AMH 3421-5634
Florida to 1845, Fall 2005
T5-6 (11:45-2:40)/R6 (12:50-1:40) Flint 105
davisjac@ufl.edu 392-0271, ext. 251
Ofc. Hrs.: T/R 2-3:30 pm
The first humans arrived in the place that we call Florida around 13,000-12,000 B.P. (before present), when the region was arid and wind-swept, 10,000 years before the great ice melts lifted the seas to form the Florida peninsula. Beginning with the geological formation of Florida, our study will move through the pre-colonial era of native inhabitants, the explorations and settlements of the Spanish and French, the period of British occupation, the reestablishment and demise of Spanish rule, and finally the development of a U.S. territory, when political boundaries gave Florida its current legally constituted shape.
Surveying the political, economic, social, cultural, and ecological developments of early Florida enlarges our knowledge of early American history. One can argue, for example, that the history of few other places better illustrates the geopolitical struggles of the era, when European colonial powers jockeyed in position to establish a foothold in the New World. At the same time, Florida was the meeting place of multiple cultures. The relationships that those cultures negotiated reveal a complexity that scholars continue to try to understand.
The readings for the course were chosen with the intent of introducing students to both Florida history and to a broad community of scholars working within the field. Their works represent the many sub-narratives that constitute the larger narrative of Florida history. We will explore in these works and in class--which will include both lecture and discussion--the common themes that weave together the larger narrative. More significantly, the course readings also spotlight the historical agency of many of the cultural and social groups that have been a part of the Florida experience. Critically analyzing Florida's past from the perspective of these groups is of utmost importance to us.
Course Objectives:
CExpanding one's knowledge of Florida history and its place in the larger American experience.
CIntroducing the student to scholarship in Florida history.
CPromoting critical thinking about the dynamics of race, gender, and class in American society.
CIlluminating the links between human history and natural conditions.
CAdvancing the student's experience in the reading, researching, and writing tasks of the historian.
CImproving the student's cognitive and communication skills.
Course Requirements:
CMuseum exercise 10%
CTake-home essays (2 X 20%) 40%
CArchive research and paper 25%
CInternet research and paper 25%
(Please see the last section of the syllabus for a description of the course requirements.)
Required Texts:
Michael Gannon, Florida: A Short History (University Press of Florida, 2003).
Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
(Books available at Goerings Book Store, 1717 NW 1st Ave)
Additional readings are provided in the course packet, except Florida Historical Quarterly articles, which are available through the Florida Heritage data base on PALMM, and Randolph Widmer (Week I), which is on reserve.
Week I (Aug 25): Beginnings
Lecture & Discussion: Course introduction
Lecture & Discussion: Florida's natural endowment
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, xi-xiii.
Randolph J. Widmer, The Evolution of the Calusa : A Nonagricultural Chiefdom on the Southwest Florida Coast (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988), 189-223 (on reserve).
Week II (Aug 30 & Sept 1): When the Old World was the Only World
(Writing Mechanics Exercise Due)
"South Florida: People and Environments" exhibit, Florida Museum of Natural History visit and exercise (see instructions below).
Class Discussion: The Glades culture
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, 1-3.
Jerald T. Milanich, "Original Inhabitants," in Michael Gannon, ed., The New History of Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996), 1-15.
"De Orbe Novo Decades, "The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca," and "The Narrative of the Expedition of Hernando de Soto," in Maurice O'Sullivan and Jack C. Lane, The Florida Reader: Visions of Paradise (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 1991), 22-33.
Week III (Sept 6 & 8): The Meeting of Two Worlds
(Sept 6, Orientation at the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History (meet there))
(Museum Exercise Due)
Lecture & Discussion: French and Spanish explorations
Lecture & Discussion: Early Settlements
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, 3-10.
Stephen Edward Reilly, "A Marriage of Experience: Calusa Indians and Their Relations with Pedro Menendez de Aviles in Southwest Florida," Florida Historical Quarterly 59 (April 1981): 395-421.
Eugene Lyon, "Pedro Menendez's Strategic Plan for the Florida Peninsula," Florida Historical Quarterly 57 (July 1988): 1-14.
Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 7-14.
Week IV (Sept 13 & 15): The First Spanish Foothold
Lecture & Discussion: The role of the Spanish missions
Lecture & Discussion: The Afro-Caribbean presence in early Florida
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, 10-18.
Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 14-28.
Week V (Sept 20 & 22): Imperial Rivalries in Florida
Lecture & Discussion: Spanish, French, and English
Lecture & Discussion: The first free-black town
Readings:
Paul E. Hoffman, "The Chicora Legend and Franco-Spanish Rivalry in La Florida," Florida Historical Quarterly 62 (April 1984): 419-38.
Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 29-60.
Week VI (Sept 27 & 29): The British Occupation
Lecture & Discussion: The British Floridas
Lecture & Discussion: Labor and economy
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, 18-24.
Daniel Schafer, "'Yellow Silk Ferret Tied Round Their Wrists': African Americans in British East Florida, 1763-1784," in The African American Heritage of Florida, David R. Colburn and Jane L. Landers, eds. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), 157-84.
VII (Oct 4 & 6): Spanish Redux
Lecture & Discussion: Establishing a new province
Lecture & Discussion: Land grants, economy, and the Anglo population
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, 24-27.
Daniel L. Schafer, "Zephaniah Kingsley's Laurel Grove Plantation, 1803-1813," in Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida, 98-120.
James Gregory Cusick, "Spanish East Florida in the Atlantic Economy of the Late Eighteenth Century," in Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida, 168-88.
VIII (Oct 11 & 13): Black Life in Spanish Florida
Lecture & Discussion: Free blacks and black women
Lecture & Discussion: Enslaved blacks
Readings:
Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 83-182.
IX (Oct 18 & 20): Contemplating Florida Landscapes: First-Person Observations
Lecture & Discussion: William Bartram and John James Audubon in Florida
Lecture & Discussion: Envisioning Paradise
Readings:
William Bartram, Travels of William Bartram (1791) (excerpt); John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography (1834) (excerpt) in The Florida Reader, 51-57, 71-76.
(1st Take-Home Essay Due.)
Week X (Oct 25 & 27): From Atlantic World Province to U.S. Territory
Lecture & Discussion: U.S. acquisition and designs
Lecture & Discussion: Territorial politics
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, 27-28.
Charlton W. Tebeau, A History of Florida (Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1971), 117-32.
Frank L. Snyder, "Nancy Hynes Duval: Florida's First Lady, 1822-1834," Florida Historical Quarterly 72 (Summer 1994).
Week XI (Nov 1 & 3): Frontier Society
(Archive Exercise Due)
Lecture & Discussion: The new U.S. frontier
Lecture & Discussion: The pioneer's life
Readings:
Gannon, Florida, 28-40.
Tebeau, A History of Florida, 133-50.
Anya Jabour, "'The Privations and Hardships of a New Country': Southern Women and Southern Hospitality on the Florida Frontier," Florida Historical Quarterly 75 (Winter 1997): 259-74.
Week XII (Nov 8 & 10): Florida's New Indians
Lecture & Discussion: Seminoles and Miccosukees
Lecture & Discussion: The African-Indian matrix
Readings:
Brent R. Weisman, "The Plantation System of the Seminole Indians and Black Seminoles During the Colonial Era," in Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida, 136-49.
Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida, 229-48.
Week XIII (Nov 15 & 17): The Longest War Ever
(Internet Exercise Due)
Lecture & Discussion: The Seminole wars
Lecture & Discussion: Red, white, and black
Readings:
Canter Brown Jr., "The Florida Crisis of 1826-1827 and the Second Seminole War," Florida Historical Quarterly 73 (April 1995): 419-42.
George Klos, "Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821-1835," Florida Historical Quarterly 68 (July 1989): 55-78.
Week XIV (Nov 22 & Thanksgiving Holiday): The Ascendancy of Middle Florida
Lecture & Discussion: Creating a Deep South landscape
Lecture & Discussion: Life and labor
Readings:
William Warren Rogers Jr., "'As to the People': Thomas and Laura Randall's Observations on Life and Labor in Early Middle Florida," Florida Historical Quarterly 75 (Spring 1997): 441-57.
Edward E. Baptist, "The Migration of Planters to Antebellum Florida: Kinship and Power," The Journal of Southern History 62 (August 1996): 527-55.
Week XV (Nov 29 & Dec 1): Middle Florida cont.
Discussion: Summing up Florida's place in history
Week XVI (Dec 6): The Last Hurray
(2nd Take-Home Essay Due.)
Course Requirements Descriptions:
All written work for the course must be typed or computer generated and in 12-point double-spaced print. Your work must also be presented in third-person language.
Take-home essays will represent responses to a list of essay questions provided on my web site at least one week prior to the due date of the assignment. The questions will be drawn from the assigned readings and the course lectures, and you will be expected to use the course readings and your class notes as sources to answer the questions. Each answer must be presented in essay format, using formal, academic language and style (i.e., complete sentences, tightly constructed paragraphs, no colloquialisms). Do not, in other words, provide answers in lists or bullets. Those exams that address each question in a rigorous and organized manner are more likely to earn a decent grade. These grades will be dependent in part on your compliance with the rules in the "Writing Mechanics" exercise.
Museum Exercise
"South Florida: People and Environments"
Following your trip to the Florida Museum of Natural History, write a page or two addressing the following questions. Your assignment must be typed or computer generated, and your responses presented in a narrative and not in bullet form answers.
* What were the origins of the early people of south Florida and when did they live here?
* How was their culture related to the environment?
* How were these people of south Florida different from other peoples of a sedentary culture?
* What ultimately happened to the indigenous people of south Florida?
Please note that your ability to comply with the rules in the "Writing Mechanics" exercise will be factored into your grade.
Archive Exercise
Visit the P. K. Yonge Library of Florida History to research one set of the primary-source materials reserved for this class. Write a five-page paper identifying the theme that emerges from your chosen material.
* What events unfold from the material?
* How are relationships between social groups or between humans and the natural environment described in your primary source?
* What implications do the events or people in your primary source have for larger events in American history?
* What implications do they have for the relationship between the U.S. and foreign countries or different groups?
* Think in terms of the historical significance of the event or individual you are writing about.
You will have to incorporate additional research from secondary-source materials to flesh out the larger context and to identify biographical figures in the articles. Ensure that you cite your source in an endnote when you quote from your research material, and when you are drawing information-whether quoting or not-from any of the sources. See the Research Paper handout on my web site for the proper format for quoting sources in endnotes. Do not use the MLA, parenthetical style of referencing sources.
Attach to the end of your paper a bibliography, not a works consulted page, listing all the sources you used for this assignment.
Remember that your grade will be based in part on your compliance with the rules in the "Writing Mechanics" exercise.
Internet Exercise
This exercise requires that you write a five-page paper using original-source letters or a memoir on an Internet site. The letters or memoir must not have been published in a book, such as Travels of William Bartram, and they must be related to Florida during the time period that we are studying. Letters can be those of a particular individual or of several individuals writing about the same place, experience, or event. The letters of soldiers who fought in the Seminole Wars offer an example of the latter. One excellent site for sources that meet the stated criteria is the Florida Heritage Collection at http://susdl.fcla.edu/fh/ . Once you have found your source or sources, write a paper analyzing a theme or themes described in the original material. For example, you might find that several military soldiers wrote home about the hardship of dealing with the Florida environment or the travails of Indian fighting. Or you may want to focus on their common and differing perceptions of Indians. Ensure that you identify the individual or individuals who left behind the written observations and that you place their observations within the proper historical context.
Cite your sources and include a bibliography as instructed with the archive assignment.
Again, following the rules of the "Writing Mechanics" exercise is imperative to doing work of full potential.
Other Business:
Plagiarism:
Keep in mind that your written assignments must represent original work. You cannot copy the words, phrases, arguments, ideas, and conclusions of someone else or of another source (including Internet sources) without giving proper credit to the person or source by using quotation marks and a foot note. Do not cobble together paragraphs or passages of separate texts and then try to claim that you have done original and legitimate work. You must write with your own ideas and in your own words. If you copy the words of someone else without putting those words in quotation marks, REGARDLESS OF CITING THE SOURCE, you are plagiarizing. Plagiarism is theft, and it is academic dishonesty. Plagiarism is grounds for an automatic failing grade in the course, a grade that is final and that cannot be made up. If you have any questions about how you are citing or using sources, come to me for the answers. Please also review the university's honesty policy at: {http://www.dso.ufl.edu/judicial/academic.htm}. {http://
Classroom Assistance:
Please do not hesitate to contact the instructor during the semester if you have any individual concerns or issues that need to be discussed. Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office { http://www.dso.ufl.edu/drp/}. The Dean of Students Office will provide documentation to the student who must then provide that documentation to the instructor when requesting accommodation.
Alpata: A Journal of History
Keep in mind that the undergraduate- and graduate-student members of Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society at the University of Florida publish an academic journal each spring. In the fall, the journal editors will be sending out a call for submissions (articles and book reviews) to the journal.