A Cross-Cultural History of Law in the Florida Borderlands, 1784-1845

FAIN: FT-286252-22

Nancy O. Gallman
Lewis and Clark College (Portland, OR 97219-8091)

Research leading to a cross-cultural legal history of early Florida (1784-1821).

At the turn of the nineteenth century, law in the Southeast was a multicultural phenomenon. In my larger project, “Law’s Borderlands,” I reconstruct the complex legal world of the Florida borderlands, showing how Indigenous peoples, Spaniards, African Americans, and Anglo-Americans created a cosmopolitan legal order in this contested region after the American Revolutionary War. I argue that, during the repeated upheavals that threatened lives, livelihoods, and sovereignties, cross-cultural law and justice served as a tool that many Seminoles, Lower Creeks, Mikasukis, Spaniards, and African Americans–and a few Anglo-Americans–used to control local violence, bolster their alliances, and block U.S. expansion into East Florida. My research completes this larger work, the first book to examine the cross-cultural legal history of the late colonial Florida borderlands and illuminate the plural dimensions of law in the making of the American South and in our nation’s founding and development.