Only by magnifying protests into revolts, and riots into revolutions, is it possible to show Cuba as the “land of revolutions” that many have declared it to be.  The truth is that from the settlement of the island in 1512 until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, there were only two experiences that can, by any proper use of the term, be called revolutions.  This statement, of course, disputes a widely accepted notion, but many notions become widely accepted because of assertions that are not contradicted.  That a strong undercurrent of discontent runs through all Cuba’s history from 1820 to 1895, is true.  That there were numerous manifestations of that discontent, and occasional attempts at revolution, is also true.  But none of these experiences, prior to 1868, reached a stage that would properly warrant its description as a revolution.  The term is very loosely applied to a wide range of experiences.  It is customary to class as revolution all disorders from riots to rebellions.  This is particularly the case where the disorder occurs in some country other than our own.  The Standard Dictionary defines the essential idea of revolution as “a change in the form of government, or the constitution, or rulers, otherwise than as provided by the laws of succession, election, etc.”  The Century Dictionary defines such proceedings as “a radical change in social or governmental conditions; the overthrow of an established political system.”  Many exceedingly interesting parallels may be drawn between the experience of the American colonies prior to their revolution, in 1775, and the experience of Cuba during the 19th Century.  In fact, it may perhaps be said that there is no experience in Cuba’s history that cannot be fairly paralleled in our own.  In his History of the United States, Mr. Edward Channing says:  “The governing classes of the old country wished to exploit the American colonists for their own use and behoof.”  Change the word “American” to “Spanish,” and the Cuban situation is exactly defined.  The situation in America in the 18th Century was almost identical with the situation in Cuba in the 19th Century.  Both, in those respective periods, suffered from oppressive and restrictive trade laws and from burdensome taxation, from subordination of their interests to the interests of the people of a mother-country three thousand miles away.  Unfortunately for the Cubans, Spain was better able to enforce its exactions than England was.  Cuba’s area was limited, its available harbors few in number, its population small.

Not until the years immediately preceding the revolutions by which the United States and Cuba secured their independence, was there any general demand for definite separation from the mother-country.  The desire in both was a fuller measure of economic and commercial opportunity.  One striking parallel may be noted.  The Tories, or “loyalists,” in this country have their counterpart in the Cuban Autonomistas.