Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810 [Paperback]

Andrew McMichael (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2008 | ISBN-10: 082033023X | ISBN-13: 978-0820330235

Integrating social, cultural, economic, and political history, this is a study of the factors that grounded--or swayed--the loyalties of non-Spaniards living under Spanish rule on the southern frontier. In particular, Andrew McMichael looks at the colonial Spanish administration's attitude toward resident Americans. The Spanish borderlands systems of slavery and land ownership, McMichael shows, used an efficient system of land distribution and government patronage that engendered loyalty and withstood a series of conflicts that tested, but did not shatter, residents' allegiance. McMichael focuses on the Baton Rouge district of Spanish West Florida from 1785 through 1810, analyzing why resident Anglo-Americans, who had maintained a high degree of loyalty to the Spanish Crown through 1809, rebelled in 1810.

The book contextualizes the 1810 rebellion, and by extension the southern frontier, within the broader Atlantic World, showing how both local factors as well as events in Europe affected lives in the Spanish borderlands. Breaking with traditional scholarship, McMichael examines contests over land and slaves as a determinant of loyalty. He draws on Spanish, French, and Anglo records to challenge scholarship that asserts a particularly "American" loyalty on the frontier whereby Anglo-American residents in West Florida, as disaffected subjects of the Spanish Crown, patiently abided until they could overthrow an alien system. Rather, it was political, social, and cultural conflicts--not nationalist ideology--that disrupted networks by which economic prosperity was gained and thus loyalty retained.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One of the most impressive achievements of Atlantic Loyalties is to establish a road map for studying West Florida in particular and the southern borderlands in general." --Peter Kastor, author of The Nation's Crucible

"McMichael's book is a powerful argument for writing borderlands history from the ground up." --Amy Turner Bushnell, author of Situado and Sabana

About the Author

Andrew McMichael is an assistant professor of history at Western Kentucky University. McMichael is also the author of History on the Web and an assistant editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 30.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (January 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082033023X
• ISBN-13: 978-0820330235
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,443,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars how the Florida panhandle became a part of the new United States, January 31, 2008

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Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810 (Paperback)

McMichael's "Atlantic Loyalties" makes a good study of how a region became part of the United States differently from how practically all of the rest of the U. S. was formed. The jingoistic settlement of Texas preceding the Mexican War; displacement of Native American tribes; and administrative steps leading to statehood as with California and other Western states are familiar ways regions have been incorporated into the United States. By contrast, the Florida panhandle controlled by Spain became a part of the nation by a long, winding course by which the Anglo-Americas who made up the majority of the population changed loyalties.

Part of the Spanish territory of western Florida almost from the earliest days of its settlement, Anglo-Americans were not essentially dissatisfied with being subject to Spanish rule. The Anglo-Americans were economically successful; they made a community within the territory; the Spanish rule was benign, with some of the governors, notably Charles Louis Boucher de Grand Pre, popular. Neither victory in America's War of Independence nor the Louisiana Purchase turned the west Floridian Anglo-Americans' allegiance from the Spanish to the Americans. However, each of these momentous historical events inevitably contributed to the eventual change in loyalties.

Continuing United States' troubles with Britain leading to the War of 1812 and conflict among the European countries of Britain, Spain, and France with the rise of Napoleon having some global dimension also unsettled the circumstances in west Florida so as to contribute to the change. Outside American agitators trying to bring the area into the United States; Spanish land speculators; and developments in the Caribbean region were localized factors which along with the larger historical events, made the change of loyalty virtually inevitable. It was only a matter of time.

What is remarkable is not that the loyalties of the Anglo-Americans shifted, but that they took so long to do so; that it took such a buildup of historical and local events for them to do so. After victory in the Revolutionary War and the Louisiana Purchase, for example, Americans rowdily and sometimes violently took over some locales.

McMichael, associate professor of history at Western Kentucky University, does not attribute the change in allegiance from Spain to the United States to any single cause; neither to any confluence of a few. He shows how the effects of historical developments and the practicalities and feelings of human lives intermingle in certain veins of history.