Paul E. Hoffman – författare

Florida has had many frontiers. Imagination, greed, missionary zeal, disease, war, and diplomacy have created its historical boundaries. Bodies of water, soil, flora and fauna, the patterns of Native American occupation, and ways of colonizing have defined Florida's frontiers. Paul E. Hoffman tells the story of those frontiers and how the land and the people shaped them during the three centuries from 1565 to 1860.For settlers to La Florida, the American Southeast ca. 1500, better natural and human resources were found on the piedmont and on the western side of Florida's central ridge, while the coasts and coastal plains proved far less inviting. But natural environment was only one important factor in the settlement of Florida. The Spaniards, the British, the Seminole and Miccosuki, the Spaniards once again, and finally Americans constructed their Florida frontiers in interaction with the Native Americans who were present, the vestiges of earlier frontiers, and international events. The near-completion of the range and township surveys by 1860 and of the deportation of most of the Seminole and Miccosuki mark the end of the Florida frontier, though frontier-like conditions persisted in many parts of the state into the early 20th century.For this major work of Florida history, Hoffman has drawn from a broad range of secondary works and from his intensive research in Spanish archival sources of the 16th and 17th centuries. Florida's Frontiers will be welcomed by students of history well beyond the Sunshine State.

Because of the legendary exploits of Sir Francis Drake, most people have heard of the sixteenth-century conflicts between the English and the Spanish in the New World. Paul Hoffman looks behind the legend to discover the reality of what the Spanish crown was doing to defend its empire against raiders such as Drake.Using quantitative as well as literary data on the costs, types, and locations of defenses and on the locations and types of corsair incidents, Hoffman documents the evolution of s system of defenses that he believes was adequate for confronting the violence of the French and English in the years before 1586. He suggests that the size of Drake's expedition of 1586 was a response to this system and in turn caused the Spanish to abandon the system in favor of one that concentrated on the defense of the major towns and trade routes.Besides telling the complex story of how the Spanish built forts, installed garrisons and artillery, and patrolled the Caribbean, Hoffman discusses the ways in which the political system of the empire shaped decisions on defenses. Contrary to what many have believed, Hoffman concludes, Spain exhibited neither military failure nor timidity in its defense of hits interest in the New World. Sharing the results of his meticulous research about the Spanish Caribbean, Paul Hoffman examines an important period that legend has obscured.

Paul E. Hoffman's groundbreaking book focuses on a neglected area of colonial history -- southeastern North America during the sixteenth-century. Hoffman describes expeditions to the region, efforts at colonization, and rivalries between the French, Spanish, and English. He reveals the ways in which the explorers' expectations -- fueled by legends -- crumbled in the face of difficulties encountered along the southeastern coast. The first book to link the earliest voyages with the explorations of the sixteenth century and the settlement of later colonies, Hoffman's work is an important reassessment of southern colonial history.

Paul E. Hoffman's Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1860- 1919 is a highly detailed analysis of LSU's beginnings and early development, starting well before it first opened its doors in Pineville, Louisiana, in 1860. Hoffman reveals how political and ideological contests in areas of governance, curriculum, finances, discipline (the ""military feature""), and student life influenced the early identity and development of the school, shaping and laying the groundwork for the university we recognize today.The institution's first name- the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy- reflected its contested character: part imitation of the Virginia Military, part true military academy, and part classical college. The school was renamed Louisiana State University in 1870 after graduating its first class. When the land-grant university created at New Orleans in 1874 merged with LSU in 1877, the school became Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. The new disagreements about the character of the institution did not resolve until 1919.At the turn of the twentieth century, new challenges led to the establishment of a law school, the admittance of women for the first time, the organization of the institution into distinct colleges, and demands to emphasize on-campus agricultural instruction. Hoffman shows that President Thomas D. Boyd, faced with flat, inadequate state funding for the university as a whole, moderated those demands until 1918. Then the wartime emphasis on agricultural production, various federal programs that encouraged enrollment in LSU's College of Agriculture, and a critical shortage of space on the downtown campus worked together to prompt the purchase of Gartness Plantation, the site of the current campus, but without any funds or immediate plans for its development.Hoffman's study ends in the spring of 1919. By then, the school had largely resumed its prewar rhythms in academic and extracurricular areas. The ROTC program, begun in 1917, was again in place, transforming LSU into the ""Ole War Skule"" of living memory. With most of its struggles over its identity resolved, LSU was poised to resume the growth that World War I had interrupted and that, with the development of the ""new"" campus, would characterize the school during the next twenty years of its history. This first fully documented history of LSU in its early years contributes to a broader understanding of the growth of both LSU itself and American higher education, showing how fiscal realities and contested ideas about higher education during the post- Civil War era shaped university development.