In the review of a recent book on Winston Churchill the New Statesman reviewer advised readers, and doubtless any writers who proposed to work in the field of the study of this great man, that ‘Of books about Winston Churchill there is no end … Newcomers to this field need either to bring with them a reputation already made or else to happen upon a theme that has so far escaped notice.’1 His conclusion about the book he was reviewing was that the author had done both. In the case of the author of the book you have in your hands no such claim can be made. Whatever reputation this author has is as a historian and political and military analyst of Latin America and not as a student of Churchill. On the other hand, he certainly has a firm belief that he has happened upon a theme that has so far escaped serious notice.
A keen reader of works on and of Churchill for many years, I had never ventured before into a field which had for obvious reasons attracted the attention of some of the greatest historians of the age. Sir Winston’s status as ‘The Greatest Briton of All Time’ according to a BBC poll at the beginning of the new millennium, and as at least ‘Man of the Half Century’ if not ‘Man of the Century’ according to Time magazine, was such that his story was the focus of the life’s work of several eminent historians, not a few psychologists and many other aficionados of all ages and from all climes. As a Latin Americanist, even one keen on Churchill, I could not see how I could do anything that would add in an important way to what was known of him. After all, he had shown little interest in my region and, great traveller though he was, had never spent any real time in the area. While I, like many people who work on Cuba, had a vague recollection that he had done something on the island during the wars for independence, I did not go into it any further than that.
My interest in the British connection with Cuba did exist, however, and I have studied for many years the nineteenth century, a period when British influence on ex-Spanish colonies was significant. Britain captured Havana and much of the western part of the island in the 1762 campaign of the Seven Years War as part of its exceptionally successful series of amphibious operations during that conflict which gave it Quebec, Manila and Saint Lucia as well as Cuba’s capital. And of course this war was not the first time the British had set their sights on this rich prize.2 In addition, the use by moderate Cubans of the Canadian model of ‘Dominion status’ as their goal short of full independence in the years before the 1895 war of independence ensured my interest in at least that aspect of the British imperial connection with Cuba in the second half of the nineteenth century.
I could not help but come across occasional mentions of Churchill and his time in Cuba but, other than knowing vaguely that he had come as a war correspondent and stayed at the city’s famous Hotel Inglaterra, I did not know much more. And I certainly had no idea of the exceptional moment, and formative experience in Churchill’s life it had been, including the preparation for it and the sequel to it, as well as the visit itself.
That interest, however, did bring me to a conference in 2002 for the 240th anniversary of the capture of Havana, the Cubans having a taste for commemorations that goes far further than the usual northern idea of celebrating only half-centuries or centuries, and certainly nothing less than quarter-centuries. There I listened to Celia Sandys, Churchill’s vivacious and engaging granddaughter, speak at the Hotel Nacional on the subject of her relative’s visit and what little we knew at that time of the subject.3 I was very interested in what she said but saw little connection between what I heard and the work I was then doing on Cuba in its first independence war of 1868–78.
A decade later, however, and after publishing my own first books on Cuban politics and history, there was another conference on Britain and Cuba, again focussed on the 1762 fall of the capital but dealing with many other elements of the bi-national story, and there Lourdes Méndez Vargas, the unofficial but no-less-real historian of the village of Arroyo Blanco in central Cuba, came to see me and told me about the work she was doing and on which she was speaking that day. She was interested in the stay of the then 20-year-old Winston in her village in the last couple of days of November 1895 and she was a source of considerable knowledge on those days and on what local lore has done with the story in the 117 years or so since. She was writing a book on the subject and was certain that, with full access to Cuban archives and a visit to those in Spain, she could find out much more than had hitherto been known about his visit.
I suggested it might be possible to work together and, after her book on the local context, attempt to do a second volume telling the full story of the visit, from the preparation to the sequel, and do so by gaining access to British archival sources as well as working thoroughly through the Spanish archives, military and diplomatic, in Madrid and Segovia. Ms Méndez does not have English so I could do the British part of the effort, she could do most of the Cuban with my helping out on the more strictly military issues, and we could both do the Spanish portion of the work. Regrettably, it did not prove possible to find the financial resources to work together on the larger book, which I had reluctantly to do by myself and which is the volume readers have before them. Since at that time my pension from the Royal Military College of Canada was covering all the costs of research, it was simply not feasible to cooperate and for me to pay for her trip to Spain and associated costs in Cuba. Hence she continued with her work on the more local story in Arroyo Blanco and I began to seriously deploy my efforts to the wider theme.4
The excitement I felt at delving into something which was clearly so new was palpable. I did the usual literature search to discover that, as I had expected, there was virtually nothing known on the subject. Biographer after biographer had run up against the same problems and short shrift was inevitably given to the visit with only the occasional slight hint produced of its likely importance in Churchill’s development. Most biographies included only a page or two on the adventure and several not even that. The importance of Churchill’s visit to New York on his way to Cuba, relatively easy to research and certainly of value to do, took the limelight away from the strictly Cuban part of the trip. Churchill’s admittedly significant meeting with Bourke Cochran in New York often took much more space than did the whole of the nearly three weeks on the Caribbean island covering Winston’s first war. This induced me even more to engage in a serious treatment of the subject especially as it became ever clearer the role the experience had in the forging of the Churchill we were to know and for what it told us about who he was even at this very young age. This was not just about eighteen days on a Caribbean island but rather at least five months of Churchill’s life during which Cuba dominated his thinking, his work and his movements, from late September/early October 1895, when the idea of the trip first struck him, until March 1896, when his last major article on the war there was written. The list of ‘firsts’ in his life that the visit represented was soon revealed to be a very long one, little known even among the most serious of historians studying his life.
But why was this the case? What had made research into this subject so fraught with problems and meant that, even as late as 2012, this was still almost totally virgin territory for any historian trying to tackle the subject? It might have been expected that both British and Cuban historians would have had an avid interest in addressing the first overseas adventure Churchill had ever had. And historians of other countries might also have shown the same keen interest in this aspect of his life as they have in so many others.5 The reasons are both complex and actually in the end rather easy to understand.
In the first place, of course, Churchill’s life covers such a wide canvas, is so varied and is so important to the history of the twentieth century that there is an embarras de choix seemingly unending where subjects of interest to historians and the public are concerned. His actions on the North-West Frontier of India, in Egypt and the Sudan, in the Boer War, in politics before the First World War, in government and in the field in that massive conflict, in political life between the wars, and as a member of, and then leader of, the wartime coalition government of 1940–45, and hero of the free world in the downfall of Hitler and Nazism, has given more than ample scope for the work of many historians and writers over many years. This is attested to by new titles that continue to be published on his life, even after the 50th anniversary of his death in January 2015. Cuba simply did not seem like a major or perhaps even very interesting part of the wider story and this acted to stymie what little interest there might have been.
It is entirely clear too that without access to Cuban and Spanish archives, there is very little to go on in order to understand the whole picture of that adventure of late 1895. British archives and other sources in the United Kingdom help a great deal as of course do his own ‘letters from the front’ (articles for the press), his letters to friends and family at home, material from his regiment, private papers of those involved and the like. But it is only through the archives and published literature of Cuba and Spain that one can complete the picture.
This means access of course but also knowledge of the languages in question. English-speaking historians working on Churchill have rarely had Spanish and, especially since the rupture of relations with the United States and the rise of Soviet influence in Cuba after the victory of Fidel Castro’s Revolution in 1959, Cuban historians more and more rarely had English.
In addition, in Cuba, Churchill’s reputation for visceral anti-communism made study of him if not taboo at least hardly easy or a priority. And, though many Cuban historians would agree that he was the most famous visitor to Cuba of all time, they would have for many years been less than sure that they wanted to give him much praise or even close study of his time on the island. The Cuba of today has changed markedly, but for most of the period since 1959 academic freedom had been noticeable by its absence. Likewise candidates from abroad coming to study Churchill in Cuba, if they came from an English-speaking country, were often hamstrung, at least to some degree, by the poor relations existing between their countries and the island. US authors in particular found study of the island a challenge since both US and Cuban governments often seemed to do their best to make such efforts flounder. Often such permission as was needed was not forthcoming from either Washington or Havana, or even both. But even British academics do not find studying Cuba easy. Suspicions of London’s close links with the United States have at many times coloured Cuban governmental views of British academics to a considerable degree. Only the Canadians, with their relatively understanding approach to the Revolution since the beginning, and their refusal to bow to US pressures to break with Cuba or to join its embargo of the island, seemed to avoid most obstacles of a political kind, especially after the friendship between Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and President Fidel Castro blossomed in the 1970s.6 However, Canada until recent years did not have many historians working on Churchill at any stage of his life.
There was also, of course, the usual vital question of funding. There is essentially no money available for Cuban researchers to spend long periods abroad. Especially since the beginning of what is called the ‘Special Period’ in the summer of 1990, that period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, COMECON and the ‘socialist division of labour’ from which it benefitted so much in trade, investment and even defence terms, Cuba has been in the midst of a deep economic crisis and the most stringent belt-tightening imaginable. It has been unthinkable to do research on anything not deemed essential and Churchill’s visit to the island more than a century ago would not have qualified for such an assessment of its centrality. Add to this that much of the research would have had to be done in London, a city in which it is expensive to pass much time, the idea of such a research project would have been a non-starter entirely for Cubans. And even for researchers from Britain and other countries, the expenses of sustained periods in Cuba and Spain would have been daunting.
Most of all, however, I suspect, the reason why it was not done is that no one actually thought of doing it. This was certainly the case for this author, whose gratitude to Ms Méndez is all the greater as a result. And, even if others had considered doing the research, they would have been dissuaded by the questions above and by the fact that seemingly what could be done had been done. This was especially true after the publication of a book by Douglas Russell in 2005 with a chapter on Churchill’s visit to Cuba.7 But even his excellent work is based essentially on the already known articles from Churchill in the press of the time, the letters he wrote to family, and other material in the Churchill Archive at Cambridge.
In my own case, I have had several advantages others have not enjoyed and these alone have allowed me to engage in this project. First, I was honoured to be made a Member of the Academy of History of Cuba, a privilege few foreigners have enjoyed, on the basis of other works I have done on Cuban history in the past. This credential opens many doors not easily passed through in facing and overcoming Cuba’s formidable bureaucracy.
Secondly, studying and working on and in Latin America for so long has meant that I speak fluent Spanish and have had to deal with archival material in that language all my working life. It has accustomed me to dealing with the often demanding Cuban academic and governmental maze, usually a challenge for even the most determined academics.
My previous books on Cuba were on themes potentially much more politically charged than this one and they have not brought down the wrath of the Cuban government, even though I was made to know that a variety of things I had written had not gone down well with some high authorities. Cuba has been a nation ‘under siege’ for well over half a century and that siege is conducted by a nation that is the greatest power in the history of the world, a country with a long tradition of military intervention on the island and in the region, and a source of hostility a mere 90 miles away from Cuba’s northern shores. And, while direct military attack and sustained economic warfare have been parts of the US strategy to unseat the Revolution, subversion has been even more constant and all pervasive. Little wonder then that the Cuban government takes foreigners who work on Cuba’s history and politics very seriously indeed. If these foreigners, like me, come from a proud country, a founding member of NATO and a close friend of the United States, and also work on defence-related affairs, the concerns in some governmental circles can be greater still.
In the end, in my case, books on such hot topics as the Cuban armed forces’ difficulties in the Special Period, and a military biography of Fidel Castro’s brother Raúl, the new president as of 2006, ensured the government would be wary of what I wrote.8 This worked in my favour in the long run, however, in that, seeing that the two books were hardly anti-Cuban and both attempted to be fair, bureaucratic patience with me seems to have grown. Thus I found that when I was proposed for membership of the Academy of History of Cuba, there were no objections, and when I began work on the Churchill in Cuba project, I found only good feelings and a desire to help whenever I needed assistance from members of the state bureaucracy.
In addition, I had the enormous advantage of having several senior and respected Cuban historians and other analysts who were friends and who had assisted in many ways in my previous endeavours and were willing to do so again. Especially important in this sense I had a very serious naval and military historian more than able and certainly willing to assist in the lengthy and sometimes tedious business of searching for newspapers, books, pamphlets, published speeches, documents, and other elements of this story. Gustavo Placer Cervera, my colleague in the Academy of History, a major force on the Cuban military history scene (and Cubans take their military history, like their history in general, very seriously), kindly offered from the beginning to help out with some of the more challenging areas of research, especially in the search for relevant Cuban periodicals of the time.
My doctoral research had taken me to the Spanish archives and to the then Public Records Office in London; later research obliged me to return on occasion to those places to work. London and Madrid had each been my home at one time or another and a large part of my adult life had been in the United Kingdom, as student, army officer, professor, and simply visitor and theatre and opera buff. This meant that the friendship of many academics and others smoothed the way in myriad ways in capitals where Cuban historians find many significant challenges to successful research efforts not the least of which is financial. I was able to get some limited financial support, unlikely to have been forthcoming for a Cuban national, from a US donor keen on Churchill as well as from other sources to face those challenges.
Thus very few Cubans scholars have been interested in working on such a subject and few British ones were either. And those who might have been knew well that the difficulties of such a project might make its success unlikely. As a historian, a Canadian, speaking both English and Spanish, an academic equally comfortable in London, Madrid and Havana, and reasonably well seen by all the national governments whose archives I would need to consult, I alone seemed well placed to carry off the research required and, given the obvious importance and relevance of the work, I quickly chose to do so.
Hal Klepak
Academy of History of Cuba, Havana
1. The book was Peter Clarke’s Mr Churchill’s Profession: Statesman, Orator, Writer, London, Bloomsbury Press, 2012.
2. Corsairs and pirates constantly raided Cuba, and even took Havana more than once, during the long wars with Spain of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed, the famous Morro Castle at the entrance to the harbour of Havana, mentioned with admiration by Churchill in his first article, written in 1895, is often referred to as Drake’s Castle as its construction was in part to deter a further attack on the city by that famous corsair and pirate. And the British had attempted a more formal attack to establish a foothold in eastern Cuba in the ill-fated expedition of Admiral Edward Vernon in 1740–41. For these stories, see Francisco Pérez Guzmán, La Habana: clave de un imperio, Havana, Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 1997; and Olga Portuondo Zúñiga, Una derrota británica en Cuba, Santiago, Editorial Oriente, 2000.
3. Celia Sandys, Sir Winston’s granddaughter, is herself a prolific author on the subject of her distinguished relative’s life. Her works include the highly engaging Chasing Churchill: The Travels of Winston Churchill, London, Unicorn Press, 2014, which includes an interesting chapter on Cuba.
4. Lourdes Méndez Vargas’ book, subsequently supported by the British Embassy in Havana, was published in Spanish in March 2014 by Editorial Luminaria, a provincial press in Sancti Spiritus, with the title Arroyo Blanco: la ruta cubana de Churchill.
5. To mention just two examples of this key moment escaping attention, neither Tuvia Ben-Mosha in his study of Churchill as a strategist nor James Lawrence in his book on Churchill and empire even mentions his time in Cuba where he made his first public comments on both those subjects. See Ben-Mosha, Churchill: Strategist and Historian, Boulder (Colorado), Lynne Rienner, 1992; and James Lawrence, Churchill and Empire, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013.
6. Cubans term the economic warfare conducted against them by the US since 1960 a ‘blockade’ but for obvious reasons the US prefers the term ‘embargo’. For the Canadian role here, see John Kirk and Peter McKenna, Canadian–Cuban Relations: The Other Good Neighbor Policy, Gainesville, FL, University Press of Florida, 1997.
7. Douglas Russell, Winston Churchill, Soldier: The Military Life of a Gentleman at War, London, Brassey’s, 2005.
8. See Hal Klepak, Cuba’s Military 1990–2005: Revolutionary Soldiers in Counter-Revolutionary Times, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; and Hal P. Klepak, Raúl Castro and Cuba: A Military Story, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.