Performances of entangled emotions and beliefs: French and Spanish cultural transformations on the sixteenth-century Florida peninsula

This essay explores how interpretations and practices of entangled emotions and beliefs were critical to European engagement with Florida during the mid-sixteenth century. It analyses emotional performances of religious, racial and cultural beliefs that lay at the heart of colonising activities of both the French and Spanish, articulated in affective forms such as facial expression, gestures, sexual practices and violent acts, and rhetorically in verbal encounters and textual presentations. It contends that these performances occurred both as practices in the Florida region and Europe, and through rhetorical and visual forms in contemporary epistolary, manuscript and printed texts. The study argues that conflicting European activities with indigenous peoples and lands in Florida produced complex emotional and affective labour among European and indigenous agents — rulers, captains, crews, spiritual envoys and diplomatic personnel. This essay suggests new insights into colonial power relations may be suggested by consideration of emotions in cross-cultural performances, in securing diplomatic relations, or as an unexpected, disruptive force to other behaviours within official negotiations. In the eyes of participants, through these entangled belief and emotional performances about Florida, indigenous, French and Spanish peoples were themselves all culturally transformed. The essay analyses performances of entangled emotions and beliefs — religious, racial and cultural — that lay at the heart of colonising activities of both the French and Spanish in a region that has became known today as Florida. These emotional performances of belief, I contend, occurred in multiple sites, both in practices in the Florida region and Europe, and also through rhetorical and visual forms in contemporary epistolary, manuscript and printed texts. I argue that conflicting European activities with local peoples and lands in Florida produced what were perceived as cultural transformations through complex emotional and affective labour that expressed divergent religious, racial and cultural beliefs among European and indigenous agents. These emotional performances were articulated in affective forms through bodies, facial expression and gestures, sexual practices and violent acts. Others were expressed rhetorically in verbal encounters and textual presentations. These were sophisticated forms of emotional labour, performed by a range of participating agents from indigenous and European leaders, captains and crews, to