British Empire and Florida: Home

In your course on British empire and Florida you will be exploring books, maps, and manuscripts that document how British imperial ambitions shaped the development of the American Southeast and the Caribbean.  In focusing on Florida and the British empire, you have three eras of involvement:

• Rivalry with Spain and the Spanish colonies, beginning in the era of the Spanish Armada (1588) and Sir Francis Drake's raids on Spanish colonies, and extending into the conflicts between British South Carolina and Georgia, on one side, and Spanish Florida on the other, in the first half of the eighteenth century
• Consequences of the Seven Years’ War, British acquisition of East and West Florida (1763-1784), and loss of these two colonies after the American Revolution
• British and American rivalry through the War of 1812, which included deployment of British forces into the Spanish Floridas; includes Andrew Jackson's confrontations with British forces and officials

James G. Cusick, Curator P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History

jgcusick@ufl.edu

P.K. Yonge Library Home Page

Although British-period cartography would eventually excel at producing accurate coast surveys and maps of the Floridas, this illustration from the mid-eighteenth century gives some sense of common misapprehensions about Florida.  Attributed to Thomas Kitchin, this very  "Inaccurate" Map of East and West Florida, showing the peninsula broken up by waterways, was published in 1765 to accompany an article in the London Magazine.  Similar promotional pieces, or outright calls to invest and settle in the Floridas, appeared in the the Gentleman's Magazine and the London Chronicle or Universal Post. The London Magazine and the Gentleman's Magazine can both be found online.

This 1774 edition of Thomas Jefferys' A Description of the Spanish Islands and Settlements on the Coast of the West Indies, first published in 1763 during the Seven Years' War (shortly after the British capture of Havana, Cuba) is a good example of British aspirations to expand in the New World Empire at the expense of Spain.  Jefferys outlined the advantages British subjects and investors would gain if they controlled various cities and ports in Spanish territory, giving detailed accounts and maps of the various places.  By the time the 1774 editon came out, at least some possessions, such as East and West Florida, had in fact changed hands, and were under British control.  Jefferys produced wonderful maps of St. Augustine and Pensacola, and a large-scale map of Florida, that are still considered brilliant pieces of cartographic work.

Facsimile available at Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

The JSTOR database, which you can access through the library catalog, is an excellent source for secondary literature. It includes The Florida Historical Quarterly, with many articles on British East and West Florida.