Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida

Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida. Edited by Jane G. Landers. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2000. Pp. [xii], 220. $49.95, ISBN 0-8130-1772-6.)

Colonial Florida is not usually considered plantation country, despite its geographic, political, and economic connections to the Caribbean and the southern colonies of British America. Jane Landers argues that previous historians have paid little attention to colonial Florida in part because of language barriers, but more importantly due to their belief that Florida was a backwater of the Spanish Empire. But, as she and other scholars explain in this new book, during the British and Second Spanish periods (1763-1821), Florida did develop plantations and a diverse economy. The frequent violence of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, prevented Floridians from achieving the economic prosperity that they anticipated.

This slim volume includes nine...