La Florida

This excellent collection of essays was spurred by the quincentenary of Juan Ponce de León's landfall on the Atlantic coast of Florida and brings together contributions by scholars who participated in at least one of the three conferences sponsored by the Florida Humanities Council in 2012 to commemorate the occasion. Divided into two parts that cover, respectively, the first and second Spanish periods and postcolonial and contemporary Florida, the book takes an insightful look at the last five centuries of Hispanic presence in the state, but with a clear transatlantic approach. This focus on transatlantic studies is already evident in the superb essay that precedes both parts, in which Gary R. Mormino takes us on a concise but thorough journey through Spain and Florida from 1513 to 2013 that is as informative as it is pleasant to read and that highlights the importance of the transatlantic exchanges and connections between the Old and the New World.The first part of the book deals with the Spanish periods of 1513–1763 and 1783–1821—that is, the first three centuries of Spanish presence in Florida, save the 20-year British interregnum. Three of the contributions to this part deal with colonial Florida: an excellent essay by Jerald T. Milanich on the controversies over the specific landing site of Ponce de León and the first contacts between Spaniards and the Calusa Indians, Paul E. Hoffman's analysis of the first century of Spanish incursions into greater Florida, and Amy Turner Bushnell's look at the three centuries–long ordeal of St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement in North America. The remaining essays are concerned with the literary representations of Florida in chronicles such as Garcilaso de la Vega's La Florida del Inca and Luis Jerónimo de Oré's Relación de los mártires de la Florida, the African experience in Florida's Fort Mose, and the chain of events leading to the end of the second Spanish period.The second part envisions Florida as a US state with an indelible Hispanic presence and is composed of six essays that examine this very presence through many different disciplines. Karen Racine's essay on the Amelia Island controversy studies the complicated geopolitical stage on which Florida's incorporation into the United States was achieved, Richard Kagan examines the influence of Spanish art in Florida at the turn of the twentieth century, and, similarly, Darién J. Davis paints a vibrant picture of the pre-1959 cultural and demographic exchanges between the city of Miami and Cuba. Also concerned with demographic exchanges is Jorge Duany, who describes in full detail the shifting migration patterns of different ethnic groups of Hispanic origin to Florida, as well as Alex Stepick and Marcos Feldman, who make an excellent case for the increasing importance of social class as a political category influencing how we view race and ethnicity in Miami. The volume closes with an essay by Susan Eckstein examining the changing patterns of national political influence of Florida's increasingly diverse Hispanic population.What all the essays have in common is that they reflect on the significance of the Spanish and Hispanic presence in Florida throughout the last 500 years, but each contribution is rooted in a different academic discipline, whether it be history, architecture, urban studies, politics, or literature. The result is a deeply researched and highly readable volume that is truly multidisciplinary in nature. It is true that since “each chapter in the book is fully independent from the others,” there is at times too much distance from one topic to another (p. xii). For example, while Hoffman's essay on the first century of Spanish incursions is a logical follow-up to Milanich's discussion of the first contacts between Spaniards and Indians, the third essay, by Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, takes us as far away as Peru, if only to discuss chronicles about Florida. In any case, such change of topics is to be expected in a volume with a strong multidisciplinary focus. All things considered, the quality of each essay and of the book as a whole make it very clear why it was awarded a gold medal for Florida nonfiction at the 2014 Florida Book Awards

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Ethnology · Geography · Humanities · Interregnum · Landfall · Political science · Politics · State (computer science) · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law