The Golden Leaf

"[A] welcome departure from the conventional sugar-centered narrative of [Cuba]'s history. . . . Among the first English-language monographs to provide an in-depth study of Cuban tobacco, the book will have broad appeal among students of Cuba and Latin America. . . . Highly recommended."
--Choice
"[A] well-researched volume on Cuban leaf from the eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. . . . The Golden Leaf is a refreshing contribution to Cuban tobacco based on extensive archival research."
--Agricultural History
"[Cosner] convincingly shows that tobacco was in fact fundamental to the Spanish colonial project. . . . [She] also provides much material to illustrate how tobacco cultivation, processing, and trade encompassed a very wide cross section of the Cuban population, at every level. . . . Cosner succeeds in bringing us an engaging story that ranges from the detail of individual local human lives and relations, through the complexity of national society and its institutions, to the global stage of empire and commodity trade."
--Hispanic American Historical Review
"Tobacco offers a prism through which to view the tension between Spain and Cuba. Cosner addresses the way that tobacco tied together various disparate social groups within Cuba and beyond its shores. Using family histories, The Golden Leaf shows the way that tobacco connected various members of tobacco-growing communities, from estate owners, to slaves, to freedmen, priests, soldiers, and island elites. The role of women in tobacco also makes a surprisingly pleasant appearance. Cosner's discussion of tobacco growing by enslaved peoples and freed peoples in Cuba is also interesting and insightful."
--Frederick H. Smith, author of Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History