Juneisy Quintana Hawkins

In the eighteenth century, Spanish Florida experienced systemic and sustained food scarcity, which led colonists to search for nourishment wherever they could. This project explores the informal, often illicit, food trade that consequently developed between British and Spanish colonists. At the time, these colonists fought over the same land, the same resources, and the same Native alliances. Despite these conflicts, and amid them, they developed far-reaching trans-imperial food trade networks that lasted until Spain ceded Florida to the British in 1763. This project, based on multinational and multilingual research, begins with the assertion that Spanish-Native relations played a crucial role in the food shortages, and goes on to demonstrate the implications of the subsequent Anglo-Spanish food trade for the colonies, the people, and the empires involved.