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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
As early as the first decades of the sixteenth century, when English and Dutch corsairs and privateers began to challenge Spain's exclusivist claims to the New World, the struggle for control over the Americas began to be couched in terms of a holy war. The Caribbean, in particular, became the arena in which the commercial, ideological and military forces of Protestant Northern Europe and Catholic Southern Europe clashed. Spanish officials commonly referred to the English and Dutch intruders as “heretics” and “Lutheran corsairs,” while Francis Drake and his fellow Elizabethan sea dogs believed that their penetration of the New World was a crusade against Popery, Catholic fanaticism and idolatry. These rivalries continued for centuries as new actors, the United States in particular, inherited some of the old roles.
A preliminary version of this article was presented at the 23rd annual conference of the Association of Caribbean Historians, Santo Domingo, March 17-22, 1991. I am indebted to a number of scholars and archivists who at various stages of this research guided me to valuable sources. Among them are: Rev. Leopoldo J. Alard, Marta Villaizán, Rev. José Pratts, Gladys Torres, and Dr. F. Garner Ranney. Generous support from the following institutions made possible the broader research from which this paper stems: Duke University, the Tinker Foundation, the Program in Atlantic History, Society, and Culture of the Johns Hopkins University, the American Historical Association, Bowdoin College, and Augusta College.
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2 Carr, Raymond, España, 1808–1975 (Barcelona: Ariel, 1985), 276,Google Scholar 304, 333–334. There is plenty of evidence that non-Catholics hoaxed the Catholicity oath. According to one British official stationed in Havana, this requirement was “very easily evaded.” It was “a simple declaration, as to which no questions were asked.” Another British official later wrote that many Protestants quibbled their way through the oath, satisfying their consciences by omitting the word “Roman.” Writing in the 1850s, another observer asserted that although the oath was required of those seeking domiciliation, he knew of only a few that had taken it. About the entire process, another contemporary observer wrote contemptuously that one was “immediately galvanized, electroplated and made a Roman Catholic.” See Turnbull, David, Travels in the West; Cuba with Notices of Porto Rico (London: 1840; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968),Google Scholar 67; Taylor, John G., The United States and Cuba (London: Richard Bentley, 1851), 297;Google Scholar and Peter Minville to Consul Conroy, March 22, 1872, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as NAWDC), Records of Foreign Service Posts, San Juan, Record Group 84 (hereafter cited as RFSPSJ-RG84), vol. 7117.
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6 Rate based on data for the 1858–1867 decade in Le-Roy, Jorge y Cassá, , Estudios sobre la mortalidad de la Habana durante el siglo xix y comienzos del actual (Havana: Lloredo y Cía., 1913), 6.Google Scholar See also José Cowley, Angel, Ensayo estadístico-médico de la mortalidad de la diócesis de la Habana durante el año de 1843 (Havana: Imprenta del Gobierno, 1845), 1–41.Google Scholar Later estimates put it at a much higher rate of 46 per thousand and above. See Marte, Cuba y la República Dominicana, 123.
7 Charles De Ronceray to William Cass, Dee. 3, 1860, Department of State, Consulate, San Juan, Despachos de los cónsules norteamericanos en Puerto Rico (Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, 1982), 308.Google Scholar
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9 William Jaeger to Seward, July 15, 1862 and Nov. 20, 1864, NAWDC, Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Santo Domingo, Record Group 59 (hereafter cited as DUSCSD-RG59).
10 Jourdan to Seward, Jan. 26, 1867, NAWDC, RFSPSJ-RG84, vol. 7228; Seward to Whidden, March 14, 1865, NAWDC, Records of Special Missions, Record Group 59; Coxe to Seward, June 1, 1866, NAWDC, DUSCPR-RG59; Jasper Smith to F.W, Seward, Dec. 2, 1864, Department of State, Despachos de los cónsules, 662. British officials stationed in Havana endured similar fates. See, for/ example, Joseph T. Crawford to Lord Russell, Aug. 5, 1861, Great Britain, Foreign Office, Collection 541, Confidential Series, The Slave Trade.
11 De Ronceray to Cass, Dec. 3, 1860, Department of State, Despachos de los cónsules, 486.
12 Torrente, Mariano, Política ultramarina que abraza todos los puntos referentes a las relaciones de España con los Estados Unidos, con Inglaterra y la Antillas (Madrid: Compañía General de Impresos y Libros del Reino, 1854), 213.Google Scholar
13 The link between yellow fever and mosquitoes was not established until later in the century, when during the early 1880s, Cuba’s Dr. Finlay began to put forth the hypothesis that yellow fever was transmitted through mosquitoes. One North American physician earlier described the disease’s symptoms as follows. First, “a chilly fit and high fever” or “headache, languor, and sick stomach.” Then, “stupor, delirium, vomiting, a dry skin, cool or cold hands and feet, a feeble slow pulse.” The patients’ skin and eyes turning yellow and the “vomiting of black matter” explain the disease’s names. Dr. Benjamin Rush to Mrs. Rush, Aug. 29, 1793, in Butterfield, L.H., ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton: American Philosophical Society, 1951), II, 644–658.Google ScholarPubMed See also, Le-Roy, y Cassá, , Estudios sobre la mortalidad, 28.Google Scholar
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15 See Marrero, Cuba, IX, 176; and “1857 Sick to Hospitals of Havana from American Vessels,” NAWDC, DUSCH-RG59.
16 Archivo de la Iglesia Santísima Trinidad, Ponce (hereafter cited as AISTP), Records of Holy Trinity Church of Ponce, I, Burials 1872–1878.
17 Dr. Tomás Romay, Secretary of Cuba's White Immigration Board, recommended in 1819 that unacclimated Europeans should plan to reach the island between the months of October and February. Marrero, Cuba, XIV, 66.
18 Thomas Savage to Marcy, Aug. 3, 1856, NAWDC, DUSCH-RG59.
19 “The Relations of the United States and Cuba in 1853 & 1854, by A.M. Clayton,” Southern Historical Collection, Chapel Hill, N.C., Claiborne Papers, file 151.
20 See, for example, Jourdan to Seward, Dec. 10, 1868, NAWDC, RFSPSJ-RG84, vol. 7228; Jourdan to Seward, Jan. 15, 1868, NAWDC, DUSCPR-RG59.
21 Wurderman, John George F., Notes on Cuba (Boston, 1844; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1971), 3; Andrew Blythe to Cass, July 20, 1857, NAWDC, DUSCH-RG59.Google Scholar
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26 For examples of newspaper ads by North American and British doctors see El País, Feb. 1, 1867 and The Cuban Messenger, March 20, 1861. See also Robertson to Marcy, Sept. 1, 1855 and Helm to Cass, April 28, 1860, NAWDC, DUSCH-RG59.
27 Blythe to Cass, July 20, 1857, NAWDC, DUSCH-RG59. Calculation for Puerto Rico based on 16 men per ship and data from De Ronceray to Cass, July 29, 1859, Department of State, Despachos de los cónsules, 390.
28 Undated [1858?] note by Blythe, and Robertson to Marcy, July 27, 1854, NAWDC, DUSCH-RG59; Howe, Trip to Cuba, 200; Taylor, The United States and Cuba, 103.
29 Paquette, Robert L., Sugar Is Made with Blood (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 59.Google Scholar Some visitors prescribed themselves preventive treatments and medications such as castor oil, “Kelley’s Vegetable Health Pills,” and Indian cannabis cigarettes. Karras, William J., “Yankee Carpenter in Cuba, 1848,” the Americas 30:3–7 (1978), 22; El Siglo, Feb. 28, 1867, 8.Google Scholar
30 Edward Kenney, “To the Friends of Our Christian Work in the Island of Cuba, Sept. 21, 1876,” Maryland Diocesan Archives, Baltimore (hereafter MDA), Cuba fol. V.
31 United States Commission of Inquiry to Domingo, Santo, Report of the Commission of Inquiry (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1871), 226;Google Scholar “Triennial Report of the Haitian Mission from August, 1878 to July, 1880,” in Journal of the General Convention of the Bishops, Clergy and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church (Boston: Franklin Press, 1881), 388.
32 Steele, James William, Cuban Sketches (New York: Putnam’s Sons, 1881), 185;Google Scholar [William Henry Hurlbert], Gan-Eden: Or, Pictures of Cuba (Boston: Jewett & Co., 1854), 136–137.
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40 Ibid.
41 Archivo Histórico de Ponce (hereafter cited as AHP), Indice del Cementerio Antiguo, vol. 1, 166.
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62 There are few works dealing with the early Protestant communities in Cuba and Puerto Rico. See Burset, Víctor, “The First Fifty Years of Protestant Episcopal Church in Puerto Rico” (Thesis, Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1957);Google Scholar Rivera Torres, Juan Jorge, Documentos históricos de la Iglesia Episcopal Puertorriqueña (Santo Domingo: Editora Lozano, 1983);Google Scholar Alard, Leopoldo J., “Proceso histórico de la Iglesia Episcopal en Cuba”Google Scholar (paper presented April 8, 1966, Seminario Episcopal del Caribe, Carolina, P.R.); and Ramos, , Panorama del Protestantismo, 1–158;Google Scholar see also Monclova, Lidio Cruz, Historia de Puerto Rico (siglo xix) (Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, 1952), 1, 853.Google Scholar
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79 AISTP, Record of Ecclesiastical Duties; AHP, box 42-B, legajo 44, expedientes 12, 17.
