Spanish Florida

past.

The Florida Historical Society in the 20s, it's a lot of really romantic histories about Ponce de Leon, De Soto, et cetera, right? But as the 30s continue, you see people think about Spanish Florida more in the context of empire.

Honestly, more of a transnational way, They're really kind of following Hannah's lead because he is not just a Southernist, he's a Latin Americanist, right? So he's thinking about his big book in 38, Flight to Oblivion, is about Confederates traveling through Florida to escape to Cuba.

He's thinking about how the longstanding connections between Florida and the Caribbean, but especially Cuba, right? And that you see really starting to appear in the quarterly in the late 1930s.

You see things about how Florida is economically connected to the Caribbean.

These people start interpreting Spanish Florida as being part of a larger empire, a larger Spanish American empire.

And that increasingly, as the 30s continue, In the FHS and in other cultural organizations, this idea of Florida through the Spanish Empire having a shared Spanish-American past with the Caribbean, with Central and South America.

For Florida Frontiers, I'm Sebastian Garcia, a graduate history student, FHS media production assistant, and history podcaster at the University of Central Florida Department of History.

The portrayal amplified doubts about Scottish independence's economic viability beyond domestic borders.

Darien is often compared to other 17th century colonial misadventures, such as Dutch attempts on Spanish Florida or Spanish setbacks in the Caribbean.

Scholars note that European powers frequently overreached without adequate resources or political backing, leading to similar failures.

These comparisons provide a broader context for understanding Darien's outcome.

And the 1730s in particular, Suzanne were a, a period of significant slave revolts in the Caribbean, in Savannah, Georgia, in New York city.

Um, that they were concerned and they were right to be concerned and they became doubly concerned just before 1739 because if you if you think about the geography of the american south just to the south of south carolina was a spanish colony florida it wasn't american it was spanish owned and the spanish were were determined to disrupt this very affluent colony, this British colony to the north, by offering freedom to any enslaved person who made their way to Spanish Florida, St. Augustine, and converted to Catholicism.

And if you converted to Catholicism, if you made it all the way down to Florida, about 150 miles, then you would be freed.

So what the Spanish are trying to do here is offer freedom to enslaved people in South Carolina as well.

part of their larger imperial ambitions to disrupt British North America.

They're all slave societies to the north.

They're heading south.

They're heading south to Spanish Florida because once they get there and if they convert to Catholicism, then they are freed.

A literate enslaved man named either Jemi or Kato marched with 22 others, mostly from Central Africa, brandishing a banner that decked with the word Liberty, and attacked a store seizing weapons and ammunition.

They planned to head to Florida, where Spanish colonial authorities offered escaped enslaved people freedom in an effort to undermine British rule.

On their way, they burned plantations, freed other enslaved people, and killed whites, until a well-armed mounted militia arrived and attacked.

While the rebels managed to kill 23 militiamen, they lost 47 of their own number who had their severed heads displayed on stakes to serve as a warning to others.

The first English attempt to establish a colony in North America was led by Sir Walter Raleigh, who founded the Roanoke colony in 1585.

Raleigh bestowed the name of Virginia upon the section of the coast of North America north of Spanish Florida and up to modern-day Maine in honor of Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen.

The Powhatan would likely have known about the English colony in Roanoke, which collapsed within five years with most inhabitants probably dying of starvation and disease and any survivors enslaved by local tribes.

In April 1606, King James I of England, during his third year on the throne, established the Virginia Company to colonize Virginia to prevent the Spanish from establishing full control of the North American coast.