The Hispanic-American History Timeline

1763 Spanish Florida Goes to England

Spain trades Florida to England in exchange for Cuba. As a result of the Seven Years (French-Indian) War, in which Great Britain defeated France and Spain, England gets all French territory east of the Mississippi River, except for New Orleans. And Spain gives up East and West Florida to the British in return for Cuba, which Spain had lost during the Seven Years War.
     This is all the result of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ends the long, bloody war and sets the Florida peninsula on a totally different course. More than two decades after the Spanish government in Florida had granted unconditional freedom to all runaway slaves from the British plantations in South Carolina, Britain imports thousands of new slaves from Africa, and from other British colonies, to Florida.
     Yet, because England had gone into debt to fight the Seven Year War, and because it was forced to imposed heavy taxes on its North American colonies, the Treaty of Paris may have triggered the American Revolutionary War against Britain a few years later.
     Twenty years later, it took another Treaty of Paris - in 1783 - to bring an end to the American Revolution, after the Americans colonies defeated the British with the help of Spain.

By Justin Acosta, Lehman College

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