A History of Saint Augustine, Florida

A History of Saint Augustine, Florida
© 1881 William Dewhurst
196 pages

St. Augustine is the oldest European city in North America, founded by the Spanish in 1565.  Sitting at the mouth of the St. John river in northern Florida, it originally served to help defend Spanish ships from mischievous English pirates.   Its history offers students a view at the turbulent story of Florida during the colonial period; first an object of fixation to Spain, France, and Great Britain,  and later on one to Spain, Great Britain, and the United States.   Although Dewhurst's A History of Saint Augustine, Florida is an older work, a product of the 19th century, modern readers will find its author's hatred of slavery and defense of native Seminoles, Creeks a refreshing departure from that century's usual conceits.   It combines colonial history with accounts both tedious and fascinating, and is largely more about colonial affairs using the city than about civic life.

 I didn't realize until reading this how little I have ever thought of historic Florida. During the American Revolution, for instance, it was technically an English possession, a colony even; but because England had acquired Florida from Spain so recently (1763,  a hair over ten years before), and because the initial governors scared all the Spanish away, England had to repopulate the peninsula with new settlers--  and not just English-types and Scots, but Greeks. These newcomers shared no history or notion of common struggle with the northern colonies, and so when thirteen of their neighbors became states, the Floridians ignored invitations to the Continental Congress.  Less is said about St. Augustine during the Civil War, for the city was  captured by the US Navy before the war was a year old. Those who despised  the thought of living under foreign rule left the city, leaving a few loyal Unionists and a larger population who didn't  care one way or another.  The author ends the book by saying that Jacksonville's railroad connection to St. Augustine will keep it popular as a health resort,  winter haven, and site of tourism.

This little introduction to St. Augustine has only confirmed my realization (in reading The Spanish Frontier in North America) that Florida's colonial history warrants more attention!  I will be visiting St. Augustine within a few month's time, so do not be surprised to see more histories of Florida and St. Augustine in the weeks to come...

Our America

Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States
© 2014  Felipe Fernández-Armesto
416 pages

Spain disappears from American history books following the Spanish-American war, in which the tired old empire was given a sound thrashing and retreated from the hemisphere, but Spanish America isn't a thing of the past.  Its heritage is older than English America, not only because the Spanish arrived first but because Spanish colonialism fused itself with the peoples and culture which it found.  Our America is a history of Spanish America, principally Mexico,  delivered from the rare perspective of a Spaniard raised partially in England.  While not nearly as sweeping as Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in the United States,  it offers abounding detail on the Anglo-Spanish struggle for power, first around the Gulf Coast and then later in the southwest as English colonies developed their own identity and ambition.  It is problematic, in that a Spanish Brit spends the book lecturing a American audience on what being 'American' is, but the perspective is unusual and at times refreshing.

Fernández-Armesto examines American history not from the east to the west -- which is how, in fact, the history of the United States as a government unfolded -- but from south to north.  He sees the United States as more colonial than European, and interprets affairs like the Revolution and the Civil War as part of general new-world struggles against colonial power. He sees the South's bid for independence as very kin to Mexico's own battles between centrists and decentralists, for instance . As mentioned, Our America's focus is Mexico and the Southwest, with Cubans and Puerto Ricans receiving scant attention at the very end. Our America is thus more a history of "New Spain" -- a label which, prior to the collapse of the Spanish empire during the Napoleonic wars, encompassed both areas.  If Fernández-Armesto actually hailed from Mexico, this could be called a localist history of the United States, rather like a history of the US delivered from the perspective of the South.  The chief weakness of this book is that the author confuses the United States and 'America' when he argues that the United States began with Spanish America. While the Euro-American experience as a whole began with Spanish exploration, the 'United States' is a government formed by thirteen States along the eastern seaboard of North America, ground never trod by the Spanish.  He also attributes European success in the Americas largely to the 'stranger effect' -- an effect which included hospitality given to visiting strangers, respectful awe of travelers from afar, and  the inclusion of them in native government to swing local battles for power one way or another.  While it's a factor to take into account, he completely writes off the 'guns, germs, and steel' triad in favor of this social element.

As a general history of Latin America, I think Harvest of Empire superior; but the amount of detail given to Spain and England's colonial wrangling, and later the American conquest of the southwest, makes it a book of note. It's certainly gotten my interest in the Spanish colonial period fired up!

Related:
American Colonies, Allen Taylor. Colonial history of Spanish, French, English, Dutch, and even Russian America.
The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, James Wilson
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America, Juan Gonzales

The Spice Route

The Spice Route
© 2005 John Keay
308 pages

Spock was right. Having a thing is often not as pleasant as wanting a thing. It is not logical, but it is often true. Such was the case with the spice trade, which so tantalized the west that it spurred on a new epoch in human history and fell victim to its own success. For centuries, spices tantalized civilizations across the Old  World, uniting them in pursuit. Romans wrote with alarm about the mound of gold and silver being lost to the east in the pursuit of clouds of incense and strange-tasting food. For the west, mystery was a key component in their appeal; they always arrived via streams of middle-men, and no one seemed to know they were were ultimately sourced.  (Their guesses based on hearsay could run wild, like Herodotus' Histories. ) Although none of the pined-for substances mace, cinnamon, etc) had preservative powers,  they did add subtle and exotic tastes to food that made them attractive even to China, closer to the source.  Keay fellows galleys, cogs, and carracks across the seas and through time, beginning with the Roman Empire and moving through medieval conflicts between Christian and Muslim traders before ultimately arriving in the globalized world that the spice trade helped create.

The spice trade's history is worth considering because of its legacy; its traffic was more than mere goods and services. They were utter obsessions to both the European and Arab worlds, and the drive to find them -- to control them, even - spurred on the Age of Discovery and the beginning of a global economy. Because of the antagonism between the Christo-Islamic political spheres  Europeans embarked on great adventures to find quicker and better sea routes to the 'spice islands'; they engaged in brutal wars, both against on another and whatever poor souls lay in their way. (Hungry, desperate men with guns don't make for ideal guests, let alone neighbors.)  Eventually Europe would win control of spice route trade points from the Arab world, and conquer the spice sources directly. The competition was such --  first between Spain and Portugal, and then even more furiously between English and Dutch trading companies --  that the spice trade fell victim of its own success. So many ships were traveling from Europe to the indies -- around Africa, around the Americas, through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf -- that markets were glutted. A warehouse in England might have a half-decade worth of surplus peppercorn, and this in the age of Sail!   The wooden road that now linked Europe, Asian, and American shores brought much more with than spices: it brought competition. Spices now had to contend with regular supplies of coffee, chocolate, chili peppers, tea, sugar -- an entire banquet of new and exotic tastes. The mysterious allure of spices had been lost in discovery,  and now they were an old pleasure fading against new possibilities, both in Europe and in Asia.  Just as the spice trade united the classical world,  Islam, China, and renaissance Europe through the ages,  its pursuit led to an Earth increasingly united in trade. The age of Discovery came not from scientific or religious idealism, but sheer appetite.

Keay uses his prior research into China and India here to good effect, drawing on Roman, Arabic, and Asian primary sources to delve into the Mediterranean powers' search for those goods from afar. Although this is a text heavy with details, they don't weight down the narrative too much. The only real limitation of the book is the complete lack of maps, which is problematic considering how large a role geography plays here.   I largely read this to introduce myself to Keay's writings, and will definitely try more of his histories.

Related:
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, David Bernstein
1493, Charles Mann

The New World

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume II: The New World
© 1956 Winston Churchill
400 pages

Shortly before the eruption of the Second World War, Winston Churchill was busy at work authoring a history of the English and American people, of which this is volume II.  Although one might think The New World is set in North America, the new world here is one of political culture, not geography. To be sure, this volume is set in in the Age of Discovery, and there is a section on the first few English colonies...but this work's primary focus is charting the transformation of England from a strongman monarchy into a constitutional government largely run by Parliament. Not coincidentally, Churchill also tracks the effects of the reformation on English religion; here we witness the break from Rome, the birth of the Anglican church, the rising of Protestant sects like the Puritans, and the tension between all three that would lead to wars, a dictatorship, and the happy departure of the Pilgrims to America, where they could ruin a whole new continent with their raging dislike for life. As mentioned prior, Churchill is a traditional historian,  completely focused on the king and the leaders of Parliament. Most people exist to do the ruler's bidding (the soldiers of the New Model Army) or to be put down by a good ruler (the Chartists, Levellers, and Diggers).  Despite this, it's fairly entertaining because Churchill so unabashedly throws in his own opinions, never missing a chance to commend his ancestor Winston Churchill or to get in a few digs at the dig-worthy Oliver Cromwell.

I may read another volume of this series eventually; I'm curious as to how he handled the American Revolution, and I'm told his coverage of the American Civil War is commendable.  Besides that, reading the work in his voice amuses me to no end.

1493

1493: Uncovering the New World that Columbus Created
© 2011 Charles C. Mann
690 pages

Although Christopher Columbus's reputation as an intrepid explorer doesn't withstand historical scrutiny,  Charles C. Mann believes Columbus has a legacy still worth honoring. No, he didn't prove the world to be flat -- that's a myth peculiar to American schoolrooms -- and his attempt to establish that the world was smaller than conventional wisdom held would have failed were it not for the existence of the Americas. But Columbus made the world smaller, through his actions -- for he not only 'discovered' the new world, he aggressively promoted interactions between it and the old. What began as the Colombian Exchange, we now call globalization -- and its effects have been profound from the start. Such is the story of 1493.

Throughout most of recorded history, the economies of large polities tended to be self-contained spheres.  The economies of the Roman and Chinese empires, for instance, were largely separate  aside from a trickle of activity along the silk road.  The modern age is marked, however, by a world economy. No sector of the Earth, no community however small, conducts business in a market smaller than the entire globe. This dense interconnectivity is made possible by both by powerful transportation, in the form of fast-moving planes, ships, and delivery trucks, and the near-instantaneous telecommunications networks. It began, however, with enormous trade galleons tying Spain to central America, and its holdings there to  China. The influx of so much silver into China's markets played havoc with its economy, leading to decades of instability. Crops from the Americas became staples of the global food market, allowing for a prolonged population boom in China and alleviating famine in Ireland, at least until the new crop the Irish came to depend upon, the potato, was hit by blight. The habitat of both plants and animals spread wildly, and it wasn't just large fauna like pigs and horses that found new ground:  bacterial populations flourished, and with them disease. In 1491, Mann detailed how the human landscape of the Americas was laid waste by the arrival of European diseases like smallpox; here, another population, that of the west-coast Africans, is reduced to slavery because of their resistance to malaria.

People tend to like histories of themselves, of great people doing great things -- but this is a material history, very much in the vein of Guns, Germs, and Steels, one which demonstrates how human history is often driven by outside factors -- here, by access to resources and the economic changes they allow. Although humans are active as agents, initiating the changes, the outcome is never what they expect: the effect is rather like Odysseus' sailors opening up the bag of wind and being blown wildly off course.

 Mann's history of early globalization covers the changes being wrought across the globe, missing only the mideast. Though dense, Mann is quite the storyteller, at least until the final leg of the story when he wanders into the rubber plantations of South America and the story loses some steam, getting lost for a while charting the growth of communities of runaway slaves in the jungles. The  work isn't as tightly focused in its latter half as in the first, but Mann does tend toward the informal, combining standard narrative with merry anecdotes from his first-hand explorations of the subject. Early on, he spends three pages detailing how he investigated a word Columbus used, eventually concluding that yes, he did mean exactly what we think he meant. The investigation is interesting to a word-nerd like myself, and amusing for its irrelevancy, but it's an example of the way he tends to wander off.

1491 was for me, the book of the year in 2010. Earlier in the summer,  when I looked back over the past five years and reflected on the stand-outs, it ranked among them. Its sequel is strong -- it puts up a good fight -- but it's not quite in the same class.   Even so, I'd recommend it to those interested in the economic impact of the age of discovery, especially if they like rubber-tree plantations.