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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn John Paul Nuño Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era. By Mike Bunn. ( Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2020. Pp. xiv, 289. $28.95, ISBN 978-1-58838-413-3.) In recent years, scholars have begun addressing the historiographical gap that relegated West and East Florida to the status of forgotten British North American colonies, especially in the traditional narrative of the American Revolution. Even to a greater extent than for East Florida, scholarship on West Florida has been particularly sparse, except for older foundational texts by Cecil Johnson and, later, Robin Fabel. More recently, Andrew McMichael's Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785–1810 (Athens, Ga., 2008) and Kathleen DuVal's Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York, 2015) have shed light on the colony's history. The latter recontextualizes and complicates the traditional narrative of the American Revolution for a general audience. DuVal focuses on historical figures whose lives illuminate important themes and the contingent nature of the period. Entering into the fray is Mike Bunn's Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era, which is also aimed at a general audience but provides more of a comprehensive narrative focused on the creation and eventual conquest of British West Florida. Bunn is a public historian, the director of Historic Blakeley State Park, and the editor of Muscogiana, a journal of the Muscogee County, Georgia, Genealogical Society. His book fits well within his efforts to educate the public. He explains to his readers that he seeks to present a "broad arc of the life of the colony" while demonstrating that the history of West Florida, once seen as inconsequential, is "worth telling and remembering" (p. xii). Bunn embarks on this mission by taking a chronological approach that details the British founding of the colony and ambitious plans to develop it. Of note here is the ineffective leadership of Governor George Johnstone, who fostered political divisiveness in the colony. The author then devotes several chapters to themes such as settlement, daily life, and earning a living. He also includes an [End Page 147] informative chapter on the Indian trade despite acknowledging that most of his work does not focus on the Indigenous population. His decision to include this chapter is vital since Florida's Native peoples had the power to significantly shape events on the ground. Toward the second half of the book, Bunn returns to a chronological scope by outlining the events of the American Revolution on the Gulf Coast. Readers will find James Willing's notorious incursion into West Florida and Bernardo de Gálvez's stereotype-defying performance as an effective Spanish colonial administrator and military leader particularly interesting. This book is primarily a synthesis of secondary works, in which the author is well versed, supplemented by primary sources from the British Colonial Office and published archival materials. The text serves a general audience that would benefit from an introduction to the nuts and bolts of the British colonization of West Florida. However, an academic reader may find that the end-notes, which are condensed in one note at the end of each paragraph, are not always clearly delineated. Further, the text would benefit from a tighter conceptual and thematic focus. Nonetheless, it succeeds in its objective of showing that the history of the colony enriches our understanding of the American Revolution. Bunn's work contributes to the larger project of presenting more nuanced narratives of southern history to the public, which is not inconsequential. John Paul Nuño California State University, Northridge Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association