The timber cuts of Cuba: two centuries of arguing about who owned the trees

Havana built warships because Cuba had cedar and mahogany, and the state kept trying to reserve them. A cedula of 1622, another forbidding cuts near the capital after a private yard stripped the nearest woods, a jurisdictional quarrel in 1774 settled by giving cedar to the navy and mahogany to the sugar crates, a joint board of naval officers and planters in 1800, and in 1805 a royal order handing landowners absolute freedom over their own trees.