Читать книгу The History of Cuba (Vol. 1-5) - Willis Fletcher Johnson - Страница 33

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It was the inscrutable irony of fate that Cuba should remain so negligible a quantity during one of the most momentous and progressive periods of human history. No other era since man began his career had been on the whole so marked with greatness. Discovery and exploration had doubled the known area of the globe, and the intellectual achievements of the race had even more than kept pace with the material. The era of which we have been writing in this volume saw the completion of Columbus's work in his fourth voyage, the exploits of Magellan, Balboa and Cabot, the enterprises of Cortez and Pizarro, of Cartier and Raleigh. It saw the rise of religious liberty, and of modern philosophy and science. It saw the art of printing, invented in the preceding century, developed into world-wide significance.

This was the era of genius. Its annals were adorned with the names of Shakespeare and Cervantes, of Rafael and Titian and Michael Angelo, of Holbein and Durer, of Luther and Erasmus, of Ariosto and Rabelais, of Tyndale and Knox, of Calvin, Loyola and Xavier, of Copernicus and Vesalius, of Montaigne and Camoens, of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, of Tasso and Spenser, of Bacon and Jonson, of Sidney and Lope de Vega. It was a wondrous company that passed along the world's highway while Cuba was struggling in obscurity to lay the foundations of a future state.

Nor did Spain herself lag behind her neighbor nations. The sixteenth century saw her swift rise to the greatest estate she has ever known, and her development of many of the greatest names in her history. She began the century a newly-formed kingdom uncertain of herself and timorously essaying an ambitious career; and she reached its close one of the most extensive and most powerful empires in the world. We commonly think of her chiefly as a conquering power. But in fact that century of her marvellous conquests of empire was also her golden age in intellect. We may imagine that the swiftness of her rise to primacy among the nations, and the dazzling splendor of her conquests, stimulated and inspired the minds of her people to comparable achievements in the intellectual world. The sixteenth century was indeed to Spain what the Augustan Age was to Rome, and what the Elizabethan and Victorian ages were to England, and for some of the same reasons.

It was then that three great universities were founded: Salamanca, Alcala for science, Valladolid for law; and a noteworthy school of navigation at Seville. There flourished the philosopher Luis Vives, the tutor of Mary Stuart. In jurisprudence there were Victoria and Vazquez, from whom Grotius received his inspiration; and Solorzano, with his monumental work of the Government of the Indies. The drama was adorned by Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Gabriel Tellez, and Juan del Enzina. The greatest name of all in literature was that of Miguel Cervantes y Saavedra. There were the poets Garcilaso de Vega, and Luis de Argote y Gongora. There were the painters Ribera, and Domenico Theotocopuli, who inspired Velazquez.

Above all, there was one of the most remarkable groups of historians of any land or age. Paez de Castro was more than any other man the founder of history as a philosophical study as distinguished from mere polite letters; the forerunner of Voltaire and Hume. There were Florian de Ocampo, Jeronimo Zurita, Ambrosio de Morales, and the famous Jesuit Mariana. Then there was a remarkable company of historians inspired by the American conquests of Spain, who gave their attention to writing of the lands thus added to her empire: Oviedo, Gomara, Bernal Diaz, Lopez de Velasco, Las Casas, and many more. Cortez, Pizarro, Velasquez and others might conquer lands for Spain. These others would see to it that their deeds were fittingly chronicled.

There was something more, still more significant. There arose distinguished writers, producing notable works, in the countries of Spanish America; some born there, some travelling thither from the peninsula. It was in 1558 that the University of Santo Domingo was founded, which for a time served all the Spanish Indies and was a great centre of learning. How many poets and dramatists, not to mention historians and other writers, there were in America in that century, we are reminded in Cervantes's "Viaje de Parnaso" and Lope de Vega's "Laurel de Apolo." These writers were chiefly in Mexico and Peru, for obvious reasons. Those were Spain's chief colonies, and they were those which had themselves the most noteworthy past, a past marked with a high degree of civilization. The first book ever printed in the Western Hemisphere was the "Breve y Compendiosa Doctrina Cristiana," published by Juan de Zumarraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, in Mexico in 1539.

It was about the middle of the century that there appeared the first American book of real literary merit. This was "La Araucana," a Chilean epic poem, by Alonso de Ercilla y Zuñiga. Another epic, with Hernando Cortez for its hero, was "Cortez Valeroso," by Gabriel Lasso de la Vega, in 1588. The next year saw Juan de Castellanos's prodigious historical and biographical poem of 150,000 lines, "Elegias de Varones Ilustres de Indias." Another epic of Cortez was Antonio de Saavedra Guzman's "Peregrino Indiano," in 1599.

In all these things Cuba had no part. In later centuries that island could boast of poets and other writers worthy to rank with their best contemporaries of other lands. But in that marvellous sixteenth century she seems to have produced not a single name worthy of remembrance. In the rich productivity of Spanish intellect Cuba remained unrepresented. In Oriente, in Camaguey and in Havana there may be found legends and ballads of unknown but ancient origin, which are assumed to have been composed perhaps in the days of Velasquez, and to have been passed down orally from generation to generation. Quien sabe? It is quite probable that such was their origin; but it is quite certain that their authors are unknown.

For this lack of intellectual productivity in the first century of Cuba's history, and indeed the lack of any noteworthy achievements, the reason is not difficult to perceive. As we observed at the beginning of this volume, Cuba, at the advent of Europeans, was a country without a civilization and without a past. Mexico, Yucatan and Peru had enjoyed civilizations not unworthy of comparison with those of Europe and Asia, the remains of which attracted thither the intellects of Spain, and inspired them. But Cuba had nothing of the sort. Again, the vast wealth of Mexico and Peru attracted to those countries many more explorers, conquerors and colonists than Cuba could draw to herself. And there was also the partiality which was shown to them by royal favor and in royal interest. We shall have reviewed the annals of the first Cuban century to little purpose if we do not perceive that during the greater part of that time the "Queen of the Antilles," the "Pearl of the West Indies," as she was even then occasionally and afterward habitually called, was the Cinderella of the Spanish Empire; a Cinderella destined, however, one day to meet her Fairy Prince and thus to be wakened into splendor not surpassed by the finest of her sisters.

The close of the sixteenth century marked, then, approximately a great turning point in Cuban history. Thitherto she had been exclusively identified with Spain. She had developed no individuality and had exercised no influence upon other lands and their relationships, or indeed upon the empire of which she was a part. It was left for later years to make her an important factor in international affairs and to develop in her an individuality worthy of an independent sovereign among the nations of the world.

Yet in these very circumstances which we have recounted, and which upon the face of them appeared to be and indeed were for the time so unfavorable, there were developed the influences which unerringly led to the subsequent greatness of the island. The earliest settlers were not only of Spanish origin but also of Spanish sympathies. They could not be expected to have any affection for or any pride in the land to which they had come as to a mere "Tom Tiddler's ground," on which to pick up silver and gold. They valued Cuba for only what they could get out of her; many of them glad, after thus gaining wealth, to return to Spain, or to go to Mexico, Venezuela or Peru, there the better to enjoy it and to mingle in social pleasures which the primitive life of Cuba did not yet afford.

There were, however, some even in the first generation who were exceptions to this rule, who loved Cuba for her own sake, who wished to identify themselves permanently with her, and who wished to see her developed to the greatness and the splendor for which her natural endowments seemed to them to have designed her. In the second generation the number of such was of course greatly multiplied, and in succeeding generations their increase proceeded at a constantly increasing ratio. Thus by the end of the first century of Cuban history the great majority of residents of the island regarded themselves as Cubans rather than as Spaniards. They were Spaniards in race and tongue, and they were ready to stand with the peninsular kingdom and the rest of its world-circling empire against any of other tongues and races. But while thus to the outside world they were Spaniards, to Spain itself and to the people of the peninsula they were Cubans; differentiated from Spain much more than the Catalonian was from the Castilian, or the Andalusian from the Navarrais.

This sentiment of differentiation, and of insular individuality, was naturally strengthened by the treatment which the peninsular government accorded to the island. The Cubans were made to feel that Spain regarded them as apart from her, just as much as they themselves so regarded her. They felt, too, that she was treating them with injustice and with neglect; that instead of nourishing her young plantation and giving it the support of her wealth and strength she was drawing upon it for her own nourishment and support. They would have been either far more or far less than human if they had not thus been incited to a certain degree of resentment and to an assertion of independence.

In brief, it was with the Cubans even at that early day as it was with the British colonists in North America a century and a half later; though indeed the Cubans determined upon separation from the mother country at a comparatively earlier date than the people of the Thirteen Colonies, or certainly much longer before their achievement of that independence. We know that the British colonists were dissatisfied and protesting for nearly a score of years before their Declaration of Independence, but that down to within a few months of the latter transcendent event scarcely any of them thought of separation from England. Lexington and Concord, and even Bunker Hill, were fought not for independence but for the securing of the same rights for the colonists that their fellow subjects in the British Isles enjoyed. But the Cubans resolved upon separation from Spain not only years but at least two full generations before they were able to achieve it.

This spirit belongs to a much later date in Cuban history than that of which we are now writing, and to refer to it here is an act of anticipation. But it is desirable to some extent to scan the end from the beginning; to see from the outset to what end we shall come as well as to see at the end from what beginning we have come. Moreover, it cannot be too well remembered that even as soon as the latter part of the sixteenth century the people of Cuba regarded themselves as Cubans, and so called themselves, and had begun the cultivation of a social order and a sentiment of patriotism quite distinct from though not yet necessarily antagonistic to that of Spain.

The transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century was marked, then, with a significant change in the temper and character of Cuba, especially by a great accession of the spirit of insular integrity and independence. While Spain was great and apparently growing greater, there was a gratifying pride in identification with her. But when her decline began, and showed signs of being as rapid as her rise had been, that pride waned, and there began to arise in its place a pride in Cuba, or perhaps we might say at that early date a determination to develop in Cuba cause for pride. From that time forward Cuba was destined to be more American than European; and though for nearly three centuries she might continue to be a European possession, yet her lot was decided. Unconsciously, perhaps, but not the less surely she was drawn into the irresistible current which was drawing all the American settlements away from the European planters of them. It was one of the interesting eccentricities of history that the first important land acquired by Spain in the western hemisphere should be the last to leave her sway; and that the first European colonists in America to have cause for complaint against their overlords should be the longest to suffer and the last to secure abatement of their wrongs. Such is the reflection caused by consideration of this first era in the history of the Queen of the Antilles.

THE END OF VOLUME ONE