Black Lives in 16th-18th century Florida | Black Lives in European History

Discover the origins of Fort Mosé, established in 1738 in St. Augustine, Florida, where free black soldiers and their families developed a mixed-race society – small, but important to and reflective of the Spanish Empire’s military and social organization. In this third session in our series “Black Lives in European History,” we’ll explore the racial fluidity of early St. Augustine, including America’s first recorded wedding, in 1565 – between Luisa Abrego, a free black woman, and Miguel Rodríguez, a white man. We’ll compare the differences of how black and native American people were viewed in Spanish Florida and British South Carolina. We’ll see how those views shaped the different roles black and native American people played in the two societies, and how they also contributed to frequent conflict between the two European powers between the late 17th and late 18th centuries.

We’ll learn about how conflict led to opportunity for greater freedom in Spanish Florida and to an early underground railroad for people escaping slavery in the British colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, and we’ll see how the free black community of St. Augustine grew as it became increasingly important to colonial defense.

Here are some sources you might want to check, and which I’ve used for this session. I hope you’ll use them to continue your own explorations and discussions of Black Lives in European History.

Deagan, Kathleen. Fort Mose: Colonial America's Black Fortress of Freedom. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. 1995. (with Darcie MacMahon).

Gallay, Alan. The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

Landers, Jane. “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida.” The American Historical Review. Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 9-30

Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas. Psychology Press. 1996.

Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions. Harvard University Press. February 2010.
Black Society in Spanish Florida. University of Illinois Press. 1999.

Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America. UNM Press. 2006.

Landers, Jane & Kathy Deagan. “Fort Mose: Earliest Free African-American Town in the United States” pp. 261-282, in Theresa A. Singleton, ed. "I, Too, Am America: "Archaeological Studies of African-American Life. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999.

Reséndez, Andrés. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Restall, Matthew, ed. Beyond Black and Red: African-native Relations in Colonial Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

Tannenbaum, Frank. Slave and Citizen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947.

[darklord]

I just discovered this channel and I say that you make an excellent presentation on Africans in Europe. My only criticism is how you use “white” as if Europeans are all under this United racial category when that isn’t the case. Other than that, I’ll suscribe and you deserve much more subscribers

[cannacris]

Can you do a vid on history of Blacks in California? I heard when it was Mexico/Spain territory 40% of settlers was of African decent. Plus 300 of 700 of Cortes men where of African decent. And California suppose to be named after a African Queen. Thanks

[jonahhex]

Will incorporate into my St Augustine tours

[Trikipum]

in the minute 2.40. The guy in the center is "juan latino". He was the first black person to ever study in an europen university. He got a profesorship in gramatics and some other things. He ended up marrying a white woman of a very good family and they had 4 children.. That is why it is ridicule when Anglos put the spanish as super racist and evil.. Man man.. imagine that happening in the england of mid century 16....

[NEY-uulx]

9:20

Britain did not gain the philippines, it gained manila, there is a book about it, stating that manila was reliant on provinical goods to stay afloat as the economy was extraction and plantations, gaining only the city and failing to destroy the government, also failing to convince the Locals in the islands to rebel made many indian and french mercenaries to actually desert to the spanish ranks and later settle when the british left.

[gkeith]

Fort Mose' is Fort Moshe' as in Moses as Gentiles now say.

All the star forts indicate the world wide Yahwahshataw kingdom.

We've been stuck in a repeating karmaic cycle. 400 years the Slavic European kin where enslaved.
400 years the Yahwahshataw and Paternal offspring have served.

The scales of are now balanced, let's tell the truth of the past so we all can move forward with a clean slate

Read the prophecies of Columbus and dum diversus...

Oh lastly on these weird words black & slave... Ever wonder how these 2 words once used on Slavic Europeans has been attached to boxum & ebon skinned Yahudim offspring? Family fighting family, Maternals vs Paternals...

Yah shalom

[kingdomoftheenglish]

Hope u know the real native Indians are black people, it was a black on black war