In 1819, an anonymous veteran of the First Seminole War described Florida’s 1810s physical and geopolitical landscapes as peculiar. “Its vicinity to the four southern tribes of Indians, and its extensive forests, beyond the control of the Spanish authorities,” he claimed, made Florida “an asylum to fugitives from justice, to the disaffected restless savage, as well as to a more dangerous population,” and demanded constant “vigilance on the frontier” (39). This volatile geopolitical milieu provides the geographical background to Nathaniel Millet’s account of the emergence, development and demise of the maroon community of Prospect Bluff.

Millett’s account is bracketed by two documents that demarcate the history of Prospect Bluff from its emergence to its definitive demise: Alexander Cochrane’s proclamation of April 2, 1814 and Andrew Jackson’s letter to the Spanish governor of Florida on May 23, 1818. Written amidst the War of 1812, Cochrane’s proclamation provided encouragement for thousands of slaves to flee the United States and seek freedom through enlisting in British forces. Because many of those who joined the British ended up living in Prospect Bluff, Cochrane’s proclamation (reproduced in full on pages 17 and 18) provides a fitting beginning to the story of The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World. Jackson’s letter (244-245), on the other hand, effectively marks the end of an era in which Prospect Bluff’s residents envisioned and implemented a version of freedom conceived in a space that Millett, using the term “Atlantic borderlands” (34-35), describes as “a region ... populated by various Europeans, Indians, blacks, and mixed race people who crossed borders freely, traded across the Western Hemisphere, maintained political and military links with Spanish and British colonial holdings as well as the United States, carefully followed world developments, and reflected a culture that was influenced by Europe, Africa, other parts of the Americas, and Native American societies” (35). Jackson’s letter points to the inevitability of a U.S. takeover of Florida. The letter, coming on the heels of Jackson’s invasion of Pensacola, effectively proved Spanish inability to control Florida’s territory and signalled the inevitable expansion of the plantation complex to the soon to be former Spanish province.

Between Cochrane’s proclamation and Jackson’s letter, Florida served as laboratory where blacks, Indians and mixed race people experimented with different versions of freedom. The Maroons of Prospect Bluff details the story of one of these experiments: that of the former slaves who, aided by British military men Edward Nicolls and George Woodbine, established and settled the community contemporaries—depending on their nationalities and allegiances—referred to as the “Fort of the Blacks”, the “post at the Bluff” or the “Negro Fort on the Apalachicola” (129-130).

In the first half of the book (chapters one to five), Millett uses the idea of “Atlantic-borderland region” (35) to present Florida’s complex and evolving geopolitical landscape and how U.S., British and Spanish officers, indigenous groups, free blacks and slaves navigated and adapted to it. While Seminoles, Red Sticks and British emerged as Prospect Bluff’s most committed supporters, U.S. military men and slave-owning Creeks stood out as the community’s most notable opponents. Spanish officers, nominally in control of the territory, were forced to choose between two unappealing options: immediate British invasion or a foreseeable, though less imminent, U.S. annexation. Unable to accept Spanish inability to assert control of Florida’s Atlantic borderlands, the Governor Sebastián Kindelán could do little more than assert an imperial power that he, and all other residents of Spanish Florida, knew Spain had long lost. As the conflicts characteristic of the Age of Revolutions redrew the political map of the Americas, the peoples of Florida relocated, changed political allegiances and embraced political systems that matched their interest in surviving. The maroon community of Prospect Bluff was born and developed in this highly complex geopolitical milieu.

The second half of the book (chapters five to ten), describes in detail the community of Prospect Bluff, emphasizing its “high degree of political sophistication” (208) and the process through which it developed a “synthetic or Atlantic culture” (147). In this half, Millett compares and contrasts the settlement at Prospect Bluff with maroon communities in Brazil (Palmares and Buraco de Tatú), Jamaica (the Leeward and Windward maroons), Hispaniola (Le Maniel), Cuba and Suriname. The comparisons effectively put Prospect Bluff in a larger hemispheric context. In contrast to many other maroon communities, Prospect Bluff appears as militarily imposing, economically stable and politically uncompromising. While other maroon communities entered into treaties that effectively made them trade “political independence for safety and stability” (200), Prospect Bluff never compromised. Instead of turning away newcomers and collaborating with imperial powers in tracking down fugitive slaves, Prospect Bluff’s maroons continuously “accepted new arrivals and aggressively recruited others” (151). Whereas other communities, Millett claims, where “essentially pro-slavery entities” that “protected their freedom by minimizing contact with outsiders and frequently returned fugitives, owned slaves, and even fought in defence of colonial regimes” (112), the community of Prospect Bluff was characterized by its radical anti-slavery commitment. The sharp contrast raises questions about the comparative horizon. Were the other maroon communities, many of which resisted for decades, willing to compromise from the very beginning or did their politically compromising stance only emerge gradually after an initial phase of open resistance? Partially answering this question, Millett acknowledges that many maroon communities only entered into treaties with colonial authorities “as years passed” (152). Since years did not really pass in the case of prospect Bluff, Millett’s comparison, while enlightening, appears unbalanced.

Several other productive tensions characterize Millett’s comparative analysis. Allowing for Prospect Bluff to be more than just a maroon community, he claims that the community was “both a maroon community and a polity” (128). His insistence on calling it a maroon community and on comparing it only with other maroon communities, however, undermines this claim. Expanding the comparative horizon to include other emerging and, in many cases, ephemeral Atlantic states, like the republics of Cartagena and Caracas or some of the many autonomous indigenous nations that populated the Americas, would have given further weight to Millett’s characterization of Prospect Bluff as a “complete” (6, 196 and 201), “formal” (203), “distinct and sovereign” (257), and “independent black polity” (214).

Millett’s insistence that the maroons of Prospect Bluff “saw themselves as a community of British subjects” (209) also merits further interrogation. While visible examples like flying the union jack at the fort (127 and 226) and claiming British subjecthood in criminal trials (209) support Millett’s case that “Britishness was central in the maroons’ identity” (167), it seems worth considering these shows of Britishness as strategic performances. In other words, while the maroons of Prospect Bluff may have seen themselves as British subjects, it seems also likely that they may have only been presenting themselves as British for strategic purposes. After all, as Millet himself acknowledges, “African or other cultural influences” could have also “shaped the community’s outlook” (212).

These tensions make the book worth reading. Some are solved more convincingly than others but even those that are left unsolved (or solved in a not fully convincing fashion) are thought provoking. The Maroons of Prospect Bluff, in short, is highly stimulating and worth reading and assigning. Undergraduates could benefit from the way in which Millett positions Florida in the Atlantic context. In a graduate seminar setting, the book has the potential to produce animated discussions on identity formation, different ways of defining, envisioning and experiencing freedom, and more. Whether or not “the maroon community of Prospect Bluff allows us to see how former slaves wanted to exist when free to live according to their own devices” (10)—if they indeed were left to their own devices—surely merits further discussion.