Breaking the Chains, Forging a Nation offers a new perspective on black political life in Cuba by analyzing the time between two hallmark Cuban events, the Aponte Rebellion of 1812 and the Race War of 1912. In so doing, it provides fresh insight into the ways in which black freedom and resistance were practiced and understood in Cuba, from the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution to the early years of the Cuban republic. Bringing together an impressive range of scholars from the field of Cuban Studies, the volume is the first to examine the continuities between disparate forms of political struggle and racial organizing during the early years of the nineteenth century and trace them into the early decades of the twentieth. Together, the authors in this collection rethink the ways in which African-descended Cubans battled racial violence, created pathways to citizenship and humanity, and exercised claims on the nation state.