West Florida

West Florida was a region on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico that changed hands several times during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Britain created West and East Florida in 1763 from territory acquired from France and Spain after the Seven Years' War, dividing the former Spanish Florida at the Apalachicola River and adding land taken from French Louisiana. Pensacola became the capital of West Florida, which included about two-thirds of the modern Florida panhandle and parts of present-day Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Its boundaries were never precisely defined, which caused repeated disputes with the United States. The colony remained loyal to Britain during the American Revolution, but Spain captured Pensacola in 1781, and Britain ceded both Floridas to Spain in 1783. In 1810 American settlers briefly proclaimed the Republic of West Florida. Spain ceded the territory to the United States in 1819, and it was formally transferred in 1821.