Border and rumors: The Georgia frontier in the Atlantic World

"Borders and Rumors" is a study of imperial rivalry, warfare, slavery, and Native American resistance in the colonial Southeast. By reexamining the international struggle over the Georgia territory in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this dissertation situates the conflict over the southern borderlands in the broader geopolitical disputes of the Atlantic World. My study combined British, Spanish, and French sources, to argue that the struggle for Georgia played an important role in determining power structures in North America while it also tested limits of European diplomacy.; England created Georgia in 1732, to fill a vacant and unprotected frontier between South Carolina and Spanish Florida. Although no other European power had previously settled the territory, the English did not enter the area unopposed. French, Spanish, and Native American claims to portions of the land brought a modicum of challenge and danger to early Georgia. War and threats of force characterized the struggle for the territory; but rumors, uncertain diplomacy, and a variety of unusual domestic policies provided the impetus for the contest for Georgia.