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The Florida presidio was different than Spain's typical presidio
Source: Situado and Sabana #82
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CHAPTER 3. ROYAL SUPPORT OF THE PRESIDIO The word "presidio" comes from the Latin "praesidium," meaning "garrisoned place." The Romans extended it to apply to th e imperial garrison assigned to preside over a particular military district. "Presidio" did not enter the Spanish language until early modern times. Used to refer to Spain's garrisons in Morocco, it took on connotations of a penal colony and a Christian enclave in heathen territory. The term crossed the Atlantic in the 1570s when small, Crown-supported military outposts appeared on the roads to the silver mines north of Mexico City. These New Spain presidios were an essentially defensive response to the Chichimeca War, which dragged on long after the conquest of the Aztec empire had run its course. Max L. Moorhead excluded the presidios of California and Florida from his study of The Presidio: Bastion of the Spanish Borderlands, not because they were less important than the presidios of the Southwest to their respective regions, but because, situated on seacoasts, they answered a different purpose and had a different pattern of development. Unlike either the 16th-century presidios of northern New Spain or the 18th-century presidios of the "Provincias Internas," the Florida presidio was large, centralized, and unmistakably maritime. It originated as a detachment of "gente de mar" and ''gente de guerra" from an armada of anti-corsairs, and it functioned as a coastguard station. St. Augustine faced the sea. That the Crown would be investing heavily in the colony was foreseeable in 1565, when Philip II became an active partner in "the enterprise of Florida." This chapter is about that early involvement and about the gradual institutionalization of royal support that followed. The situado for the presidio is described and the nonmilitary situado funds are introduced. Chapters 4, 6, 7, and 9 expand on the nonmilitary situado funds, respectively discussing royal support for missionaries, for doctrinas, for religion in St. Augustine, and for caciques. The institutions which marshalled native labor in support of the convents and presidio are presented in Chapters 10 and 11. (Bushnell)
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