This course is an introduction to the study of Cuban history, culture, and politics, from the sixteenth century to the present. We will discuss the development of the island along a series of overlapping and inconclusive historical processes. These include five hundred years of colonialism starting in the 1500s, a century of formal independence inaugurated in the 1900s, fifty years of real socialism since the 1960s, and two decades of virtual collapse started in the 1990s. Using Cuba as a case study, we will examine what it means, for a colony and a nation, to be Western and modern.