30 University of California Publications in History

credit for determination and skill, both in administration and in
diplomacy.
 Spain's governing officials, in 1816, still looked on the colonial
uprising as a problem of "pacification," evidently taking for
granted what outsiders and colonials considered an impossible
reconquest.1 And, still dreaming of the days when all of North
America was Spain's unchallenged possession, they were reluctant
to admit the necessity of yielding any more of it than had already
been lost. In fact, they were soon to maintain that the King had
no right to cede away lands.
 The center of Spanish North America was the city of Mexico,
 long the capital of the viceroyalty of New Spain. But the United
 States adjoined two subdivisions of that administrative unit. It
 had long been customary, when a large and important area lay far
 from a viceregal capital, to make it a semiautonomous unit of the
 system, with direct reference to Spain in many matters. Such was
 the captain-generalcy of Havana, governing the West Indies, the
 Floridas, and Louisiana. This region, vastly important in trade
 and international political rivalries, had in its capital an impor-
 tant administrative, military, and financial center.
 After Havana became a captain-generalcy, a reorganization took
 place on the northern frontier of New Spain itself. Thus was
 formed the Provincias Internas (Interior Provinces), also a cap-
 tain-generalcy, with its capital at Chihuahua. This unit, later sepa-
 rated into two districts, embraced what are now the northern states
 of the republic of Mexico, and Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and
 California. Both at Chihuahua and Havana the governments were
 essentially military, but there were also present civil and com-
 mercial authorities. And all officials indulged in the characteristic
 Spanish practice of writing the innumerable lengthy and detailed
 reports which now crowd the archives.
 EAST FLORIDA
 The Florida peninsula was the first area, geographically speaking,
 on the line along which the two Powers met. With the region bor-
 dering the Gulf Coast as far west as the Apalachicola River (an
 area somewhat less extensive than the present state of Florida), it
 constituted the Spanish province of East Florida. The capital and
 For notes to chap. ii, ee pp. 54-56.