History
The micronation was founded in November 2005 in order to "reassert Britain's rights" over the region, by an individual identified on the micronation's website only as "Robert VII, Duke of Florida" The website asserts that Duke Robert "inherited the Peerage of the Dominion" in 1969, and "accepted the position of Governor General" in 1994. Since Duke Robert's retirement in 2007, the Acting Governor General has been Bo Register, a computer systems and networking consultant and former member of the US armed services. The micronation has issued cinderella stamps and has minted several base metal coins produced by Jorge Vidal and issued in denominations based on pre-decimal pounds.
The founders of the micronation assert that the US annexation was illegal, because control of the region had actually defaulted to the United Kingdom in 1808, upon the removal from office of King Charles IV of Spain, thus invalidating the Treaty of Paris and the US annexation to which it gave rise. This interpretation of historic events is not supported by any mainstream historian.
Read more about this topic: Dominion Of British West Florida
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)