A Historiographically Marginalized Place: Spanish La Florida

The historiography of Spanish Florida (La Florida) has improved markedly since 1965 (the quadricentennial of settlement), but is still generally characterized by a lack of context, whether that is within the Spanish Empire or the Atlantic World of trans-imperial economic, human, and intellectual interchanges, or as part of the narrative of the pre-history of the United States.  This paper will briefly note the ways in which that historiography has improved since ca. 1965 and then explore why so little of it invokes larger contexts.  In essence, the paper is a call for not only historians of La Florida but also those of the Spanish Empire and the Atlantic World, including "U.S. colonial historians," to integrate Spanish Florida into those larger narratives by taking a new approach to sources and to collaboration.