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"Life in Florida 200 years before the Epcot Center was a complex and painful story of speculation and exploitation, of high hopes and bitter realities. This very southern story has remained unknown to most Americans for too long. Now a diligent group of Florida historians is mining late 18th-century sources to uncover a forgotten world of English and Spanish, Minorcans and Greeks, Ibos and Fulani, Creeks and Seminoles. This timely volume brings together some of their best and most recent work, offering a varied, coherent, and detailed introduction to the work-in-progress that is early Florida history during the crucial period long after De Le n and De Soto and shortly before Jackson and Osceola."--Peter H. Wood, Duke University

This illustrated collection documents the rich history of Florida's earliest indigo, rice, and cotton plantations, cattle ranches, timbering operations, and Atlantic commercial networks. Based on primary research in archives in England, Scotland, Spain, Cuba, Minorca, and Florida as well as upon archaeological investigations, the essays trace for the first time the relationship of Florida to both the Caribbean and the Atlantic economies and document Florida's national and international significance in the colonial period.

Contents

Introduction, by Jane G. Landers
1. "A Swamp of an Investment"? Richard Oswald's British East Florida Plantation Experiment, by Daniel L. Schafer
2. Blue Gold: Andrew Turnbull's New Smyrna Plantation, by Patricia C. Griffin
3. Success through Diversification: Francis Philip Fatio's New Switzerland Plantation, by Susan R. Parker
4. Francisco Xavier S nchez, Floridano Planter and Merchant, by Jane G. Landers
5. Zephaniah Kingsley's Laurel Grove Plantation, 1803-1813, by Daniel L. Schafer
6. Free Black Plantations and Economy in East Florida, 1784-1821, by Jane G. Landers
7. The Plantation System of the Florida Seminole Indians and Black Seminoles during the Colonial Era, by Brent R. Weisman
8. The Cattle Trade in East Florida, 1784-1821, by Susan R. Parker
9. Spanish East Florida in the Atlantic Economy of the Late 18th Century, by James Gregory Cusick

Jane G. Landers, associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University, is author of Black Society in Spanish Florida, editor of Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas, and coeditor of The African American Heritage of Florida (UPF, 1995).