What if Florida became independent from Spain instead of being American?

You have points on all sides here - I humbly concede the points and apologize for my snarky attitude.

We're all snarky on occasion :)

Anyway, the last major Hispanic population in Florida left come 1763 upon transferral to Britain.

Then the initial southern-colonist population chose loyalism and got booted out by Spain in 1783.

Then a new wave of southerners, these loyal to America, trickled into Florida when Spain realized it needed warm bodies, period, there.

So you see two different seed populations booted out, only for Americans to move into the virtually empty colony.


You have excellent points on the emptiness of Florida though, ones I would agree need to be addressed in any case for the what if. Perhaps Gog3451's ideas with a 7YW POD, or Tripledot's Seminole state?

Seminole independence would be interesting, they fought fairly tenaciously OTL. Perhaps some sort of creole state evolves over the years?
 
You'd need a pretty early POD to get Florida enough people to keep its independence and not get absorbed into the US. Since Florida was pretty marginal owing to its difficult climate and terrain, this might be difficult.

My guess is an independent Spanish Florida might not gain independence whenever all of Spain's other colonies get independence, since the population base is too small and would have a lot of enslaved blacks, which would create a strong Spanish loyalist base. If in case Florida did gain independence, it would turn into a banana republic almost immediately, guaranteed, and probably end up like a Cuba attached to the American continent. I also wouldn't be surprised if at some point Americans gain control of the country and try to annex it to the US. And even if they fail, it would basically mean Florida becomes another Anglo country at some point (probably late 19th century).

What applies to Cuba probably applies to Florida, except Florida will be far worse off than Cuba for so many reasons. It's fate will be to end up a satellite state of the US, and any would-be Castro will have no ability to try and change that, since the US would come in there and crush any revolution.

Speaking of Native Americans, how viable would be an independent Seminole state be?

As viable as any other Native American state--not very, since settlers would want its land and get the US government to defeat it.
 
I am thinking West Florida, in it's expanded form, might go US, while East Florida gets independence? It would be pushing it of course, but perhaps the Five Nations move south. The Southernors might not mind as much since it might not be the best land, though of course it led down to Cuba and I am sure with enough slavelabor they could make Florida profitable. That was what slavery was for, after all. Putting people to work in conditions that should be reserved for murderers, throwing bodies into thankless work so the Master can complain about how lazy those putting in fourteen hour workdays were.
 
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