Located at the junction of North America and the Caribbean, the vast territory of colonial Louisiana provides a paradigmatic case study for an Atlantic studies approach. One of the largest North American colonies and one of the last to be founded, Louisiana was governed by a succession of sovereignties, with parts ruled at various times by France, Spain, Britain, and finally the United States. But just as these shifting imperial connections shaped the territory’s culture, Louisiana’s peculiar geography and history also yielded a distinctive colonization pattern that reflected a synthesis of continent and island societies.
Louisiana: Crossroads of the Atlantic World offers an exceptional collaboration among American, Canadian, and European historians who explore colonial and antebellum Louisiana’s relations with the rest of the Atlantic world. Studying the legacy of each period of Louisiana history over the longue durée, the essays create a larger picture of the ways early settlements influenced Louisiana society and how the changes in sovereignty and other circulations gave rise to a multiethnic society. Contributors examine the workings of empire through the examples of slave laws, administrative careers or on-the-ground political negotiations, cultural exchanges among landowners, slave holders, and slaves, and the construction of race through sexuality, marriage, and household formation. As a whole, the volume makes the compelling argument that one cannot write Louisiana history without adopting an Atlantic perspective, or Atlantic history without referring to Louisiana.
Contributors: Guillaume Aubert, Emily Clark, Alexandre Dubé, Sylvia R. Frey, Sylvia L. Hilton, Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, Cécile Vidal, Sophie White, Mary Williams.
Table of Content
Introduction. Louisiana in Atlantic Perspective
—Cécile Vidal
PART I. EMPIRES
Chapter 1. ‘To Establish One Law and Definite Rules’: Race, Religion, and the Transatlantic Origins of the Louisiana Code Noir
—Guillaume Aubert
Chapter 2. Making a Career out of the Atlantic: Louisiana’s Plume
—Alexandre Dubé
Chapter 3. Spanish Louisiana in Atlantic Contexts: Nexus of Imperial Transactions and International Relations
—Sylvia L. Hilton
PART II. CIRCULATIONS
Chapter 4. Slaves and Poor Whites’ Informal Economies in an Atlantic Context
—Sophie White
Chapter 5. ‘Un Nègre nommè [sic] Lubin ne connaissant pas Sa Nation’: The Small World of Louisiana Slavery
—Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec
PART III. INTIMACIES
Chapter 6. Caribbean Louisiana: Church, Métissage, and the Language of Race in the Mississippi Colony during the French Period
—Cécile Vidal
Chapter 7. Private Lives and Public Orders: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Legitimacy in Spanish Colonial Louisiana
—Mary Williams
Chapter 8. Atlantic Alliances: Marriage among People of African Descent in New Orleans
—Emily Clark
Conclusion. Beyond Borders: Revising Atlantic History
—Sylvia R. Frey
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
About the author
Cecile Vidal is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for North American Studies at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
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