Settler colonialists heading to Florida: Elaine Lafay, ‘Botany, Health-Seeking, and Settler Colonialism in Tropical Florida, 1827–1840’, The Journal of Southern History, 89, 3, 2023, pp. 417-452 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialists heading to Florida: Elaine Lafay, ‘Botany, Health-Seeking, and Settler Colonialism in Tropical Florida, 1827–1840’, The Journal of Southern History, 89, 3, 2023, pp. 417-452

02Aug23

Excerpt: On July 4, 1840, the ailing physician Henry Perrine gazed out into the ocean from his home on Indian Key, Florida. It was a beautiful day on the tiny island that lay south of the Florida mainland: the temperature stood at 83 degrees Fahrenheit, and a trade wind ushered a southerly sea breeze across the shores. When Perrine circulated his meteorological data in the Magazine of Horticulture, he told readers, “Ye northerners, who have not ever resided in tropical climates, cannot realize the delightful reality of the delicious temperature of the summer season.” “In Boston,” he wrote sadly, “the thermometer may likely indicate ten degrees more of scorching heat, at this very hour.” Simply look at the data below, he told them, and try to imagine, to “feel the delightful difference of the weather of South Florida.” But Perrine was not just trying to make people jealous. He had a scheme in mind. At its heart was an experiment in settler colonialism. First, Perrine was going to entice white residents, especially invalids in search of curative places, to come to south Florida to improve their health. Then, he would engage them in (and charge them for) “light healthy labor” to cultivate and subsequently sell tropical plants, including but not limited to Agave sisalana, logwood, and Peruvian bark, which Perrine had been steadily importing from nearby countries like Mexico and Cuba. He trumpeted that these plants would become “new staples of cultivation, especially on steril[e] or ruined soils,” across the South, thus addressing longstanding fears of regional soil exhaustion. Finally, Perrine was going to kick back and get rich.

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