Question

Explain how England tried to undermine Spanish control of Florida

Answer 1

In 1607 the English settled in present-day Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay, and founded Jamestown. Spain considered the act as a usurpation and a threat, and reacted immediately, albeit weakly. In 1609 Felipe III sent an expedition against this establishment to the control of the captain Fernandez de Écija and the alféreces Juan Rodriguez de Cartaya and Juan de Santiago, but since it was insufficient its force did not attack it, limiting itself to provoke the hostilities of natives against English; this indirect technique of war would later revert against the Spanish establishment, and then it did not work because the king of Spain, to attract England, temporized with his colonists, because he hoped that they would fail by themselves, which did not happen. Meanwhile new Franciscan missions appeared among the Indians. And so, in 1612, those of Georgia were created, and two years later they amounted to 20 Christian Indian villages raised in Florida.