Florida without Spanish colonization

[Ricardolindo]

Suppose Spain never colonized Florida. What happens to it, then? I suppose that the local Natives would survive, thus, preventing or changing the Seminole migration. Would the French eventually have colonized the Panhandle? Would the British eventually have colonized the peninsula?

 

[Alex Richards]

The French had established a fort at Jacksonville in 1564 to claim the territory themselves, which is what precipitated the Spanish actually establishing St. Augustine. So basically you're probably looking at a Franco-Spanish fight over the territory more than anything.

 

[SinghSong]

The French had established a fort at Jacksonville in 1564 to claim the territory themselves, which is what precipitated the Spanish actually establishing St. Augustine. So basically you're probably looking at a Franco-Spanish fight over the territory more than anything.

But a Franco-Spanish fight over the territory wouldn't happen unless the Spanish colonized Florida as well. As such, you'd probably have a Franco-British fight over the territory instead. And on a related note, thinking about the potential butterflies which this would've caused- IOTL, Britain gained control of Florida (and Menorca) in 1763 as a Spanish concession in the Treaty of Paris, acquiring it in exchange for Cuba, which the British had captured from Spain after the Siege of Havana (which had been the third largest city in the Americas at this time) during the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Spain evacuated Florida immediately after the exchange, leaving the province virtually empty. And the Spanish concession of Florida, in exchange for regaining Havana, had been negotiated IOTL on France's advice that declining the offer could well result in Spain being forced to concede Manila (along with Luzon and the rest of the Philippines by extension, which had also been conquered by the British in the Seven Years' War), Mexico, and/or much of its South American mainland colonial territory, to the British instead.

ITTL though, the Spanish wouldn't have had any pre-existing claim to, or colonial presence in, Florida; it'd either have been conquered from the French (and thus conceded to the British along with all of the rest of the eastern half of French Louisiana), or belonged to the British to begin with. Ergo, this begs the question- which other colonial territory might have taken Florida's place in being conceded by the Spanish to the British ITTL's Treaty of Paris? Could the British have kept either Havana (resulting in a British Cuba TL) or Manila (resulting in a British Philippines TL)? Or could it have acquired one of the other Capitanías/Real Audiencias of the Spanish Empire ITTL- in which instance, what might be the long term consequences of each of these alternatives? And which would be the most interesting option to explore? British Venezuela, British Chile, British Pueblos Originarios (the 'indigenous territories', which comprised all of Argentinian Patagonia), or the British Provincias Internas (Eastern, comprising Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Nuevo Santander and Texas, and/or Western, comprising Arizpe, Durango, New Mexico, Baja California and Alta California)?

 

[Ricardolindo]

But a Franco-Spanish fight over the territory wouldn't happen unless the Spanish colonized Florida as well. As such, you'd probably have a Franco-British fight over the territory instead. And on a related note, thinking about the potential butterflies which this would've caused- IOTL, Britain gained control of Florida (and Menorca) in 1763 as a Spanish concession in the Treaty of Paris, acquiring it in exchange for Cuba, which the British had captured from Spain after the Siege of Havana (which had been the third largest city in the Americas at this time) during the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Spain evacuated Florida immediately after the exchange, leaving the province virtually empty. And the Spanish concession of Florida, in exchange for regaining Havana, had been negotiated IOTL on France's advice that declining the offer could well result in Spain being forced to concede Manila (along with Luzon and the rest of the Philippines by extension, which had also been conquered by the British in the Seven Years' War), Mexico, and/or much of its South American mainland colonial territory, to the British instead.

ITTL though, the Spanish wouldn't have had any pre-existing claim to, or colonial presence in, Florida; it'd either have been conquered from the French (and thus conceded to the British along with all of the rest of the eastern half of French Louisiana), or belonged to the British to begin with. Ergo, this begs the question- which other colonial territory might have taken Florida's place in being conceded by the Spanish to the British ITTL's Treaty of Paris? Could the British have kept either Havana (resulting in a British Cuba TL) or Manila (resulting in a British Philippines TL)? Or could it have acquired one of the other Capitanías/Real Audiencias of the Spanish Empire ITTL- in which instance, what might be the long term consequences of each of these alternatives? And which would be the most interesting option to explore? British Venezuela, British Chile, British Pueblos Originarios (the 'indigenous territories', which comprised all of Argentinian Patagonia), or the British Provincias Internas (Eastern, comprising Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Nuevo Santander and Texas, and/or Western, comprising Arizpe, Durango, New Mexico, Baja California and Alta California)?

I find it plausible that the French would colonize the Florida Panhandle, which was more accessible from Alabama than from Peninsular Florida, which the British could colonize. Regardless, Spain not colonizing Florida could butterfly away those wars.

 

[SinghSong]

I find it plausible that the French would colonize the Florida Panhandle, which was more accessible from Alabama than from Peninsular Florida, which the British could colonize. Regardless, Spain not colonizing Florida could butterfly away those wars.

Not sure if goings-on in a far flung, largely uncolonized backwater like Florida would butterfly away a global conflict like the Seven Years' War (aka as the 'First World War' by Churchill and his generation). And if the butterlies were big enough to manage that, literally nothing'd be remotely recognisable by the start of the 20th century. IOTL, René Goulaine de Laudonnière established the first European settlement on the St. Johns River, Fort Caroline, near the main village of the Saturiwa in 1564 (in the present day metropolitan area of Jacksonville); two years after the French Huguenot explorer Jean Ribault had charted the St. Johns River, in 1562, calling it the River of May, and erecting a stone column at his landing site near the river's mouth, claiming the newly discovered land for France.

In response, Philip II of Spain ordered Pedro Menéndez de Avilés to protect the interests of Spain by attacking the French at Fort Caroline. And on September 20, 1565, a Spanish force from the nearby Spanish settlement of St. Augustine (which had only been founded 12 days prior) attacked Fort Caroline, and killed nearly all the French soldiers defending it, before renaming the fort as San Mateo and, following the expulsion of the French, building up St. Augustine to become the most important European settlement in Florida. IOTL- but the whole premise of this scenario is 'suppose the Spanish never colonized Florida'. So what POD could make this happen? It's simpler than you might think.

See, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who'd been appointed by King Philip II as Captain General of the Fleet of the Indies in 1560, and commanded the galleons of the Spanish Treasure Fleet on their voyages from the Caribbean and Mexico to Spain, determining the routes they followed. And Florida was something of a personal obsession for him; he'd been asking permission for over a year and a half to go to Florida, in order to search for La Concepcion, the flagship of the New Spain fleet, which had been commanded by his son Admiral Juan Menéndez, and had been lost in September 1563 when a hurricane scattered the fleet as it was returning to Spain, at the latitude of Bermuda off the coast of South Carolina. But the crown repeatedly refused his request, for well over a year, before receiving word of the French establishing their outpost of Fort Caroline, and then approached Menéndez, agreeing to fit out the expedition to Florida he'd been pleading for them to send, on the condition that he explore and settle the region as King Philip's adelantado, and eliminate the Huguenot French presence there. And Menéndez was in a race to reach Florida before the French captain Jean Ribault, who was on a mission to secure Fort Caroline against any such incursion.

The two fleets met in a brief, indecisive skirmish off the coast, before Menéndez's fleet sighted land on 28 August 1565, the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo; landing on 8 September and founding the settlement they named Saint Augustine accordingly. And a French attack on St. Augustine, within the first week, was thwarted by a violent squall that ravaged the French naval forces. Taking advantage of this, Menéndez marched his troops overland to Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River, about 30 miles (50 km) north, with the Spanish easily overwhelming the lightly defended French garrison, which had been left with only a skeleton crew of 20 soldiers and about 100 others, killing most of the men and sparing about 60 women and children. The bodies of the victims were hung in trees with the inscription: "Hanged, not as Frenchmen, but as "Lutherans" (heretics)." Menéndez renamed the fort San Mateo and marched back to St. Augustine, where he discovered that the shipwrecked survivors from the French ships had come ashore to the south of the settlement. A Spanish patrol encountered the remnants of the French force, and took them prisoner. Menéndez accepted their surrender, but then executed all of them except a few professing Catholics and some Protestant workers with useful skills, at what is now known as Matanzas ('Slaughters' in Spanish) Inlet.

So then, you could either have Pedro Menéndez de Avilés' expedition fleet forced to withdraw due to a more decisive skirmish with Ribault's fleet off the coast; or, simply have the flagship under his son's command, La Concepcion, making it back to Spain along with his own and most of the rest in the autumn of 1563, resulting in Pedro Menéndez de Avilés never developing his obsession with Florida, and the Spanish subsequently largely leaving the French settlers at Fort Caroline, and any other successive settlements in Florida, to their own devices rather than mounting a brutal campaign to exterminate them. Forget Alabama, and the accessibility from there- by the time the French founded the first European settlement in that state, at Old Mobile in 1702, Fort Caroline (unless the Spanish still ransack and destroy it, but simply don't bother to establish their own colonial settlement in Florida at the same time as well ITTL) would've been almost 140yrs old, and could easily have been comparable to (or greater than) OTL's Quebec and New Orleans in size and importance by then. Thing is, ITTL, French Florida would've included The Carolinas and coastal Georgia as well, extending at least as far north and inland as it did IOTL:

So it'd become markedly less likely that the local Natives would survive, to any greater extent than the Taino did in the Caribbean; far from preventing or minimizing the Seminole migration, being colonized on a far larger scale c.1-200yrs earlier would be more likely to accelerate and maximize this. Would the French eventually have colonized the Panhandle? Unless someone else (besides the Spanish) got there first, undoubtedly.

 

[Ricardolindo]

How would the Natives of Florida, like the Calusa, develop with no Spanish colonization? Would they be able to stop the Seminole if they still migrate there?