Sugar Baron
Subtitle: Manuel Rionda and the Fortunes of Pre-Castro Cuba
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: March 2003
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 337
ISBN-13: 9780813026138
Subjects: Agriculture & related industries; American history: c 1800 to c 1900; American history: from c 1900 -; Biography: historical; Economic history; Sugar trade; Cuba; Biography / Autobiography; Biography & Autobiography; Rionda y Polledo, Manuel; Biography/Autobiography; Historical - General; Rich & Famous; 20th century; Biography; Businessmen; History
Description: "Sugar Baron is the story of Manuel Rionda (1854-1943), who immigrated from Spain to Cuba as a boy of sixteen to become a dominant operator in the international sugar trade and to stand at the crossroads of U.S.-Cuban economic relations. Through an examination of Rionda's career as founder of the Cuba Cane Sugar Corporation and of New York's major sugar brokerage firm, Muriel McAvoy gives us an in-depth history of Cuba's sugar industry and its economy during the first half of the twentieth century.".

"McAvoy examines the dilemmas of development and the constraints of financial dependency, probing the inside story of how both Wall Street's and Cuba's political elite viewed the crucial economic problems facing the island and how they attempted to solve them. In great detail, she elucidates conflicts among the various economic sectors in both Cuba and the United States, providing unique and often corrective insights.".

"Stressing the significance of the Cuban elite in furthering and profiting from the development of Cuba as a sugar enclave, Sugar Baron shows that Rionda and the other hacendados did much to ensure that a single export would dominate their island's economy, enriching themselves in the process.

Challenging the view that U.S. capitalism reduced Cuba's businessmen to helpless pawns it provides a clearer view of the responsibility for events between the Spanish-American War and the triumph of Castro's revolution."--BOOK JACKET.