ALPATA a Journal of History

ALPATA a journal of history Volume XVI, Winter 2021 Cover: Unknown Artist. The Caiman Wood Ceremony. April 14, 1791. ALPATA is named after the Seminole word for alligator. ALPATA a journal of history Volume XVI, Winter 2021 A publication of the University of Florida Phi Alpha Theta, gamma eta chapter Undergraduate Managing Editor Grant A. Graves Business Editor Benjamin Chitko Book Review Editor Christopher Calton Cover Design Olivia Urban Layout Adam S. Weiss Editorial Board Lauren Azurin, Tamsyn Butler, Shannon Chamberlain, Ryan Chatoo, Benjamin Chitko, Jacob LeMaster, Simon Lothair, Brian Marra, Jillian Medina, Hope Scheff, Dorothea Schmid, Shannon Scott Faculty Advisor Dr. Louise M. Newman Note from the Faculty Advisor The essays published in this journal were written by undergraduate students at the University of Florida prior to the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted so much of normal life in 2020. The sudden transition to online/remote instruction in March, the psychological uncertainties and economic struggles that resulted from shutdowns and stay-at- home orders in April, and the physical dislocations that occurred during the spring semester, as students were forced out of dormitories or had to relinquish off-campus housing, interrupted a post-production process that would normally have resulted in this issue appearing in May 2020. But as this issue goes to press in the winter of 2020-21, it is possible to see the value of this scholarship in ways that would not have been evident had Covid-19 not changed how we live and work. First and foremost, is the quality and depth of research, undertaken at a time when students had physical access to libraries, archives and traditionally published books and could take advantage of regular face-to-face meetings with faculty, librarians, peers, and mentors. Most of these essays could not have been written without going to a research library, taking books off the shelves and/or examining unpublished materials in person. This is especially true of the pathbreaking essay, “Slavery and the University of Florida,” since there is no published secondary source material on the topic. Indeed, most of the essays in this journal rely on specialized monographs that are only available in hard copy/book form. What working historians already know, but the general public may not yet fully appreciate, is how the nature of research has fundamentally changed in a post-Covid world, where travel and access to physical archives has been severely curtailed and may be restricted for years to come. At the very least, historians will be forced to devise topics that can be researched using only sources available through the internet—resulting in the narrowing of the range of researchable topics and increasing the relative visibility and power of larger, wealthier institutions who have the manpower and means to digitize their collections. Second, I want to say a word about the editorial process that was employed to produce this issue. The submission process is open-ended—any historical essay written by any current undergraduate, or by a student who has graduated within the past year, on any topic, of any length or form, may be submitted for consideration. For this issue, we received twenty-three submissions, which were read by undergraduates who volunteered to serve on the Editorial Board. The Editorial Board selected nine articles for publication and then participated in a months-long, back-and- forth with the authors, making suggestions for revision. The one exception was the Special Feature essay, which was not in the original pool of articles, but which I solicited because of the significance of the topic at a moment when University administrations around the nation are beginning to examine the impact that slavery, and in UF’s case, violent displacement of indigenous peoples, had on their founding and development. The decision to organize the journal into sections came after the essays were chosen and was implemented to bring some order to the presentation of such diverse material. Yet, I do not think it is accidental that the pieces in this issue focus on a few specific themes, notably unfree forms of labor and the impact of colonialism (Parks, Hill, Weis), ethnic genocide (Ward, Weiss, Cook) and the reassessment of women as historical subjects (White, Schmid, Perez)— in part because the faculty at the University of Florida are deeply invested in these topics and offer research seminars focused on these themes. But it is equally the case that this young generation of scholars is passionately committed to producing scholarship that will help bring about the social changes that they want to see in the world. This commitment is at the forefront of Sheana Ward’s “Everyone Watch a Different Live Feed” and Adam Weiss’ “Antisemitism at Evian.” In other instances, the impetus for the scholarship involves critiquing existing narratives and methods of analysis in order to make historiography more inclusive, more responsive to the telling (of) stories that for a host of reasons, not all of them insidious or intentional, have not received adequate attention. (See in particular Weis’ “The Tale of Two Marias” and White’s “Poète ou Sainte.”) All of the articles published in this issue are beautifully crafted and intensely engaging, offering analysis that is at the cutting edge of their subfields. Finally, I want to express my deep appreciation to several individuals, without whom this publication would not have been possible: Dr. Elizabeth Dale, the current chair of the history department, for her compassionate and wise leadership during this fraught moment in history; and Adam S. Weiss, the undergraduate managing editor of last year’s issue and a contributor to this year’s issue, for stepping up at the last minute to help with the tedious and time-consuming process of preparing the manuscript for publication. To all the student authors and editors who contributed their time and talents to bringing this issue to fruition, I want to say how very proud I am of what you produced and grateful for all that you have taught me. Louise M. Newman, Associate Professor of History December 24, 2020 Table of Contents Special Feature Slavery and the University of Florida: African Americans, Seminoles and the Origins of Higher Education in Florida Ahmad Brown, Gabriella Paul, Javier Escoto-Garcia, and Morgan Peltier Preface by Professor Jon Sensbach……………………………...1 Selected Works The Influence of the Haitian Revolution on Slave Revolts and Slave Value in Pre-Emancipation Cuba, 1825-1875 Hayli Parks …………………………...………………….34 “Between Slavery and Slavery, There is a Difference”: Russian Exceptionalism as a Discursive International Weapon, 1800-1861 Jarrett Hill …………………...…………………………...52 “Everyone Watch a Different Live Feed”: Modern Surveillance During the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, 2016-2017 Sheana Ward ……………………………….…………….74 Quakers are Inchanters: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Radical Religion in Mid Seventeenth- Century England Catherine Perez ………………………………………........98 The Tale of Two Marias: Native Women and the Spanish Colonial World, 1700-1800 Courtney Weis………………………………...……………116 Medieval Showcase Poète ou Sainte: Medieval Illuminations of Marie de France Ethan White ………….………………………………....130 Marian Devotions and Motherhood: Guibert De Nogent on His Mother and The Virgin Dorothea Schmid …………………………………….…...154 Holocaust Showcase Antisemitism at Evian: The Jewish Refugee Crisis Through the Lens of the 1938 Inter-Governmental Conference on Jewish Immigration Adam S. Weiss ………………………………………….172 “Lost in the Gray Zone”: Re-examining the Jewish Rescue Narratives of Oskar Schindler and Rezső Kasztner Kayla M. Cook ………………………………………….196 Book Reviews The Republic For Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896. By Richard White. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Reviewed by Timothy Blanton ……………………………...218 The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. By Joanne B. Freeman. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018. Reviewed by Tyler Carawan Cline ………………………….222 Notes on Contributors …………………………….….227 Submission Guidelines …………………………….….231 Special Feature ________________ Slavery and the University of Florida: African Americans, Seminoles and the Origins of Higher Education in Florida Ahmad Brown, Gabriella Paul, Javier Escoto-Garcia, and Morgan Peltier Artist’s Ken Snelling’s projection of the East Florida Seminary (from Broward Lovell, Gone With the Hickory Stick: School Days in Marion County, 1845-1960 [1975] 1 Slavery and The University of Florida Preface Jon Sensbach Professor of History, University of Florida Born into slavery in South Carolina, Samuel Small was among dozens of enslaved men, women and children who moved with planter John M. Taylor and his family to the South’s new cotton frontier in Marion County, Florida, in the early 1850s. Through their unpaid labor in sweltering cotton and sugar fields, hundreds of enslaved workers in central Florida, including Small, generated profits that made possible a new, state-supported academy, founded in Ocala in 1853, called the East Florida Seminary, on whose board John Taylor served. After the Civil War, Samuel Small went on to become one of a handful African-American representatives elected to the state Legislature during Reconstruction. The East Florida Seminary, which moved to Gainesville in 1866, merged with other small colleges to become the University of Florida in 1905. Now one of the

Load more