1512: Hatuey, a Taíno chief and resistance leader, is burned at the stake. Suffering through armed attacks and brutal mistreatment, as well as from new diseases introduced to Cuba by the colonizers, the native population is decimated over the next decades.
1526: Importation of enslaved people from Africa begins. Slave revolts begin shortly thereafter.
1607: Havana is named the capital of Cuba.
1717: In the first of three uprisings, tobacco growers protest the Spanish monopoly on the crop.
1762: Havana is occupied by the British during the Seven Years’ War; Spain regains control of Cuba in 1763.
1807: The British end their slave trade and oppose Spain for its continuation.
1808: In parts of Spanish America, wars to end Spanish rule break out; they will last several decades. Many colonies will eventually declare independence.
1812: Slave revolts known as the Aponte Rebellion take place across Cuba.
1817: The Spanish monopoly on goods and trade in Cuba is abolished, opening the island to British, French, German, and later U.S. trade and investment. Cuba’s sugar economy, fueled by massive importation of enslaved labor from Africa and indentured labor from China, will eventually supply 40 percent of the world’s sugar.
1844: Uprisings against slavery and colonial rule are brutally suppressed during the “Year of the Lash.”
1868: The Ten Years’ War, the first war of Cuban independence, begins.
1870: Poet José Martí is sentenced to prison for writings considered treasonous by the colonial government; he is then pardoned and exiled to Spain.
1878: The Ten Years’ War concludes with the Pact of Zanjón, which promises greater freedoms but not the end of slavery. Afro-Cuban General Antonio Maceo leads the Protest of Baraguá, rejecting the pact.
1879: General Maceo and others declare a second war, which ends in 1880; he and others are deported to Jamaica.
1886: Slavery is abolished in Cuba.
1892: Now living in the United States, Martí founds the Cuban Revolutionary Party among Cubans there in exile.
1895: Led by Martí, Maceo, and Dominican-born General Máximo Gómez y Báez, among others, the final war of independence begins. Martí is killed in battle just two days after landing in Cuba, but his political activity and his writings warning about the threat of Spanish and U.S. expansionism establish him as one of the great Latin-American intellectuals; he will come to be known as the “apostle of Cuban independence.”
1898: In what came to be known as the Spanish-American War, the United States declares war on Spain following the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor. Spain cedes control over Cuba, and the United States begins military occupation of the island.
1903: As a condition of ending its occupation, the United States ratifies the Platt Amendment, a rider to Cuba’s constitutional sovereignty.
1906: The United States begins a second military occupation of Cuba; it will last until 1909.
1917: Cuba declares war on Germany, entering World War I on the side of the Allies.
The
Russian Revolution reverberates around the world, including in Cuba.
1925: The first Communist Party of Cuba is founded, also to be known as the Popular Socialist Party.
1933: Fulgencio Batista leads the Revolt of the Sergeants, which topples the government.
1934: The Platt Amendment is repealed, and the United States relinquishes its right to involvement in Cuban internal affairs.
1940: Batista becomes president and establishes a new constitution.
1941: Cuba enters World War II by declaring war on Japan, Germany, and Italy.
1944: Batista retires and is succeeded by President Ramón Grau San Martín.
1952: Batista overthrows the elected government and becomes a corrupt dictator with close ties to the U.S. Mafia.