The demands of sugar—labourers, capital, machines, technical skills, and markets—strained ethnic relations, aggravated political and economic differences between metropolis and colony, and laid the foundation for the break with Spain in 1898. Spanish colonial administration was corrupt, inefficient, and inflexible. People in the United States, especially in the southern slave states, showed a lively and growing interest in the island and supported a series of filibustering expeditions led by Narciso López (1849–51) and others. (The red, white, and blue battle flag that López flew was designated the Cuban national flag in 1902.) After the 1860s the United States tried many times to purchase the island.

Spain precipitated the first war of Cuban independence—the Ten Years’ War (1868–78)—by increasing taxes and refusing to grant Cubans political autonomy. On October 10, 1868, the eastern planter Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, now known as the “father of his country,” issued the Grito de Yara (“Cry of Yara”) decree, in which he declared Cuban independence. He also freed his slaves to fight in his revolution. Céspedes had the support of some landowners and of numerous farmers and labourers who wanted to increase their share of political power and abolish slavery. However, many Cubans, including the wealthy sugar producers of the western region and the vast majority of slaves, did not join the revolt. Many questioned Céspedes’s plans for manumission, notably the rate at which slaves were to be freed, or disagreed with his call for U.S. annexation of Cuba. Spain promised to reform the island’s political and economic system in the Pact of Zanjón (1878), which ended the war. However, the nationalist leader Antonio Maceo and several others refused to accept the Spanish conditions. In August 1879 Calixto García started a second uprising, called La Guerra Chiquita (“The Little War”), which Spanish forces put down the following year.

The political and economic crisis grew more severe. The Spanish government failed to carry out most of the promised reforms, although it allowed Cubans to send representatives to the Cortes (parliament) and abolished slavery in 1886. Annual trade between Cuba and the United States had reached about $100 million, but in 1894 Spain canceled a Cuban-U.S. trade pact. In addition, the central government imposed more taxes and trade restrictions. Cubans increasingly resisted colonial authority, and the poet, ideological spokesman, and propagandist José Martí coordinated and mobilized political organizations in exile. War broke out again on February 24, 1895, and Martí and the revolutionary leader Máximo Gómez landed with an invasion force in April.

Gómez and Maceo led a force that quickly conquered the eastern region and began to spread westward. The Republic of Cuba was declared in September 1895. The following year Spain placed General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau at the head of more than 200,000 troops, who brutally “reconcentrated” rural residents into camps in the towns and cities, where tens of thousands died of starvation and disease. Both sides killed civilians and burned estates and towns, with the rebels concentrating on destroying Cuba’s sugarcane crop.

The Spanish government recalled Weyler in 1897 and offered autonomy to Cuba, and the following year it ended the “reconcentration” program. However, the vast majority of Cubans had come to sympathize with the rebels, who held most of the countryside. Meanwhile, commercial activity ground to a standstill, and news of Spanish atrocities spread to the United States, where yellow journalism (notably in newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst) stirred up anti-Spanish sentiment. Following a mysterious explosion aboard the USS Maine that sank it in Havana’s harbour in February 1898, the United States and Spain fought the brief, one-sided Spanish-American War, during which U.S. forces captured Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines by mid-August.