raharris1973
Well-known member
What if the Spanish invested more in building up recovered Florida as a cash cow after 1783?
They did not seem to do a lot with it, in the remaining 36 years they held on to it, except use it as as diplomatic bargaining chip.
It is true that after 1793 and the outbreak of Revolutionary Wars, other concerns were looming larger. After 1807, without a doubt. And after the defeat of Napoleon (1815) there was hardly any time to do anything with the land before it was ceded to the USA (1819).
But it seems to me the Spanish had a relatively tranquil decade in European and American imperial affairs from 1783-1793 where they could have done more investment.
My suggestion: Invest in the slavery-manned plantation economy, big time.
It costs some money to purchase the field hands and the tools to clear and train land and buy seeds for planting. But it takes money to make money. And Spain was not entirely without it at this time. There were profit-making techniques to copy and learn from right next door in American Georgia and South Carolina for the growth of indigo and cotton, and in the West Indies for other other crops.
The logical focus would have been to concentrate and build out from the existing settlements in northern Florida like St. Augustine, San Marcos, which I think is around the Jacksonville area, and Pennsylvania, and Mobile and Biloxi, where some plantations existed, and even more the far western "Florida" areas that later became Louisiana that may have had some sugar growing.
A couple years into growing crops, up front investment costs should be recouped from export revenues. The chances to make money as exporting plantation owners should attract more white Spaniards and yield more local revenue to help support fortifications and fund garrisons for internal and external security.
It shifts the "defenses" of the colony from being a low-investment, low return set-up of Seminoles and indigenous who don't want to be part of the USA, and some militia of ex runaway slaves who don't want to be recaptured, to funded Spanish professionals, while exporting higher value crops rather than the more limited and sporadic exploitation of lumber and low-density ranching.
"Filling up" northern Spanish Florida with more slave plantations, and also more Spanish masters and overseers, should also *improve* relations with the USA and reduce external, read USA, security threats to Florida, compared with OTL.
That's because if Florida is more densely settled along the border with Georgia, and later Mississippi territory, by plantation owners, its more policed, so much less hospital as an escape route for runaway or fugitive slaves, or as a pathway for raiding Amerindians. Those factors in OTL Spanish Florida attracted frequent American attention, all negative. If southern American plantation owners feel like they can reciprocally deal with fugitives across the borders, tensions should ease.
Now Americans can always get greedy to own the land. Later on, if other factors make Florida Creoles regard Spain as an unviable protector, some of them may not dismiss the idea of Florida uniting with the USA either. But Spain having this type of Florida policy, which is more evil, admittedly, should mean its making more money from it, the Americans are finding it more tolerable most of the time, and even if it were to become an American possession at the same time as OTL, Florida would be left more culturally Spanish that it was in OTL.
If you're skeptical it could have been done, I cite the example of Cuba, which went from not being so plantation centric in mid-1700s, to becoming more plantation-y after the episode of British occupation in 1762-63, a little more from the 1780s, and very plantation-centric after the Haitian revolution.
en.wikipedia.org
Plantation slavery in the Spanish Caribbean was weird, it was an early and late bloomer, doing best when slavery was having harder times in other colonies, so the Spanish were not doing it as intensely at the height of British, French, Dutch plantation successes in the 1600s and 1700s, even though they were there doing it at the start, and kept doing it until the end. Cuban slavery in that middle period was more feudalistic and mafia like, with slaves finding diverse jobs like anybody else, and paying a big share of their wages to their owner. And the Spanish Caribbean was backwaters ignored for the mainland.
They did not seem to do a lot with it, in the remaining 36 years they held on to it, except use it as as diplomatic bargaining chip.
It is true that after 1793 and the outbreak of Revolutionary Wars, other concerns were looming larger. After 1807, without a doubt. And after the defeat of Napoleon (1815) there was hardly any time to do anything with the land before it was ceded to the USA (1819).
But it seems to me the Spanish had a relatively tranquil decade in European and American imperial affairs from 1783-1793 where they could have done more investment.
My suggestion: Invest in the slavery-manned plantation economy, big time.
It costs some money to purchase the field hands and the tools to clear and train land and buy seeds for planting. But it takes money to make money. And Spain was not entirely without it at this time. There were profit-making techniques to copy and learn from right next door in American Georgia and South Carolina for the growth of indigo and cotton, and in the West Indies for other other crops.
The logical focus would have been to concentrate and build out from the existing settlements in northern Florida like St. Augustine, San Marcos, which I think is around the Jacksonville area, and Pennsylvania, and Mobile and Biloxi, where some plantations existed, and even more the far western "Florida" areas that later became Louisiana that may have had some sugar growing.
A couple years into growing crops, up front investment costs should be recouped from export revenues. The chances to make money as exporting plantation owners should attract more white Spaniards and yield more local revenue to help support fortifications and fund garrisons for internal and external security.
It shifts the "defenses" of the colony from being a low-investment, low return set-up of Seminoles and indigenous who don't want to be part of the USA, and some militia of ex runaway slaves who don't want to be recaptured, to funded Spanish professionals, while exporting higher value crops rather than the more limited and sporadic exploitation of lumber and low-density ranching.
"Filling up" northern Spanish Florida with more slave plantations, and also more Spanish masters and overseers, should also *improve* relations with the USA and reduce external, read USA, security threats to Florida, compared with OTL.
That's because if Florida is more densely settled along the border with Georgia, and later Mississippi territory, by plantation owners, its more policed, so much less hospital as an escape route for runaway or fugitive slaves, or as a pathway for raiding Amerindians. Those factors in OTL Spanish Florida attracted frequent American attention, all negative. If southern American plantation owners feel like they can reciprocally deal with fugitives across the borders, tensions should ease.
Now Americans can always get greedy to own the land. Later on, if other factors make Florida Creoles regard Spain as an unviable protector, some of them may not dismiss the idea of Florida uniting with the USA either. But Spain having this type of Florida policy, which is more evil, admittedly, should mean its making more money from it, the Americans are finding it more tolerable most of the time, and even if it were to become an American possession at the same time as OTL, Florida would be left more culturally Spanish that it was in OTL.
If you're skeptical it could have been done, I cite the example of Cuba, which went from not being so plantation centric in mid-1700s, to becoming more plantation-y after the episode of British occupation in 1762-63, a little more from the 1780s, and very plantation-centric after the Haitian revolution.
Slavery in Cuba - Wikipedia
Plantation slavery in the Spanish Caribbean was weird, it was an early and late bloomer, doing best when slavery was having harder times in other colonies, so the Spanish were not doing it as intensely at the height of British, French, Dutch plantation successes in the 1600s and 1700s, even though they were there doing it at the start, and kept doing it until the end. Cuban slavery in that middle period was more feudalistic and mafia like, with slaves finding diverse jobs like anybody else, and paying a big share of their wages to their owner. And the Spanish Caribbean was backwaters ignored for the mainland.