THE SPANISH FLORIDA MODEL The maritime colony of Spanish Florida does not fit the Borderlands Paradigm of self-sufficiency and isolation, characterized by mutually exclusive institutions and castes. What it does fit is a Peripheries Paradigm, to which it contributes a model of mixed support. In terms of that model, the colony's first phase was characterized by a cooperative venture linking private enterprise and royal investment. In the second phase, Crown-supported soldiers and missionaries conquered, converted, and reconquered the eastern mission provinces, adding the new element of Indian tribute and labor to the support system. When royal support faltered, in the third phase, the colony expanded to take in the western mission provinces, acquiring new sources of native support and new opportunities for private trade. In the fourth phase, increased royal investment and increased demands on native support strengthened the presidial center at the expense of the mission peripheries. The latter sloughed away, and in the fifth phase, the colony returned to its early reliance on a combination of royal investment and private enterprise. Reducing the Florida model to its components, the colony and its elites received support from two main sources: the Crown and the Christian Indians. The sum of this support fluctuated, because the contribution from either source was free to rise or fall independently as a function of some pressure or opportunity in the colony, the region, or the empire. A moderate level of regional threat from the English of Jamaica and Carolina could, for example, lead to larger subsidies from the Crown and heavier labor demands on the Indians, while the trading options that accompanied the threat could contribute to the drift of native population out of the provinces and to widespread smuggling. The system worked as long as it did because it was flexible. A shortfall in one source of support could be eased by a transfer from another. A governor who needed a supply of maize in order to ration the builders of a fort on the frontier, or the sentries in coastal outposts, or 1500 refugees under siege, without hesitation sequestered the stores of Spanish individuals AN509. Friars raised Indian orphans in their convents, who then became their assistants. Floridanos in search of income insinuated themselves into the royal treasury and the garrison. Hispanicized caciques desiring protection and gifts acted as brokers, channeling the labor and produce of lndian commoners to the Spanish. The king of Spain saw himself as the patron of lndian converts, and them as wards of the Crown. Royal alms supported their missionaries, royal subsidies regaled their chiefs, and a royal Protector represented their interests. But wars in Europe, spilling into America, strained the king's resources to the limit. The colony survived the war years by demanding advances of goods and services from persons and groups who had no idea when they would be paid for them. At those times, the system may have survived because it was ideologically reinforced. The "cult of the king" helped to obscure the reality of forced loans, while the "divine cult" taught the Indians that they were natural inferiors and perpetual children AN510. And, as yet, there was no alternative. To Spaniards, Florida must have seemed like a native Utopia by comparison to other colonies. In this maritime periphery of strategic rather than economic importance, the goals of peaceful evangelism were largely met. Indian slavery was stymied; Indian lands did not suffer alienation; Indian lives were not shortened by service in mines or manufactories. Territorial expansion observed all the forms of the conquest by contract. Cooperative, convent-trained chiefs supplied friars, soldiers, and settlers with plentiful labor and low-priced products. The natives, in turn, received the gifts of heavenly salvation and earthly sanctuary, plus the material benefits of clothing, iron tools, and useful plants and animals. Meanwhile, through private enterprise, provincial elites, both Spanish and Indian, found ways to better themselves. But Spain's design for the mastery of North America was based on the premise of an exclusive and cooperative relationship between Indians and espanoles. When, in the Southeast, the English breached that exclusivity, the common Indians refused to renew the relationship and withdrew their services. In the 18th century, the sabanas were gone and the colony was back where it had started, looking seaward for its support. (Bushnell SS)