The Departure of Spanish Catholicism from Florida, 1763–1765

Abstract

The Seven Years’ war brought an end to almost 200 years of Spanish residence in Florida. Following the 1763 Treaty of Paris which settled the long and costly conflict between Great Britain and the Bourbon Family Compact (France and Spain), all Spanish possessions in North America east and southeast of the Mississippi River, were ceded to His Britannic Majesty, George III of England. Because Havana, Cuba, had capitulated to a British invasion in the summer of 1762, Marqués de Grimaldi, the Spanish plenipotentiary at Paris, reluctantly relinquished Florida to England in order to recover the Caribbean Island for His Catholic Majesty, Charles III. The treaty of Paris thus reduced Spain’s territorial holdings in the Americas. However, since the Spaniards were determined to leave to the British Crown an empty and unpopulated colony, all the population and portable possessions of Spanish Florida were transported to other areas of the Hispanic Indies.