2019 James A. Rawley Prize, American Historical Association
2020 Bryce Wood Book Award, Latin American Studies Association
2019 Murdo MacLeod Prize, Latin American and Caribbean
Section, Southern Historical Association
2019 FEEGI Biennial Book Prize, Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction In 1762, British forces mobilized more than 230 ships and 26,000 soldiers, sailors, and enslaved Africans to attack Havana, one of the wealthiest and most populous ports in the Americas. They met fierce resistance. Spanish soldiers and local militias in Cuba, along with enslaved Africans who were promised freedom, held off the enemy for six suspenseful weeks. In the
end, the British prevailed, but more lives were lost in the invasion and subsequent eleven-month British occupation of Havana than during the entire Seven Years' War in North America.
The Occupation of Havana offers a nuanced and poignantly human account of the British capture and Spanish recovery of this coveted Caribbean city. The book explores both the interconnected histories of the British and Spanish empires and the crucial role played by free people of color and the enslaved in the creation and defense of Havana. Tragically, these men and women would watch their promise of freedom and greater rights vanish in the face of massive slave importation and increased sugar production upon Cuba's return to Spanish rule. By linking imperial
negotiations with events in Cuba and their consequences, Elena Schneider sheds new light on the relationship between slavery and empire
at the dawn of the Age of Revolutions.
During the eighteenth century, Havana was the crown jewel of the Spanish Caribbean, a place of dazzling wealth and formidable power.
Behind this impressive façade, however, lay a more complicated history of war, trade, and slavery that Havana shared with its British neighbors.
Elena Schneider brings this entangled Anglo-Spanish history to life as no historian before her has done. The result is a landmark in the history of the British and Spa
