Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century (review)

The eleven articles in this volume do not center on a unified theme; instead, they highlight the diversity of racial, ethnic, cultural, and economic contacts that characterized the eighteenth-century colonial Gulf South during a time of rapid change. In the afterword, Ida Altman sums up this broad-based approach by concluding that “strikingly diverse societies” existed concurrently in the region.

The various contributions provide useful examples of current historiographical approaches to, and viewpoints about, the region. Topics include Native Americans and their relationship with Europeans, African Americans, women, exchanges among the groups living along the coast, economic development, and political loyalties. The essays primarily cover, in one fashion or another, a geographical area encompassing Florida through Louisiana to Texas from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. All of the articles flow methodologically from the varieties of historical analysis that have emerged from the application of “world systems theory,” employing an analysis of “centers and peripheries,” of overlapping physical and mental spaces, and of the “contested grounds” held by competing groups of people both temporally and culturally.

The volume opens with a well-crafted, informative survey of the historical literature of the late eighteenth-century Gulf Coast. Four of the subsequent articles deal with aspects of Native American society, especially cultural contact, trade relations, identity, and community. Three additional articles explore colonial Louisiana, including social customs and deviancy during the French era, patterns of property holding in New Orleans, and the tobacco trade in Natchitoches during the Spanish period. An additional article deals with cattle raising and ranching along the lower Rio Grande Valley. The final article examines motivations for the Anglo-American revolt in West Florida.

All of the contributions are well written and meticulously researched. Refreshingly, a helpful and thorough bibliography includes every item cited in each of the essays.