In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Ethnohistory 49.4 (2002) 880-885



[Access article in PDF]
Laudonnière and Fort Caroline: History and Documents. By Charles E. Bennett. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001. xv + 191 pp., foreword, preface, maps, illustrations, appendixes, index. $19.95 paper.)
Three Voyages. By René Laudonnière. Translated and edited by Charles E. Bennett. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001. xxii + 232 pp., foreword, introduction, appendixes, notes, index. $22.95 paper.)
A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida. By Bernard Romans. Edited by Kathryn E. Holland Braund. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999. xiv + 442 pp., introduction, illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $44.95 cloth.)

In three new editions recounting colonial expeditions to the North American southeast, the University of Alabama Press has made available important and fascinating accounts that will instruct scholars and students in [End Page 880] the weird, strange, and destructive phenomena of colonialism. Two of the books reissue accounts of 1560s French attempts to settle Florida, which Charles E. Bennett translated and edited in the 1960s and 1970s but which have been out of print. The third book, Bernard Romans's 1775 A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, is a much-needed new edition of a rare work, with notes and helpful introductory essays by Kathryn E. Holland Braund. Together, these books provide important glimpses of worlds rapidly changing and the motivations and actions of the agents of that change. Two centuries apart in time, they also reflect tremendous differences between experimental early European efforts to colonize North America and the confident expansion of eighteenth-century Anglo-Americans.

Bennett's collections Laudonnière and Fort Caroline: History and Documents and Three Voyages tell the story of France's fleeting colonization of Florida. In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Americas and Africa between Spain and Portugal. Over the next few decades, Hernando de Soto and others explored the lands from Florida to New Mexico that the treaty had granted to Spain and claimed them in the name of the Spanish king. Naturally, this division of the world did not satisfy French, British, and Dutch imperial interests. In the 1560s, France decided to colonize the land that the Spanish had named Florida (but that the French insistently called New France). The urge to settle Florida stemmed not only from the global contest for colonies but also from religious differences within France, as Regent Catherine de Medici sought to prevent civil war by sending Huguenots out of France to settle throughout the empire.

In May of 1562, Jean Ribault, with René Laudonnière as his second-in-command, founded Charlesfort (now Parris Island, South Carolina). Almost immediately, Ribault and Laudonnière headed back to France for more supplies and settlers, but war there delayed their return to Florida for two years. Abandoned, hungry, and discontent, the stranded colonists gave up on Florida. With the help of some Indian neighbors, they built a boat and returned to France, eating their shoes, drinking their urine, and killing and eating one of their comrades along the way. Colonialism was not a venture for the faint of heart, or stomach. Unaware of the disastrous end of Charlesfort, Laudonnière returned in 1564. When he could not find the settlers he had left behind, Laudonnière established Fort Caroline near what is today the northeastern border of Florida.

Laudonnière and Fort Caroline contains Bennett's short history of the venture as well as related documents, translated into English. These documents—which include accounts by several French settlers, French mutineers who were captured and interrogated by the Spanish, and the Spanish [End Page 881] commander sent to conquer Fort Caroline—provide a fascinating multiperspectival view of the colony. Bennett introduces each document clearly and succinctly. His history is informative as to European motivations and actions, although it includes little information on the native peoples of Florida. Readers and instructors could supplement Bennett's history with information from such works as John E. Worth's The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida (1998). Although...

pdf

Share