Unearthing the Missions of Spanish Florida

These compositions reconstruct the sonic environment of the seventeenth-century Mission San Luis de Talimali. These “soundscapes” draw on musicology, geography, archaeological data, historical research, and field recordings to help Mission San Luis’s visitors and scholars better understand the lived, sensory experiences of the Apalachee and Spanish people at La Florida’s paramount mission community.

«The Silver Age of Piracy»: French pirates in the Atlantic in the first third of the XVI century

The purpose of the study was to find a causal relationship between the activities of king Francis I and the large-scale pirate actions of the captains of the French merchant fleet, Jean Ango. This was necessary to show piracy as a fusion of the military and diplomatic policies of France against Portugal and Spain with the naval experience of warfare on the seas and in the oceans, which had the captains of the merchant fleet of Jean Ango. We can see this connection by the captured and looted of hundreds of ships in Portugal and Spain with the full support of piracy from the French crown. The goal was also to show how France, through piracy and its promotion at the state level, destroyed the system of international agreements and Royal oaths in the Christian world for the sake of its commercial advantage. The author studies and gives examples of numerous acts of piracy, numbering in the hundreds of captured, robbed, and sunk ships, the reasons and conclusions are given why Francis I began to demand Open seas and oceans and why he demanded a revision of the borders of the world in the XVI century. The author has considered and found the answers to the questions of what caused the rupture of international treaties, on the part of Francis I. The author has also revealed and shown the facts of multiple penetrations of France on the territory of Portugal and Spain, which later led to attempts by France to establish settlements in Brazil in 15551559 and Spanish Florida in 15631565, contrary to all international norms and agreements the Popes bulls of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 and subsequent ones. The paper shows that the scale and scope of the pirate actions of French pirates in the Atlantic contributed to the formation of piracy as a mass phenomenon and can be called the Silver age of world piracy, which falls on the 16th century, and anticipates the Golden age of piracy of the 17th and 18th centuries. This term is quite appropriate to introduce for this time, especially if it is considered together with the even larger-scale pirate actions of Berber pirates in the Mediterranean, which are quite well known and described in the scientific literature.

A new view of the native revolts in Spanish Florida and the West Indies in the 16th century

This study is a more general research of the Christianization of Florida in the 16th and 18th centuries. This topic became a separate study since when compiling the chronology of Christianization and the foundation of settlements, there were revolts of local residents. When identifying the causes of these revolts, identical and recurring events were identified. To identify them we studied the cause-and-effect relationships between Spaniards and natives. We compared primary sources, their translations from various Spanish sources, as well as recent archaeological finds and research, reviewed data on the nature of the revolts, researchers work; we also compared the facts and the process of describing events during Christianization. To complete this work it was necessary to find the kinship and the root cause that gave rise to the prerequisites for the revolt. We decided to step over the theory of class struggle and apply the search for the cause of revolts in interpersonal relations (social psychology), studying the chronology of witnesses of that time. The author uses the gender factor, i.e. the relationship between man and woman, as a new concept when considering the processes of revolts of natives and introduces a new term expectation formula, applied to the relations between the local chiefs (caciques) and Spaniards. The gender factor is important as an increase or, conversely, as a decrease in the expectation formula, at a low or zero value when revolts begin. At the same time, the expectation formula has a clear dependence on the size of the ego of the local leaders, who assumed certain benefits for themselves and that can be seen in the formula of the cause-and-effect relationships that led to revolts against the Spanish crown. As a result, we came to the conclusion that socio-psychological and behavioral universal factors can explain both the acceptance and rejection of the union of aborigines with Europeans, without involving the study of the theory of class struggle. When the expectation factor was lowered or dropped, the union broke up, and this led to a revolt of the natives on the Spanish territories.

Scotland's Lost Colony Found: Rediscovering Stuarts Town, 1682–1688

Historians on both sides of the Atlantic have failed to appreciate the significance of Stuarts Town, Scotland's short-lived colony in Port Royal, South Carolina. This article challenges the current view that Stuarts Town was primarily a business venture, focusing, instead, on the religious impulses that lay just beneath the surface of the Carolina Company. These concerns came to the fore as presbyterian persecution intensified in 1683 and the colony was reimagined as a safe haven for the true church, where the saving remnant of God's people could escape the terrible judgments befalling Scotland and where the gospel would be secure. Its purpose was collective, corporate, social and historical. On the ground in Carolina, however, colonisers behaved more like imperialists than religious refugees. Like Scotland, the Anglo-Spanish borderland was a violent and unstable place that bred fear of displacement and enslavement, but unlike Scotland it lacked a centralised power, giving the Scots an opening to make their bid for empire. They moved aggressively into this power vacuum, seeking in particular to capitalise on the perceived weakness of Spanish Florida to extend their reach into coastal Georgia, the south-eastern interior and as far west as New Mexico. Their actions created great anxiety in the region and, although the collapse of the Stuart regime finally put an end to their hopes, their short-lived colony transformed the borderlands, reorienting English, Spanish and Indian relations, sparking the coalescence of the Yamasee tribe and the Creek confederacy, and giving new life to the Indian slave trade that eventually shattered indigenous societies in the American south-east.

Birth across Borders: Migueleña Maternal Experience in Palm Beach County, Florida

Inbal Mazar is an Assistant Professor of Spanish language and culture at Drake University. Living in six countries sparked an appreciation for cultures worldwide. She strives to share this enthusiasm by promoting culture in and out of the classroom and building connections between students with local, national and international communities. She earned a PhD in Comparative Studies (Florida Atlantic University 2015) with a focus on Gender Studies and Sociology and a master’s degree in Spanish (Florida Atlantic University 2008). Her research centers on migration and health from a transnational perspective. She has conducted comparative transnational fieldwork in San Miguel Acatán, a highland hamlet in Huehuetenango, Guatemala and in Palm Beach County, Florida to better understand how migration influences Guatemalan Maya maternal care.