This episode explores the complexity of Florida's colonial history, its relationship to African-Americans, and its importance during the War of Independence.

Our expert guest is Prof. Jane Landers (Vanderbilt University), who is also the Director of the Slave Societies Digital Archive.

Topics include:

-The importance of remembering African-American history in Spanish America

-An overview of Spanish colonial history, which is much older than Anglo-American history that began in Jamestown in 1619

-Spain's religious sanctuary policy, which granted African-American slaves freedom in Florida as far back as 1687

-The first Underground Railroad for enslaved Blacks, which led south to Spanish Florida not north

-The different models of slavery in Spanish colonies and the different ways enslaved people could free themselves

-The complex political, religious, economic, and military structures in Spanish colonies

-Indigenous migration from Anglo colonies to Spanish Florida

-The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739-1748) and the Battle of Bloody Mose (1740) near St. Augustine, during which free Africans fought with Spain to protect their freedom

-Spanish Florida during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War)

-The cession of Florida to Britain at the end of the War in 1763 and the subsequent migration of Carolina farmers with roughly 9,000 enslaved African-Americans to Florida and then the later transfer of additional enslaved Africans from Africa

-The exile of free Blacks from Florida to Cuba in 1763-64

-Spain's support of American Patriots in the War of Independence

-The deployment of exiled free Blacks, who had left Florida for Spanish-Cuba in 1763, to fight the British in Pensacola in 1777

-The return of Florida to Spain in 1784

-The drive by the US both to eliminate free black culture in Florida and also to institute a slave economy there

-The transfer of Florida to the new United States in 1821 and the second exile of free Blacks from Florida to other Spanish colonies

-An analysis of the phrase "all men are created equal" through the lens of the free inhabitants of Spanish Florida

Jane Landers' books can be found here:

Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions

Black Society in Spanish Florida

The Slave Societies Digital Archive can be found here:

Slave Societies