| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Florida's Frontiers. By Paul E. Hoffman. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. xx, 470 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-253-34019-5.)

Florida, the first part of the present-day United States to experience European colonization, followed a historical path markedly different from that of the rest of the eastern United States. From its tenuous exploration and settlement by Spaniards in the early sixteenth century, the Florida region remained distinct in development and culture well into the nineteenth century. Paul E. Hoffman's new study, Florida's Frontiers, describes the severe challenges faced by a succession of sovereign powers--first Spain and later Britain and the United States--as they tried to unify and control that region.

Hoffman sensibly begins with a detailed look at the geography of the area that was known to Europeans as La Florida, a somewhat amorphous territory whose borders were often both uncertain and contested. He then shows how the nature of that physical environment profoundly affected both those who lived there and those who attempted to rule them. In particular, military and civilian settlements established in the relatively resource poor areas of the coast repeatedly failed to exercise effective authority over the people, both native and European, in the interior; as a result, the tension between the rulers and those under their putative authority was an outstanding characteristic of Florida history.

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