16th century
A01=Heather Martel
Atlantic World
Author_Heather Martel
Calvinists
Category=NHK
Category=NHTQ
Category=QRMB3
Colonialism
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
First contact with Europeans
Florida
Florida History
Fort Caroline
France Colonies
French Calvinist
Huguenot
identity
Protestantism
Religion and science
White Supremacy
Product details
- ISBN 9780813066189
- Weight: 579g
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 26 Nov 2019
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In Deadly Virtue, Heather Martel argues that the French Protestant attempt to colonize Florida in the 1560s significantly shaped the developing concept of race in sixteenth-century America. Telling the story of the short-lived French settlement of Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, Martel reveals how race, gender, sexuality, and Christian morality intersected to form the foundations of modern understandings of whiteness. Equipped with Calvinist theology and humoral science, an ancient theory that the human body is subject to physical change based on one's emotions and environment, French settlers believed their Christian love could transform the cultural, spiritual, and political allegiances of Native Americans. But their conversion efforts failed when the colony was wiped out by the Spanish. Martel explains that the French took this misfortune as a sign of God's displeasure with their collaborative ideals, and from this historical moment she traces the growth of separatist colonial strategies. Through the logic of Calvinist predestination, Martel argues, colonists came to believe that white, Christian bodies were beautiful, virtuous, entitled to wealth, and chosen by God. The history of Fort Caroline offers a key to understanding the resonances between religious morality and white supremacy in America today.
Heather Martel is associate professor of history at Northern Arizona University.
