Security was the primary concern of colonial empire in the Americas, and nowhere was this more evident than in the walled port city of colonial Havana. Looking within, through, and beyond the colonial processes responsible for Havana's walls, Beyond the Walled City explores the complex history of Havana's relationship to colonial empire. The city walls, built in the early seventeenth century, defended Havana from pirates and corsairs and from the other Atlantic empires, Spain’s competitors. Through the groundbreaking and urbanization debates that surrounded their construction and demolition, G ... More

Security was the primary concern of colonial empire in the Americas, and nowhere was this more evident than in the walled port city of colonial Havana. Looking within, through, and beyond the colonial processes responsible for Havana's walls, Beyond the Walled City explores the complex history of Havana's relationship to colonial empire. The city walls, built in the early seventeenth century, defended Havana from pirates and corsairs and from the other Atlantic empires, Spain’s competitors. Through the groundbreaking and urbanization debates that surrounded their construction and demolition, Guadalupe García explores the interplay between urban space and imperial rule in colonial Cuba. She shows that the all-encompassing stone walls remained an integral part of Havana’s landscape for much of its colonial existence, marking the ways in which colonial exclusion became synonymous with colonial power. Beyond the Walled City demonstrates how urban development became a legitimating force of empire that remained constant throughout Havana’s existence and how people, space, and colonial sovereignty and legal practice converged to produce the landscape of the Spanish-Caribbean city. García reveals that while the Spanish crown remained oriented toward the Atlantic, Cubans turned their attention away from the sea and toward the internal changes taking place in Cuba. She traces the expansion of the city through over four hundred years of political, social, and economic changes to demonstrate how the founding concerns of the colonial city continued to organize Havana’s urban space long after the end of colonial rule, into the twentieth century—and, arguably, well beyond it.