The ratio of population to the square league is a very interesting and illuminating study. On this point J. S. Thrasher gives us some excellent deductions:
"Supposing the population to be 715,000 (which I believe to be within the minimum number) the ratio of population in Cuba, in 1825, was 197 individuals to the square league, and, consequently, nearly twice less than that of San Domingo, and four times smaller than that of Jamaica. If Cuba were as well cultivated as the latter island, or, more properly speaking, if the density of population were the same, it would contain 3,515 x 974, or 3,159,000 inhabitants."
In 1811, at the time the population was estimated, we find the negroes to have been distributed as follows; the figures indicating percentages:
| Western Department | Free | Slave | Total |
| In towns | 11 | 11½ | 22½ |
| In rural districts | 1½ | 34 | 35½ |
| Eastern Department | |||
| In towns | 11 | 9½ | 20½ |
| In rural districts | 11 | 10½ | 21½ |
| 34½ | 65½ | 100 | |
The foregoing indicates that sixty per cent. of the black population at this period lived in the district of Havana, and that there were about equal numbers of freedmen and slaves, that the total black population in that portion of the island was distributed between towns and country in the ratio of two to three, while in the eastern part of the island the distribution between towns and country was about equal. We shall find the foregoing compilations of inestimable value in consideration of the problem which was such a source of concern to the white population and which played so large a part in this period of the history of Cuba; namely, slavery.
CHAPTER XVIII
The first records of the slave trade in Cuba—so far as the eastern part of the island is concerned—were in 1521. Curiously enough it was begun by Portuguese rather than Spanish settlers. It was a well recognized institution, licensed by the government. The first license was held by one Gasper Peralta, and covered the trade with the entire Spanish America. Later French traders visited Havana and took tobacco in trade for their slaves. The English, during their possession of the island, far from frowning on the traffic, encouraged it; yet in the latter part of the eighteenth century the number of slaves in Cuba was estimated not to exceed 32,000. This was previous to 1790. Of these 32,000, 25,000 were in the district of Havana.
Baron Humboldt is authority for some interesting figures on the traffic. "The number of Africans imported from 1521 to 1763 was probably 60,000, whose descendants exist" (he writes in 1856) "among the free mulattoes, the greater part of which inhabit the eastern part of the island. From 1763 to 1790 when the trade in negroes was thrown open, Havana received 24,875 (by the Tobacco Company, 4,957 from 1763 to 1766; by the contract with the Marquis de Casa Enrile, 14,132, from 1773 to 1779; by the contract with Baker and Dawson, 5,786 from 1786 to 1789). If we estimate the importation of slaves in the eastern part of the island during these twenty-seven years (1763 to 1790) at 6,000, we have a total importation of 80,875 from the time of the discovery of Cuba, or more properly speaking, from 1521 to 1790."
It was in the period of which we are writing, particularly in the very early years of the nineteenth century, that the slave trade most flourished in Cuba. It is estimated that more slaves were bought and sold from 1790 to 1820 than in all the preceding history of the Spanish possession of the island.
England, possibly seeing what an enormous power for developing the natural wealth of the island an influx of free labor would give to Spain, entered into an arrangement with Ferdinand VII.—whose sole animating motive in dealing with his foreign possessions seems to have been to grab the reward in hand and let the future take care of itself—whereby, upon the payment by England to the king of four hundred thousand pounds sterling, to compensate for the estimated loss which the cessation of the slave trade would mean to the colonies, Ferdinand agreed that the slave trade north of the equator should be restricted from November 22, 1817, and totally abolished on May 30, 1820. Ferdinand accepted the money, but as we have seen he did not fulfil his contract and winked at the continuation of the importation of labor from Africa.