America's Hundred Years' War: U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 1763-1858

by William S. Belko

Featuring essays on topics ranging from international diplomacy to Seminole military strategy, America's Hundred Years' War urges us to reexamine the traditional line of thought that has previously defined early U.S. expansion into the Spanish Gulf borderlands. America's extended battle with the Seminoles transpired over a period of nearly a century, commencing in the decade prior to the American Revolution and ending in the decade before the U.S. Civil War.

William Belko and the contributors argue that we would do better to view these events as moments of heightened military aggression punctuating a much longer period of conflict in the Gulf Coast region. Each essayist uniquely expands the conventional views and periods of U.S. Seminole contact, and each does so in a variety of manners-chronologically, geographically, culturally, politically, conceptually.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 23, 2011

Reviews

[Josh Liller]

This book is a collection of nine essays pertaining to what I like to call The Florida War i.e the Seminole Wars as traditionally understood plus the decades of conflicts and expansionism leading up to them. The title gives a range of 1763-1858, but only the first essay touches on the British Florida era (1763-1783), and then only partly. I wouldn't include those twenty years in The Florida War anyway.

Two essays address Seminole perspectives. I liked the first about the Alachua Seminoles diplomatic relations prior to the Patriot War. The other, about Seminole strategy during the Seminole Wars, is not about answers but rather asking a lot of probing questions for historians to attempt to address. Although the essay title gives the range 1812-1858, it's mostly focused on the Second Seminole War (1835-1842).

The essay about the influence of Anglophobia on American attitudes about Florida - primarily the fear that the British would acquire Florida from Spain - was one of the fresher and more interesting ideas in this book, but it's also too long.

The other standout for delving into an obscure topic, delving into how the Second Creek War spilled over into the Florida Panhandle. That largely forgotten conflict overlaps with part of the Second Seminole War, which otherwise had negligible direct impact west of the Apalachicola River.

The other essay topics: Floridian's concerns during the early part of the Second Spanish Colonial Era; Andrew Jackson's rogue activity in the First Seminole War and political controversies - particularly regarding President James Monroe - over the next decade stemming from those actions; how Nat Turner's Rebellion and the Haitian Revolution contributed to Southern fears about "Black Seminoles"; an overview of American military strategy in the Second Seminole War; the South Carolina Volunteers in the early stages of the Second Seminole War and how it relates to the Nullification Crisis.

Each essay has endnotes. There are a few relevant images, but no maps. There is an index.

Although a good contribution to the historiography, I did find many of the essays a bit dry. The Heidlers' essay is the one where I probably liked the writing the most, although it was probably also the one with the least information that was new to me.