Florida to 1845, Fall 2011

Take-Home Essay # 1

To complete the essay, you are required to discuss (using third-person language only) in five DOUBLE-SPACED pages the history of Florida to the end of the British occupation in 1783. This means that you need to put a lot of thought not only into the content of the paper but also into the presentation of your response. Your essay should be written in a single seamless narrative, without rephrasing the questions and without listing answers in bullets.

To be successful at this task will require an economy of words and tightly constructed sentences and paragraphs. You should write in clear and concise language that conveys only information relevant to the questions. In other words, avoid becoming bogged down in minutia but provide the information necessary to show that you have a comprehensive understanding of the history. Write, in other words, as if you are explaining this history to a stranger, not to me. When you respond to the questions, always think in terms of historical significance and in terms of Europeans, Africans, and Indians--their relations with one another and their contributions to the history of Florida.

(Remember also to follow the rules in the Writing Mechanics Exercise. Retrieve it from your class notebook and put it on your desk next to your computer before your begin.)

1. Describe the physical and cultural landscape in Florida before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. (You’ve already talked about the Calusas’ unique sedentary life in the museum exercise, so you won’t need to do that again. But do tell us who and what had lived and was living in Florida before and at the time of Spanish contact and what kind of physical environment the Spanish encountered.)

2. Discuss the adelantado period--including successes and failures--in Spanish Florida from the time of Juan Ponce de Leon to Pedro Menendez de Aviles.

3. Discuss the rise and fall--including the motivating forces behind the rise and the reason for the fall--of the mission period in Florida from 1567 to 1705.

4. Discuss the period of international rivalries in Florida--between the Spanish, French, and English--leading up to the French and Indian War (don’t forget about the role blacks played in international conflict.).

5. Finally, conclude with a summary of the British occupational period.