Research Interests

Philip Smith received a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2007. His dissertation “Persistent Borderland: Freedom and Citizenship in Territorial Florida” looks at the Florida’s diverse Indian, African, and Caribbean heritage during the antebellum period, and it has expanded to also include the New South era.  His research interests are the options for inclusion and exclusion for non-whites in the Florida Territory and later in what he calls Caribbean Florida.  The options included degrees of citizenship for free blacks to rebellion by Indians and Africans during the antebellum years to limited assimilation or separation during the New South era. At the center of his research interests are the legacy of Spanish Florida and Indian resistance to removal. Though specific to Florida, aspects of Spanish and Caribbean colonial definitions of race and citizenship are common to broader Gulf Coast studies and the greater southeast.