Exercise 8 Document analysis (10%)

Optional background reading: Bernard Bailyn, "Failure in Xanadu," Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1986). [available on Ares]

1) Go to the Florida History Online website and select the project entitled "Smyrnea: Dr. Andrew Turnbull and the Mediterranean Settlement at New Smyrna and Edgewater, Florida, 1766-177".  Read the Table of Contents and Introduction to get a sense of the overall collection and narrative of events.

2) Print and read carefully the documents in the first section entitled "A 'Greek Community' in British East Florida: Early Plans, Selecting a Site at Mosquito Inlet, and Initiating the Smyrnea Settlement" [approximately 20 pages]

3) Dip into the other sections to see what kinds of documents are in the collection and what they have to tell us about the early history of British East Florida.

4) Write a 4-6-page paper in which you analyze the documents in the first section ("A 'Greek Community' in British East Florida").  What does this collection of documents tell us about Britain, East Florida, and the Mediterranean in the 1760s and 70s? Some of the topics and questions you may want to consider include: What was Turnbull's vision for the colony? What was the British government's attitude and policy toward the colony? What challenges did Turnbull face and how did he address them? 

In writing your paper, make sure to quote directly from and cite the documents using the following citation as a model:

James Grant to Andrew Turnbull, April 26, 1767, James Grant Papers, Roll 2, File 38-42, Florida History Online, http://www.unf.edu/floridahistoryonline/ (accessed February 28, 2008).

Note: if you feel you do not have enough material to analyze in the first section, feel free to include documents from the second section "'The Peopling Plan': Recruiting Indentured Laborers in Greece, Italy, and Minorca" [approximately 30 pages including 10+ pages of images.]


5) Revise your paper!   Refer to the grading rubric handed out in class (Argument, Evidence, Expression).