East Florida

East Florida
1763–1822
Left: Red Ensign of Great Britain Right: Flag of the Spanish Empire
Status	Colony of Great Britain (1763–1783) Colony of Spanish Empire within the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1783–1821) Provisional military government of the United States (1821–1822)
Capital	St. Augustine
Governor
• 1763–1784	5 under Britain
• 1784–1821	8 under Spain
• 1821	1 U.S. military commissioner
History
• Treaty of Paris	10 February, 1763
• Transferred to Spain	25 November 1783
• Adams–Onís Treaty	1821
• Merged into Territory of Florida	30 March, 1822
Preceded by Succeeded by Spanish Florida Territory of Florida

East Florida (Spanish: Florida Oriental) was a colony of Great Britain from 1763 to 1783 and a province of the Spanish Empire from 1783 to 1821. The British gained control over Spanish Florida in 1763 as part of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' War. Deciding that the colony was too large to administer as a single unit, British officials divided Florida into two colonies separated by the Apalachicola River: the colony of East Florida, with its capital located in St. Augustine; and West Florida, with its capital located in Pensacola. East Florida was much larger and comprised the bulk of the former Spanish colony and most of the current state of Florida. It had also been the most populated region of Spanish Florida, but before control was transferred to Britain, most residents – including virtually everyone in St. Augustine – left the territory, with most migrating to Cuba.^[1]

Britain tried to attract settlers to the two Floridas without much success. The sparsely populated colonies were invited to send representatives to the Continental Congress but chose not to do so, and they remained loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. However, as part of the 1783 treaty in which Britain officially recognized the independence of thirteen of its former colonies as the United States, it ceded both Floridas back to Spain, which maintained them as separate colonies while moving the boundary east to the Suwannee River.

By the early 1800s, Spain had proved uninterested in and incapable of organizing or defending either of the two Floridas much beyond the two small capital cities. American settlers moved into the territory without authorization, causing conflict with the Seminoles, a new Native American culture formed by indigenous refugees from the American Southeast. During the War of 1812, the American military invaded Florida, occupying West Florida while East Florida remained in Spanish hands. American settlers in East Florida further weakened Spanish control in 1812 when a group of Americans, mostly from Georgia, calling themselves the "Patriots", declared the short-lived Republic of East Florida at Amelia Island with semi-official support from the U.S. government.

Border disputes between the United States and Seminoles in Florida continued after the war. By 1817, much of Spanish West Florida had been occupied and annexed by the United States over Spanish objections, with the land eventually becoming portions of the states of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. After a decade of intensifying border disputes and American incursions, Spain ceded both Floridas to the U.S. in the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819. The U.S. officially took possession in 1821; in 1822, all of East Florida and the few remaining portions of West Florida were combined into a single Florida Territory with borders that closely approximated those of the current state of Florida.