Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America’s Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn

Abstract

The late eighteenth-century Spanish Gulf Coast remains one of the least examined and woefully misunderstood regions of North America. American historians of the period generally focus on revolutionary developments in New England or on the French and British imperial struggle to define the Great Lakes region. Yet the Gulf was a dynamic nexus of empire in which three imperial metropolises—Britain, France, and Spain—all vied with one another, and, after 1783, with the United States and numerous Native American peoples and maroon communities to strengthen and expand their own spheres of control. By the late eighteenth century, the destiny of this region had coalesced as the number of competitors had been reduced to only Spain and the nascent United States.Bunn’s Fourteenth Colony provides an explanation of how and why the colony of West Florida remained loyal to Britain during the period of the American Revolution, and how Spanish forces wrested it from British hands. The examination, through eleven chapters, explains the British takeover of the Gulf Coast in the post-1763 period. During the Seven Years’ War, Spain had lost control of Havana, the capital of Cuba; to secure the return of this valuable city, Spain ceded La Florida (East and West Florida) to Britain in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. Subsequent chapters also explain the role of government and of Indian trade and describe the sparsely located settlements and daily life of the inhabitants, as well as how the colony prospered. Without a stable cash crop, settlers cultivated indigo and cochineal for dyes, harvested pine timber for construction and naval stores, traded with the Indians for deerskins, herded cattle and raised hogs for meat, and exploited slavery.The revolutionary struggle that erupted between Britain and the North American colonies inevitably brought the Gulf Coast into the fray even though the settlers remained steadfastly loyal to Britain. James Willing, a former captain in the Colonial Navy, brought the war to West Florida when he took Patriot forces down the Mississippi River to compel settlers to take an oath of neutrality. Although Willing occupied Natchez and plundered nearby plantations, he was defeated by a Loyalist force and taken captive by the British. Spain took advantage of the disorder and removed Britain from the Gulf. Spanish troops in New Orleans under Bernardo de Gálvez seized Baton Rouge in the fall of 1779 and Mobile in early 1780. By May 1781, Gálvez had captured Pensacola and its garrison, leaving the British with no ports on the Gulf of Mexico. The 1783 Peace of Paris returned the territories of West Florida and East Florida to Spain but initiated growing problems regarding the boundary with the newly established United States.By its very nature, well-written history is interdisciplinary because it addresses events and people, economics, politics, class and society, and why and how important decisions were made. Bunn’s Fourteenth Colony does so by integrating the Gulf Coast into the American revolutionary struggle. Using an extensive collection of primary and secondary sources, Bunn ably describes, in an engaging style, how the British ultimately lost the Gulf to Spanish control. He also places the colony into the broader narrative of American territorial expansion, which is a valuable lesson for those trying to understand the development of the United States.