Credit for banner image above: Map of Cuba by Emanuel Bowen, 1747.
The recorded history of Cuba began on October 28, 1492, when Christopher Columbus sighted the island during his first voyage of discovery and claimed it for Spain. Since its occupation and settlement in 1511, Cuba remained a Spanish possession until 1898 (except for eleven months during the 1762–63 English takeover of Havana), ruled by a colonial governor, first in Santiago and later in Havana. Since the late eighteenth century, Cuba's economy relied increasingly on plantation agriculture and the export of sugar, coffee, and tobacco to Europe and North America. The massive importation of enslaved Africans bolstered the island's economy throughout the nineteenth century.
Cuba's proximity to the United States has been a powerful influence in its history. The U.S. government attempted to annex or purchase the island from the Spanish government throughout the nineteenth century. Spain, however, refused to cede one of its two last possessions in the Americas.
The first major armed rebellion against Spain resulted in the Ten Years' War (1868–78). The Spanish government finally abolished slavery in Cuba in 1886. Rebellion against Spain broke out again in April 1895, and the United States intervened in the armed conflict after the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in April 1898.
Cuba gained formal independence on May 20, 1902. The United States ended the military occupation and the young republic emerged under the presidency of Tomás Estrada Palma, a hero of the War of Independence. The next military occupation, predicated upon the Platt Amendment, lasted from 1906 to 1909 under a provisional government. The United States intervened in Cuba again in 1912 and 1917–22.
Political turmoil ensued during the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado (1929–33), ended by the first of several coup d'états that eventually led to what some historians call "The Age of Democracy" in Cuba (1940–52). The 1940 Constitution included a wide range of social, economic, and political reforms such as the creation of a minimum wage and extended social security benefits. In 1952, General Fulgencio Batista deposed President Carlos Prío Socarrás, canceled the constitution, and suspended elections.
Fighting in the eastern mountains of the island since 1956, Fidel Castro's guerrillas mounted a counteroffensive against the Batista dictatorship. Following Batista’s flight from the island, Castro and his guerrillas entered Havana triumphantly on January 8, 1959. Soon after, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union for support after the U.S. government imposed an embargo on the island. In 1961, the U.S. and Cuba severed diplomatic relations and the U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion failed. Antagonism between the two countries escalated during the Missile Crisis of 1962, resolved by an agreement between the USSR and the U.S.
The trade embargo continues to be the linchpin of the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Whereas some U.S. administrations have relaxed the more stringent prohibitions to allow the purchasing and shipping of food and medicine, others have curtailed humanitarian and cultural exchanges as well as family visits to Cuba.
Fidel Castro held effective power until July 2006, when he temporarily handed over his duties to his brother Raúl Castro, due to medical reasons. Cuba's National Assembly elected Raúl Castro president in February 2008.
In December 2014, Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced that they would take steps to resume diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. The two countries reopened embassies in their respective capitals in July 2015. However, a series of health attacks of an unknown nature against U.S. diplomats and their families in Havana chilled U.S.-Cuba relations under President Donald Trump's administration in 2017.
In April 2018, the National Assembly of People's Power selected Miguel Díaz-Canel as president of Cuba, but Raúl Castro remained first secretary of the Communist Party. In July, the Cuban government proposed the draft of a new constitution, which was approved in a referendum in February 2019. Castro resigned as first secretary of Cuba's Communist Party in April 2021, and Díaz-Canel assumed that position.
In July 2021, thousands of Cubans took to the streets to protest the scarcity of medicine, food, fuel, and other basic necessities on the Island, as well as to demand freedom and criticize the communist government. The Biden administration expressed its support of people's right to demonstrate peacefully and condemned the Cuban government's violent response to the protests.
(Portions of this text were adapted from the entry on "Cuba" for the New World Encyclopedia.)