Jos�e Mart�i and the global origins of Cuban independence / Armando Garc�ia de la Torre.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-211) and index.

The global origins of Cuban independence -- Transmitting civic values to our future citizens: Mart�i's global histories for children -- The Hindu inspirations of a freedom fighter's spiritual and world outlook -- Mart�i and the divine nation-state -- Mart�i and the African diaspora -- Transmitting proper government: Ulysses S. Grant and the US Civil War in Mart�i's imagination.

A nationalist campaigner, civil rights advocate, diplomat, lecturer and orator, journalist, poet, author of children's stories, visionary champion of anti-colonial Latin American and Caribbean thought, all are expressions of Jos�e Mart�i's (1853-95) extraordinary life in fighting for Cuba's definitive independence. This work opens a new path in studies of Mart�i's efforts to build a modern democratic Cuba by widening the lens under which the Cuban hero has been examined. In joining these different facets of Mart�i and by going beyond the national and hemispheric, Garc�ia de la Torre introduces the largely ignored global influences and dimensions that marked the revolutionary's work and ideas. From Mart�i's global histories for children to his adaptation of Hindu and Eastern conceptions, through a juxtaposition of The Bhagavad-Gita, to his relationships and inspirations from the African diaspora to the US Civil War and Ulysses S. Grant, Garc�ia de la Torre vividly reveals the global origins of Mart�i's ideas regarding governance, citizenship, independence and spirituality. In bridging the familiar and the individual with larger global patterns and processes of the late nineteenth century, this work gives birth to a modern Cuba understood from a truly global perspective.