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 articles by historians who look at the Florida economy through both wide and narrow lenses, ranging from James Gregory Cusick's study of "Spanish East Florida in the Atlantic Economy of the Late Eighteenth Century" to Susan Parker's study of a single plantation. (It should be noted, however, that Florida, as examined in this book, is more accurately denoted "East Florida," since none of these studies includes West Florida.) As Landers explains, these essays all seek to demonstrate that "Florida's colonial economy was much more diversified and integrated into the wider Atlantic commerce than previously has been understood" (p. 1).

Although none of these articles has previously appeared in print, some of the authors have published on their topics in other venues, such as Daniel L. Schafer on Zephaniah Kingsley and Patricia C. Griffin on the New Smyrna Plantation. The economic and social diversity represented in these articles challenges the stereotypical image of the plantation. Brent R. Weisman, for example, describing the plantation system of the Florida Seminoles, points out that "incorporation of the so-called Black Seminoles into the Seminole agricultural system after the 1790s underpinned the Seminole contribution to the colonial economy through the creation of an agricultural surplus" (p. 136). His brief chapter raises more questions than it answers, but it explores a number of issues involving the Seminoles and their interactions with their European neighbors. In contrast to the Seminoles' almost subsistence economy, Susan Parker's topic is Francis Philip Fatio, a native of Switzerland, who created a 10,000-acre plantation with eighty-six slaves and accumulated elegant household furnishings more "typically associated" with the gentry of South Carolina and Virginia (p. 69). In a well-researched and broadly conceived chapter James G. Cusick, curator of the P. K. Yonge Library at the University of Florida, draws a picture of the role of trade in Spanish East Florida, showing how "the mercantile classes of Florida ... anchor[ed] themselves to the broader economies of Havana and Charleston" (p. 169). Landers's introduction and Cusick's review of Spanish Florida's commerce serve to provide a context for the other excellent articles, all of which sharpen our understanding of Florida's colonial past.

This collection of essays is an excellent addition to the bookshelves of Florida history for both scholars and general readers. One can hope that historians of West Florida will soon contribute their own findings in a similar fashion, but in the meantime it would be helpful if it were acknowledged that there were two Floridas until the American cession in 1821.

JANE E. DYSART
University of West Florida