Sugar as well as coffee will become…

Sugar as well as coffee will become increasingly important in the Cuban economy throughout the nineteenth century.

Large cattle estates are subdivided and sold to enterprising Spaniards for sugar or coffee cultivation.

Aware of the profit possibilities, the Spanish crown encourages and aids the subdivisions of land.

Prior to this time, much suitable land was often part of large estates, the owners of which could neither divide nor sell the land because it had been granted to them for use, not ownership.

The crown had agreed in 1819 to consider landowners all those who could prove they had been on the land for the past forty years.

This measure had facilitated the break-down of large estates, contributed to the growth of the sugar industry, and benefited a new class of proprietors.

These new landowners can sell their land at a profit, become sugar producers themselves, or lease their land to other less fortunate and smaller planters, who did not receive title to a piece of real estate.

In 1827 Cuba had one thousand sugar mills, two thousand and sixty-seven coffee estates, and five thousand five hundred and thirty-four tobacco farms.

By 1860 it will be estimated that there are about two thousand sugar mills, the greatest number in Cuban history.

A prosperous and large class of rural proprietors who base their prosperity on the cultivation of sugar and tobacco has emerged.