On September 23, 1810, a group of Spanish subjects rose in rebellion by storming the Spanish fort at Baton Rouge and declaring the independent Republic of West Florida. This was not a unique occurrence. That same month, Simon Bolívar departed Britain for Venezuela for his first attempt at the liberation of his homeland. Earlier in the year, the May Revolutions broke out in Argentina threatening to oust the Spanish regime, and in September, Padre Hidalgo had rung his “Cry of Delores” beginning the Mexican War for Independence. The revolt in West Florida, then, was part of a wave of Spanish-American revolutions that broke out across Spain’s empire in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Although there have been several studies dedicated to the territory, most of the scholarship on West Florida and its revolution have treated it as a distinctly American event, and even applying a teleological lens that portrays West Florida as an early example of the manifest destiny that spread over the North American continent. Instead, this paper seeks to analyze the West Florida Revolution in an Atlantic context. The events that unfolded in West Florida in 1810 cannot be separated from the other revolutions against Spain in North and South America, nor the developments in the mother country in their struggles against Napoleon. With this framework in mind, an examination of the events in West Florida shows that West Floridians were aware of their place in the Atlantic world and used that knowledge and experience to negotiate for their own ends.
West Floridians had long been accustomed to negotiating their interests with the empires of the Atlantic world. Indeed, West Florida is the only territory on the North American continent that was once held by Britain, France, and Spain before being absorbed into the United States. It was, in fact, a “nexus of empire,” as some historians have described it. Throughout their struggles, West Floridians were aware that they occupied a sort of in-between place amid the imperial Atlantic world and used this position and professions of loyalty to further their own interests. As fully immersed in the Atlantic economy from the hub in New Orleans, West Floridians professed and negotiated their national loyalty to whichever side they felt would ensure their welfare – a game West Floridians were quite used to, given the shifting imperial boundaries of the revolutionary era – and they adopted and adapted the systems of those empires that best suited their interests. This negotiation continued after incorporation into the United States, allowing the former revolutionaries to use their loyalty to the American government as a bargaining chip in advocating for their benefit. Another Atlantic conflict, however, forced many West Floridians to flock to the American standard in defense of their homes against the British in the War of 1812. Only after Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, more than four years after American annexation, did West Florida emerge as thoroughly American.