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In 1810 French and Anglo subjects in the Spanish colony of West Florida carried out what contemporary Bostonians called a “little mimick revolution .”1 Historians have been similarly dismissive of the conflict that brought the area into the United States. Latin Americanists have tended to ignore the region altogether. When U.S. historians treat the movement and its background, they seem baffled by the 1783–1810 period and what it means to the development of the United States South. In large part this confusion arises because in the United States the historiography of West Florida, when it is not ignored entirely, has built on the mistaken assumptions of outdated works largely informed by the biases of the “Black Legend.”2 U.S. historians, while mostly ignoring Britons and French in West Florida, have long argued that American residents were unhappy with Spanish rule.3 In their view Spain maintained a largely ineffective presence in the New World in general and in West Florida specifically.4 Thus, unlike the vigorous and complex scholarly debates about the nature of the American Revolution, considerations of the West Florida revolution remain staunchly one-dimensional. Seemingly little has changed since the Washington Federalist in 1804 weighed in on the so-called West Florida “question” amidst the bitter debate over Thomas Jefferson’s conduct in the Louisiana Purchase. The paper celebrated filibustering in West Florida and played up the supposed pro-American sentiments of West Floridians, arguing against those who believed that “we ought never to own an inch of ground beyond the Mis- '($CW_djW_d_d]BeoWbjo_dj^[ M[ij

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