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First Events and Early Influences: Spanish

The truth lies in the fact that after having exhausted the Indian population, the Island was only held as a military post on the way to the mines of Mexico, with little else to occupy its reduced populations than the raising of cattle on lands not appropriated. To the latter years of the past century, commerce was not only confined to Spanish merchantmen but to the periodical voyage of the fleet belonging to the East India Company. Foreign trade has only been authorized in the present century, when the European wars, forcing the Spanish flag from the seas, an encroachment of contraband trade made it impossible to oppose it.

The commercial restrictions were antiquated, and, of course oppressive, and extended to all the relations of Spain and the Spanish provinces. At the opening of the nineteenth century, the now alienated children of Spain claimed that her attitude was one of nobility, actuated by patriotic impulse, and Cuba, repeatedly invaded as a Spanish province, was true to the old colors; but her loyalty did not affect the steady encroachment of the fatalities of the colonial system of Spain, or the indurated and deadly prejudices of her political economy.