Why was there not more plantation slavery in Cuba?

Both Jamaica and Haiti are now overwhelmingly black nations because the countries were entirely converted to plantation slavery. However, Cuba resisted this fate, because the Spanish did not go in for plantation slavery to the same extent? Why was this? The vast profits the British and French were making here must have been obvious. Did the Spanish just decide for moral reasons to forsake them?
 
Both Jamaica and Haiti are now overwhelmingly black nations because the countries were entirely converted to plantation slavery. However, Cuba resisted this fate, because the Spanish did not go in for plantation slavery to the same extent? Why was this? The vast profits the British and French were making here must have been obvious. Did the Spanish just decide for moral reasons to forsake them?

Maybe to some extent, but there is probably some sort of financial reasoning to it.
 
Things to bear in mind;

1) Cuba DID have plantation slavery as a major lynchpin of its economy, arguably as much so as many parts of the American Deep South per capita. There were efforts in the post-1789 era to regulate living conditions for slaves (likely stemming from Spain's tiptoeing into Enlightenment ideals before Napoleon's trip across the Pyrenees), but it's worth noting that slavery there was not outlawed until 1886. Hell the island still faces issues with racial relations (despite what your friendly neighborhood Party rep would probably say).

2) Unlike Jamaica and Haiti, Cuba was the first major colony abroad for Spain going back to the 16th. Century, and was a major seat of royal power overseas for much of the Spanish West Indies. It was far from a backwater compared to the British or French West Indies, where resource extraction was mostly all they were used for, and didn't see much settlement from the Home Country beyond a bit in the big cities for administrative reasons. Cuba did receive immigration from Spain (tropical ailments bedamned, although it's located just marginally in the tropics anyway) at a slow but steady rate as a Spanish colony, which actually increased substantially in the 19th. Century from the Canaries, Andalusia, Asturias, etc. As such, it's mostly a matter of a comparatively much higher degree of settlement from Europe to the island than Cuba's neighboring isles saw. Why? Probably has to do with the points brought up here.

3) Where do you think a bunch of the whites living in Saint-Domingue escaped to after the Haitian Revolution? It's right next door, and carried a fairly robust defensive force against another slave revolt. Not only that, but a ton of Chinese labor was imported legally to replace using the Atlantic Slave Trade (which still happened under the table up until at least 1869 anyway), both of which meant a shrinking proportion of the population being of primarily African descent. It also needs to be said that one's gender played into whether your children would be free and/or considered one racial category or another. As such, the "fact" that Cuba is 64% white is pretty dependent on how one defines that term.
 
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The main reason Spanish indolence. They were inept colonizers and didn't have the personnel to create an efficient slave trade.

Read "Empire how Spain became a world power". It tells how, in 1700, Britain did more business by volume with Barbados than Spain did with two whole continents.

an inept mercantile system didn't help.
 
FleetMac,

Your comments about Cuba having lots of black plantation slaves, just also having a lot of white people due to Cuba's importance is an interesting one. But how does it tie to Puerto Rico also being much whiter than its neighbours?
 
FleetMac,

Your comments about Cuba having lots of black plantation slaves, just also having a lot of white people due to Cuba's importance is an interesting one. But how does it tie to Puerto Rico also being much whiter than its neighbours?

Because unlike in most other islands, the natives on Puerto Rico (Tainos and invading Caribs, mostly) weren't totally wiped out to the same degree as elsewhere, and were proportionally used moreso as cheap labor under the repartimiento system. And given the island's relative size and mountainous geography compared to their neighbors, having a plantation-based economy didn't make as much sense (though there still were plantations, they were smaller and less productive by comparison). Ergo, less Africans being brought to Puerto Rico. And of course, intermarriage made for an inflated "white" or "mixed" population at the expense of that demographic sector.
 
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