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Florida has had many frontiers. Imagination, greed, missionary zeal, disease, war, and diplomacy have created its historical boundaries. Bodies of water, soil, flora and fauna, the patterns of Native American occupation, and ways of colonizing have defined Florida's frontiers. Paul E. Hoffman tells the story of those frontiers and how the land and the people shaped them during the three centuries from 1565 to 1860.
For settlers to La Florida, the American Southeast ca. 1500, better natural and human resources were found on the piedmont and on the western side of Florida's central ridge, while the coasts and coastal plains proved far less inviting. But natural environment was only one important factor in the settlement of Florida. The Spaniards, the British, the Seminole and Miccosuki, the Spaniards once again, and finally Americans constructed their Florida frontiers in interaction with the Native Americans who were present, the vestiges of earlier frontiers, and international events. The near-completion of the range and township surveys by 1860 and of the deportation of most of the Seminole and Miccosuki mark the end of the Florida frontier, though frontier-like conditions persisted in many parts of the state into the early 20th century.
For this major work of Florida history, Hoffman has drawn from a broad range of secondary works and from his intensive research in Spanish archival sources of the 16th and 17th centuries. Florida's Frontiers will be welcomed by students of history well beyond the Sunshine State.
List of contents
Preliminary Table of Contents:
List of Figures
List of Tables
Introduction by Walter Nugent and Malcolm Rohrbough
Preface
1. The Secrets of the Land
2. Discovering the Secrets
3. The Spanish Tidewater Frontier, Part I, 1562-1586
4. The Tidewater Frontier, Second Phase, 1586-1608
5. The Inland Frontier, 1608-1650
6. Death, Rebellion, A New Accommodation, and New Defenses: La Florida's Frontiers, 1650-1680
7. The First Contests with the English, 1680-1702
8. The Military Frontier At Last
9. New Tidewater Frontiers, 1763-1790
10. The American Frontier Envelopes East Florida, 1790-1821
11. The American Frontiers, 1821-1860
Appendix: U.S. Confirmed British and Spanish Land Grants, 1764-1820
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Paul E. Hoffman is Professor of History at Louisiana State University and author of several books including the prize-winning A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast during the Sixteenth Century. He is honored by LSU with appointment as the Paul W. and Nancy W. Murrill Distinguished Professor.
Summary
A history of colonial Florida.
