Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 May 2020
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0337
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 May 2020
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0337
Introduction
Founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, the city of La Nouvelle-Orléans was named in honor of the French Regent Philippe, Duc d’Orléans. In 1722, it became the capital of the then-French colony of Louisiana. After four decades of French rule, it was ceded to Spain, at the end of the Seven Years’ War, in 1762. Almost four decades later, in 1800, it was briefly (and secretly) retroceded to France before the latter, faced with defeat in neighboring Saint-Domingue, sold it to the United States in 1803, turning La Nouvelle-Orléans into New Orleans. Throughout the eighty-five years of its colonial history, it remained a small frontier town, with a population of about 8,000 in 1805. Its integration to the United States marked the beginning of its expansion, favored by its ideal position at the mouth of the Mississippi River, at the confluence of the main riverway of the young American republic and the Gulf of Mexico, a position which permitted exchanges of products and people between the United States, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic. Receiving large contingents of migrants (free and forced) from the eastern part of the United States, the Caribbean (especially the “refugees” from the Haitian Revolution), Europe (France, in particular, throughout the first half of the 19th century), and Africa (until the closing of the Atlantic slave trade), it grew to 102,193 inhabitants by 1840, then becoming the third-largest city in the United States. Its specific colonial past and singular evolution in the early American period account for its complex status in the 19th-century United States. Because it relied on the institution of slavery, it was a city of the South in the forty-year sectional confrontation that eventually tore the country apart in 1860. The presence of a significant population of free people of color, often educated, politically conscious, and socially and economically active, however, made it depart from the usual Southern pattern. Moreover, its existence as one of the main port cities of the United States, its cosmopolitanism, and its multilingualism made it follow a development pattern closer to that of the Atlantic port cities of the northeastern United States. After the Civil War, it became the spearhead of the civil rights movement, under the lead of the politically conscious, culturally, socially, and sometimes economically influential population of color that had been free before the Civil War. When the 19th century closed, New Orleans became an American city of the segregated South and its Atlantic destiny ended.
General Overviews
Historians of New Orleans (many of them working within an Atlantic perspective) have recently opted to refute the long-asserted breaches supposedly caused by the transfers between the French and Spanish colonial empires and then the purchase of Louisiana by the United States. They insist more on continuity than rupture between the various periods (“French,” “Spanish,” and “American”). Very few books, however, cover the history of New Orleans between its founding and the end of its Atlantic period in the late 19th century, two relative exceptions being the powerful, synthetic narrative of Powell 2012 and the useful narrative of Sublette 2009, although neither covers the whole 19th century. Though not technically overviews, a number of recently edited collections of essays have attempted to breach national divides, from Bond 2005 and Boelhower 2013 to the recent Vidal 2014 and Dessens and Le Glaunec 2016. The bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase and the tricentennial of the founding of New Orleans have been marked by the publication of useful reference works including Lemmon, et al. 2003 and, more recently, Greenwald and Colomer 2018. The key overview guides to the “French” and “Spanish” periods are Havard and Vidal 2008 and Din 1996, respectively.
Boelhower, William, ed. New Orleans in the Atlantic World: Between Land and Sea. London: Routledge, 2013.
Reprint of a 2008 special, double issue of the journal Atlantic Studies (“New Orleans in the Atlantic World,” vol. 5, no. 2 and 3). Eleven contributions from historians, geographers, anthropologists, and American studies specialists. Includes contributions from Adam Rothman, Markus Rediker, Walter Johnson, Douglas Chambers, and a very useful historiographical essay by Mark L. Thompson.
Bond, Bradley, ed. French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
A collection of twelve chapters by historians of Louisiana studying French colonial Louisiana under various perspectives, Native Americans being granted more space than in most historical works on Louisiana. The topic is larger than New Orleans, but the resolutely Atlantic focus sets a very good contextual and theoretical framework for a study of New Orleans’ connections with the Atlantic world.
Dessens, Nathalie, and Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, eds. Interculturalité: La Louisiane au carrefour des cultures. Collection « Les Voies du Français ». Quebec: Presse de l’Université Laval, 2016.
This collection of thirteen chapters (in French), written by Canadian, French, and American historians, linguists, and specialists of popular culture, is a study of intercultural New Orleans during its three centuries of existence. From religion to material culture, politics, celebrations, linguistic practices, and even zydeco, it partakes of the Atlantic turn that has marked the history of New Orleans since the early 2000s.
Din, Gilbert C., ed. The Spanish Presence in Louisiana, 1763–1803. Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, Center for Louisiana Studies, 1996.
This key reference book (composed of over thirty essays and articles) is the second volume in the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial series, the project of which was launched in 1992. It is not technically an overview, but it is the starting point for anyone hoping to get a comprehensive grasp of the principal research and historiographical questions related to “Spanish” Louisiana up until the early 1990s.
Greenwald, Erin M., and Henry Colomer, eds. New Orleans, The Founding Era. New Orleans, LA: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2018.
Companion guide to the eponymous exhibition displayed at the Historic New Orleans Collection for the tricentennial of the City of New Orleans. Organized in two parts. Part 1 is made of nine contextualizing essays written by Robbie Ethridge, Cécile Vidal, Erin Greenwald, Gilles-Antoine Langlois, Emily Clark, Yevan Terrien, Daniel Usner, and Shannon Lee Dawdy. Part 2 is the exhibition checklist. The book is beautifully illustrated.
Havard, Gilles, and Cécile Vidal. Histoire de l’Amérique française. Paris: Flammarion, 2008.
This now-classic overview of L’Amérique française is a starting point for anyone trying to figure out how the different pieces of the French North American empire (including, of course, New Orleans and Lower Louisiana more generally) interacted in the longue durée of its history. Indeed, “French” New Orleans and its hinterland were intimately connected to the Pays des Illinois and New France more generally.
Lemmon, Alfred E., John T. Magill, and Jason Wiese. Charting Louisiana: Five Hundred Years of Maps. New Orleans, LA: Historic New Orleans Collection, 2003.
Published to coincide with the bicentennial of the vente de la Louisiane/Louisiana Purchase, this monumental book brings together almost 200 maps tracing the development of Louisiana from its beginnings to the present.
Powell, Lawrence. The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674065444
There are few overviews of the birth and development of the city of New Orleans across time from the “French” to the “American” period. Powell’s elegantly written synthesis of the first century of New Orleans history is one of them. Although it does not cover the 19th century as such, it closes with an epilogue that extends to the Civil War period.
Sublette, N., ed. The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2009.
A useful overview of New Orleans’s history from its founding to the 1820s. The book pays particular attention to the various social, ethnic, and racial groups that made the city over the first century of its existence.
Vidal, Cécile, ed. Louisiana, Crossroads of the Atlantic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
A collection of nine essays, written by Guillaume Aubert, Alexandre Dubé, Sylvia L. Hilton, Sophie White, Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, Cécile Vidal, Mary Williams, Emily Clark, and Sylvia R. Frey, looking at Louisiana from a Cis-Atlantic world perspective (à la David Armytage). The book, concluded by Sylvia R. Frey’s “Revising Atlantic History,” signals an important historiographical shift toward a better understanding of Louisiana’s Atlantic dimension.
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- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Brazil
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos South Atlantic Creole A...
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets