The origins of the Cuban Revolution reconsidered

Samuel Farber, University of North Carolina Press, 240 pages, hardback, £34.95

This academic book takes a fresh look at the Cuban Revolution (1959-61), challenging the dominant view that Cuba’s leaders merely reacted to US policies or domestic socio-economic conditions.

Instead it shows that the revolution’s leaders, while acting under serious pressures, were still autonomous agents pursuing their own independent aims.

Arguing that the structure of Cuba’s economy in the 1950s made it ripe for radical change, Farber uses recently declassified US and Soviet documents as well as biographical and narrative literature from Cuba to shed new light on the origins of the revolution.

He shows how the US first tried to accommodate the new Cuban government — but by mid-1959 began drawing up plans to overthrow it — and catalogues Soviet-Cuban relations to explain Castro’s turn towards Communism. A well-informed analysis.