local authorities (Gobierno Superior Civil 1841) were not so inclined, because:

There certainly was competition occurring between the different nations, both politically and commercially, in this period. In the development of the railways, British technology lost out at an early date to North American, although it continued to be principally British capital that was investing in railway construction (Zanetti and García 1987). French, British and North American machine and engine manufacturers competed for the growing plantation market: the former being renowned for their cheapness, the latter for their power, however, for 'works ... requiring niceness ... and for such machinery as for strength and durability may be depended upon the English maker must be applied to' (Crawford 1851). However, those who had taken up residency in Cuba showed no clear preference for their country of origin over any other. While agents for the different companies were entering into quite cutthroat competition with one another, resident engineers were so unconcerned about national identity that it is at times hard to discern exactly where they originally came from. In a leaflet advertising his services in the acquisition of steam engines and other machinery, Charles Edmonstone boasts of ordering the merchandise from 'the United States, England or wherever the buyer wishes to give his preference' (Edmonstone 1863). There are also signs that the British and Irish working class presence in Cuba was part of a wider Atlantic migrant working class. It has been suggested that the so-called Irlandeses or Irish navvies involved in the construction of the railroad were in fact a motley crew of migrant workers, which included, alongside the proverbial Irish navvies, British, Germans, Dutch and North Americans (Moyano 1990; Zanetti and García 1987).

Even consular activity at this time reveals a lack of national specificity, despite the consuls being charged with representing specific national concerns. In most cases consuls and vice-consuls were themselves migrant merchants who had lived in Cuba for many years - often with little respect to country of origin: for example, the German-born William Lauten was appointed British Vice-Consul at Manzanillo, at the same time as representing Bremen, on the basis of having spent five years living in England, and speaking fluent English (Crawford 1862). Such consular representatives did not see themselves as limited to protecting the interests of one particular nation. In 1856, British Vice-Consul William Sydney Smith was praised for the assistance he was giving in Trinidad to French residents (Crawford 1856).

Such camaraderie and community of interest amongst the North Atlantic merchant and professional class was seen in other issues that at first sight might appear to be clear evidence of British community in Cuba. One particularly sore point was the question of religious worship, since no religion outside the Roman Catholic was openly permitted to exist in the island (Martínez-Fernández 2002). In 1839, a letter was sent to the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Palmerston, from 'the British residents at Havannah being desirous to have the benefit of the services of an English Chaplain at that place'. The assistance of the British government was looked for in seeking to pressure the Spanish government in Madrid to make an exception, and to grant them 'permission to perform Divine worship according to the forms of the Church of England'. As specifically British a request as this might sound, generous donations were made from a broad cross-section of the middle class, non-Spanish population of Havana: Germans, French and North Americans (Powles 1839).

Nation was therefore an ambiguous source of identity. This should not be surprising, since Cuban society in the nineteenth century was itself not simply defined along national boundaries, but was fractured along a number of interacting lines: enslaved and free; black and white; workers and employers; men and women. The experience and identity of migrants were, therefore, the result not simply of their being foreigners with a shared national origin, but also a question of legal status, skin colour, class and gender. While being 'British' did play a part in this complex insertion into Cuban society, what being 'British' meant, if anything, can only be understood with reference to the position that the migrants occupied in relation to the social divisions that they found themselves participating in. While clearly there were situations in which a sense of Britishness could be appealed to, that it is next to impossible to clearly discern the boundaries of a British community in Cuba is testimony to the complex identities of these migrants, and their multi-dimensional involvement in Cuban society - in which, for example, engineers found themselves working as privileged workers within a milieu that included slaves, indentured labourers and free artisans (Curry-Machado 2007b); or merchants found themselves initially contributing to the rise of indigenous economic power, only to become the agents by which new forms of dependency and imperial control were imposed on the island (Curry-Machado 2009).

Never sufficiently numerous to form a clearly identifiable ethnic grouping in their own right, it was the manner of their insertion into Cuban society and economy that led to them playing a disproportionately large part in the development of Cuba during the period. Not only were they concentrated in the economically most important parts of the country, but also in occupations that were of crucial importance to an island still under the political and military dominion of an imperial power that was falling significantly behind the other Atlantic powers in commercial and industrial development. 'British' merchants were significant in Cuba's international maritime trade, and also in the introduction of machinery, railways and other innovations. 'British' professionals were prominent in areas previously all but ignored, such as medicine and teaching. 'British' engineers came to operate and maintain the steam engines and machines that were being introduced in the sugar plantations, mines and railways.

It is hard to discern to what extent migration from the British Isles to Cuba led to permanent settlement in the island, and this in itself is evidence of the lack of a distinct 'British' community. This 'British' input into the island's ethnic mix is now remembered only through isolated family reminiscences on the part of Cubans who had a British ancestor. The influential Brooks, Beattie and Mason families continued to be important in Oriente into the twentieth century, by which time they had become firmly creolised (Boissy and Mason 2001). The descendents of Albert Barefoot of Berkshire still live in Cojímar, a fishing village to the East of Havana. Albert travelled to Cuba in 1886 with his French wife, Maria Virginia Lalande. In 1995, the Cuban Barefoots and their long-separated British cousins finally found each other again. For the British Barefoots, the migration of Albert had long formed a blank space in their family history.

While some migrants did establish themselves permanently in the island, others either returned to Britain, or continued their migration after a few years working in Cuba, often to finally settle in North America. William Henry Ross migrated to Cuba as a young man in 1843, to work as an engineer. He there made the acquaintance of Edward Beanes, also originally an engineer, who later became an agent in Havana for engineering companies (Kerr 1851). The two of them succeeded in saving sufficient money, and to obtain sufficient experience, to enable them to return to Britain and set up together in business, around 1860. Although both Scots, rather than return to Scotland they based themselves in Liverpool, from where they partly designed and made their own pieces of sugar equipment, but also acted as a channel for the steam engines and sugar mills of such large engineering firms as Mirlees Watson, or W & A McOnie. Those migrants who remained, rather than affirming what elements of British identity they might have brought with them seem to have opted for creolisation. Since, during much of the period, to be identified as 'British' would often lead to acts of random official aggression, they became Cuban - albeit adding their own particular experiences and notions to that ethnic mix - with only the distant memory of British ancestry being carried down through the generations, in the course of which even their surnames came to disappear through marriage, and all contact with their families back in the British Isles lost.

Jonathan Curry-Machado is an Associate Fellow at London Metropolitan
University's Caribbean Studies Centre and a research fellow at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. His most recent article, '''Rich flames and hired tears": sugar, sub-imperial agents and the Cuban phoenix of empire', appeared in the Journal of Global History 4.1, 2009.

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