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Ethnohistory 48.4 (2001) 760-762



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Book Review

Black Society in Spanish Florida


Black Society in Spanish Florida. By Jane Landers. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. xiv + 390 pp., foreword, acknowledgments, introduction, afterword, appendixes, index.)

I found the reading of Jane Landers’s book extremely exciting, in part because it hits so close to home. It is a book—and here I completely agree with Peter H. Wood’s appreciations in the foreword—that represents an important contribution to our knowledge of Florida under Spanish rule and is a “solid and intriguing monograph.”

The book covers three distinct historical periods: Spain’s tenure of Florida (1565–1763), Britain’s short-lived invasion (1763–84), and Spain’s recovery of the province (1784–1821). The analysis is centered on the interactive life of three social groups: Indians, blacks, and (Spanish) whites (portrayed by Anglo planters as mulattos). For various generations, these social groups lived on an internationally contested maritime frontier on the Atlantic Rim. This peculiar historical and geographical setting provided all those involved with a knowledge (and thus the capacity to act within this knowledge) of the often turbulent political events. According to Landers, “persons of African descent (and others) in colonial Florida were politicised by imperial contests, Indian wars, and the American, French, and Haitian [End Page 760] revolutions” (4). Indeed, this is what she systematically shows throughout the book.

Landers eloquently demonstrates how Spanish institutions and legal frameworks affected people in Florida and how this framing allowed for the emergence of a working community, marked by intense interaction, marriage and kinship alliances, and a corporate identity through the participation in wars. The reproduction of a sense of community was achieved by resorting to the flexibility of Spanish law, by the existence of notions of status and of right and wrong within the community, and by resorting to multifaceted cultural traditions. Landers traces the workings of this community by carefully reconstructing life and family histories in Florida; sometimes she is even able to trace the destinies of individuals and families in exile (more often than not in Cuba). The book places the lives of people amid successive political and military conflicts and shows how these conflicts shaped their lives, often through their physical and/or historical removal.

All this was possible under Spanish rule. Everything achieved was somewhat reversed during the British intermezzo and was completely reversed with the North American takeover in 1821. The contours of the community disappeared, people were exiled—once again—to Cuba, and Florida was shaped to fit southern plantation life. In the author’s words, a past “marked by amazing cultural diversity and adaptation,” often also by African traditions (see especially 129–33) by which “multiple generations of Africans leveraged linguistic, military, diplomatic, and artisanal skills into citizenship and property rights” (249–50), was attuned to fit the reality of a cotton-producing slave society. These changes happened after years of continued U.S. aggression against a successful black-Indian-Spanish alliance that was deemed, of course, as dangerous. Rightfully so, Landers draws on the work of Frank Tannenbaum. However, her analysis shows the importance of religion, laws, and miscegenation in a single place. Thus her (and Tannenbaum’s) conclusion about the greater leniency of Spanish slavery—no matter what kinds of units of production are examined—is further substantiated.

Landers’s best-researched historical moment is the second Spanish period (1784–1821), rich in archival sources, case studies, and details. Some topics (women, military, religious life, labor arrangements) are not fully developed for the other two time periods. Especially in the discussion of the British intermezzo, I was left wondering what happened to the indicators of the existence of a strong community after the British and then the U.S. takeover. How was it possible to dismantle such strong social links in such [End Page 761] a short time period and, seemingly, with not much resistance? Is the answer sheer brutality?

From a very long-term (and different) perspective, the book also recaptures the tortuous past of Florida-Cuba connections. When one looks at the story...

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