Florida: Difference between revisions
→Pirate Wars
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From 1720 to 1750 the Spanish fought a series of wars to rid of Florida of these pirates (who now fashioned themselves as 'The 2nd Pirate Republic'). Due to the pirates mastery of navigation along with the harsh and defensible terrain of southern Florida, the Spanish had trouble effectively dealing with the pirates and in 1750 they negotiated with the four of the premier 'pirate lords' of the region ( Jim "King Andrew" Briggs, Catherine Kelly, One-eye Ned Jacobszoon, "El Lobo" Bortholomew Jones) to come under the employ of the Spanish crown as privateers and be given clemency and land grants in southern Florida. This strategy worked and the Spanish employed their new privateers to much effectiveness in the great Silesian War (1750-1755). After the war most of these privateers settled in the land granted to them by the Spanish Crown (besides Bortholomew Jones who left for the East Indies and Ned Jacobszoon who got hit in the head with a cannonball during the war). These pirate settlers contributed to settlement and growth of Spanish Florida with cities like Port Andrews and Santa Cruz growing into important ports of call in the mid and late 18th century.
=== Spanish Florida in the Early 19th Century ===
The turn of the century marked a lot of big changes in Floridian society with it's population and levels of economic development reaching catching up with many other European colonies and it's existence not being under constant threat of annexing by other power. Between 1800 and 1840 in parts of the north around San Agustin there was a rise in the number of sugar and cotton plantations much to the delight of the Spanish imperial authorities (whom previous thought Florida was more a money sink than anything and at one point before the Argentine Purchase considered offering to sell Florida the British). In fact it was so well received that in 1819 the Spanish Empire changed the status of Florida to that of a captaincy general under direct control of the crown. In the early 19th century the Spanish undertook the last of the Muscogee or Creek wars to pacify the natives in the interior of the colony which led to the 1813 Treaty of San Agustin in which the Spanish gave the Muscogee & Creek rights to part of their historic land in the interior of the colony in exchange for becoming citizens and adopting Catholicism. During the Latin American Spring of Nations Florida managed to avoid any major uprising due to it's more rural population and lack of liberal agitation. In 1842 on the heels of the Puerto Rican & Mexican revolts as well as the Colombian war for independence the Spanish abolished the institution of slavery.
=== Dutch-Spanish War and the growth of Spanish Florida ===
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