Louisiana: Crossroads of the Atlantic World 9780812208733

Citation preview

Louisiana

Vidal_Louisiana_FM.indd 1

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Early American Studies Series Editors Daniel K. Richter, Kathleen M. Brown, Max Cavitch, and David Waldstreicher Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Vidal_Louisiana_FM.indd 2

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Lou isi a na C ro s s roa d s of t h e At l a n t ic Wor l d

Edited by

Cécile Vidal

u n i v e r si t y of pe n n s y lva n i a pr e s s ph i l a de l ph i a

Vidal_Louisiana_FM.indd 3

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Copyright © 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Louisiana : crossroads of the Atlantic world / edited by Cécile Vidal. — 1st ed.    p. cm. — (Early American studies)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-0-8122-4551-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)  1. Louisiana—­History—To 1803. 2. Louisiana—­ History—­1803–­1865. 3. Louisiana—­Ethnic relations. 4. Louisiana—­Social life and customs. 5. Slaves—­Louisiana. 6. African Americans—­ Louisiana—­History. 7. Atlantic Ocean Region—­History—­18th century. 8. Atlantic Ocean Region—­History—­19th century. I. Vidal, Cécile. II. Series: Early American studies. F372.L68 2014 976.3—dc23 2013019469

Vidal_Louisiana_FM.indd 4

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Contents

Introduction. Louisiana in Atlantic Perspective Cécile Vidal 1

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 21 Chapter 2. Making a Career out of the Atlantic: Louisiana’s Plume Alexandre Dubé 44 Chapter 3. Spanish Louisiana in Atlantic Contexts: Nexus of Imperial Transactions and International Relations Sylvia L. Hilton 68

PART II. Circulations Chapter 4. Slaves and Poor Whites’ Informal Economies in an Atlantic Context Sophie White 89 Chapter 5. “Un Nègre nommè [sic] Lubin ne connaissant pas Sa Nation”: The Small World of Louisiana Slavery Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec 103

Vidal_Louisiana_FM.indd 5

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

vi Contents

PART III. Intimacies Chapter 6. Caribbean Louisiana: Church, Métissage, and the Language of Race in the Mississippi Colony during the French Period Cécile Vidal 125 Chapter 7. Private Lives and Public Orders: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Legitimacy in Spanish Colonial Louisiana Mary Williams 147 Chapter 8. Atlantic Alliances: Marriage among People of African Descent in New Orleans Emily Clark 165

Conclusion. Beyond Borders: Revising Atlantic History Sylvia R. Frey 184

Notes 205 271

List of Contributors

Index 273 Acknowledgments 279

Vidal_Louisiana_FM.indd 6

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Introduction

Louisiana in Atlantic Perspective Cécile Vidal

“Perros los Franceses” are the words that Antoine Paul, a domestic slave, would have cried out to the Sieur Rivière, a merchant in New Orleans, on one street of the Louisiana capital on a Sunday afternoon in 1766. Witnesses, some neighbors who watched the fight, told the judge that the Sieur Rivière was hitting the slave with a stick and that Antoine Paul was trying to defend himself while “chattering incessantly.” None of them understood what the slave was saying, because he spoke in Spanish. The Sieur Rivière complained that Antoine Paul not only tried to defend himself but also attacked him. Coughing and spitting on the ground, the slave would have made “many silly remarks about the French.” In front of the magistrate, Antoine Paul claimed that he did not insult the French; he only said “that the English were dogs, that they did not know the Virgin Mary or anything else, and that the Sieur Rivière did not understand correctly if he believed that it was about the French that he talked, that he had nothing wrong to say about them since he was himself a Creole from Martinique.” During his first questioning, the defendant had told the judge his complex peregrinations since his birth in Martinique: Dutch merchants bought him and took him to Curacao and then Santo Domingo, where he was baptized. Afterward he circulated in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, living in various Spanish settlements, before landing in Havana where his current master, Mr. de Loyola, purchased him. The French, the English, the Spaniards in an enslaved man of Africa descent’s view . . . ​The incident happened while Louisiana, a colony founded by the French in 1699, had been divided and given to Spain and Great Britain by the treaties of Fontainebleau and Paris in 1762–1763. Antoine Paul’s owner,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 1

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

2 Introduction

Joseph de Loyola, was probably the war commissioner who, a few months earlier, had come from Havana to New Orleans with the new Spanish governor Antonio de Ulloa to take possession of the Louisiana capital and the western bank of the Mississippi River.1 Located at the junction of North America and the Caribbean and at the crossroads of the three main empires that established colonies in the New World, Louisiana experienced a succession of sovereignties in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The lives of Louisiana’s inhabitants, whether they were Native Americans, European settlers, or slaves of African descent, were all impacted by this geography and history, and the conflict involving Antoine Paul was emblematic in this regard. “Tensions of empires”2 —​­between metropole and colonies, within colonial societies, and among various empires—​­and trans-​­imperial crossings and mobilities—​­especially the slave trade, which was the most internationalized Atlantic commerce—​­were not abstract realities for these various historical actors. These conflicts deeply shaped life trajectories and informed social identities. Louisiana’s peculiar geography and history, which makes the “Mississippi colony” (as Louisiana was known in eighteenth-​­century France) a paradigmatic case study, calls for an Atlantic perspective.

The New Atlantic History In less than twenty years, Atlantic history has experienced an extraordinary rise in the United States. According to Alison Games’s definition, it is “a style of world history with a particular regional and chronological emphasis.”3 A larger and more inclusive entity is superimposed on the traditional national, colonial, and/or imperial frameworks of analysis. Atlanticists regard the Atlantic world as constituting a unit of historical analysis in which the transnational and trans-​­imperial connections between the fifteen and nineteenth centuries should be studied first and foremost. The Atlantic paradigm postulates that the relations animating the Atlantic space played an essential role in the evolution of societies on both sides of the ocean. Consequently, Atlantic history “is concerned with explaining transformations, experiences, and events in one place in terms of conditions deriving from that place’s location in a large, multifaceted, interconnected world.”4 It goes without saying that no consensus exists on the factors and actors that were the most influential, or on the ways these societies were transformed by their relations with the rest of the Atlantic world or by local circumstances.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 2

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Introduction 3

In spite of the important efforts already made to define precisely the object and methods of the new Atlantic history,5 works claiming to draw on it are characterized by their great diversity and by the variety of their approaches. There are many competing definitions of the Atlantic world(s) and some very contradictory conceptions of the way Atlantic history should develop. This divergence continues to obscure the debate that has developed over the Atlantic paradigm.6 Admittedly, the concept of an Atlantic world and the way the related history has developed are not flawless, but critique should not lead to invalidation, nor should it discredit the Atlantic paradigm entirely. Although one should not expect this approach to solve all problems, Atlantic history opens up new and promising perspectives. A few years ago, Trevor Burnard questioned the necessity and the sheer possibility of turning all historians of the colonial period into Atlanticists, pointing out the difficulty for a single person to master several languages and historiographies and to do research in archives disseminated all over the Atlantic world.7 These obstacles can be overcome in two ways: first by adopting a microhistorical approach and following an individual or a small group in their peregrinations around the Atlantic world;8 second, by conducting collective inquiries, on the model of the present book, which brings together American, Canadian, and European specialists of French, Spanish, and American Louisiana. As Alison Games has rightly pointed out, the most promising trend of Atlantic history is what David Armitage calls “cis-​­Atlantic history,” since it can be done by any researcher individually.9 This kind of history “studies particular places as unique locations within an Atlantic world and seeks to define that uniqueness as the result of the interaction between local particularity and a wider web of connections (and comparisons). . . . ​Cis-​­Atlantic history, in the more expansive sense proposed here, is the history of any particular place—​­a nation, a state, a region, even a specific i­nstitution—​­in relation to the wider Atlantic world.”10 Even more than seventeenth-​­century Virginia, which several authors have studied in a cis-​­Atlantic perspective,11 the Mississippi colony, because of its position at a crossroads, constitutes a prime location for the practice of Atlantic history. Under the French regime (1699–1769), Louisiana was located at the intersection of two models of French colonization in America: a continental Franco-​­Indian model and an inland and slave Franco-​­African model. Louisiana’s hybridity thus linked different societies of the French Atlantic Empire.12 Similarly, during the Spanish period (1769–1803), Louisiana occupied two kinds of peripheral spaces: the Hispano-​­Indian northern

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 3

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

4 Introduction

margins of New Spain (California, New Mexico, and Texas) and the littoral and island regions of plantations (New Grenada, Cuba, etc.), with their exploited black slave workforce. In the heart of North America, Louisiana’s colonial territory was one of the largest in the New World, and the control of the whole hydrographic basin of the Mississippi enabled contacts between Louisiana settlers and those of neighbouring foreign establishments. Because of its perch on the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana also belonged to the cosmopolitan Caribbean world; it, too, participated in those dense relations with the colonies or former colonies of various European powers. At the same time, because it stood at the margin of three rival empires in North America, Louisiana came successively under French, Spanish, British, and finally American sovereignty during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus, not only did Louisiana stand at the crossroads of two distinctive socioeconomic and commercial systems, but it also refracted the sovereignties of three distinctive European empires and an American nation-​­state. It is impossible to confine oneself to a strictly national or imperial approach when studying Louisiana over a lengthy period of time; one is compelled to engage transnational, connected, and/or comparative history. The study of colonial Louisiana enables us to steer clear of a problematic tendency in Atlantic studies, which paradoxically have adopted mainly a national and imperial perspective and taken the form of distinct histories of British, Iberian, French, and Dutch Atlantics. Most of the works still focus on the British Atlantic to the neglect of other empires,13 despite the formation of a French Atlantic History Group, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, at McGill University in Montreal.14 The few authors who have engaged in comparative and/or connected history have mostly favored comparisons between British and Spanish Americas in the colonial period.15 Nevertheless, it is important to include the French Empire in the comparison, because in some respects the British and the French faced similar situations overseas with slave-​­trading forts in Africa and territories located both in North America and in the West Indies, and both had to negotiate relations with sparse, nomadic, or semi-​­nomadic Native populations. Imperial rivalries also principally opposed France and Great Britain during the “second Hundred Years’ War”16 (1689–1815), which played an essential role in the construction of a British national identity17 and in the establishment of Louisiana and its later integration into the United States.18 Thus, focusing on this region allows us to make the comparison more complex and to confront the colonial models of the three greatest monarchies of Western Europe, which fought each other for

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 4

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Introduction 5

hegemony during the entire early modern period, notably in their colonial peripheries.

The Expansion of Louisiana Historiography Although concomitant, the recent expansion of Louisiana historiography does not stem from the rise of Atlantic history. Rather, it results from the progressive broadening of colonial historians’ interests from their initial focus on New England to Virginia and the other southern colonies, and subsequently on the Mid-​­Atlantic colonies, the British West Indies, Spanish Florida, and finally French and Spanish Louisiana, all of which was spurred by multiculturalism. If taking the British West Indies into consideration may be construed as a return to an imperial perspective, the integration of Florida and Louisiana once again connects colonial history to American national history, as these non-​­British colonies eventually became part of the U.S. national territory. In any case, ever since the publication of Gwendolyn Hall’s and Daniel Usner’s books in 1992,19 French and Spanish Louisiana have become a popular research topic in the United States: dissertations, books, and articles on the subject have multiplied,20 and the findings therein have been integrated progressively into syntheses devoted to “colonial America.”21 Likewise, a new spate of works on territorial and antebellum Louisiana has also materialized.22 Every historian and ethnohistorian working in the field nowadays recognizes their debt to these two pioneers of the new Louisiana history, while the proliferation of scholarly research on Louisiana testifies to the rising legitimacy of Louisiana history in the field of colonial and antebellum American history in the United States. The new favorable position of Louisiana history owes a great deal to the innovative work of Hall and Usner, whose books were perfectly in line with a fundamental streak of Atlantic history, resolutely “multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial.”23 While Atlanticists acknowledge that Europeans were initially responsible for the formation and integration of the Atlantic world, they also emphasize the essential contribution of Africans and Native Americans to the formation of new societies and cultures in the Americas. As it emerged in the 1990s, the new historiography provided a synthesis and reconceptualization of various Atlantic and colonial histories: that of the White Atlantic, which appeared in the 1940s and 1950s, and that of the Black Atlantic, which accelerated in the 1970s with the multiplication of works on the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 5

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

6 Introduction

slave trade, slavery, and the Black diaspora, while ethnohistory and the study of Euro-​­Indian relations also developed. In these two latter fields, Gwendolyn Hall’s and Daniel Usner’s books contributed, twenty years later, to a major historiographical turn. With The Middle Ground by Richard White, published just one year before,24 Usner’s dissertation proposed to replace histories of conquest, domination, and acculturation with histories of exchanges and accommodation between European and Native cultures. Thus, it played an essential role in the rise of the New Indian history and in the integration of ethnohistory into colonial history.25 As for Hall, she took part, with John Thornton, whose book was published simultaneously,26 in the renewal of the very important historical debate, launched in the 1940s by the anthropologist Melville Herskovits and sustained in the 1970s in the works of Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, over the transfer and persistence of African cultures in the slave communities of the Americas.27 Hence, the new interest in colonial Louisiana, which should also be related to a concomitant rise in French West Indian history,28 could be connected with the fact that the study of the French Empire allows American historians to think differently about interethnic and interracial relations in colonial and/or slave societies.

Atlantic and Caribbean Louisiana Even though it is not labeled as Atlantic history, and its title and content do not incorporate the term “Atlantic world,” Gwendolyn Hall’s book clearly belongs to the historiography of the Black Atlantic.29 By asserting that the Louisiana slave community was one of the most Africanized in the Americas, Hall confers a special importance on the connections between Louisiana and Africa. The present book builds on this essential idea. Its central hypothesis on which it relies is that Louisiana’s relations with other regions of the Atlantic world, not only Africa, but also Europe and the rest of the Americas, played a fundamental role in the formation of its society and culture. Admittedly, Louisiana was a “frontier society.” The colony was established very late (in 1699), and during the eighteenth century it still had to struggle for its survival while most other European colonies in the Americas experienced a transformation from “charter” or “frontier societies” into “Creole societies,” according to Timothy Breen’s model.30 Within the French Empire, the Mississippi colony was one of the most remote, as it took nearly the same amount of time to cross the Gulf of Mexico as it did the Atlantic Ocean from Europe or Africa

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 6

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Introduction 7

to the West Indies.31 The competition from older and better-​­located colonies explains the failure of its peopling and the weakness of its export trade to the parent country during the first half of the eighteenth century. During the Spanish period, Louisiana’s situation improved but did not drastically change. Thus, local circumstances certainly had a considerable impact on the way Louisiana society and culture developed. However, one can argue that, even though they were weak, the connections with the successive parent countries were not negligible. Moreover, to offset its relative isolation and remoteness from the Old Worlds, Louisiana developed intercolonial relations within the whole Caribbean basin that exercised a great influence on its development. Hence, when Louisiana society is compared to other colonial and/or slave societies, it is very important not only to remember that it remained in an early stage of development for most of the eighteenth century, but equally important to realize that the situation of a new colonial society was very different in the eighteenth century than in previous centuries because it developed within a rising interconnected Atlantic world that was experiencing a general process of racialization from the last decades of the seventeenth century. Although Louisiana was not a slave society as were older plantation societies such as Martinique and Virginia or Jamaica and Saint-​­Domingue, it did not remain a society without slaves for very long: with slaves soon constituting more than 20 percent of the population, Louisiana quickly became a slave society, with slavery the main source of labor and an institution that informed all social dynamics and cultural representations.32 As such, this book partakes of an old debate on the respective influence of “nature” and “nurture,”33 the weight of local circumstances versus the cultural baggage of free or forced migrants, the role of internal or external factors in the formation and development of colonial societies.34 Acknowledging that the Atlantic paradigm is operational in the case of Louisiana, the authors try to apply it carefully, without affirming that it explains everything. The goal, as John Elliott puts it, is to avoid the “natural temptation to exaggerate the extent to which one side of the Atlantic influenced developments on the other, perhaps in an effort to prove the writer’s Atlanticist credentials. But it needs to be recognized that there is no need to find a consistency, and still less a progressive development, of interaction over time and space. At some times and in some places the Atlantic component will figure strongly, while at others it may well occupy a subordinate position. Tracing and explaining the fluctuations in the degree of interaction between the whole and the parts is a necessary element in the writing of Atlantic history.”35 One of the major

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 7

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

8 Introduction

problems that Atlanticists should try to solve is indeed that of the relationship between the parts and the whole, as well as the contradictory and simultaneous processes of integration and fragmentation, though this issue arises both within and beyond the Atlantic world. Some phenomena that interest Atlantic historians, such as the formation of colonial empires or the expansion of European trade, were not confined to the Atlantic basin but extended to all continents. For instance, as Sophie White underlines in her essay, textiles from Asia were imported, looked after, and highly valued by both European settlers and African slaves in Louisiana.36 Still, the book clearly demonstrates that the “Atlantic component” was the most important in the Louisiana case and that the adoption of an Atlantic perspective enlightens our understanding of Louisiana society and culture.37 Likewise, if this collection of essays promotes an Atlantic approach, it does not try to impose it to the detriment of other historical frameworks. The volume views hemispheric or continental history and Atlantic history as complementary and not exclusive interpretative frameworks.38 It seeks to understand how the formation and evolution of Louisiana territory and society were construed on various scales. It is this “game of scales”39 that made Louisiana a crossroads of the Atlantic world with its transatlantic, hemispheric, imperial, continental, Caribbean, and local dimensions.

Chronological Scale and Geographical Framework The essays collected here extend both the chronological scale and the geographical framework. Most studies of eighteenth-​­and nineteenth-​­century Louisiana tend to focus on one political period only, when the region was under French, Spanish, or American sovereignty. Other studies include the entire colonial period but stop at the time of the Louisiana Purchase or the accession to statehood. A few works carry through to the antebellum period, such as Emily Clark’s great book on the Ursulines of New Orleans.40 The essays gathered in this book likewise range over a very large period, from the foundation of the colony at the end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, when francophones ceased to be the majority in Louisiana. The idea is to focus on the colonial period while surveying its legacies in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Contrary to what took place in other colonies that underwent a transfer of sovereignty, such as New York or Canada, both integrated into the British Empire at a century’s

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 8

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Introduction 9

interval, Louisiana’s francophone population became a minority among settlers of European descent very late in time. This was due to the weakness of the hispanophone migrations during the Spanish period and the persistence of intense relations with the former parent country and with populations of former French colonies, including Acadians and refugees from Saint-​ ­Domingue. Paradoxically, the migrations from France to Louisiana were relatively more important during the antebellum period than under the French regime. Removed from the French Empire in the 1760s, Louisiana remained an essential component of the French Atlantic for a century after that. The integration of Louisiana into the field of Atlantic studies thus allows us to reconsider the relationship between imperial history and Atlantic history. Several historians have criticized the fact that the way Atlantic history has been (re)developed with works on the various national Atlantics amounts to a revamping of the old Imperial school and displays a very Eurocentric perspective.41 Other scholars have underlined that the newly proposed view of the Atlantic world as a world of “entangled empires” also leaves aside Africa and an alternative diasporic conceptualization of the Atlantic world.42 This tendency is reinforced by the choice of many authors to stop Atlantic history at the independence of European colonies in the Americas, obtained for the most part by the end of the 1820s.43 Consequently, this historiography contributes to an overemphasis on the White or Euro-​­American Atlantic. The result is to impose its analytical framework on the entire field of Atlantic studies, despite the fact that a growing number of historians point out that there was not one but several Atlantics “shaped by the position, experiences and perspectives of each individual” and group.44 Kathleen Wilson’s comment on David Armitage’s and Michael J. Braddick’s essay on the British Atlantic puts it this way: “What is lacking is the attempt to rethink British Atlantic history through the very divergent chronologies, beliefs and practices of any of the creoles or non-​­Europeans who also peopled it. This task is crucial if British Atlantic history is to be more than merely a variant of imperial history, whether new or old.”45 This book adopts a longue durée in order to respond to the injunction of Kathleen Wilson and others. This alternative chronology allows us to think about several interconnected phenomena: the fundamental impact of the first migrants—​­whether free or forced—​­and settlers on the formation of Louisiana society and culture in the long run;46 the effects on social and racial relations of the imposition of new legislation and political culture at each transfer of sovereignty; the process of integration of the successive waves of free or

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 9

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

10 Introduction

forced migrants and their influence on the local society and culture according to their demographical importance in this evolving context; the legacy of each period of Louisiana history for the succeeding one; and, finally, the formation and evolution of a local society and culture, which was neither truly French, Spanish, nor American. This preoccupation with time and changes is matched by an interest in space and location. The various essays thus take into account every part of the vast original colonial territory, even though some regions receive more attention than others (see Map I.1). Under the French regime, the colony of Louisiana, theoretically, extended from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Alleghenies to the Rocky Mountains. However, most of that space was, in practice, Indian country. Colonial settlements were limited to a string of outposts in the Mississippi Valley and on the Gulf of Mexico, and to an archipelago of forts south of the Great Lakes and in the Mobile Valley. Because of low immigration, land use followed a dual model, intensive and extensive: compact colonization developed only in the Lower Mississippi Valley, upstream and downstream from New Orleans, while the vast interior remained the domain of the fur trade, aside from the settlements in the Illinois Country. The treaties of Fontainebleau and Paris in 1762–1763 gave New Orleans and the west bank of the Mississippi to the Spanish, while the rest of the Louisiana territory went to the British. The lands east of the river exited Louisiana history to enter West Florida’s history, an important point made in Sylvia Hilton’s essay. Nevertheless, under the Spanish regime, Louisiana was still a vast territory extending along the entire Mississippi River. Although it was an integrated space as during the French period, American historians tend to study Lower and Upper Louisiana separately during the colonial period; they project onto the eighteenth century a territorial division which appeared only in the first decades of the nineteenth century, when a very small part of Spanish Louisiana became a U.S. state called Louisiana in 1812.47 If most of the essays in this book deal with the Lower Mississippi Valley, those by Sylvia Hilton, Sophie White, and Cécile Vidal remind us that the history of French and Spanish Louisiana cannot be understood without taking into account the dispersion, remoteness, and diversity of settlements. Although they were located far away in the interior, the six villages of the Illinois Country, in the Mississippi Valley, between the mouths of the Missouri and the Ohio, for instance, formed the second most important settlement of the colony during the French period. The same is true for Saint-​­Louis and the other villages of the region under the Spanish regime. Because of its location,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 10

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Map I.1. French Louisiana in the eighteenth century.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 11

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

12 Introduction

the Illinois Country served as a link between Canada and Lower Louisiana, and its demographical and economic development depended upon the connections it maintained with both regions.48 As Hilton demonstrates regarding the fur trade, relations between “Greater Louisiana” and Canada were as important as relations with the West Indies in the eighteenth century.49 Several of the chapters here deal with New Orleans proper. Apart from Shannon Lee Dawdy’s and Jennifer M. Spear’s recent book,50 very few monographs have focused on the city in the colonial period, and they deal mainly with its economy, urbanism, and architecture.51 In the studies about slaves of African descent, one might infer from book or chapter titles that the authors paid attention to urban slavery, but the expression “New Orleans” designates both the city and the surrounding region and the emphasis is on the slave laborers of the neighboring plantations.52 Indeed, New Orleans and its region formed a vast agro-​­urban zone, in which the city lived in symbiosis with its rural environment.53 Moreover, it comprised only 3,000 inhabitants at the end of the French regime and 8,000 by the time of the Louisiana Purchase.54 It looked like a rural town for a very long time and did not have any local political institutions before the Spanish period. However, from the beginning, New Orleans was conceived as a city, carried out some urban functions, and gathered specific social groups. Half of the migrants to Louisiana probably came from cities, as did their counterparts to Canada, and they probably brought with them an urban culture and a particular representation of the city.55 It is probable that a distinct urban society existed very early on, in the space and in the conception the city dwellers had of themselves. The several articles dealing with New Orleans in this book address new important topics such as the specificity of cities in plantation societies, the particularities of urban slavery, and the influence of the urban environment on social and racial relations and on the formation of local culture.56 As such, the book partakes in the recent development of studies on colonial and/or slave urban societies, outside of Spanish America.57 A by-​­product of this focus on the Louisiana capital, which housed very few Indian slaves, is the relative pre-​­eminence that the book gives to Atlantic actors of European and African descent to the detriment of Native Americans, although they appear in Sylvia Hilton and Cécile Vidal’s essays. In no way should this be seen as a sign that indigenous populations are not recognized as crucial actors in Louisiana or Atlantic history.58 All throughout the colonial period, most of “Louisiana” remained Indian country; under the French regime, the Choctaws alone, who formed the most important Native

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 12

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Introduction 13

American nation allied with the French, always outnumbered the few settlers and slaves in the Lower Mississippi Valley; and European and Indian settlements lived in close proximity. Native American nations were able to play imperial powers against each other and, consequently, to exercise their agency and maintain their sovereignty. It is thus not surprising that Native Americans and Euro-​­Indian relations have already been a major focus of colonial Louisiana historiography since the 1980s and 1990s.59

Empires, Circulations, and Intimacies This volume is divided into three parts that reflect various ways of conceptualizing the Atlantic world and of practicing Atlantic history, notwithstanding that all the essays attempt to dialogue with each other. Part I, “Empires,” explores how intra-​­and inter-​­imperial relations and networks affected Louisiana history, society, and culture in multiple ways. It relies on the idea that, although the history of the Atlantic world cannot be reduced to the history of empires, even of entangled empires, empires did matter within (and outside) the Atlantic world.60 While the existence of a real French Empire has been contested,61 the chapters by Alexandre Dubé and Guillaume Aubert demonstrate that, although early modern France did not develop imperial discourse and ideology, both the circulation of administrators managed by the navy and the elaboration of slave laws through collaboration between the metropole and the various colonies created an imperial political, juridical, and social space de facto. Within this imperial configuration, intercolonial relations and influences, sometimes mediated by the imperial center, were of great importance: some administrators used their previous experience in Canada or in Saint-​­Domingue to fulfill their missions in Louisiana, while the Louisiana Code Noir was deeply inspired by the legislation developed by the French West Indian authorities between 1685 and 1724. Connections and networks were thus as important as discourse and ideology to the construction and consolidation of imperial formations.62 Along with Sylvia Hilton’s essay, these contributions also highlight the essential role the state—​­with officials on both sides of the Atlantic—​­played in the absolutist empires of France and Spain, even if imperial policy was negotiated between the imperial center and the colonial peripheries. But the divide was not only between central powers and local authorities. In the case of the French Empire, which distinguished itself

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 13

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

14 Introduction

by the fact that it was run by a single and centralized institution, the navy, another fault line existed. As Alexandre Dubé’s chapter demonstrates, there was a divide between officers who were recruited locally, with no possibility of getting a position outside of Louisiana, and those who had a commission or a brevet, and thus a link to the king, and were able to pursue an Atlantic career in other colonies or in the metropole. The fact that the king was willing to extend his favor and to coopt colony-​­born elites gave the French Empire a strong sociopolitical cohesion. Moreover, imperial policy resulted not only from these relations and negotiations within the successive empires, but also was elaborated in reaction to pressures from other powers, whether they were imperial or pontifical. Versailles and Madrid had to take into account the mercantilist competition that raged among the great Atlantic empires or the debate that developed over the (in)compatibility of evangelization and slavery in the Catholic Atlantic. These trans-​­imperial religious connections demonstrate once again that imperial dynamics were not the only ones at work within the Atlantic world. Finally, these three articles illuminate the role played by actors other than officials and elites, whether they were a lowly commis aux écritures (copyist), simple missionaries such as Epiphane de Moirans and Francisco Jose de Jaca, Anglo-​­American migrants who eagerly wanted to take advantage of the plenitude of free lands west of the Mississippi, or Osage Indians who defended their sovereignty against all odds. If the question of circulations was already present in Part I, it is the main focus of Part II. It relates to a diasporic conceptualization of the Atlantic world as a space of high mobility, cultural encounters, and exchanges between various diasporas and social and ethnic groups, as well as the formation of new hybrid cultures and identities.63 Circulations (of migrants, goods, ideas, practices, etc.) refer here as much as to transatlantic transfers from Europe and Africa to Louisiana as to trans-​­imperial and intercolonial influences, and intracolonial exchanges within Louisiana society among white settlers, free people of color, slaves of African descent, and Indians. Because they demonstrate that the Black and White Atlantics were deeply intertwined and that all Atlantic actors could “contribute and participate into the construction of other diasporas” and Atlantics,64 both chapters in Part II argue for a better integration of Black Atlantic studies within the larger field of Atlantic history. Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec and Sophie White’s chapters deal specifically with the formation and evolution of slave communities and cultures. They take part in the old but still vivid debate that has developed over the transfer,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 14

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Introduction 15

survival, and persistence of African cultures and identities and the development of Afro-​­Creole cultures among the slave communities of the Americas.65 Following the steps of other scholars such as Stephan Palmié, Richard Price, and James H. Sweet,66 they try to avoid the dead ends where this debate has been stuck for a long time. They seek to reconcile “Creolization” with “(re)Africanization” and assimilation or acculturation with retention, tradition, or continuity. Sophie White uses slaves and poor whites’ interrogatories and testimonies in judicial cases to show how together they created an underground and informal economy in order to access the material goods that their statuses and social positions deprived them. In that context, slaves adopted and re-​­appropriated European goods (clothes) and cultural practices (theft practices), but instead of seeing this process of acculturation67 as the sign of a passivity and lack of autonomy from the slaves, White demonstrates that this behavior of accommodation constituted a way for them to exercise their agency. In response to the slaves’ entrepreneurship, the repressive legal and judiciary system became more heavily racialized: it increasingly targeted slaves and criminalized collaboration between slaves and whites of lower condition during the French regime. Taking the young Lubin, a slave who did not know his “nation,” as a guide, Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec demonstrates that focusing only on African “nations” to study the creation and transformation of slave cultures and communities constitutes a deceptive methodology. Instead, he analyzes the constraints (the conditions of the slave trade and of plantation life) that weighed against the re-​­Africanization of the slave communities of Lower Louisiana during the Spanish period. He describes a small world of high mobility and fluidity where slaves of various origins lived in close proximity with white settlers. Hence, both authors call for a more dynamic and relational history of slaves and slavery, which pays more attention to context and time. The three chapters (by Cécile Vidal, Mary Williams, and Emily Clark) in Part III, “Intimacies,” demonstrate how sexuality, marriage, and family or household formation lie at the heart of both the development and the contestation of the racial order in New Orleans. Together they discredit a theological and culturalist interpretation that has relied mostly on cultural factors to explain the differences between the French, Spanish, and American periods and to describe the evolution of interethnic relations over time as a continuous and linear process of growing racialization from the so-​­called color and race-​­blind French regime to the strict racial order of the antebellum period. Thus, the analysis of the language of race by Cécile Vidal reveals that

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 15

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

16 Introduction

under the French regime missionaries had a racial culture that has not been previously recognized. Mary Williams shows that this racial culture had long-​ ­lasting effects during the Spanish period: very few marriages across the color line were then celebrated, although they had become legal. However, many actors took advantage of the new laws introduced by Spanish authorities to provide for their partners and their illegitimate children of mixed descent. Conversely, Emily Clark undermines the traditional conceptualization of nineteenth-​­century Louisiana society as a three-​­caste society, emphasizing that plaçage was far from a ubiquitous institution among free women of color, free people of color did not constitute a homogeneous community, and New Orleans born-​­free people of color developed a strong marital culture. These final three essays also argue that both Tannenbaum’s thesis on the differences between the Catholic and Protestant Empires and the way it was first rejected were too simplistic, and instead offer a more complex and thoughtful exploration of the relations between law, (political) culture, religion, and society and of the way the various kinds of factors (demographical, economical, religious, cultural, juridical) combined to differentiate national/ imperial and/or local models of colonization and slavery in the long run.68 Vidal’s and Clark’s essays demonstrate that the role of Catholicism was very ambiguous and could play in contradictory ways: the use made by the free people of color of the institution of Christian marriage from the Spanish period helped them to get away from the inferior status in which the racial order tried to confine them, but the way Capuchins integrated the newly baptized slaves within the Catholic Church contributed to the formation of a fragmented and segregated society and culture during the French regime. Part III, along with the earlier chapters in the book, highlights the necessity to better link North American history to Caribbean history. Vidal’s essay explores the fundamental influence the connections between Louisiana and Saint-​­Domingue exercised on the racial culture of the Mississippi colony, while Clark analyzes how refugees from Saint-​­Domingue were integrated within New Orleans society and how they greatly contributed to the transformation of the territorial and antebellum city. It is possible that Louisiana history has been marginalized within U.S. history for a very long time precisely because its integration would have forced North American historians to adopt a Caribbean or a Latin American perspective for which they were not ready. Gary Nash’s call to recover the “hidden history of mestizo America” has not yet produced much,69 and historians can seem shaken by the scientific confirmation of the liaison between

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 16

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Introduction 17

Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings,70 as journalists may be by the revelations about the mixed ancestry of Michelle Obama.71 But Nash’s use of the Spanish adjective “mestizo” or the use of the French substantive métissage in this book should not convey a wrong idea about interethnic relations in the French or Iberian Atlantics in comparison with the British Atlantic, or in the British mainland colonies in comparison with the islands. It is not because they did not work in the same way that race was not at the heart of all these social systems from the eighteenth century. We should not go back to the negative exceptionalism of some U.S. historians.72 The concepts of mestizaje or métissage during the considered period are related to race-​­thinking as much as miscegenation.73 Thus, the adoption of a Caribbean perspective should not lead us to an anachronistic celebration of métissage, but to more complex comparative and entangled histories of the colonial and/or slave societies of the Americas, where intricate intimacies did not prevent relations of domination. This book aims to demonstrate that one cannot write Louisiana history without adopting an Atlantic perspective or study Atlantic history without including Louisiana, but the leads it might have opened in the field of Louisiana and/or Atlantic studies need to be explored and followed more thoroughly for confirmation or refutation. A connected history of exchanges and interactions in the whole Caribbean basin, a comparative history of cultural transfers between island and mainland colonies, or a comparative history of all the colonies that experienced multiple changes of sovereignty: these are all innovative research topics offered to the curiosity of historians by Atlantic history.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 17

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 18

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Part I

Empires

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 19

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 20

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Chapter 1

“To Establish One Law and Definite Rules”: Race, Religion, and the Transatlantic Origins of the Louisiana Code Noir Guillaume Aubert

In 1724, the Superior Council of Louisiana registered one of the lengthiest and most comprehensive royal edicts ever promulgated in a French Atlantic colony. As stated in its preamble, the Edict of March 1724, soon to be known as the Code Noir de Louisiane, was intended to “maintain the discipline of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church” in the colony and “to establish one law and definite rules” regarding “the status and condition” of the “enslaved negroes” used by “our subjects [for] the cultivation of the land.”1 In fifty-​­five articles, the Louisiana Code Noir declared Catholicism the unique religion of the colony, enjoined colonists to have their slaves instructed, baptized, fed, and clothed, defined slaves as movable property and slave status as an inherited condition, prohibited concubinage and interracial marriage, and imposed restrictions on slaves’ movement, property ownership, and ability to testify against abusive masters and overseers but ordered the latter “to govern their slaves as bons pères de famille,” since the torture, maiming, and execution of slaves remained the prerogative of colonial judges. Finally, the Louisiana Code Noir required masters to obtain the permission of the Superior Council before manumitting their slaves. Once freed, former slaves were ordered “to show the utmost respect to their former masters, to their widows and children” but were nevertheless granted “the same rights, privileges and immunities enjoyed by . . . ​our other subjects.”2 The promulgation of the Louisiana Code Noir followed an established

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 21

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

22

Chapter 1

legal pattern in French Atlantic colonies. In 1685, the royal government had issued a first version of the Code Noir for its Caribbean colonies. First registered in Martinique and Guadeloupe, the 1685 Code Noir was also adopted in the new colony of Saint-​­Domingue in 1687 and extended to Guiana in 1704. Just one year before the promulgation of the Louisiana Code Noir, a revised version of the 1685 text was sent to the French Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. Thus, by the time the Superior Council of Louisiana registered the latest inception of the Code Noir, the French Empire became the first European overseas empire where slave law emanated from a metropolitan edict, and while the Louisiana Code Noir differed from its Caribbean predecessor on certain issues, fifty-​­one of its fifty-​­five articles were taken from the original Code. The fact that the various versions of the Code Noir were issued from Versailles has led some scholars to argue that metropolitan legal traditions rather than colonial circumstances shaped its form and content. Laurent Dubois and John Garrigus, for instance, have recently introduced the 1685 Code Noir as a text “drafted by European legal scholars who knew far more about ancient Roman jurisprudence than about New World plantations.”3 Indeed, certain provisions of the Code Noir, such as the possibility for slaves to receive a peculium or the granting of citizenship rights to freed slaves, undoubtedly derived from Roman law. Yet the legal filiation of the Code Noir seems to have been a bit more complex since much of the final text was also based on colonial reports synthesizing decades of Caribbean jurisprudence, which itself occasionally invoked Roman law. Emphasis of the Roman filiation of the Code Noir has occasionally led to peculiar interpretations of the Code’s relationship to the elaboration of racial hierarchies in the French Atlantic. According to Alan Watson, a scholar of Roman law and author of several works on American slave laws, the influence of Roman law transcended Caribbean racial hierarchies and contributed to produce a text in which “the concept that slaves are intrinsically inferior because of their race [is] surprisingly absent.”4 If historians of Atlantic slavery are well aware that the Code Noir was intended to regulate the enslavement of people of African ancestry, they too seem reluctant to acknowledge its racial underpinnings. For John Garrigus, the granting of citizenship rights to former slaves and their children indicates that at the time of its original promulgation the Code Noir “defined slavery as a legal, not a racial, condition.”5 Presumably focusing on provisions imposing colonial and slave Catholicity, Ira Berlin writes that the Code Noir “exhibited

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 22

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 23

greater concern with heretical Jews and Protestants than with race and slavery.”6 Since, unlike its predecessor, the 1724 Code Noir prohibited marriages between “white subjects” with blacks and envisaged the reenslavement of free people of color convicted of certain crimes, such characterizations of the Code may be less tenable for the version of the Code Noir promulgated in Louisiana than for its Caribbean counterpart. With few exceptions, however, Louisiana historians have been unwilling to view the Code Noir as an expression of racial ideology.7 To varying degrees, the Code’s provision ordering masters to have their slaves instructed and baptized in the Catholic religion has been the linchpin of this peculiar interpretation. By promoting enslaved Africans’ “right” to become Christians, the argument goes, the Code Noir recognized them as “members of the Christian community.” As such, slaves were provided with a degree of legal protection and spiritual entitlement that set French Louisiana apart from the supposedly harsher slave regimes of British North America.8 These interpretations of the Code Noir do raise important questions about the impact of Catholicism on French slave regimes and the transatlantic dynamics shaping metropolitan and colonial law, but their inclination to sever these issues from transatlantic constructions of race is misleading. Indeed, this essay suggests that the original issuance of the Code Noir should be understood within the context of intensifying transatlantic religious controversies over the legitimacy of racial slavery in the Catholic Atlantic.9 Moreover, if the metropolitan drafters of the Code Noir found some of their inspiration in race-​­blind Roman law, they also relied heavily on colonial jurisprudence positing a direct connection between African ancestry, perpetual servitude, and social inferiority.10 When the monarchy decided to issue a new version of the Code Noir for the emerging slave colony of Louisiana, it again turned to colonial jurisprudence. From 1685 to 1724, Caribbean officials had become increasingly anxious about the preservation of the colonial racial order. The perceived threat of a growing population of free people of color led Caribbean courts to issue local rulings that curtailed masters’ ability to grant manumissions, imposed new restrictions on the “privileges and immunities” theoretically bestowed upon free people of color by the 1685 Code, and denied titles of nobility to colonists married to women of African ancestry. The metropolitan drafters of the Louisiana Code Noir integrated this piecemeal jurisprudence into the new law, even taking the unprecedented step of banning interracial marriages altogether. The 1724 Code Noir thus constituted the most racially exclusive colonial law of the French Empire.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 23

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

24

Chapter 1

Evangelization and Enslavement in the French and Catholic Atlantics The importation of enslaved Africans into the new French West Indian colonies starting at the beginning of the seventeenth century coincided with the emergence of metropolitan and transatlantic discourses that challenged the legitimacy of the slave trade and colonial slavery. By questioning the compatibility of the evangelization and enslavement of African populations, metropolitan jurists and Catholic missionaries operating within and beyond the French Atlantic sphere spurred seventeenth-​­century French colonial secular and religious authorities to justify slavery on religious and racial grounds and eventually led the monarchy itself to settle the issue through the promulgation of a general slave code. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, French slavers were mostly individual merchants, sometimes organized in joint stock companies, engaged in isolated and private commercial ventures operating independently from the international and commercial interests of the French state.11 Subsequently, the desire to bolster France’s international standing through the development of an Atlantic colonial empire prompted the royal government to foster the development of French slave trading ventures. In the 1630s, Louis XIII issued letters patent to Norman, Breton, and Parisian joint stock companies trading along the west coast of Africa.12 Most of the slaves bought by the French slave trading companies of the early seventeenth century were destined for the newly founded French colonies of the Caribbean. Shortly after a Norman sailor named Belain d’Esnambuc established a settlement on the small island of Saint-​­Christophe (now St. Kitts) in 1625, he traveled back to France and obtained a royal charter creating the Compagnie de Saint-​­Christophe et îles adjacentes.13 By 1635, one observer noted, “French and Dutch ships” had brought so many “esclaves mores,” bought in “Guinée” or “taken from the Spaniards along the coasts of Brazil,” that the Compagnie resolved to establish new colonies in the neighboring islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Dominica.14 Twenty years later, the black slave population of the French islands reached 10,000.15 The importation and use of African slaves in territories under French authority represented a significant departure from sixteenth-​­and early ­seventeenth-​­century French legal and philosophical principles. According to some of the most prominent French thinkers of the period, human bondage

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 24

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 25

was both a legal and moral aberration. In 1576, for instance, leading French political theorist Jean Bodin expressed his strong disapproval of all forms of slavery past and present, by drawing upon philosophy, history, and French jurisprudence. “Although there is some remembrance of old servitude [in France],” he claimed, “yet it is not lawful there to make any slave, or to buy any of others: Insomuch that the slaves of strangers so soon as they set their foot within France become frank & free.” According to Bodin, France’s free soil principle came from an “old decree of the court of Paris [which] determined against an Ambassador of Spain, who had brought a slave with him into France.” This principle, he continued, had recently been upheld in a case presented to the Parlement of Toulouse in which a Genoa merchant reluctantly agreed to free the slave he had brought with him from Spain.16 Although the ethnicity of the slaves thus freed was not specified, Bodin indicated that he disapproved of the enslavement of Africans in the Iberian Atlantic world. Apparently unaware of the nascent Norman slave trade or of the presence of African slaves in various parts of southern France, Bodin deplored the fact that both Portuguese and Spaniards, “having brought the Negroes into the Christian religion, keep them nevertheless and all their posterities for slaves.”17 The qualifier Bodin added to his explicit opposition to the enslavement of Africans by Spaniards and Portuguese is noteworthy, for it indicated that it was not so much the enslavement of Africans Bodin found objectionable but that of Christians.18 Indeed, the incompatibility of Christianity and slave status stood at the core of French legal discourse about France’s free soil principle during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.19 In his compilation of French customary laws and jurisprudence, for instance, Antoine Loisel, one of the most prominent French legal scholars at the turn of the seventeenth century, declared in 1607 that “all persons are free in this Kingdom, and as soon as a slave reaches its borders [marches] and is baptized, he is manumitted.”20 The opposition to the enslavement of Christianized populations expressed by Bodin and Loisel was far from an exclusively French concern. Since the early sixteenth century, Catholic theologians and missionaries on both sides of the Iberian Atlantic had been debating the compatibility of evangelization and enslavement. And although such debates often concerned the enslavement of indigenous populations, the means through which Africans were enslaved could also become a recurring source of controversy.21 Starting in the 1640s, Catholic missionaries in the Christianized kingdom of Kongo repeatedly denounced the negative impacts of the European enslavement of

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 25

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

26

Chapter 1

African populations on their evangelizing efforts.22 In 1645, and again in 1652, the Prefects of the Capuchin missions virulently condemned the practices of European slave traders at the port of Mpinda who customarily embarked baptized Africans as slaves, thus causing the dramatic diminution of the Christianized population of Kongo and impeding the progress of missions as the local population lived in constant “fear of being enslaved by the whites.”23 In 1660, the Holy See’s central agency in charge of promoting and coordinating all missionary activities, the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, organized a special congress to examine the Capuchins’ grievances and agreed to interfere.24 As a result of its deliberations, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, Propaganda’s secretary general, issued two letters. The first urged “The People of Congo” to refuse to sell their children as slaves, and the second ordered the Capuchin missionaries of Kongo to preach against the enslavement and deportation of baptized Africans.25 While Propaganda cautiously limited its denunciation of the enslavement of Christianized Africans to Kongo and seemed reluctant to challenge the transatlantic slave trade and colonial slavery directly, some Capuchin missionaries were not so guarded. As early as the 1640s, the Capuchins based in Saint Christophe had been echoing the concerns of their colleagues in the midst of the emerging French Caribbean slave system, preaching that baptism conferred freedom to the Africans who had been forcibly transported to the French colonies. “It is an unworthy thing,” they claimed, “to use one’s Christian brother as a slave.”26 The response of French colonial authorities was swift. In 1646, Commandeur Blondel de Longvilliers de Poincy issued an ordinance to confirm that the Christian “Negroes” and their descendants were to be maintained in perpetual bondage. Poincy also expelled the Capuchins from Saint-​­Christophe, therefore leaving the evangelization of slaves to more compliant religious orders.27 Indeed, to argue that the Dominican and Jesuit missionaries who served in the French islands did not share the qualms of their Capuchin colleagues would be an understatement. While the latter had insisted that conversion to Christianity should procure Africans with the double benefit of eternal salvation and temporal freedom, the former saw enslavement as a precondition to Africans’ salvation.28 In his 1655 Relation of the Jesuit missions in the French islands, Father Pierre Pelleprat developed the same argument, reporting a conversation he had had with “a young Negro” in Martinique in which the latter had allegedly explained that he “preferred his captivity to the liberty he had enjoyed in his country, because if he had remained free he would be

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 26

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 27

a slave of Satan, while as a slave of the French he had become one of God’s children.”29 Not all metropolitan readers seem to have been convinced by this argument. Fifteen years after the publication of Pelleprat’s relation, Dominican missionary Jean-​­Baptiste Du Tertre still felt the need to “justify” French colonists in their use of Africans slaves, and to defend them against the “injurious reproaches” of “several persons displaying more piety than knowledge” who maintained that the “laws of France” precluded the treatment of Christians as slaves.30 The enslavement of Africans, he insisted, had its origin in Africa itself where “despotic” African lords willingly sold “men, women, and children of all ages” to European traders. While Du Tertre expressed some empathy toward the “poor wretches” thus sold, he nevertheless specified that most of them were “criminals,” and that the enslavement and deportation of “innocents” by “unjust” European merchants, a charge that had been repeatedly formulated by a number of Capuchin missionaries, only occurred occasionally. Reprising a familiar theme, Du Tertre asserted that the establishment of slavery in the French islands had led to the conversion of “fifteen thousand slaves, who would never have had any knowledge of God in their country, and who would have died miserably in the impieties and errors of Mahomet, which infect those brought from Africa.” Echoing Pelleprat and others, Du Tertre adamantly argued that Africans’ servitude in the French islands “is the principle of their happiness, and that their disgrace is the cause of their salvation, because the faith they embrace in the islands prepares them to know God, and to love and serve him.”31 As Du Tertre concocted his religious apology of colonial slavery, the French monarchy eagerly encouraged its expansion. From 1664 to the early 1680s, three slave trading companies were established under the direct patronage of the Crown.32 From 1670 to 1672 alone, 9,000 African slaves were transported aboard French ships to the French Caribbean.33 In Martinique alone, the number of African slaves rose from 2,642 to 10,656 between 1660 and 1684 while the French colonial population only doubled during the same period, from 2,489 to 4,857.34 The dramatic increase of the slave population also coincided with an important reorganization of the colonial infrastructure of the French Antilles. In 1664, the Crown put an end to the rule of the seigneurs-​­propriétaires and placed all the French islands under the administrative responsibility of the newly created Compagnie des Indes Occidentales. This important administrative shift along with the exponential growth of the African population prompted the first efforts to standardize colonial practices

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 27

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

28

Chapter 1

regarding slavery. The 1664 Règlement of Governor General de Tracy on the “Police des Isles” was the first such effort. It especially emphasized the obligation of masters to baptize their slaves, and it included a few provisions concerning their discipline, while it explicitly specified that “Negroes” were “movable property” and as such could be seized for debt. De Tracy’s Règlement thus implicitly confirmed that conversion to Catholicism in a French colony was an essential part of the enslavement process and certainly not a pre-​­condition to freedom.35 The issue, however, was far from settled. When, in the early 1680s, the French royal government began its consultations with Caribbean officials to devise a general code “touching the conservation, policing, and judging of slaves,” a small but outspoken network of Capuchin missionaries who had worked in French and Iberian colonies were issuing virulent attacks against the legitimacy of the slave trade and colonial slavery in the hope of obtaining 36 a papal decision on the matter. Indeed, by the time French authorities were putting the final touches to the Code Noir, the papacy was contemplating a radical censure of slavery in the Catholic Atlantic, including the prohibition “to sell baptized and instructed slaves.”

Moirans, Jaca, Da Silva, and the Papal Censure of Slavery, 1677–1686 The drive for a papal censure of slavery was spearheaded by three extraordinary figures: a pair of French and Spanish Capuchin missionaries, Epiphane de Moirans and Francisco Jose de Jaca, and the mulatto procurator of one of the largest black confraternities of the Iberian Atlantic, Lourenco da Silva. Since they have received so little attention in the current historiography of Atlantic slavery, their stories and their ideas are worth recounting in some detail.37 Epiphane de Moirans,38 a Capuchin from the Province of Burgundy, left France in 1677 and first joined the Capuchin mission in Martinique. There, he soon drew the ire of French authorities after refusing to establish a mission on the island of Grenada and attacking the governor himself for having enslaved a group of free blacks from Saint Vincent. After becoming a persona non grata in the French colonies, Moirans proceeded to New Andalusia, where his relentless denunciation of Spanish colonists’ mistreatment of Indians and enslaved Africans led him to be charged with spying and sedition. He was

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 28

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 29

arrested and deported to Cuba, where he was to await deportation to Spain. It is at Havana’s Capuchin convent that Moirans met and befriended Francisco Jose de Jaca, a fellow capuchin from Aragon who had previously worked in the Indian missions of western Venezuela. Bound by their strong opposition to the cruel exploitation of enslaved populations, the two Capuchins soon became a thorn in the side of Cuba’s secular and ecclesiastical authorities. At the time Moirans arrived in Havana, Jaca had already come under official censure for delivering a sermon in which he had proclaimed the enslavement of Africans contrary to divine and natural law. Pressured by his superiors to cease his preaching, Jaca left Havana instead to find refuge at the hermitage of Santo Cristo del Potosi, where Moirans joined him to organize an itinerant mission on local plantations. Undeterred by repeated calls to cease their activities at once and report to Havana, the two missionaries spent several months not only preaching that the enslavement of Africans was illegitimate but refusing absolution to masters who would not promise to free their slaves. In early 1682, the fathers were finally arrested and confined to Havana’s Capuchin convent. Accused of being French spies bent on destroying the socio-​­racial order of the Spanish colonies, Moirans and Jaca mounted an aggressive defense. Arguing that they owed sole allegiance to the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide, they refused to appear before colonial judges and spent their confinement drafting lengthy treatises against the transatlantic slave trade and colonial slavery. The breadth, depth, and conclusions of these works are truly stunning. Combining accounts of their own encounters with colonial slavery and the testimonies of missionaries working in West Africa, Jaca and Moirans proposed an exhaustive examination and refutation of the theological and legal justifications of Africans’ enslavement. If the fathers recognized the theoretical legitimacy of slavery for captives taken in “just wars,” they insisted that no such wars were ever waged in Africa. Rather, the enslavement of Africans and their forced transportation to the Americas proceeded from the “cupidity” of European traders, who never inquired about the origins of their cargo. To those who maintained that colonial slavery ensured the salvation of Africans, they retorted that Catholic slave traders and colonial slave masters cared little about the religious instructions of slaves.39 Forced to work on Holy Days and Sundays and unable to marry according to the rites of the church, slaves were prevented from “leading a Christian life,” submitted instead to “horrible torments and uninterrupted tortures” at the hands of their captors.40 The missionaries did not mince their words in condemning colonial

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 29

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

30

Chapter 1

slavery. Moirans was particularly virulent. By treating and punishing their slaves like “brute beasts” and depriving them of almost all material sustenance, he insisted, masters and those who “by their words and actions” supported them were nothing less than “insane, made mad by their cupidity,” blind to “the light of charity, justice, and reason,” and without any “moral conscience.” To avoid the wrath of God against “all Christians” for such violations against “natural and divine law,” the fathers not only called for the immediate prohibition of the slave trade but also demanded that all masters free their slaves and pay them “reparations” for the work they had done. Finally, “all the Negroes of the Indies” were enjoined to leave the plantations and “go to places where they can take care of their eternal salvation.”41 Deported to Spain in October 1682 to appear before the Council of the Indies, Moirans and Jaca continued to claim that, as apostolic missionaries, they were not subject to Spanish authorities’ jurisdiction and so demanded their transfer to Rome. The governance of colonial missionaries had long been a source of tensions between the Spanish royal government and Propaganda. Indeed, soon after the Council of the Indies ordered the incarceration of the fathers at the convent of Seville and banned them from ever returning to the colonies, Propaganda fide sent instructions to Cardinal Millini, the papal nuncio in Madrid, to interfere in their case. After difficult negotiations with the court of Spain, Millini eventually obtained their release and helped them get to Rome.42 When Moirans and Jaca finally arrived in the papal city in early 1685, they found a receptive audience, not least because of the recent efforts of an Afro-​­Brazilian layman named Lourenco da Silva to muster antislavery sentiments among papal officials. In 1684, Silva had already submitted a petition condemning the abuses of slavery to Propaganda. Claiming to be of the “royal blood of the Kings of Congo and Angola,” he had been appointed procurator-​­general of the congregations of the Blacks and Mulattos of Our Lady of the Rosary in 1682, entrusted with the establishment of similar institutions “throughout the whole of Christendom.” In his capacity as a leading representative of a large group of Christians of African ancestry in the Iberian Atlantic, Silva commended a certain amount of influence and respect in Spanish and Portuguese religious circles.43 Prior to his arrival in Rome, Silva had held consultations with “many Mulattos from various parts” in Lisbon. Although the specific nature of these consultations is unknown, they prompted Silva to draft a petition condemning the “diabolic abuse” of perpetual slavery. Offering vivid descriptions of the persecutions endured by “Christian

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 30

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 31

blacks,” Silva enjoined the pope to take action against “those poor wretches who are involved in the sale and purchase of these unhappy Christians” and call for the liberation of “all these Christians, and increase in numbers all the more those who otherwise are being completely annihilated.”44 At first glance, Silva seemed exclusively concerned with the fate of Christianized Africans. Yet by positing the incompatibility of baptism and perpetual servitude in a context where Catholic powers had the obligation to proselytize and convert those who came under their dominion, Silva was effectively calling for an end to slavery as it was practiced throughout the Catholic Atlantic. In March 1684, after hearing further testimonies that confirmed Silva’s descriptions of the cruelties inflicted to slaves, the cardinals of Propaganda sent two identical letters to the nuncios of Madrid and Lisbon denouncing slavery in no uncertain terms: New and urgent appeals on the part of the negroes of the Indies to his holiness, and by him remitted to this holy Congregation, have caused no little bitterness to his holiness and their eminences on seeing that there still continues in those parts such a detestable abuse as to sell human blood, sometimes even with fraud and violence. This involves a disgraceful offence against catholic liberty, condemning to perpetual slavery not only those who are bought and sold, but also the sons and daughters who are born to them, although they have been made Christians.45 Deploring the resulting loss of “innumerable souls,” Propaganda urged the nuncios to request Spanish and Portuguese authorities to issue orders throughout the Iberian Atlantic that would prohibit “such inhumanity as contrary to natural and civil law and much more to the gospel and sacred canons.”46 Spain and Portugal unsurprisingly turned a deaf ear to Rome’s demands. Yet Silva’s petition had been instrumental in mobilizing papal dignitaries against colonial slavery, and the arrival of Jaca and Moirans in Rome ensured that the matter would not rest. Once there, the Procurator-​­General of the Capuchins and close friend of Pope Innocent XI, Giambattista Carampelli da Sabbio, took the two fathers under his protection and advised them on the drafting of a memorandum that would be submitted to the meeting of Propaganda’s cardinals in the name of all the “Capuchin fathers, missionaries in America and in Africa.”47

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 31

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

32

Chapter 1

This memorandum, submitted to the meeting of March 12, 1685, constituted a radical plea against “the inhuman treatment” endured by enslaved Africans at the hands of slave traders and American colonists. Since the pleas of the nuncios had failed to compel Catholic powers to take action against the abuses of slavery, the Capuchins adopted a strategy that they thought would stand a better chance of spurring drastic reforms. The Capuchins’ memorandum, for instance, did not dispute the legitimacy of slavery per se but emphasized instead the obligation of anyone purchasing slaves to ascertain that they had indeed been “justly enslaved.” Although the Capuchins distinguished between “innocently enslaved men and women” and “justly enslaved ones,” they insisted that “Negroes,” whether or not they were justly or unjustly taken, should not be baptized without instructions and that, once they were “baptized and instructed,” they could not be sold. If some of Moirans and Jaca’s earlier arguments were slightly toned down, the document voiced the Capuchins’ continued opposition to the enslavement and sale of Christianized people of African ancestry. Moreover, unlike previous petitions on the matter, the memorandum contained a comprehensive list of abuses and a forceful request for their immediate prohibition “under pain of ecclesiastical censure.” In total, eleven “propositions” were submitted to the scrutiny of the cardinals. The first four condemned the enslavement, buying, and selling of “Negroes and other savages with force and by fraud” and denounced the failure of “the buyers of slaves to investigate whether the slaves offered for sale are justly or unjustly enslaved, even though they know many of them are enslaved unjustly.” Propositions 5 and 6 denounced masters who refused to free those slaves, and required both masters and traders to pay them reparations. The seventh proposition declared that “masters and buyers” could not be permitted, “on their own authority,” to endanger, wound, or kill their slaves. The last four directly concerned the connection between evangelization and slavery. They required that slaves be instructed before baptism and that once baptized “Negroes” could not be sold. Moreover, those who “were captured or enslaved after baptism, either justly or unjustly” could not be kept in bondage. Masters were also obligated “to prevent their slaves from living in concubinage.” Finally, Catholic slave owners were prohibited from buying “Negro slaves directly or indirectly from heretics, or to sell slaves from heretics.” Those who purchased such slaves had the obligation to free them, a tall order given the predominant role of British and Dutch slave traders in supplying Catholic colonies during this period.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 32

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 33

The cardinals examined the memorandum carefully. Taking heed of its dramatic implications, they decided to refer its eleven propositions to the approval of the Holy See, the highest tribunal of the Roman Curia with the sole authority to have a last say on theological or ethical issues.48 What impact these developments had on the drafting of the Code Noir can only be surmised. Diplomatic relations between Paris and Rome had come to a virtual halt in the 1670s and early 1680s because of long-​­standing tensions over ecclesiastical jurisdictions and revenues, as well as Louis XIV’s ambivalent attitudes toward Catholic defensive strategies against the Ottoman Empire.49 Yet French authorities were undoubtedly well aware of the kinds of objections Capuchins and others had made against slavery over the past few years. In the early 1680s, for instance, the Provincial of the Capuchins of Normandie, who supervised his order’s missions in Martinique, informed the Ministry of the Navy that he had received orders from Propaganda to deny absolution to those who “kidnap, sell, and buy Negroes and other peoples from Africa not taken in war,” and thus wondered if “one could, in conscience, sell, buy, and sometimes beat the Negroes who are instructed and baptized.”50 To such ethical qualms the Code Noir provided clear answers. Settling the issue of the compatibility of evangelization and enslavement, the Code Noir expressly ordered masters to instruct and baptized their slaves in the Catholic faith, forbade the public exercise of any other religion, and required that all those in charge of the direct supervision of slaves be Catholics. Masters were also prohibited to work their slaves on Sundays and Holy Days. And while the ill treatment of slaves had been a recurring theme in Capuchins indictment of slavery, the Code Noir instructed masters to provide their slaves with basic necessities and treat them as “bons pères de famille.” As such, masters could beat them, but the torturing, mutilating, and killing of enslaved Africans remained in the exclusive domain of royal judges. To be sure, the promulgation of the Code Noir proceeded in large part from the desire of the absolutist state to assert its legal prerogatives over distant colonies and confirm Louis XIV’s championing of Catholic hegemony in all French territories. The Code Noir not only followed a series of metropolitan ordinances initiated in the 1660s and intended to enlarge the powers of the state, from the adjudication of civil and criminal justice to the regulation of domestic and international commerce; it also coincided with the acceleration of royal intervention in the suppression of Huguenots, culminating in the official end of “religious toleration” with the revocation of the Edict of

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 33

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

34

Chapter 1

Nantes in October 1685.51 Thus, proclaiming the legitimacy of colonial slavery through a royal edict affirmed the Crown’s willingness to affirm its authority over both temporal and religious matters. In view of the sour turn that relations between Rome and the French Episcopate had recently taken, such a proclamation also ensured that any papal pronouncement on the legitimacy of slavery could have no effects in the French colonies. Indeed, in 1681–1682, an extraordinary assembly of the French clergy virulently denounced the pope’s infringements on “the liberties of the Gallican Church” and declared that “the laws and customs” of the kingdom of France superseded papal authority.52 Thus, when on March 20, 1686, just one year after France had issued the Code Noir, the Holy Office finally declared its complete support of all the propositions the Capuchins had originally submitted to Propaganda, French missionaries in the islands could conveniently ignore that decision.53 To be sure, the Holy Office’s radical attack on the abuses of slavery had little chance of prompting an overhaul of the slave trade and slavery anywhere in the Catholic Atlantic. While France disregarded it, Portuguese and Spanish ecclesiastical and secular authorities, embroiled in their own jurisdictional disputes with Rome, made clear that they had no intention of allowing the papacy’s ethical concerns to undermine what had long constituted their most important source of wealth and power.54 As Richard Gray puts it: “The Holy Office could define questions of ethics, but the enforcement of these decisions depended on clerics and laity whose immediate ecclesiastical, and ultimate political, loyalties lay elsewhere.”55

Racial Slavery, Racial Order, and the Elaboration of the 1685 and 1724 Codes Noirs If the Code Noir’s ethical concerns for the plight of enslaved Africans suggest its inscription in past and contemporary religious debates over the legitimacy of racial slavery, it also encapsulated decades of colonial jurisprudence designed to establish an orderly plantation regime. Prior to the adoption of the Code Noir, the elaboration of a legal and customary framework for the efficient exploitation of African slaves led to the formulation of increasingly explicit distinctions between the European and African populations of the islands. Originally, however, some important aspects of colonial slavery, such as the transmissibility of slave status, or the status of the offspring of a free

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 34

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 35

person and a slave, remained legally ill defined. To be sure, a number of early commentators clearly stated that the Africans imported to the French islands were sold into perpetual servitude.56 There is some evidence, moreover, that early French colonial authorities applied the Roman principle of partus sequitur ventrem to African slaves and thus considered the children of slave women to be slaves as well. The status of those born of French-​­African sexual encounters, however, presented colonial officials with a legal conundrum.57 Concerns over French-​­African concubinage were not strictly moral but also stemmed from those regarding the status of the children born of these relations. Indeed, the presence of children who were neither black nor white and who could claim both free and slave ancestry posed a direct threat to the binary hierarchy that had customarily prevailed in the French islands. Addressing the issue of the “mixed” population of the islands led French colonial authorities to articulate an increasingly detailed construction of difference. Early French discourses about the French-​­African offspring of the islands did not develop in a vacuum but were simultaneously inspired by the Iberian colonial precedent and metropolitan ideas of social order. The French directly borrowed from the Spanish to designate these children and called them mulastres, a Gallicized version of the Spanish mulato. Father Du Tertre provided the first definition of the term in 1667. “The children born of these illegitimate unions,” he explained, “are commonly called Mulastres everywhere in America, by the Spaniards as well as by the Portuguese (among whom this crime is as ordinary as it is rare in our Antilles).” The term mulastre, Du Tertre continued, was an allusion to a mule “because these poor children are engendered from a white man and a black woman, as the Mule is produced from two animals of different species.” Like mules, he insisted, the mulastres inherit “something of their father and of their mother [because] they are not all white like the French, nor all black like the Nègres, but they have a leaden color which comes from both of them.”58 The necessity to define and categorize French-​­African offspring at a time when their number remained rather insignificant revealed a particular inclination for categorizations based on ancestry and skin color. Accordingly, the first surviving census of Martinique, dated 1664, was divided into three categories of population and reported 2,704 “nègres,” 2,681 “blancs,” and only 16 “mulastres.”59 Until the adoption of the Code Noir 1685, which explicitly stipulated that all the children of female slaves would inherit the status of their mothers, there was little consensus about the exact status of mulastres in the French islands. In 1673, for instance, a memoir written by M. de Ruau Palu, an official

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 35

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

36

Chapter 1

of the Compagnie des Indes, revealed starkly different approaches. Some colonists, Ruau explained, insisted that the children born of free men “must rather follow the condition of their father than that of their mother.” Others, he continued, argued that “Roman law, which orders Partus Sequitur Ventrem,” should prevail. Siding with the latter view, Ruau agreed that to free such children only rewarded “a Crime and a sin,” and deprived masters of the slave children they should obtain from the legitimate marriages of their slaves. Ruau also implied that rather than being abused by their masters, slave women willingly sought white sexual partners to protect their offspring from enslavement. Freeing mulatto children, he insisted, encouraged the “prostitution” of slave women. “I believe,” he concluded, “that in order to prevent the disorders of the Négresses there is more reason to declare Mulattoes slaves for ever than to set them free.”60 In 1680, the Superior Council of Guadeloupe settled the issue for that island and ordered that the children born of a slave woman would follow the status of their mother even if their father were “white.” Like Ruau seven years earlier, the Council implicitly exonerated white male colonists from any wrongdoing and blamed slave women who “despising their own kind . . . ​ abandon themselves readily to the artisans and servants of the house, even to sons of the [slaveholder’s] family, in the hope of conceiving mulattoes and not slaves.”61 In Martinique during the same period, however, whites convicted of fathering a mulatto child were sentenced to a fine of 1,000 livres payable to the church. By the time such mulatto children reached their majority, they were declared free.62 These disparities were representative of the variety of opinions that existed among colonial leaders and policy makers over the issues of French-​ ­African sexual encounters and the status of their offspring. When in 1681, Governor de Blénac and Intendant Patoulet submitted an advisory memorandum that would serve as the basis for the drafting of the Code Noir, the two highest officials of the French islands clashed over the new Guadeloupean Edict. Governor de Blénac explained that he would prefer all mulattoes to be freed as they “easily adopt our manners, our language, and our religion, and they are accustomed to the climate.” The governor also favored intermarriage between French settlers and free mulatto women as a means of increasing the islands’ population. The Spanish and the Portuguese, he insisted, “have only established their islands through this means.” Yet he approvingly explained that they made “blood distinctions” according to the degree of African ancestry. Intendant Patoulet strongly objected to de Blénac’s position on

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 36

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 37

French-​­mulatto intermarriages, which he saw as the source of “scandal and disorders.” “It is true,” he replied, “that the debauchery of the Spaniards and the Portuguese has brought them to alliances with such an impure blood, but I can also say that their colonies are abodes of abominations, vice, and filth.”63 Despite their strong disagreements over the status of mulattoes, both De Blénac and Patoulet used language that revealed an entrenched belief in inherent and transmissible differences between French and African. If De Blénac’s position expressed a genuine belief in the possibility of cultural transformation for those descending from Africans, his remarks concerned the offspring of French and mulatto rather than black women. His approval of Spanish “blood distinctions” between “mulattoes” according to their degree of African ancestry, moreover, confirmed that ideas of purity and impurity of blood informed his position as much as Patoulet’s. Metropolitan authorities also expressed increasing concerns about the possibility of a destabilizing increase in the mulatto population. In 1683, Louis XIV wrote to Intendant Bégon that he had been “informed of the extraordinary prostitution that reigns among négresses.” Consequently, the king ordered that “this disorder be repressed . . . ​and that Negroes and Négresses be made to marry between themselves as much as possible.”64 This last injunction suggested that metropolitan authorities not only frowned upon the moral disorders stemming from interracial concubinage but on the possibility of intermarriage as well. Growing opposition to French-​­ African sexual encounters revealed French colonial authorities’ willingness to avoid the “confusion” resulting from the birth of mulattoes, and to establish a clear socio-​­racial order in the colonies. In 1684, Governor Le Chevalier and Intendant Bégon signed a general ordinance applicable to all the French islands aimed at settling the issue of mulattoes’ status once and for all. This ordinance stipulated that “the masters who will have children with their Négresses will lose both the Négresses and the children.” It specified that both mother and child would be sold, a third of the proceeds of the sale going “to the poor.” Similarly, “the commandeurs [overseers] who will have children with négresses will see a third of their wages confiscated to the profit of the poor.”65 A few months later, however, the proclamation of the Code Noir slightly mitigated the stance of the 1684 colonial ordinance. In keeping with colonial legislation, Article 9 of the 1685 Edict declared that “free men” who fathered children with their slave concubines would be heavily fined, and that both the slave and her children would “be confiscated

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 37

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

38

Chapter 1

to the profit of the hospital, without ever being eligible for manumission.” Yet it was added that “the present article will not be enforced when the free man was not married to another person during his concubinage with his slave.” In that case, “he will marry his said slave in the forms observed by the Church, and his slave will thereby be freed, and [the children will be declared] free and legitimate.”66 Arguably, this rather striking modification of colonial jurisprudence constituted yet another indication of metropolitan authorities’ desire to preempt the criticisms of colonial slavery that were currently being examined in Rome. Revealingly, however, this last provision was never enforced and no master was ever forced to marry and free his slave concubine. While slave concubines and their mulatto children were occasionally confiscated, mostly under pressure from ecclesiastical authorities, colonial courts demonstrated little zeal in punishing masters. Moreover, colonial judges often shielded promiscuous masters by arguing that the slave mothers of mulatto children were either falsely accusing them or that there was no sufficient proof that the master was the actual father.67 To be sure, some articles of the Code Noir seemed to indicate that, from a legal standpoint, African descent did not automatically imply relegation to an inferior status. Article 57, for instance, declared that manumitted slaves “enjoy[ed] the same rights as the natural subjects of our Kingdom.” Article 59 similarly granted freed slaves “the same rights, privileges, and immunities enjoyed by persons who were born free.” The latter article insisted that the king wished “that the merit of an acquired liberty produce in them . . . ​the same effects that the happiness of a natural liberty causes to our other subjects.”68 Yet an examination of seventeenth-​­century colonial jurisprudence, as well as of official and missionary discourses regarding Africans and their descendants, clearly indicates that discrimination between whites and “nègres” or “mulastres” was very much part of the French colonial ethos by 1685. Indeed, the Code Noir itself imposed some significant limitations upon the “rights, immunities, and privileges” of free blacks. Between the two articles granting these rights to freed slaves, another provision specified that manumitted slaves were to “demonstrate a singular respect for their former masters, their widows and children.” In case of non-​­compliance, freed slaves were to be punished “more severely” than if they insulted another person.69 Article 33 lumped together slaves and free blacks and stated that both were to be severely punished, “even to die” if they were caught stealing. Finally, free blacks who gave refuge to runaway slaves had to pay a fine amounting to thirty times

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 38

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 39

what “other free persons” paid in similar cases.70 Thus, despite its seeming ambivalence, the 1685 Code Noir encapsulated decades of French colonial customs and legislation relegating Africans and their descendants to an inferior status. By the turn of the eighteenth century, however, Caribbean colonial courts started to express a degree of dissatisfaction with the relative “liberality” of certain provisions of the Code Noir. Indeed, by the time the French metropolitan government initiated the drafting a general code to regulate the growing enslaved population of the colony it had recently established in Louisiana, Caribbean jurisprudence had amended the 1685 text in significant ways. The metropolitan drafters of the Louisiana Code Noir took heed of these changes and integrated them into the new law, thereby producing the most racially exclusive slave code of the French Atlantic. The Louisiana Code Noir significantly differed from its predecessor in three areas: manumission, the status of free blacks, and sexual encounters between whites and blacks. In each case, the Louisiana Code echoed jurisprudence enacted in the French islands since 1685. While the 1685 Code Noir had allowed “masters to free their slaves . . . ​without being obligated to give a reason for their manumission,” the new Code required that masters obtain the authorization of the Superior Council to do so. Permissions to free slaves were to be granted only when “the motives presented by the masters will appear to be legitimate.” Manumissions granted without this permission were declared “null and void.” Slaves freed without permission thus remained slaves and were to be confiscated “to the profit of the Company of the Indies.”71 The attempt to limit manumissions in Louisiana was directly inspired by similar measures adopted in the French Antilles at the beginning of the eighteenth century. There, colonial officials, alarmed by the slow but steady growth of a free population of African descent, decided to issue new regulations. In 1711, the governor and the intendant of the Îles du Vent (Martinique and Guadeloupe) ordered that manumissions would now have to be authorized by both of them.72 Two years later, a royal ordinance confirmed that the new regulation superseded the manumission disposition of the 1685 Code Noir and indicated that non-​­compliance would lead to the confiscation of the slaves involved.73 Both the Louisiana and Caribbean codes granted freed slaves (affranchis) “the same rights, privileges, and immunities which are enjoyed by persons born free.” Both codes nevertheless ordered freed slaves “to convey a singular respect to their former masters, their widows and children,” specifying that

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 39

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

40

Chapter 1

offenders would “be punished more seriously than if [they insulted] another person.” By 1724, Caribbean legislation and jurisprudence had further curtailed the extent of the privileges theoretically bestowed upon free blacks by the 1685 Code Noir. In 1705, for instance, a royal ordinance ordered that freed blacks convicted of having helped runaway slaves, who under the terms of the 1685 Code Noir were to be sentenced to pay a heavy fine, could now be reenslaved.74 This new measure was included in the Louisiana Code. In the 1724 version, both manumitted or free blacks (“les affranchis ou nègres libres”) who gave refuge to runaway slaves were not only to pay a fine but could also be “reduced to the condition of slaves, and be sold” if they were unable to pay.75 By specifying that free blacks, that is, blacks who were born free, could be enslaved, the Louisiana Code signaled that African ancestry carried a stigma that even free birth could not erase. Similarly, the 1724 Code declared both manumitted slaves and free blacks “incapable of receiving any donations from whites” by acts of inter vivos, testamentary dispositions, or otherwise.76 In 1685, the authors of the Caribbean Code Noir had taken a quite different stance on the matter. According to Article 56 of the 1685 Code, slaves could be named “universal heirs by their masters,” thereby acquiring their freedom in addition to receiving their inheritance.77 As early as 1703, however, a decision of the Superior Council of Martinique signaled that colonial authorities clearly opposed the prospect of people of African descent inheriting from whites. In September of that year, Governor Machault wrote Pontchartrain that the Martinique Council had refused to register the titles of nobility of two colonists “because they had married mulatto women”; this measure would prevent their “mixed” offspring from inheriting their titles.78 Upon receiving the news, Pontchartrain congratulated Machault and confirmed that “his majesty does not wish that the titles of nobility of [these colonists] be received because they have married mulâtresses.” Pontchartrain also instructed Machault to make sure that no colonial court would agree to examine their claims in the future.79 These official decisions to deny free people of color the right to inherit titles of nobility from their white fathers not only reversed Article 56 of the 1685 Code Noir but also signaled that African ancestry was deemed incompatible with the foremost quality of a member of the French nobility: the “purity” of his “blood.”80 The 1703 decision thus not only revealed the extent to which “blood” had become central to the articulation of social hierarchies in the French Caribbean but also indicated French colonial officials’

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 40

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 41

increasing concern for what they termed “le mélange des sangs,” or “mixing of bloods.”81 While the 1685 Code Noir had envisaged the possibility of marriages between single white masters and their slave concubines, the prospect of sexual encounters between whites and blacks had become abhorrent to French colonial authorities. In 1722, for instance, the Superior of the Jacobin missions in Saint-​­Domingue echoed many secular officials’ sentiments when he emphatically denounced the “unfortunate commerce of impurity” between white men and black women. The “criminal coupling of men and women of different species,” he explained, posed the greatest threat to the colonies as they produced “a fruit which is one of Nature’s monsters . . . ​a third species of men called mulattoes, who are neither whites nor Negroes but retain all that is the worst in the ones and the others.” If nothing was done to put a stop to such liaisons, he insisted, this “third species of men” would soon be more numerous than the whites and could “in the course of time attempt to overthrow the colonies, and be the cause of their total ruin.”82 Official concerns about the mélange des sangs in the Caribbean found an immediate echo in the Louisiana Code Noir. In a dramatic departure from the Caribbean Code, Article 6 of the Louisiana Code forbade the king’s “white subjects of either sex to contract marriage with blacks under penalty of arbitrary punishment and fine; and [forbade] all curates, priests, secular or regular missionaries, and even navy chaplains to marry them.” In order to discourage white masters from freeing their concubines and slave families, as Caribbean officials often complained that they were prone to do, this article also stipulated that any children born from such unions would be confiscated to the profit of the hospital and barred from any possibility of enfranchisement in the future.83 It is noteworthy that the Catholic missionaries of Louisiana never objected to these dispositions. To be sure, missionaries were not always compliant with the racial underpinnings of colonial law. Nor did they necessarily subscribe to their secular contemporaries’ vision of the racial order.84 When Louisiana authorities repeatedly attempted to prohibit French-​­Indian marriages, for instance, some Jesuits refused to comply and adamantly defended their prerogative over the sacrament of marriage.85 Yet no such protests were ever voiced against the strictures of the Code Noir. Indeed, in Louisiana at least, the religious challenges over the legitimacy of racial slavery that had initially prompted the promulgation of the first Code Noir were long forgotten.86 For Louisiana religious authorities, the preservation of “the discipline of the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 41

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

42

Chapter 1

Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church” in a slave colony demanded “definite rules” positing inherent differences between white and black Catholics.

A Comparative Epilogue Ultimately, the inscription of the Code Noir in its proper transatlantic religious and judicial contexts raises a number of questions about the specificities and entanglements of legal prescriptions of race in Louisiana and the French Atlantic. While this essay has focused on the theological and legal debates crisscrossing Catholic and French Atlantic spheres, the simultaneity of religious and legal tensions regarding who could or could not be enslaved in Protestant Atlantic settings should elicit further comparisons that will hopefully complicate and nuance our understandings of the similarities and differences within and between Catholic and Protestant racial regimes. Historians of Dutch and British Atlantic colonies have showed how seventeenth-​­and early eighteenth-​­century missionaries, religious leaders, jurists, and legislators also grappled with the issue of the compatibility between conversion and enslavement.87 We may then wonder if and how ideas about the legitimacy of slavery and socio-​­racial orders circulated throughout the “Christian Atlantic.”88 Concurrently, investigating these issues across religious (as well as national and linguistic) lines might lead us to overcome resilient and often misguided essentializations alleging inherent differences between Catholic and Protestant prescriptions of race. If the existence of transatlantic and trans-​­imperial missionary networks as well as the centralizing role of Propaganda Fide associated with the concept of a distinct Catholic Atlantic shaped the specific dynamics of the emergence of racial slavery in French American colonies, the inclusion of enslaved Africans within the French Catholic community was initially intended to reinforce rather than undermine racial hierarchies—a notion also embraced by a number of Protestant church leaders and legislators. In 1727, for instance, the Bishop of London’s letters “To the Masters and Mistresses of Families in the English Plantations Abroad” would have sounded quite familiar to the drafters of the Code Noir: The Freedom which Christianity gives, is a Freedom from the Bondage of Sin and Satan, and from the Dominion of Men’s Lusts and Passions and inordinate Desires; but as to their outward Condition, whatever that was before, whether bond or free, their being baptized,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 42

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



“To Establish One Law” 43

and becoming Christians, makes no manner of Change in it. . . . ​And so far is Christianity from discharging Men from the Duties of the Station and Condition in which it found them, that it lays them under stronger Obligations to perform those Duties with the greatest Diligence and Fidelity.89

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 43

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Chapter 2

Making a Career out of the Atlantic: Louisiana’s Plume Alexandre Dubé

“If I have proposed augmentations of expenditures, it is because I have found them indispensable.”1 Thirty-​­two years of service for the king had made Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel de Villebois de la Rouvillière bold. The peremptory conclusion to his otherwise impassioned plea for increased credits for Louisiana would seem to brook no opposition, even if addressed to his ultimate superior, the minister of the navy. Thirty-​­two years of service. Seventeen in Canada. The rest spent in various ports of France. Michel had brought his experiences to bear on the quality of his budgetary analysis of the colony he had under his care. He was, like so many, torn between what he felt were unreasonable demands of economy from Versailles, the necessities of local policies, and his own plans for the Mississippi colony. The story of Michel’s dilemma and of his frustrations is a familiar one. Bureaucracies have usually been considered as the logistical, material avatar of the state and of its projects. As variations on the bureaucratic theme, imperial administrations have likewise been especially attractive terrains to explore the “tensions of empire.”2 Colonial agents were seen as the cogs that made the imperial wheels either turn smoothly or grind opposition, but these were cogs deemed susceptible—​­both by recent historians and policy makers of the past—​­to rust in the colonial climate, thereby introducing grains in the ideally smooth running of the machine. Distant administrators drew up plans to be implemented across the oceans; small clerks were confronted to, or corrupted by, the realities of local terrain. Imperial orthodoxies had to be mitigated by

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 44

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 45

countless circumstances, arising from the specifics of colonial territories and from the quirks, passions, desires, and dislikes of the agents.3 Such features of imperial administration would suggest that early modern empires could be safely relegated to the wrong side of the threshold of modernity, deprived as they were of the rational, centralized administration thought to be one of the foundations of the modern state. The early modern French Empire is no exception, yet it has offered some measure of paradoxical resistance to this characterization. This owes in part to the strength of Tocquevillian interpretation within French historiography, according to which the absolutist monarchy had already realized the centralization of power that would eventually benefit the modern, revolutionary institutions. The temptation therefore remained to make a unified, central, efficient empire a similarly persistent reality of French colonialism. The existence of the Ministry of the Navy seemed to provide remarkable empirical verification for a program of centralization unequaled in other colonial worlds. Unlike the Spanish or British overseas territories, French colonies had ended up within the folds of a single administrative body: the Ministry of the Navy. It is from the navy that colonial administrators were (usually) drawn. It is to the ministry alone that colonial governors and intendants, as well as their underlings, military officers, captains of port, warehouse keepers, and scriveners had to report. It is even to the ministry that “notable inhabitants” who sat on the colonial superior councils had to answer.4 Housed in Versailles, the navy was therefore in a unique position to learn and to decide matters regarding all colonies; information flew from everywhere across the oceans, as it did from every part of the kingdom, toward a single point, the king—​­or, more appropriately, his minister. Neither composed of decentralized trading entities (such as the Dutch were often portrayed) nor “neglected” by its imperial administration (a long-​­lasting theme of British imperialism in North America), the first French Empire could drink at the fountain of absolutism. There, in the accounts the French monarchy made of itself, historians found ample discourse to make unity of direction and unity of voice a dominant paradigm of its early modern trajectory.5 Yet it seems all of this centralization amounted to naught, as never did “an empire” truly seem to emerge—​­at least not before the African and Asian ventures of the nineteenth century.6 Rather, the French colonies seemed to have been managed independently, according to the vicissitudes of the times, in a series of parallel relationships that had little to do with each other. The sovereign’s gaze looked upon New France, Martinique, or Guiana in succession

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 45

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

46

Chapter 2

only, with little that lingered in official administrative memory; with little that, seen in one place, was deemed susceptible to inform policy in another. Hence, the rarity of the very word of “empire” within the French colonial archives—​­at least until the last decades of the Ancien Régime. For James Pritchard and Kenneth Banks, therefore, the paradox of the French Empire, if it even could be called an empire, lies in the seemingly contradictory nature of French overseas domination, between a superficially apparent cohesion and a somewhat flawed execution. These problems of execution could be ascribed to technical and logistical issues, to be sure—​­but they could also stem from the Ministry of the Navy itself, from its agents and their shortcomings. Much like the empire itself, the ministry was a deceiving illusion. The failings of the early modern navy are thoroughly documented: administrators pocketed the king’s money, peopled their bureaus with creatures devoted to their interests. Individual concerns for gold and glory hindered the pursuing of grand Atlantic schemes. In this, the French early modern empire is but an echo of the similar revisions that emerged out of the historiography of the French monarchy itself, an extremely dynamic object of study.7 Indeed, it bears repeating that the study of Atlantic empires as “negotiated” drew considerably from revisionist accounts of European monarchies.8 These sought similarly to undermine the perceived strength of the state itself and emphasize the point to which Ancien Régime polities were enterprises of “social collaboration”; that their rhetoric of power had clear practical limits; and that their timeless nature was an ulterior motif of the nineteenth century. In these readings, the concepts of bureaucracy and administration were deemed improper to the analysis of early modern polities, rather kept by historians as useful tell-​­tale signs of modernity, much like Max Weber had suggested himself.9 Agents of social collaboration therefore could not be considered bureaucrats.10 Yet focusing mostly upon the opposition between blind plans and fallible executors risks obscuring not only the subtle play of negotiated authorities but also the actual workings of early modern administration itself, collapsing both into narratives of ideals found wanting in the face of reality. A renewed historiography of empire-​­and state-​­building has recently suggested that such hiccups of administration are to be located at the center of the process rather than at its margins. Conflicting objectives and passionate pleas allowed—​­and forced—​­authorities to retrace and reaffirm their relationships to imperial polities. Series of judgments over the forms of knowledge that imperial agents carried, created, and manipulated, over the utility or conversely over the irrelevant nature of such knowledge should be

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 46

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 47

considered foundational for national and imperial bureaucracies, rather than as parasitic elements hindering rationally organized polities. It is within those tensions, rather than despite them, that empires are made.11 This proposition has proven to be a challenge both to older notions of empire shaped by the cohesion brought by a central bureaucracy and to the very idea of rational modernity that was presumed to inform the efficiency of such bureaucracy, blurring the familiar divide between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. To analyze the role of the French navy in the eighteenth-​­century empire is therefore not to measure the extent of its insufficiencies but rather to examine how it reconciled the personal and the imperial, how it played with ambition and desires and how it categorized usefulness among its servants. Desires, ambitions, and, above all, the reasons that lie behind official decisions are notoriously difficult to locate in official sources. The inner dynamics of the navy are still shrouded in mystery. The historiographical segmentation between individual French colonies has relegated to the background any commonality of experience that might have existed between agents of the Ministry of the Navy in different parts of the empire.12 There might thus be a temptation to see the navy simply as a malleable framework, a loose affiliation of unrelated administrators. When large, cisatlantic categorizations are attempted, personnel in the colonies are included, not wholly without reason, under the capacious label of “elite” or, more problematically, differentiated by place of birth: metropolitan or colonial.13 We are still lacking thorough comparative prosopographical studies of those agents that could allow us to paint a more precise group portrait of the men who decided to serve the king across the Atlantic. Though such prosopography might enlighten their marital status, size of property, family antecedents and ties, it might still not allow us to answer questions about the nature of the relationships of agents to the colonial world, the colonial state, and the metropole.14 The examples I have chosen here, taken from the “civil” administration of Louisiana (the quill, la plume), are designed to illustrate how imbrications within the navy hierarchies brought a dozen men to the Mississippi Valley to seek promotion and distinction, how they found colonial challenges to be confronted, and how these challenges might in turn have been answered by the central bureaus. Such tests of mettle conscripted existing personal networks, both within and without the navy, and pushed outward the reach of the navy’s own network. This, as we will briefly see, should lead us to question the often-​­too-​­strict opposition between early modern administration and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 47

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

48

Chapter 2

clienteles, and, in colonial historiography, between metropolitan institution and local expertise. Thus dynamics of the ministry allowed the use of individuals “chasing their own career across the sea” in order to pursue changing policy goals. Through this movement, through people like Michel, who judged the Mississippi through criteria elaborated in Canada, even Louisiana could end up tied with the rest of the Atlantic world. At the heart of the capacity of the navy to transform, through a myriad of operations, individual action into collective policies and individual policies into collective actions lies the notion of career. The word itself was slowly making forays in the eighteenth century from meanings associated to the trajectory of a galloping horse to that of a man in his life.15 One can thus presume that the capacity to rise within a single hierarchical domain of activity, perhaps the single most important aspect of any definition of career, had become possible and could be envisioned, and desired. By spanning the whole of the Atlantic world, the navy could foster circumatlantic careers. Conflicts between administrators, which have been such a prominent part of the stories usually told about the French political regime along the Mississippi, need not be ignored. Rather, these are moments that allow a glimpse into the dynamics at play between career and empire.

Climbing the Ladder around the Atlantic From the moment of its relatively late conception, the Ministry of the Navy managed much more than ships and sailors. In the mid-​­seventeenth century, Jean-​­Baptiste Colbert’s desire to pursue a naval policy on his own terms had resulted in the rapid invention of an institution, which in turn had to contend with few historically entrenched institutional rivals.16 Arsenals were more or less created anew and became the foundations of the new ministry. Commercial ports received administrators from the navy, and so did the interior provinces capable of supplying of wood for naval construction. The ministry also sent diplomatic representatives to the French consulates of North Africa and Constantinople. Colonies were almost immediately added to the navy’s responsibility, although their direct administration by navy personnel would wait until the king extinguished proprietary rule, between the mid seventeenth century (1663, Canada) and the late eighteenth century (1766, the Mascarene Islands). In short, the navy brought within its fold jurisdictions, polities, goods, and men. It aimed to govern the building of ships, the daily

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 48

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 49

life of military ports, the use of inland resources, the governing of coastal population and colonial societies. In all, a small world of clerks, officers, and servants to oversee a large dominion. Overseeing had always been a contentious issue in the navy. Indeed, the new institution had been elaborated with “civilian” control of the “military,” following the growing conceptual division between these two fields. While the sword (l’épée), made up of military officers, ship captains, and lieutenant of the troops, would command at sea, on land they would defer to the head of the arsenal, a man drawn from the quill (la plume): the intendant. The rest of the plume, under direct supervision of the intendant, was made up of clerks, warehouse keepers, and their supervisors, the commissaires: men of inventories and accounts, drawing up lists, managing goods and money. This novel arrangement was bound to chafe with the old, strong, intimate association between the warrior and the leader.17 Still, the division of roles had been enshrined in new legal texts. Owing to Colbert and his son Seignelay, Ordonnances (especially the great Ordonnance of 1689)18 regulated in sometimes painful detail the activities of the navy, from accounting procedures to minimal quality of naval stores, from disciplinary measures to diplomatic protocol. More important, Ordonnances established the military practice of creating ranks and hierarchies within servants of the navy, wherever in France they might serve. By making public ranks and responsibilities, these legal texts at once recognized, and fostered, the possibility to make a career within the navy. The military world had been experimenting with ranks—​­ranks trumping social rank, that is—​­for quite some time. Promotions, once the result of glorious deeds, had become the object of regulatory attention.19 The navy had done the same, going so far as to project military-​­like ranks over the plume. In a world dominated by the desire to shine, and which made emulation one of the driving principles of distinction through nobility, promotions could stir up the fire of ambitions that burned in a king’s servant’s heart—​­indeed, in any unwise men’s heart, railed the moralists of the time. And indeed, ambition burned in the heart of navy personnel, if one is to believe the countless memoranda asking for promotion that were forwarded to the central bureaus at Versailles: yet ambition was also thought capable of stimulating one’s zeal.20 As expectations of promotions took root within le service, so did ideas about the criteria that would warrant them. Seniority, merit, and talents could be favorably reflected in a steady, if sometimes slow, rise through the ranks, crowned with retirement, a pension, and even a bonus if favorable

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 49

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

50

Chapter 2

conditions were met. To the unlucky ones, anything else smacked of disfavor, enmity, unfairness. In the navy, then, as in the army of the eighteenth century, distinct career paths had begun to emerge: individuals could hope, or wish, to spend their entire life within the department. To do so, many would have had to cross the Atlantic. One of them was Vincent-​­Gaspard-​ ­Pierre de Rochemore. Vincent-​­Gaspard-​­Pierre de Rochemore (1709?–​­1764) followed, slowly, the paths of a young “quill pusher” within the navy. Louisiana certainly did not seem to appeal to him in any way. He was not related to any (known) prominent colonial family: his own protections came from powerful robe nobility within Languedoc and Provence; his father had been the first to embrace a naval career. Yet, even someone as “well born” as Rochemore could feel the pangs of anxiety and self-​­doubt.21 When he had joined the navy, in the 1730s, he had the good fortune of being posted at Toulon, the major military port of southern France—​­a mere sixty kilometers or so from his mother’s relatives at Aix-​­en-​­Provence. From then on, he had the typical career of the plume.22 First named naval scrivener, an écrivain, Rochemore had served on the squadron that plied the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, registering names of sailors, managing supplies, and traveling to various places where royal ships would call port—​­including once to Louisiana. He eventually was moved to Rochefort, where his brother Henri, a naval officer of the sword following in their father’s footsteps, had already been transferred. At Rochefort, Vincent-​­Gaspard-​­Pierre rose to the rank of écrivain-​­principal, supervising a small team of scriveners. Twelve years later, in 1750, he had obtained the rank of commissaire. But, in 1755, the tableau was giving Rochemore some anxieties. The ta­ bleau displayed for all to see the list of the navy’s servants in order of seniority, starting from the year each one had received their brevet, the document that officially recognized their incorporation within the corps. While many employees had no doubt labored within the navy for some years, alongside fathers or uncles, the brevet marked the official beginning of one’s service, and allowed its holder to hope for pensions, promotions, and other advantages derived from seniority. Vincent-​­Gaspard-​­Pierre had received his more than thirty years before, yet he had the distinct displeasure of seeing some of his junior colleagues rise in ranks before he did. Had he done something wrong? Was someone laboring against him in the bureaus of the navy? What truly worried Rochemore, as he wrote to the minister, was the fact that his career did not seem, at least to him, all that it could have been. For two years,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 50

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 51

Rochemore would wonder. For two years, he would try, by every means at his disposal, to obtain his promotion.23 Rochemore was not alone to feel the stranglehold of the rank of commissaire: he was fortunate enough to be deemed susceptible of having gone that far. By definition, in any career, the upper ranks need to be fewer. At Rochefort, for instance, in the middle of the century, commissaires represented less than 10 percent of the total number of plume employees.24 A commissaire was tasked with what was then called a detail, the responsibility for a branch of arsenal, which could be naval conscription, funds, construction, or even, in the arsenal of Rochefort, “the colonies.” A senior commissaire was also usually named comptroller, a keystone of the administration who ensured the day-​­to-​­day compliance of the arsenal and its employees with the legal forms prescribed by the carefully recorded laws and ministerial dispatches. Commissaires could also serve at sea, though they were then given the task of overseeing expenditures for whole fleets.25 If one was truly meriting, lucky, or well connected, the last rank available was that of a commissaire-​­général, who were often considered as the intendant’s right-​­hand man and potential replacement, or alternatively given the responsibility over primarily commercial ports of France (such as Bordeaux or Rouen). The plume’s crowning achievement would be the title of naval intendant. Rochemore would get his wish: after two years of relentless petition, either personally or through friends, he obtained in November 1757 the rank of commissaire-​­général, along with the function of ordonnateur—​­the capacity to order disbursements. But he would have to go to Louisiana. While the Ordonnances had remained mostly silent about the colonial world, its administration had found itself gradually shaped to resemble the recognizable form of the urban arsenal. Intendants, commissaires, scriveners: all ranks of the navy could be established in the colonies, albeit modulated according to an evolving hierarchy of overseas territories.26 This made it possible for officers such as Rochemore to consider positions in Canada, Louisiana, Saint-​­Domingue, or Guiana in order to rise within the corps. For most of the top administrators of Louisiana, their nomination to New Orleans indeed meant a promotion.27 Climbing the ranks brought them to the Mississippi; it could also lead them out. If they could. Many must have hoped to be recalled to France. Few did. The colonial world was dangerous for top administrators: of the ten commissaires of royal Louisiana, six returned to France: two retired, two left in disgrace, one left in chains, and only one was to be promoted.28

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 51

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

52

Chapter 2

Networks of Talents in Louisiana For the cunning young man aspiring to “deserve graces better”29 within the navy, ensuring his transfer from one arsenal to another proved he was suited both to a variety of settings and tasks and to a variety of supervisors with different personalities. Colonies could offer many tests of one’s skills that one would never confront in the small world of the arsenal, and thus there are hints that Minister Jean-​­Frédéric Phélypeaux, marquis de Maurepas, had wished to make previous colonial experience a requirement for promotion in France.30 For service in the colonies, the navy did not necessarily seek candidates who had extensive overseas experience. Still, it did favor people who had some previous colonial contact, even if only through a brief colonial voyage. Others had a thoroughly mediated knowledge of colonies: the early commissaires Salmon, Bobé-​­Descloseaux, and Crémont had all been working within the colonial bureaus of Versailles and had never set foot in the Americas. Others, however, had much more intimate knowledge: at his third colonial posting, Lenormant de Mézy had been the embodiment of transatlantic travels of the plume. Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel de Villebois de la Rouvillière, scion of a family with a long history of service within the navy, had served his seventeen long years in Canada. Their succession in Louisiana allows us a glimpse in the kind of skills needed along the Mississippi and, more important, recognized as such by the navy, for all had to convince their superiors of their worth.

Louisiana Justice: Edme Gatien Salmon and Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel In 1731, Louisiana was returned to the Crown by the Company of the Indies. A new cadre of administrative officers was needed to replace the variety of councils the Company of the Indies had set up to manage its affairs in the colony. The choice fell on one of the most atypical commissaires-​­ordonnateurs of Louisiana’s short history: Edme-​­Gatien Salmon. His former position as a commis within the Bureau des Colonies at Versailles made him one of the more knowledgeable administrators of the affairs of Louisiana that could be found at the time. Indeed, Louisiana had last been under the king’s direct supervision in 1711, and most of Louisiana’s early adventurers had since entered the military corps. Certainly, the navy could have co-​­opted some of

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 52

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 53

the already-​­established administrators that had served in the colony under the tutelage of the company. Yet there is a slight hint as to what might have motivated a different choice. In the summary presented to the minister, suggesting the appointment of Salmon, we find this isolated mention: Salmon is “avocat au Parlement de Paris.”31 In any other context, such a mention might be superfluous: the intendancies of France were filled with lawyers, or people trained in legal matters; metropolitan intendants themselves came from the ranks of the maîtres de requêtes, who were required to hold a previous office of law in one of the great courts of the kingdom. Much of the king’s power rested upon the exercise of justice emanating from his person: so did that of his main administrative servants. In France, the intendant was first and foremost a judge, with the power to “evoke,” to claim cases from the ordinary courts and judge them all himself if he deemed them worthy of his time and attention. While we should not exaggerate the formal compliance of all metropolitan maîtres de requêtes to the requirements of their venal offices, the practice of provincial intendant was nonetheless rooted in courts and law.32 Within the navy, however, legal training had very little place, even if naval intendants were also magistrates.33 The head of the arsenal had the power to judge most crimes and take appropriate measures of police on anything that took place within the boundaries of the arsenal. Those were very limited grounds. Naval intendants who overstepped the limits of their powers had soon to contend with jealous competing authorities: the sénéchaussées, the Parlements, the Estates, various other corps, even the other neighboring intendants.34 Such was certainly not the case in the colonies, where whole societies, with all their complexities, quarrels, and crimes, had the capacity to breed court procedures a navy intendant would never see in the metropole, and for which his years spent as an écrivain would never prepare him. The navy bureaus were aware of this lack and tried to act accordingly. In the very few instances—​­at least before the administrative reforms of 1762– 1764—​­where intendants were not drawn from the navy corps, they were exclusively selected among individuals who had served in high metropolitan courts, had been received as lawyers, or had extensive legal training. In these circumstances, Salmon’s background might have proven especially appealing as Louisiana had garnered a reputation for being prone to chicanery and factionalism, especially among the various government councils set up by the Company of the Indies.35 With the return of the king, these councils were to be dissolved and the former Superior Council, simultaneously a court of

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 53

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

54

Chapter 2

first instance and regulatory body, would be reinstated. This situation might have led the minister to try both to give a clear superior in the civil authority, which was in the preceding years strongly divided, and identify an adjudicator and final judge who would play the intended role of court of appeal.36 The new Superior Council could at last have a strong local master who would enjoy the king’s trust. Lack of legal training could be supplemented by previous colonial service, which could help a plume officer hone his skills as a judge. During his term in Louisiana, Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel would frequently fall back to his years of service in Canada as a source of inspiration over what he could or should do. His term as commissaire in Montreal had come along with a commission as the intendant’s subdelegate—​­legally authorized to represent the intendant in all his functions, including as royal judge. While Michel’s abrasive personality might have led him into frequent quarrels with the royal judge of Montreal, Guiton de Monrepos (a preview of things to come in Louisiana), his service seems to have favorably impressed his superior, Intendant Hocquart of New France, for he would eventually request for Michel a seat at the Superior Council in Quebec. In any case, Michel did not want to leave anything to chance: he sent his own son in France to receive legal training before entering the navy’s service.37 While Salmon might have been a good judge, and a good administrator, his grasp of finances was tenuous. In New Orleans, he had left the details of all things financial to his nephew Le Breton, who had accompanied him to Louisiana as an écrivain in 1731, and later to Jean-​­Baptiste Destréhan, who eventually became the treasurer of the navy in New Orleans.38 As expenses mounted, to a large extent due to the conflicts with the Natchez and the Chickasaws, inflation became worrisome. Pointed questions and veiled accusations from the minister were left unanswered by Salmon. By 1744, Minister Maurepas’s patience had run out. It became urgent to find a replacement. He found it in the person of Sébastien-​­François-​­Ange Lenormant de Mézy.

Louisiana Finances: Lenormant de Mézy Lenormant de Mézy’s appointment to Louisiana is perhaps the only one where the reasons for his assignment are clearly mentioned: he was to be sent to New Orleans to clean up the financial mess that had been attributed—​ ­rightly or wrongly—​­to Salmon. He had previously clearly demonstrated his

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 54

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 55

capacity in that domain.39 His instructions involved declaring the partial bankruptcy of the colony that was thought to be the answer to Louisiana’s financial troubles—​­a measure he would eventually consider with some reluctance. Lenormant de Mézy was thus firmly resolved to fight what he thought was the root cause of this situation, and reduce the expenses of the colony. In Louisiana, this meant managing the king’s goods, for rather than sending specie in the colony, the navy had decided, for a variety of reasons, to send merchandise of all kinds to New Orleans. These goods were in turn distributed to soldiers and craftsmen in lieu of pay, or sold to the general public in order to fill colonial coffers.40 Any navy employees trained in the metropole would be on familiar ground, for the plume’s responsibility in France’s arsenal consisted mainly to track the movements of naval stores and supplies. But in Louisiana, managing the king’s goods also meant, indirectly, an involvement in the Indian trade, for it was expected by the military officers that goods distributed to the soldiers would eventually make their way to the Natives and contribute to maintain the essential strategic alliances on which the French of Louisiana relied for their safety. Lenormant’s attempts to raise the price of trade goods sold to the public is well known to historians of French-​­Native relations in Louisiana, who have generally accused Lenormant of being insensitive to Indian diplomacy.41 Indeed, Lenormant’s previous experiences had not necessarily prepared him for such delicate endeavors. Île Royale, where he had served from 1735 to 1739, also had sums earmarked for the Mi’kmaq allied with the French, but these were quite small, amounting to a few thousand livres per year (between 4,000 and 8,000 livres per year, which included amounts for missionaries and interpreters). Louisiana’s budget, on the other hand, had to contend with hundreds of thousands of livres worth of goods destined for Native allies, which, Lenormant complained, could never be set in stone and were always subject to the whims of the governor, rather than the careful managing of the commissaire-​ o­ rdonnateur.42 Indeed, the whole fur trade, for Lenormant, was a dead end, maintained only for misguided political purposes. Only the development of plantations could bring Louisiana to the level of other prosperous Caribbean colonies.43 Lenormant could draw upon his personal knowledge: he was the owner of a large plantation in Saint-​­Domingue. His policies predictably led to a conflict with the governor, Pierre Rigaud de Vaudreuil, as well as with the major military officers, who all accused Lenormant of undermining the alliance and thus the safety of the colony with a “misguided thriftiness.”44 After such difficulties, and as Lenormant was promoted to bigger and better things,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 55

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

56

Chapter 2

it might not be coincidental that the new commissaire-​­ordonnateur was considered a specialist of Natives.

Louisiana Natives: Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel Lenormant left the colony to return briefly to Le Cap, before being promoted to intendant at Rochefort. There, he would oversee the shipping of supplies from France to all colonies and would continue to influence Louisiana’s affairs through advice and promotions, as we shall see. While Lenormant had seen firsthand the potential of plantation economies, Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel, his successor, had better knowledge of the intricacies of the fur trade. His past experiences in Canada allowed him, he felt, to bolster his credibility in managing Native relations. He simultaneously demanded to play, as commissaire-​­ordonnateur, a larger role in Native policy. In Montreal, the Canadian center of Native diplomacy where he had spent seventeen years, Michel had learned to manage goods destined for the Natives. He had supervised the supplying of the Great Lakes posts, and even at times those of the Illinois country. He had policed the fur trade congés, had participated in gift-​­giving, and had conducted negotiations. In short, Michel had had to deal with everything materially related with the Native alliances within the borders of the St. Lawrence Valley. He not only had to understand how to deal with Natives “with gentleness,” to borrow the intendant’s words, he was “the only one capable of acting by the knowledge he has of the Natives’ mores and his talents for prompt work.”45 The Chickasaw war, which Salmon had poorly managed, had cost upward of a million livres and had led to Lenormant’s aggressive reforms. Now, the mounting Choctaw civil war threatened to lead to costly French involvement. The navy may have wanted to send an officer deemed capable of dealing and understanding North American Natives. And Michel’s abilities on this matter had been considered especially good. But Michel’s training under Canada’s Intendant Hocquart led him to echo his former superior when analyzing the problems of the fur trade. As Hocquart suggested, one should never advance funds to traders, one should always avoid complacencies in convoys for the Pays d’en Haut or the Illinois, and, if possible, one should always get involved in the matters related to the fur trade—​­even if they fell squarely within the governor’s purview.46 Michel repeated these words in his Louisianan dispatches, keen on pursuing Lenormant’s policies of direct intervention in the fur trade, if only because of its

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 56

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 57

financial implications for the colony’s budget. Michel also tried to attend, as he had done in Montreal, the councils for Native policy assembled by the governor—​­to no avail. His own relentless attacks to reform in Louisiana what he had perceived as similar abuses in the Canadian fur trade slowly eroded Michel’s credit at Versailles, as the commissaire-​­ordonnateur clashed over and over again with governor Vaudreuil.47 Back in Rochefort, Lenormant offered his distant commiseration.

Louisiana’s Credit: Rochemore? Unlike his predecessors, Michel died in office, and his admittedly difficult personality masks the sort of problems his successor might have been expected to confront. Six years would come to pass before Rochemore was appointed to the position. It was Lenormant de Mézy who recommended Rochemore to the position; Lenormant who had quarreled with Vaudreuil and who had sent words of sympathy to similarly quarrelsome Michel. Governor Vaudreuil was certainly a well-​­connected, well-​­protected individual within the navy. He had a good credit within the bureau and at court.48 Lenormant had loudly complained, upon his return to France, about the increasing power of military authority in the colonies in general, in Louisiana in particular. Michel had been extremely vocal on the same topic. Why was Rochemore sent to Louisiana, then? Various hints sprinkled in the official correspondence show that Rochemore, like his predecessors, had a high idea of his own prerogatives and power.49 In the arsenal, much to the chagrin of the sword, it was civil power that ordered military men around: the intendant of Rochefort had the upper hand over the military commander of the port. The situation was reversed in the colony, where the resident governor could always claim to be the actual representative of the king himself, whose word was, theoretically, always to win out in any disagreement between the two administrators. But Rochemore, as he himself knew well, was also powerfully protected: enough so that Vaudreuil’s successor, Louis Billouart de Kerlérec, rapidly felt threatened by Rochemore’s appeals to his patrons in France.50 Here was someone, of high and noble birth—​­his personal file is filled with mentions about his naissance distinguée—​­who could stand his own in the semi-​­permanent power struggle of the plume with colonial governors. Someone who, perhaps, could triumph where Lenormant couldn’t. From this latest clash resulted a profound scandal over the nature of colonial authority, the Affaire de la

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 57

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

58

Chapter 2

Louisiane, which would see the initial triumph of the governor, the recall of Rochemore, his subsequent death in disgrace, and his final, posthumous victory sealed by the exile of Kerlérec.

The Patronage of Empire Rochemore’s promotion to New Orleans could certainly be seen as the effect of patronage, the subtle games of clientele, rather than true talents he may have had. Still, he was not alone. In all cases considered here, officers of the pen made use of their relations to help obtain favors, promotions, or protection. Some were exterior to the navy. For Rochemore’s family, their foray into the navy extended only marginally previous networks that were already strong and healthy at court and country. For others, like Michel, the question never really arose in the first place: his family and protectors had led him to an institution they already had colonized during the previous eighty years. Michel had been born of the navy and was destined to the navy. Yet the navy offered its own possibilities, where, through service, officers could meet new families, new patrons. Movement of personnel around the Atlantic extended one’s usual ties of patronage and family to new worlds, thereby linking together Versailles, the coastal cities, and colonial societies. Postings in Rochefort, Brest, and Toulon extended a family’s reach much farther than its original location. Rochemore, for instance, found a wife in Rochefort, Marie-​ ­Madeleine Gaston, from a family who supplied leather goods to the navy and the colonies. Sending officers trained in the arsenals to colonies also had a trickle-​­down effect: it was expected that aspiring young men began their careers alongside parents to better learn the trade. Most commissaires that would come to serve in Louisiana during the French regime has been trained by relatives and would repeat the experience with their juniors in Louisiana. Commissaires Salmon, Bobé-​­Descloseaux, and Rochemore brought nephews, sons, and brothers-​­in-​­law with them to Louisiana. These links, however, needed not be of families exclusively. Some brought men they had seen in action, or had taken an “interest” in, sometimes leading to important transatlantic circulations: commissaire-​­ordonnateur Sébastien-​­Ange Lenormant de Mézy had brought Adrien de La Groue from his previous posting at Saint-​­Domingue to New Orleans when he arrived in 1744, and Sieur Gouvion from New Orleans to Saint-​­Domingue when he left in 1748.51

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 58

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 59

A recurrent temptation to qualify imperial administration as “metropolitan,” and thereby closed, or opposed to colonials and colonial “interests,” would perhaps suggest that these benefits were out of reach for Louisiana-​ ­born individuals. Yet the structure of the navy shows how institutions provided tools for legitimation, strength, and mobility to local employees, thereby blurring the opposition of “colonial” and “metropolitan” that has often been used to explain power struggles within imperial administration. The influx of colonial employees within the navy also helps illustrate the actual dynamics, and interplay, of colonial and imperial patronage. Necessity first opened the navy networks to colonials. Mortalities left holes to be filled quickly before someone taken from an arsenal in France could be sent. Officers already within the hierarchy stepped in to fill the functions of their late superiors, awaiting the official candidate of Versailles or, as they hoped, the confirmation of their new roles by the ministry along with the promotion that made it proper. The burden of colonial administration also took its toll: the tasks of Louisiana were well beyond the capacity of the handful of officers sent from France.52 The offices at New Orleans needed clerks capable of copying the hundreds of pages sent annually to Versailles, drawing up accounts and filling ledgers. The Mississippi Valley’s network of forts and posts required warehouse keepers who could at least scribble to track the flow of supplies. Distant settlements might need anyone who had dabbled in customary law and notarial practices. Some merchants and debuting négociants became warehouse keepers; so did the few soldiers who could read or write.53 For such products of Louisiana history and society, the talents required might indeed have been little more than having nice handwriting, knowing how to count—​­as well as exhibiting the ideal traits of a good employee of the king: zeal, obedience, rigor. Others had good relations with planters or influential people within the colony. Those who had slightly more specialized skills—​­those who could know how to deal with Natives, with the specificity of Louisiana trades, with the local adaptation to customary law—​­those ones could perhaps gain entry within the navy and develop those sought-​­after relationships. This situation offered opportunities for local talents to make themselves indispensable. Writing, counting, calligraphy, and bookkeeping could transform soldiers into warehouse keepers, opportunists into administrative fixtures—​­and perhaps open up new possibilities. Alexis-​­Philippe Carlier and Alexandre-​­Claude Duparquier were such men. Both were literate. Both had some skill. Both had come as soldiers, one of the lowest sorts of free men in colonial societies. Carlier, the son of an

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 59

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

60

Chapter 2

official of the tax farms of Beaumont, had come to Louisiana by way of Canada. He seemed to have a knack for accounting, which led him to Tombecbé, the fort that served as the hub for the fur trade in the Lower Mississippi. He would eventually conduct trade under his own name, selling deerskins to French négociants.54 Duparquier, the son of a Parisian lawyer, had a smattering of legal knowledge. It was that knowledge that had sent him to Louisiana in the first place. A libertine convicted of fabricating false letters of exchange, he had been kidnapped following a lettre de cachet issued to spare his family’s honor. In New Orleans, he had begun a journey of refashioning that would make him a part-​­time notary, a warehouse keeper and a planter in the Mississippi Valley, a servant of the king in Saint-​­Domingue, and a respected elderly mayor of Saint-​­Servant, among the family of his Louisiana-​­born wife, near Saint-​­Malo, in 1790—​­somewhat removed from his father’s networks within the law community of Paris.55 But in Louisiana, both Carlier’s and Duparquier’s services were somewhat unofficial. They were not alone. Among the forty servants of the plume within Louisiana during the years 1759–1760 (our most complete series), only six were registered officially as officers of the navy. The others were dubbed employés.56 They were lacking the brevet, the document that signaled their formal recognition as officers of the navy, along with the year in which they had begun their service. Unbreveted employees were familiar faces in an arsenal, where they usually served as copyists (commis aux écritures). In Louisiana, most warehouse keepers were also without brevet.57 For twenty-​­six breveted officers serving in Louisiana between 1731 and 1768, one can discern at least sixty-​­five other assorted “employees.” No doubt there were more. Without formal ties to, and a formal recognition from, the navy, unbreveted employees rarely surfaced within the official archives.58 Their links to the department were therefore thoroughly mediated by their superior. Local candidates were employed at the whim of the commissaire-​ o­ rdonnateur, who ascribed, and sometimes diverted, funds from the colonial budget to pay them. They had no claims to pensions, no claims to seniority, no official capacity to climb the hierarchy. Administrators of the ministry felt no obligation to relocate them around the Atlantic in cases of crisis. In 1744, Alexis-​­Philippe Carlier caught the attention of Lenormant de Mézy by finding himself at the center of the new commissaire-​­ordonnateur’s main concerns: fiscal management and division of authority. In Tombecbé, warehouse keeper Carlier had been thrown in jail for opposing the military commander, who had wished to use the king’s goods as he saw fit. While Lenormant did side with Carlier on this matter, as he was wont to do—​­a decision

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 60

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 61

that would lead the commissaire-​­ordonnateur into trouble of his own—​­the inquiry also revealed that Carlier owed the king several thousand livres. Lenormant thus forced the newly freed warehouse keeper to sell his slave to settle his debt.59 By 1758, however, this episode was long past. Back in France, Sébastien-​­Ange Lenormant de Mézy, who first had castigated Carlier for bad management, nevertheless recommended him for an official brevet of écri­ vain. It would come just in time. Newly appointed, Rochemore arrived in New Orleans in the fall of 1758. He found a colony that had been deprived of many of the top employees of the navy, as well as most of those who had previously served abroad, for some time. Michel had died in 1752. Commissaire d’Auberville had succeeded him only as interim until his own death in 1757. The highest-​­ranking plume officer was therefore commissaire Bobé-​­Descloseaux. The much-​­lauded Adrien de La Groue, who had previously served in Saint-​­Domingue, took up the role of comptroller. He died in October 1758. As the only other available breveted employee, Alexis-​­Philippe Carlier found himself acting comptroller, a position largely above his rank of écrivain. Rochemore’s nomination thus signaled the replacement, and promotion, of many new employees. Carlier did not impress the new commissaire-​­ordonnateur, and Rochemore recommended that the minister send someone else.60 A metropolitan training within the navy, he argued, was superior to colonial experience; Carlier no doubt was insufficiently aware of proper procedures and should therefore defer to officers holding a brevet from the metropole, such as the two young men who had accompanied Rochemore from Rochefort, René-​­Gabriel Fazende and Joseph Rouer de Villeré. The soldier-​­turned-​­comptroller felt rightly threatened by these junior newcomers. A brevet was a brevet, Carlier replied. Nowhere in the Ordonnances was it specified that employees of the colony were inferior in rank to those of the metropolitan navy. There was no precedent, metropolitan or colonial, for the kinds of distinction Rochemore was trying to make. Both officers thus turned to the minister for an answer. Meanwhile, Rochemore and the by-​­then experienced governor, Louis Billouart de Kerlérec, had clashed over policy matters. Both turned to the archives handled by comptroller Carlier to find proof of their opponent’s wrongdoings. Carlier was bound to be in a difficult position. The comptroller was supposed to ensure that colonial government practices conformed to regulations—​­leaving few options when his superior, the commissaire-​ ­ordonnateur, was himself committing mistakes, either out of fraud or neglect. Initially, Alexis-​­Philippe Carlier seems to have prudently remained as distant

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 61

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

62

Chapter 2

as possible from both growing factions, but by the spring of 1759 the feud between Kerlérec and Rochemore had moved from a war of words to outright obstruction. Back in Versailles, the governor’s angry denunciations of the commissaire-​­ordonnateur as incompetent succeeded in convincing the ministry to place him squarely under the direct supervision of the governor. The orders arrived in the winter of 1760. Rochemore was officially reprimanded. The confirmation of Carlier’s appointment followed. Things in the colony soured even more.61 Perhaps out of a desire for retribution, Carlier then refused to validate one of Rochemore’s administrative decisions. He explained his behavior plainly: as long as he was serving as interim comptroller, he could not go directly against his superior officer—​­which implied he had been forced to agree to some dubious practices in the past. Now that he had an order from the king himself, his duty as comptroller was quite clear. Every official action from Rochemore should conform to the Ordonnance of 1689 (the same Ordonnance Carlier had used to establish his legitimacy) or he would refuse to validate them. Rochemore responded in two ways: first, by claiming he still had the authority to remove Carlier from his position, and then by writing to Lenormant de Mézy for support within the ministry. Carlier followed a similar two-​­pronged strategy of writing to “some protector” at court and turning to Governor Kerlérec for help. The governor was only too happy to oblige and enlist a new ally against his then archenemy. Through the brevet, the navy recognized and enforced a bureaucratic division between the employees who had been accepted by the minister and those who were only the result of local agreements. The first could potentially serve anywhere in the Atlantic. The second were tied to the person of their superiors. Non-​­breveted clerks were employed only at the discretion of their superior; breveted officers were fully part of the institution. Scribes could be terminated at the whim of a superior, while one could not do so without justification when it came to breveted administrators. Those who lacked these resources could find such a move significantly harder: in the quarrel between the commissaire-​­ordonnateur and the governor, Alexandre-​ ­Claude Duparquier had quietly sided with his superior Rochemore. His lack of brevet also had to be overcome. In 1762, on the eve of the supposed transfer of the colony to Spain, Carlier, Duparquier, and Fazende turned their eyes to Saint-​­Domingue. All asked to continue their services to the king at the perle des Antilles. Carlier obtained positions there for both his sons; Fazende would eventually make his way to Le Cap. Duparquier, however, was refused.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 62

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 63

Without a brevet, no one in the Ministry of the Navy felt he was owed anything. Only after intense pressure by his protector (by then Comptroller-​ ­General of the Finances L’Averdy) was he able to obtain a position.62 These relationships were therefore ideally deemed personal before being institutional in the case of non-​­breveted employees, institutional before personal in the cases of “official” servants of the king. The brevet, and the legal texts surrounding the official ranks it recognized, offered their resources in cases of dispute. Not only did the Ordonnance ensure Carlier’s legitimacy, it allowed him to circumvent the personal relationship with his immediate superior in favor of his duty to the king and the navy. If Carlier could censor Rochemore’s action, it was because he was autonomous from the commissaire-​­ordonnateur. Carlier’s use of his brevet was not meant to keep personal relations out, but rather to keep them out of his professional life in certain circumstances. Was Rochemore’s attack against Carlier only an indirect attempt to keep “colonials” out of the networks of power? It is revealing that while Rochemore could attack Carlier’s lack of seniority to discredit him, he did so by mentioning the colonial nature of his services to the king: “on which he objected I was only a colonial écrivain, and that he was commissaire général.” Carlier’s answer in return demonstrates how his own brevet could serve as both comfort and power: “that all this was true, but that I had obtained an order from the king that I intended to follow on all points.”63 The main thrust of Rochemore’s argument was focused on Carlier’s training, although he attempted to couch it in quasi-​­formal terms, ascribing to his opponent a different title (“colonial scrivener”).What Rochemore attacked, however, was the place of Carlier’s training. Indeed, Fazende and Rouer de Villeré, the two young men he brought from France and recommended for Carlier’s position, were born in Louisiana. Sons of local planters and part of the colonial elite, they had traveled to Rochefort in 1750, where, working under Lenormant de Mézy, they obtained their brevets as écrivains. This practice, Rochemore added, should be encouraged among sons of planters to foster émulation.64 Thus a metropolitan officer was arguing against a French-​­born employee, in favor of young Creoles trained in the metropole. What the navy offered to Duparquier was an opportunity to refashion himself. What it offered to Carlier were legitimate, legal resources to oppose Rochemore, regardless of whether or not such opposition was based on vengeance, pettiness, or pride. What it offered to Louisiana-​­born Fazende was the capacity to broaden one’s possibilities by honorable service to other

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 63

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

64

Chapter 2

colonies. To all, the navy offered an administrative framework that could bring some measure of independence from the personalities of those who peopled it. This sort of local recruitment of colonial administration therefore blurs categories that have often been used to oppose imperial designs carried out by aloof metropolitans looking down on backward Creoles. The structure of the navy in the colonies itself allowed for a ready-​­made network available to newcomers—​­perhaps even more so than in France—​­who did not have previous relatives or powerful friends.65 In Carlier’s case, for example, it is quite difficult to determine whether his protection at court predated his entry within the navy or arose out of it. Those who succeeded in entering through the career path joined new families, made new friends as they traveled the Atlantic, and discovered new opportunities. When Sébastien-​­Ange Lenormant de Mézy and, later, Vincent-​­Gaspard-​­Pierre de Rochemore suggested sending the sons of colonial elites to be trained at Rochefort, they tried to fulfill twin objectives: first¸valorizing in the eyes of Louisiana planters the authority of the plume and its place within the king’s service; then, tapping into the planters’ credit for the benefit of the navy.66 The navy gained a measure of trust. The conflation of family and institution has often been decried as irredeemably pre-​­modern. Still, contemporaries believed it to be both a quick and useful way to teach young men and establish trust between administrators who knew themselves and who could mobilize much more than the resources of obedience, but also of friendship, shame, and paternal authority, to arrive at whatever objectives the navy had haphazardly set. To all, the navy both offered the capacity to use whatever talents they had for the service, and the ministry made use of them. And what of money? Certainly, many employees of the navy sought fortune in the colonies, carrying a small trade, easily obtaining plantations through their own superiors, diverting credits or converting their knowledge of law, transactions, or ship movements into cash. The desire to enrich oneself through shadowy dealings, tacitly encouraged by Versailles, has been often invoked as one of the main reasons for officials to cross the Atlantic.67 If we insist upon retaining characterizations based upon selfish interests, we need to recognize that many factors combined to make “career satisfaction” a more complex beast than amassing money and extending relations, as Michel’s story reminds us. Like many, Michel first wanted to get out of Louisiana as soon as possible—​­and yet, caught in the middle of things, he started to envision a future for himself in the Mississippi colony. Perhaps wanting to see his projects through, he turned his back on his uncle’s position in Bordeaux.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 64

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 65

Many times Michel reported his thinly disguised pride at things he achieved as an administrator in New Orleans, reminding his readers that his incapacity to increase his fortune in Louisiana was proof of his virtuous disinterestedness. For his family, his stubborn refusal to engage in more overt schemes for profiteering was worrisome. Much to his mother-​­in-​­law’s chagrin, Michel’s boisterous virtue was leading him to administrative actions and policies that brought him to direct confrontation with other colonial officers. His burning desire for what we would call professional recognition from the ministry in the face of corrupted people he despised led him to take actions that cut through bonds of friendship and family.68

Epilogue The ways through which the navy tied itself to the colonies, and the colonies to the navy, were numerous but never mutually exclusive. The legal and administrative framework of the navy, the great Ordonnance of 1689 had remained mostly silent about the colonial world. The navy could thus have opted for a number of differentiated schemes for its distant chasse-​­gardée, and to a certain extent, it did. The governing of early French colonies truly was elaborated ad hoc, a bricolage of ideas and practices of power that existed during the first half of the seventeenth century—​­but then again, such bricolage had been the navy’s own experience.69 What the Ordonnances had established were ranks and titles that were to be recognized on all parts of its metropolitan domain: personnel within the navy could move, and did move, from one arsenal to another, from Provence to Brittany, from La Rochelle to Le Havre. And many of them found their way to the colonies. While titles and ranks could hide a variety of experiences, the Ordonnances proved a guiding principle and a shared administrative culture. Colonial administration along the Mississippi River seemed at the same time similar to and distinct from what Salmon, Michel, or Rochemore knew, what they had experienced in Versailles, Montreal, or Rochefort. The standardization of practices did not necessarily impair a transatlantic measure of improvisation. At his desk in New Orleans, Rochemore could—​­and did—​­wonder how to, or whether to, apply the provisions of the rules and regulations promulgated for all colonies, or if the practices of Martinique, Guadeloupe, or Canada should be followed in Louisiana.70 All these networks permeated the colonial world as well as the navy, and linked both. For people wishing to join the navy, the benefits were

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 65

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

66

Chapter 2

varied. There were, of course, issues of reputation and social standing that came with the privilege of serving the king—​­powerful motivation in their own right, powerful enough that one such as Michel could use it as justification for aggressively pursuing his policies, despite his family’s desires and his protector’s wishes.71 It is in such interplays between the personal and the institutional that the navy gained its own character. Louisiana and the navy would offer administrators valuable contacts and means to satisfy their future ambitions, which in turn the navy could also use to pursue its own policies. By supplying and coopting a variety of colonial administrators, the navy went farther than simply ensuring the often difficult transmission of orders and information between individuals of comparable social statuses. Preexisting ties, loyalties, and desires were arranged, hierarchized, and exploited along with the navy’s own brands of ties, loyalties, and desires. When French-​­born, colony-​­trained Alexis-​­Philippe Carlier perceived a threat from Louisiana-​ ­born, metropole-​­trained colleagues, he retreated to the institutional, transatlantic groundings of the navy. Problems of Louisiana had been transformed both by previous experiences and personal goals: in 1758, when Lenormant de Mézy, then an influential administrator in metropolitan France, insinuated himself in the administration of a colony he had known by recommending Rochemore, he tried to shape it according to his own reading of the necessary influence of the pen over the sword. He selected young planters to serve in the metropole and recommended local talents to be officially recognized by a position within the navy. Local talents, such as Carlier or Duparquier, sought from the navy mobility, and respectability; in cases of conflicts, the impersonal legal framework of the ministry provided recourse against the so very personal nature of small administrations. In these struggles, colonial Louisiana and metropolitan France emerged at every knot of the threads. Louisiana necessarily participated in full in the weaving of such a tapestry, enriching it with its own colors, its own experiences, its own contributions, pulling strings on its own. Metropolitan French practices and protectors could be encountered, if only in thought, or apprehensions, in the bureaus of the colonial plume. Previous colonial service in Canada, rumored practices of Guadeloupe, or hopes of serving in Saint-​ ­Domingue could be traced in personal meetings in Versailles or in hundreds of letters reporting on the situation along the Mississippi. As the image of the metropolitan navy could appear in New Orleans, so could Louisiana show up in the offices of Versailles or Rochefort. It would create the conditions of its own representation in the administrative imagination. Around the table

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 66

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Louisiana’s Plume 67

of the governor in New Orleans, administrators of French Louisiana could alternatively exchange, discuss, or hide stories that would bring together and compare the foggy shores of Île Royale off the coast of Nova Scotia, the intrigue-​­filled corridors of Versailles, the strange exoticism of Canton, the sinister prisons of Paris, or the cold winters of Montreal. Administrators of Louisiana might have asked the question: Can one make a career out of the colonies? Our own version might rather be this: Can these processes be reconciled into a history of the “imperial” state in the French colonies? The navy did indeed provide something to the colonial world, objects that tend to disappear behind their end product, or behind the still-​­strong theories that inform government action: organization, men, and practices—​ ­frequently seen as sources of disorder, division, and inefficiency, but which we should perhaps see as a source of coherence as well. Successful bureaucratic organizations are not organizations that succeed in stamping out individual motivation from their members, but that are able to orient the activity of individual members and make use in return from the resources the employees do provide. Out of their use of power in New Orleans, the plume of Louisiana also constructed the navy’s presence in the colony from local resources, contributing to its reach and flexibility. This made the navy an Atlantic network in its own right, but it also made it an organizer of power relationships. Plans might have been fragile things at best, but the manner in which colonial issues were handled, modified, theorized, and perceived at every thread of the many webs that brought together all sides of the Atlantic might give us a better understanding of the nature of French colonialism. And if there is one thing the Ministry of the Navy provided, it is an organized series of webs. An organized series of webs that could tie together, in often precarious hierarchies, the arsenals of France with colonial ports, the colonial ports with the central bureaus, the central bureaus with the colonial hinterland. An organized series of webs that could make use of preexisting client-​­patron relationships, or that could help foster the creation of new types of relationships, beneficial to the temporary goals set by the navy. In short, the navy was an organization through which men (and few women) could travel along the lengths of the webs woven, strengthening them or cutting them according to circumstances; an organization that could help structure how knowledge was gathered and used. If the French colonial empire might perhaps lack a unified theory, it might perhaps have given birth to a certain practice of empire.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 67

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Chapter 3

Spanish Louisiana in Atlantic Contexts: Nexus of Imperial Transactions and International Relations Sylvia L. Hilton

Between 1763 and 1803, the Mississippi Valley stood at center stage in that long historical process described by Jeremy Adelman as the “pan-​­Atlantic struggle for mercantilist control, political loyalty, and ultimately for military alliance that brought about the crisis of the old régime.”1 A tightly woven web of interconnected interests, processes, and events linked Spanish Luisiana to larger Atlantic worlds.2 Foremost among these links was an imperial defense strategy that, in the face of increasing international threats, prioritized the conservation of the colonies of greatest economic potential such as Mexico. That priority obeyed Madrid’s view that Spain’s American resources were essential for the global revitalization of the Spanish Empire. To serve those much larger aims, Spanish occupation of North American borderland colonies was preemptive in character and defensive in function. From the metropolitan point of view, all other considerations were subordinate. However, regional demographic factors and the specific location of Luisiana and the Floridas made these colonies especially sensitive to the international transatlantic conflicts of the age, forcing imperial authorities to embrace a highly adaptive approach to their internal government, as local actors maneuvered in defense of their own interests.3 The history of Spanish Luisiana therefore exemplifies the dynamics of a “negotiated” empire, as suggested by current center-​­periphery theory; that is, one in which a metropolitan government not only lacked the coercive resources that might have stiffened a more

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 68

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 69

authoritarian approach but also one in which the people in geographical and/ or social peripheries found ways to defend their own interests by participation in the imperial structure.4 Those dynamics affected every social group and every aspect of daily life in Luisiana, but they were particularly evident as colonists, land speculators, local authorities, Native peoples, and royal officials in Madrid wrangled over land and trade.5 It has often been noted that Spain pursued startlingly liberal policies in its Mississippi frontier. Adaptation to local conditions was actually nothing new in the long history of Spanish imperialism. Indeed, pragmatic flexibility was as “traditional” as the historiographically more visible aim of establishing order and uniformity according to a metropolitan blueprint. Bourbon reformism and the influence of enlightened ideas, too, go some way to explaining certain innovations in Spanish Luisiana and the Floridas. Nonetheless, this essay argues that the most unusual policies adopted there were original in their scope and their concentration in space and time, and further, that they were not so much inspired by a political plan based on ideological conviction as by expediency born of necessity, in the face of local peculiarities which made that region especially vulnerable to international pressures.

Building an “Invincible Barrier”:6 Manpower for Imperial Defense From the perspective of the metropolitan “center” of the Hispanic monarchy, the burdens of governing Luisiana and (after 1783) the Floridas were acceptable only if these colonies fulfilled their defensive function. The immense territory between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains was as yet largely unexplored by Europeans, and Spaniards saw it as a great natural barrier that could protect New Spain from commercial infiltration and overland attacks by Anglo-​­American rivals. That protection was essential because Mexican revenues covered a major part of general government expenses in this period.7 In addition, Spanish control of the coasts of Luisiana and the Floridas contributed to the safety of Spanish ships in the Mexican Gulf. The Mississippi colonies were therefore to be defended not so much for their own sake as to prevent overland access to New Spain and to protect Spanish navigation and trade in Caribbean-​­Gulf sea-​­lanes. From the beginning, royal advisors in Madrid treated Luisiana as a special case. Instructions to the first governor, Antonio de Ulloa, stipulated that

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 69

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

70

Chapter 3

he should consider it, at least temporarily, as “a separate colony,” and make as few changes as possible.8 Unfamiliarity with the territory and a prudent regard for French sensibilities (both locally and in Europe) recommended this initial policy, pending more informed decisions as Spanish officials on the spot learned about the situation. Thirty-​­five years later the governor of Luisiana still thought that the colony required special treatment.9 Metropolitan authorities worried about the potential risks to the empire as a whole if internal disputes invited international intervention in such an exposed frontier region. They therefore consistently tried to avoid creating tensions in this North American periphery. They were also loath to take on new responsibilities that might prove too costly and, in the longer term, impossible to sustain. The vast expanses of the western Mississippi basin might form a land barrier protecting Mexico against foreign intrusions, but a defensive human barrier of armed men was also needed. To the Luisiana battalion established by Alejandro O’Reilly in 1769, two others were added in 1783 and 1790, each theoretically with about 600 men at full strength, although actual forces fell far short of that figure.10 Regular military forces and fortifications were costly. The over-​­extended Spanish Empire had many vulnerable flanks, and its limited financial and military resources had to be spread very thin. Government advisors in Madrid always carefully weighed both local and global goals when pondering the estimated costs of any action. Their aim was not to mount a defense of Luisiana and the Floridas against all odds, but one that would be as economical as possible, while having the desired retarding effect on Anglo-​ ­ merican expansion, which was viewed as inevitable in the longer term. This A meant using all the manpower that was available locally.11 Unfortunately for Spain, the white population of Luisiana in 1763 was very small in comparison with that of the neighboring English colonies.12 A partial solution was found by negotiating defensive alliances with local Indians and by recruiting free colored militiamen.13 Important as the services of these groups were, they could not provide the kind of defense desired by metropolitan authorities. It was therefore deemed necessary to increase the number of white settlers as quickly as possible.14 In order to promote the growth of white settlers, the Spanish government financed several early colonization projects. Acadians were the first to arrive in the 1760s. During the war of U.S. independence, Spanish immigrants arrived from the Canary Islands, Granada, and Malaga. Shortly afterward, another wave of Acadians came from France. In their dramatic personal stories, such ventures reflect the human dimensions of an Atlantic world of

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 70

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 71

long-​­distance maritime migrations. However, for Spanish officials these efforts were disappointing in the short term. They were far too costly, and they brought insufficient manpower and very little private wealth into the colony. After 1785, immigrants would have to be self-​­financing. The geopolitical changes brought about by U.S. independence posed new problems.15 After 1783, the existence of a sovereign power based in the American continent affected the balance-​­of-​­power system that held sway in Europe. Spain was most affected because, even if Spanish-​­U.S. relations were theoretically cordial, any variation of U.S. relations with France or Great Britain could result in a negative effect for Spanish interests on either or both sides of the Atlantic. Through the 1780s and 1790s a growing stream of individuals and small groups, who were migrating under their own initiative and for many different reasons from the Atlantic coast states, arrived at Spanish frontiers. The initial attraction was undoubtedly the government’s offer of free land. Having obtained permission from local authorities to settle, most stayed in West Florida, especially in the Natchez district, but many took up residence in St. Louis, New Madrid, Arkansas Post, and other places west of the Mississippi. At the same time, refugees fleeing from the disruptions and terrors of revolution in the French sugar islands also started arriving. By 1803 the white population had grown rapidly from about 5,500 in Luisiana in 1766 to perhaps as many as 25,000 (including West Florida). The inhabitants of known African descent increased in a similar proportion, making a total non-​­Indian population in excess of 50,000 as Spanish rule came to an end.

“The Indissoluble Ties of Interest and Affection”:16 The Price of Loyalty The demographic peculiarities of Spanish Luisiana meant that loyalty could not be taken for granted. In 1763, it was obvious that there would be difficulties in governing a colony whose white population had little cause to receive their new Spanish rulers with enthusiasm. As governor Antonio de Ulloa soon discovered, after a late arrival with very few Spanish troops, disaffection could turn into open rebellion. The revolt led by Attorney General Nicholas Chauvin de Lafrénière and Intendant Commisary Denis-​­Nicolas Foucault, with other members of the Superior Council and leading citizens of New Orleans in 1768, arose mainly in protest against existing economic hardships and fears regarding the future economic implications of Spanish rule, and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 71

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

72

Chapter 3

involved three main social groups: French Creoles of New Orleans, German coast farmers, and Acadian immigrants.17 General O’Reilly quickly restored order and established Spanish law, making it clear that, while Charles III would brook no disobedience to his authority, he would provide protection and a government that would be both efficient and reasonably responsive to local needs by including members of the French colonial elites in positions of power and responsibility. It would be difficult to say whether, in later years, social discontent among the inhabitants of the Mississippi colonies owed something to the latent influence of a collective memory of the 1768 revolt, but the U.S., French, and Haitian revolutionary movements and wars provided motive enough for Madrid’s constant worry that these colonial subjects might engage in subversive activities, possibly with the aid of rival foreign states.18 Their diverse cultural identities, transatlantic commercial connections, and foreign interference could easily create divided loyalties and/or conflicted interests. After 1783 American immigrants were especially worrisome because they often maintained family, friendship, and business ties in the United States, with all the implications arising from territorial contiguity to an expansive sovereign state. This did not necessarily mean that white francophone settlers always remained loyal to France, or that anglophone settlers would fight for England or the United States if forced to choose sides. Family connections by marriage and other ties to local communities, roots in the land, religion, political ideology, and business interests could and did influence the loyalties of individuals. Gilbert C. Din stresses the loyalty of French Creole elites to Spain after the initial revolt and abundantly documents their cooperation with government authorities.19 He has also effectively argued, contrary to the version given by Ernest R. Liljegren, that the disorders in Natchitoches in the mid-​­1790s did not represent a pro-​­French revolutionary movement but reflected little more than local factional jealousies and rowdiness instigated by local priest Delvaux, who was merely trying to avoid transfer to another town.20 Similarly, Andrew McMichael shows that most Anglo-​­American residents in West Florida were loyal to the Spanish government until well after 1803.21 Even so, local authorities charged with keeping these colonies in Spanish hands as long as possible were faced with a difficult task. Clearly, in order to win the political loyalty needed to ensure active cooperation in imperial defense, incentives must be offered to different social groups in Luisiana and, after 1783, the Floridas.22 Local inhabitants (including Indians), would-​­be immigrants, promoters of colonization projects, merchants, and speculators were all quick to see the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 72

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 73

predicament in which the Spanish government found itself, and maneuvered accordingly in order to obtain advantages for themselves. Land would be a central issue for all social groups. As already noted, on hearing about the transfer of Luisiana to Spain, the white inhabitants of the colony had immediately been concerned about their own economic interests. Most of their land property titles had not been properly confirmed according to French law, but Spanish recognition of the titles had quickly dispelled their worries on that score. O’Reilly also sought the advice of a committee of fourteen local inhabitants who recommended a system of distributing land into private hands by liberal rules that would satisfy most genuine settlers in Luisiana and (later) the Floridas. The power to make new land grants rested with the governor, who in turn could authorize district commanders, subject to his approval.23 Then, in the early 1780s, British Loyalists who had taken refuge in the Floridas during the war obtained permission to stay under Spanish rule thanks to strong support from Governor Esteban Miró. Many were impoverished settlers who were unable to seek homes elsewhere as others did.24 Soon, settlers and adventurers migrating overland from the United States in search of better lives began pressing on Spain’s Mississippi frontiers. The Spaniards foresaw at once that it would be impossible for local officials to stop the westering newcomers on such a long and open frontier.25 Neither would the U.S. government be able to stop it, even if inclined to do so. There was only one viable solution. At the suggestion of Miró and the intendant of Luisiana, Martín Navarro, the authorities in Madrid approved a bold plan to allow the immigration of English-​­speaking and other foreign settlers. As far as Madrid knew, the plan represented the informed recommendation of these royal officials, after hearing proposals made by James Wilkinson during his first visit to New Orleans in 1787, but Miró may have been mulling over such an initiative for some time in the light of the experiment with the British Loyalists.26 Whatever the case may be, this immigration plan, as approved by Madrid, required dramatic adaptation of a long-​­standing Spanish policy to accommodate complicated local conditions and interests.27 Spanish authorities on both sides of the Atlantic all knew that it was a case of fighting fire with fire, and accepted the obvious risks as a matter of necessity. For nearly three centuries foreign immigration had been prohibited by law in Spanish America, exceptions being admitted only in justifiable individual cases. In this respect, the Mississippi colonies became a regional exception. As the minister of state, Manuel Godoy, later famously remarked: “One cannot put doors on the open country.”28 Thus, the admission of large

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 73

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

74

Chapter 3

numbers of foreign immigrants reflected the pragmatism guiding Spain’s rulers. Its design and execution were eloquent examples of internal negotiation of compromise solutions. Striking as it was, it was not unique to the Mississippi frontier, since foreign immigration was being encouraged into other strategically valuable Spanish colonies in this period.29 Even so, in those other cases permission was always restricted to Catholics (in practice, mostly French and Irish), and in no other colony did Spanish authorities contemplate the large-​­scale immigration of Protestants. Nothing reveals as clearly as this measure the extent to which the internal transactions of the Spanish Empire were determined by the transatlantic interface between specific local circumstances and international concerns. The policy was conceived not only in order to establish some semblance of control over a potentially disruptive local problem, but more important from the perspective of Madrid, it did so in a way that would minimize the risks of international conflicts. The initial attraction, freely admitted by everyone involved, was the land, but governor Miró and intendant Navarro believed that the colonists who came would be loyal to Spain if the government would “protect them, facilitate the extraction of their products, and decide their disputes in justice, without imposing any tribute at all or molesting them in their domestic affairs.”30 To attain these goals, there was considerable scope for internal negotiation of special needs. Metropolitan authorities did authorize significant concessions, although they were not always as accommodating as colonial officials and local elites would have liked. After it became known in the late 1780s that, subject to certain conditions, Spain would accept foreign settlers, increasing numbers of individuals, families and small groups of westering migrants from the United States arrived at frontier posts along the Mississippi and West Florida. Some, especially in the latter years of Spain’s rule, simply slipped into Spanish territory without requesting permission, but many applied to local officials, who would usually either admit them conditionally, pending confirmation from superior authorities, or keep them waiting until authorized to allow them to settle. Initially, the negotiating “voices” of these immigrants were heard only through the letters or reports of local officials requesting permission to admit the colonists and to distribute land to them. For example, James Mackay wrote from the new post at San Andrés, near the mouth of the Missouri: “Since my arrival here several families came with all their property to this country in expectation of getting lands as usual, some of them came from the most distant parts of the United States even from the limits between the State of Vermont

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 74

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 75

and Canada, but finding themselves disappointed they remain on the American side. Some have . . . ​camped in the woods until your excellency takes pity on them—​­as they say.”31 Once authorized to settle, the settlers’ voices were clearly and publicly heard in the formal oaths of allegiance taken by all free males who agreed to fix their residence in the Spanish territory and to obey Spanish laws, local ordinances and the requirements of Spanish authorities. Such oaths normally included a promise to be vigilant and to inform local officials of any seditious or politically subversive manifestations or conspiracies, and a commitment by all able-​­bodied men to perform their military duties in defense of Spanish imperial interests in their country, if summoned by the competent authorities.32 The new Spanish policy also encouraged many U.S., European, and local agents, promoters, and opportunists to present more or less ambitious colonization projects, all based on the promise of land.33 Most failed to lead to actual settlement, either because Madrid did not approve them for various reasons (or did so too late) or because the intermediaries abandoned their projects, but a few plans were actually put into practice. It is, however, significant that projects involving foreign Catholics, which were otherwise highly recommendable from the Spanish point of view, were not approved if they were likely to cause friction with foreign states. In 1789, for example, the government in Madrid rejected one plan to bring numerous Catholic settlers to Luisiana from Ireland “so as not to give England any motives for jealousy or . . . ​a reason to express or conceive any complaint.”34 In other words, foreign policy trumped demographic interest and religious affinity. Agents and promoters of colonization projects knew that the minimum royal requirements were contained in the loyalty oaths and in the instructions transmitted by governor Miró to district commandants.35 These intermediaries, who may be understood to represent at least to some extent the voices of prospective settlers, drew up their proposals accordingly. A composite list of subjects brought up for negotiation in such proposals includes both what the would-​­be colonists were willing to offer and what special concessions they sought. What they offered was usually tailored to appeal to metropolitan needs. Their requests, by contrast, varied widely in content and combination, but might refer to the legal regime and local government institutions, to diverse economic interests, and to religious and other cultural issues. Different proposals were addressed to the Crown through several channels. The Spanish ambassador in the United States, Diego de Gardoqui, was approached by George Morgan and by John Sevier;36 Wouves d’Argès sent his proposal to

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 75

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

76

Chapter 3

Secretary of State Count Floridablanca on the advice of the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Count de Aranda;37 and James White broached the subject with the captain-​­general of Cuba, Diego de Ezpeleta.38 Most proposals, however, were channeled through Miró, or other governors and district commanders of Luisiana. Indeed, the rivalry among these promoters, as they scrambled to obtain advantages, created some tension between Miró and Gardoqui, mainly because Miró thought that the ambassador had promised Morgan far too many privileges of a political nature. Actually, several intermediaries tried to negotiate a degree of self-​ g­ overnment under Spanish protection, suggesting different general formulas as well as concrete aspirations. Those who sought to create an autonomous state usually requested positions for themselves—​­the governorship (sometimes for life), or the rank of general or chief commander of regular troops—​­ as well as official employment for their sons. Some attempted to obtain autonomous political institutions such as a representative council with regular periodical elections, a representative legislative assembly, courts of justice, and justices of the peace. Some sought certain concessions regarding legal codes, practices, and institutions. Some specified that litigation connected with contracts of sale, transfer, lease, inheritance, and other cases involving private property should be subject to Anglo-​­American laws and to the jurisdiction of tribunals formed by and among the immigrant population. Other proposals requested the application of Anglo-​­American laws and procedures in the appointment and functions of diverse public officers, such as agents for Indian affairs, customs inspectors, geographer or general surveyor, registrar of land concessions, provost or chief of the police, police officers, and magistrates. Some wanted the right to trial by jury for criminal cases. In Madrid, the political system was considered non-​­negotiable and none of these proposals prospered. Regarding land grants, by contrast, Spanish regulations were liberal and generally well received by the colonists, but they did not satisfy opportunistic adventurers who thought that the Mississippi Valley was ripe for development in the incipient liberal capitalist expansion of the Atlantic economic system. Spain’s priority was the permanent establishment of an industrious agricultural population that could defend Spanish sovereignty against external enemies. Speculation in land property was therefore undesirable and its prevention was one of the theoretically non-​­negotiable conditions imposed by the Spaniards. In 1798, intendant Juan Ventura Morales received royal authorization to control land grants, and at once issued more restrictive

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 76

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 77

regulations designed to ensure that grants were given to the sort of bona fide settlers most useful to Spain’s imperial defense strategy and the internal tranquility of colonial society. The innovation alarmed local planters. Representing their interests, the síndico procurador general, Félix Arnaud, who was elected by the inhabitants as a non-​­voting member of the Cabildo, drew up an appeal to the Crown. In the end, the king confirmed the intendant’s position, but only after time elapsed and the inhibition, demise, or replacement of colonial officials created a morass of unconfirmed land titles that remained unsolved in 1803.39 The Cabildo also exercised some power over public lands in New Orleans, and its records contain proceedings connected with petitions and disputes over urban lots and buildings dedicated to an array of local economic activities.40 In addition to land property titles, the other chief economic concerns of Luisiana inhabitants were taxation and trade, as expressed by the rebels of 1768 who feared economic ruin under the Spanish mercantilist system. To meet the expenses of local administration and defense, the royal treasury in Mexico was ordered to provide a situado.41 This annual government subsidy became the main source of cash in both Luisiana and the Floridas, largely erasing local concerns about new fiscal burdens. The inhabitants were not required to pay any direct taxes, although local businesses in New Orleans paid license fees or other contributions to maintain the Cabildo. Merchants and planters were therefore mostly affected by trade regulations and import-​ ­export duties, a subject that provided ample scope for internal discussion of protests and petitions. Smuggling was already rife before the arrival of the Spaniards, and the Cabildo frequently pressed for liberal commercial regulations, since most of its members belonged to the planter class.42 Early attempts initiated by O’Reilly to integrate the colony in the imperial system failed. For the first ten years of Spanish rule, Cuba and Spain were designated as the official trading partners of Luisiana, but these were not complementary economies. Cuba and Spain could neither absorb the local products of Luisiana nor provide the kinds of merchandise that were wanted in the colony. Local merchants repeatedly requested to be allowed to trade with French ports but, with brief exceptions, the government in Madrid rejected their petitions. One petition that did prosper was instigated in 1770 by síndico procurador general Luis Ranson and resulted in permission to export local tobacco duty free to Cap français in exchange for slaves needed to increase production.43 By contrast, their hopes of being permitted to trade with New Spain were dashed. The government in Madrid was trying to stop contraband while gradually

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 77

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

78

Chapter 3

reforming the structural deficiencies of Spain’s economic system by means of a controlled process of internal liberalization. Luisiana gained little in these general reforms, but some relief came under governor Luis de Unzaga, who pragmatically allowed local merchants to trade with French island ports and turned a blind eye to illicit trade with British West Florida, on the grounds that the colony could not otherwise survive or prosper. The economic prosperity of the Mississippi colonies after 1776 resulted mostly from the transatlantic wars that prevented Spain from maintaining its old imperial trade monopoly. U.S. independence and the new international situation it created brought many innovations. Some trade with French ports was authorized; in 1778 New Orleans was allowed to trade freely with designated Spanish ports in Europe and America; and, above all, a royal decree of 1782 established the colony’s commerce on liberal terms for the next ten years.44 Sugar and its sub-​­products could be imported from Havana, local tobacco could be exported to Mexico, and general import-​­export trade was allowed with France and the French islands of Saint-​­Domingue and Martinique.45 When this concession expired, most of its terms were renewed. By favoring French commercial connections, royal advisors in Madrid were hoping to break the Anglo-​­American hold on commerce in the Mississippi Valley. They were sorely disappointed in this aim, but the attempt revealed the international concerns underpinning these commercial concessions. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars increasingly disrupted Spain’s transatlantic trade and communications, allowing British manufactures and U.S. foodstuffs to flood the Mississippi colonies as they were doing everywhere in the Spanish Empire.46 Colonial officials were powerless to stop it. In fact, the very real needs of the population often led sympathetic or venal local authorities to bend the rules. Luisiana merchants prospered greatly when a royal order of 1797 authorized neutral ships to trade throughout the empire, so it is not surprising that when it was revoked a year and a half later they protested strongly enough to prevail upon intendant Morales to suspend its application. Following classic Spanish modes of internal negotiation, Morales maintained the liberal regime pending the results of the petitions and recommendations to the king.47 Intermediaries of foreign colonization projects also tried to negotiate a wide variety of economic concessions, ranging from travel expenses to food rations and from widow’s pensions to rights over forest resources. Most common, however, were requests for commercial privileges —​­such as the right to import provisions, equipment, livestock, domestic furnishings, personal

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 78

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 79

effects, merchandise, slaves, and cash—​­and for guarantees that the settlers would be allowed to export their products profitably, ideally exempt from import and export duties but at least on the same terms as those enjoyed by other Spanish subjects. A few bold agents even dared to specify their interest in gaining access to other Spanish markets. Spanish toleration of cultural diversity was stretched to the limit by the immigration of large numbers of Anglo-​­American and other foreign Protestants.48 George Morgan, for example, requested that land be granted for the support of six municipal schools, for each of which he should be allowed to appoint a teacher who would teach in English and be paid by the parents, though he did add that since it would be useful to teach the children Spanish too, the king might want to offer a salary of 100 pesos a year.49 In the religious terrain, Wilkinson’s first proposal waxed eloquent on the wisdom of allowing a broad toleration.50 Other agents requested total freedom of conscience and of public worship, and still others wanted guarantees that there would be no fines, confiscations, proselytizing pressure, government harassment, or other kinds of legal and social discrimination. Eventually, metropolitan authorities approved a workable compromise suggested by Miró and Navarro. Protestants would enjoy limited religious tolerance as long as they kept their worship private and allowed their children to be baptized and taught by Catholic priests. Irish-​­born Catholic priests trained in Spain were recruited to organize parishes for the inhabitants of West Florida who required their religious services, to offer instruction in the Spanish language to the English-​­speaking settlers, to baptize the children, and to try to convert the adults by example and gentle persuasion.51 A few Spanish officials may have been intimately convinced that religious tolerance was a progressive and desirable policy, or at least were able to rationalize such an innovation. Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that this concession was not an expression of enlightened belief in the social and political desirability of cultural tolerance but a practical necessity forced on the metropolitan government by the peculiar local problems of this sensitive imperial periphery.52 As the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Conde de Aranda, remarked, the religious issue was a problem but could be solved by political measures, since “it would be worse if non-​­Catholics, instead of being royal subjects, were the owners and lords of those territories.”53 Large-​­scale foreign immigration contravened a traditional imperial policy, and toleration of Protestants was a radical departure from Spanish orthodoxy, not found elsewhere in Spain’s American colonies. Such negotiated concessions can be explained only in the transatlantic contexts of Spanish defense strategies and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 79

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

80

Chapter 3

international relations, in view of Madrid’s prioritizing of imperial defense and the avoidance of frontier conflicts with the United States. Expressing his frustration in 1795, the bishop of New Orleans feared that Spain’s tolerant approach to gradual Hispanicization was failing: “I have always thought that the admission of foreigners in this province is in the understanding that . . . ​the aid which they have been given of having priests who speak French and English is not in order to perfect their knowledge of these languages but to offer them some immediate but temporary help.”54 Many factors apart from personal conviction explain the cultural resistance of the francophone and anglophone inhabitants of Spain’s Mississippi colonies. The French-​­speaking Creoles of Luisiana were already settled and always outnumbered the Spaniards. The Acadians stayed together in small isolated agricultural communities. Anglophone immigrants, arriving in large numbers over a short period of time and concentrated in relatively small areas, possibly had little or no intention of becoming more culturally assimilated than was necessary. The proven ease with which European colonies could quickly change hands also caused uncertainties about the political future of the region. Everywhere, cultural diversity was encouraged by official tolerance, by the absence of any real incentives for the mass of settlers and first-​­generation immigrants to become Hispanicized, and by the knowledge that decisions made by governments in Europe could end Spanish rule at any time.

“We Shall Be Spaniards from Now On”:55 Indian Allies Spanish relations with the indigenous peoples of the Mississippi Valley rested squarely on negotiation. Traditional cultural imperialism had to be abandoned in favor of a more diplomatic approach that recognized the political independence of the separate Indian nations. There would be no missions or any other sustained efforts to convert these Natives to Catholicism or to formally educate them in European values, lifestyles, and economic skills. The only vestiges of Spanish paternalism would be the efforts to stop the enslavement of Indians and the repeated but largely futile attempts to curb the sale of liquor to them.56 The result of one negotiation, for example, stipulated: “The long experience of disease and evils that the firewater drink causes in people of the Choctaw Nation has determined both parties to agree by common consent that none of the traders should take any kind of [alcoholic] drink to the Nation, on any pretext whatsoever.”57 Geopolitical considerations

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 80

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 81

convinced Spanish authorities that there were no viable alternatives. Patterns of interaction with these Indians had been firmly entrenched by French and Anglo-​­American traders. The proximity of British colonies and, after 1776, the United States meant that Spain simply could not afford to disrespect the political independence and cultural differences of the Mississippi tribes or to ignore their very specific demands for trade. Formal treaties created special relationships of mutual interest in which Indians offered friendship and some recognition of Spanish sovereignty in exchange for protection, fair trade, annual gifts, and symbols of political status (small and large medals, portraits of the king, military jackets, flags, batons, or staffs of authority).58 During these negotiations and other official meetings, deliberate efforts were made to accommodate Native customs and values, although such cultural sensitivity developed primarily as a means to an end.59 “Deferential consultation” and negotiated compromises did not necessarily reflect genuine respect for Native rights but the pragmatic adaptability of colonial officials who were outnumbered and impotent to enforce any other kind of power relationship.60 Furthermore, the terms of such negotiations were open to interpretation. Spaniards might have thought or pretended to believe that the Quapaw chief Cassenonpoint’s recognition of Governor O’Reilly as his “father” in 1769 was an oath of allegiance to Charles III, but the chief no doubt understood this gesture differently. The Quapaws accepted diverse Spanish symbols of friendship and distinction, but they were not subject to Spanish laws and they did not relinquish title to their lands, their freedom of movement, or their liberty to trade or treat with foreigners.61 Similar reservations were surely intended by chiefs Tinhioüen of the Kadohadachos and Cocay of the Yatasis, despite reports that they ceded to Carlos III “complete sovereignty” over their homelands and promised to give him “blind fidelity and obedience.”62 After regaining the Floridas, imperial defense strategy led local Spanish officials to sign similar treaties of alliance with several Indian nations at Pensacola and Mobile in the spring of 1784.63 In these negotiations, Alexander McGillivray and the many other individually identified Indian leaders clearly had their own agendas. They pledged their loyalty to the Spanish Crown and agreed to risk their lives and property in the royal service, but they pointedly qualified their promise to obey Spanish laws by stipulating that it extended only to “those that are compatible with our character and circumstances,” carefully leaving some room for further negotiation of “difficult points that might require interpretation.” Responding to the Spaniards’ preoccupation with international threats, Native negotiators promised to arrest

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 81

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

82

Chapter 3

and hand over to local Spanish authorities any foreigner that might come to them “with the insidious idea of inducing us to take up arms against our Sovereign,” and to ban from their villages any foreign white person who did not carry a Spanish passport. Native leaders here had ample experience and information that gave them good cause to fear U.S. expansion and, although trade remained a key issue, they pressed for strong Spanish commitment to the protection of Indian territorial rights by means of formal guarantees. For their part, the Spaniards spoke of legitimate tribal rights but steered clear of offering any guarantee of lands that fell outside Spanish sovereignty, not wanting to create any motives of conflict with the United States. They did, however, suggest that the king could offer them equivalent lands in Spanish territory if tribal lands were lost to Spain’s enemies. After long and complicated negotiations, in the early 1790s Carondelet and Gayoso succeeded in creating a confederation of southern tribes, in “a defensive-​­offensive alliance,” under Spanish protection.64 Earlier agreements were renewed, with clear and specific mutual guarantees of territorial rights and limits. Even the Cherokees requested inclusion in the confederation and, since they were then at war with the United States, authorized the other tribal leaders to represent Cherokee interests in the negotiations. Again, Spanish representatives pursued their imperial defense goals by pressing hard to obtain the cession of tribal land for trading posts and garrisoned forts at places chosen for their strategic value against U.S. expansion. Spain’s international interests were likewise served by obtaining Indian authorization for Spanish diplomats to negotiate definitive tribal territorial limits with the United States. Perhaps tribal leaders thought that it was worth a try since they were fast running out of other options. By contrast, Spain never managed to establish any real control over the Osage nations in northern Luisiana.65 Groups of Osages often roamed far to the south of their own homelands in the Upper Mississippi, Missouri, and Osage Valleys. They hunted, traded, raided settlements, stole livestock and other property, sometimes killed people, and committed numerous other aggressive acts, as well as warring against other Indian nations such as the Quapaws, Wichitas, Taovayas, Tawakonis, and Caddos.66 All efforts to negotiate a lasting peace failed. The long-​­suffering inhabitants of southern Luisiana and northern Texas made countless complaints, while officials in Natchitoches and Texas urged in vain that military expeditions be sent against the Osages. Carondelet did contemplate a punitive expedition in 1793, but news of the war against France and Genêt’s mission to invade the Floridas and Luisiana stymied his plan. Officials invariably justified their inaction by pointing out

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 82

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 83

the excessive expense, the tactical difficulties, and the uncertain results of military action to punish the offenders.67 These were no doubt weighty reasons, but the real motives of Spanish inhibition lay in metropolitan strategy for imperial defense in larger transatlantic perspectives. Bernardo de Gálvez summarized it well in 1786: “A bad peace with all the Nations that request it will be more beneficial to us than the exertions of a good war. Insincere peace treaties with the Indians produce better effects than open warfare.”68 During this period the number of Osage warriors was decreasing, but they retained their bargaining power thanks to their position on important international frontiers. Spanish authorities repeatedly sacrificed the well-​­being of numerous people under their protection rather than risk pushing the Osages into alliances with the British operating out of Rupert’s Land (the vast northern territory granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company) or with U.S. Americans. Provision of the commercial needs of the Mississippi Natives posed a serious problem for the Spaniards, who had little experience in the dynamics of the North American Indian trade. They did not produce the kind of goods demanded by the Indians, nor were Spanish imperial markets able to absorb the products offered by the Indians. But this trade was tied to transatlantic commercial networks, which meant that it was also interwoven with international relations. French Creoles continued to manage the Luisiana trade, and in 1781 the influential merchant Gilbert Antoine de St. Maxent secured important privileges in the Indian trade, but the Frenchmen increasingly had to deal with British infiltration in the Missouri Valley.69 After 1776 Spanish authorities tolerated illicit commercial connections in the northern British colonies, as merchant-​­capitalists in St. Louis argued that the region’s economic prosperity depended on receiving appropriate supplies. Competition became even more intense in the 1790s when the new North West Fur Company of Montreal aggressively disputed the Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly, and soon most of the fine furs from the Upper Mississippi and Missouri Valleys were being exported to London via Montreal.70 Meanwhile in West Florida, a startling solution was applied. British companies were authorized to continue trading under Spanish licenses.71 Eventually, the Scottish firm of Panton & Leslie beat out competitors and succeeded in obtaining a de facto monopoly, with permission to bring goods directly from Great Britain.72 The wily Panton had suggested that he might be forced to base his business in the United States if he was not given permission to stay in the Floridas.73 The Spaniards did not need this sly threat to understand the situation. The strange commercial arrangement showed that the North

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 83

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

84

Chapter 3

American Indian trade depended on transatlantic connections that could not easily be severed, despite the fact that Britain continued to be Spain’s chief rival during most of this period. Indeed, the intendant of Luisiana, Juan Ventura Morales, argued that since no Spanish company wanted to accept the risks of this Indian trade, if the king decided to dispense with Panton’s services, “it would be necessary to resort to some other [company], whose connections depended on France, England or the United States of America, even if its agents here [in Florida] were naturalized Spaniards.”74 Moreover, government officials knew there would be political consequences if U.S. traders gained control of the trade in this region. The cost of Spain’s Indian policy in the Mississippi Valley represented a considerable economic burden.75 Nonetheless, it was deemed less onerous than the expense of providing greater conventional military defenses, and less risky than leaving the Indians with no alternative than to deal with multiple British and U.S. American neighbors. The constantly repeated justification was that Indian friendship was essential to check the expansion of northern British agents and of the United States, arguing that only French traders in Luisiana and the Scottish traders in the Floridas could conserve Indian friendship for Spain.76 Such an expedient reflected an internal imperial transaction in which Spanish authorities—​­both local and metropolitan—​­recognized Indian power, not just for the sake of the internal tranquility of this particular region, and certainly not inspired by concern for Indian interests, but because of the political and strategic value of Indian alliances in the transatlantic complications of Spain’s international relations. Spanish participation in the war against the French Convention would have dramatic consequences for these Indian nations. When the terms of Pinckney’s treaty reached Luisiana and the Floridas, Indian leaders and local Spanish officials alike were surprised and disappointed. Spain could no longer protect the Native homelands in northern West Florida that had been relinquished to the United States. The Chickasaw chief, Ugulayacabe, expressed his bitter dismay: “Our Great Father [King Carlos IV] gives our land to the Americans who have no other ambition than to expulse us. . . . ​We know very well that we shall be victims; but we shall die like men.”77 Spain’s unilateral action underscored in the harshest possible way that the fate of the Mississippi Indians depended on international relations in which they had no voice. Jay’s treaty of 1794, the French invasion of Spain, the treaty of Basel in 1795, the imminent British declaration of war against Spain, and other events in Europe determined Spanish concessions in Pinckney’s treaty. From the global

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 84

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Spanish Louisiana 85

perspective of royal advisors in Madrid, the diplomatic priority was always to prevent any kind of Anglo-​­U.S. American rapprochement. That meant trying to ensure that the United States saw greater advantage in staying neutral. The Mississippi colonies were expendable if their sacrifice could prevent or delay U.S. involvement in international conflicts. Subsequent agreements with France for the retrocession of Luisiana confirmed that Spanish commitments to safeguard Indian territorial rights stood only as long as they served imperial strategic interests. Meanwhile, small groups of eastern Indians began migrating westward into Spanish Luisiana. After ceding tribal lands to the United States, the Cherokees made a formal request for Spanish lands west of the Mississippi. Gayoso replied that such an arrangement could be contemplated only if the Cherokees were willing to settle and cultivate the land under the same regime as the Natives of New Spain.78 The policy practiced in the Mississippi Valley had not been an experiment aimed at reflecting new ideas and testing viability, but a necessary and temporary expedient for a special case.

Conclusion The Hispanic monarchy was (mainly if not exclusively) a transatlantic empire. Late eighteenth-​­century revolutionary movements and economic tensions threatened its internal stability. In the event of international wars, the diplomatic consequences of naval and military defeats could easily affect precious possessions far removed from the combat zones. Local conflicts might escalate into full-​­scale wars that endangered the entire empire. Frontiers shared with other sovereign states in Europe and America were especially vulnerable, because the proximity of rival powers magnified the interconnectedness of international and internal issues, of metropolitan and local interests. Consequently, geopolitical factors weighed heavily in Spain’s imperial defense strategies. Knowing that the Mississippi was a prime target of British and (above all) U.S. American expansionism, after 1783 Spanish diplomacy strove to avoid conflicts with the United States and especially to prevent any Anglo-​­U.S. entente that would seriously threaten Spain’s imperial interests in more general terms. In the event of war, imperial authorities would need to mobilize all available local manpower for the defense of Luisiana and West Florida, not for their own sake but for their value in protecting New Spain and Spanish shipping in the Gulf-​­Caribbean sea-​­lanes. To these ends, it was

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 85

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

86

Chapter 3

essential to find feasible ways to promote demographic growth and to gain the loyal cooperation of local inhabitants. Moreover, these metropolitan goals had to be attained as cheaply as possible, because Spain’s depleted treasury limited the size of the military forces that could be deployed at any one time or place. This complex combination of metropolitan aims required the negotiation of unusual concessions to local interests, needs, and circumstances, in order to ensure internal tranquility and a degree of local economic satisfaction. Except in the case of black slaves, upon whose continued oppression most members of other social groups and the major powers were agreed, coercion was out of the question in frontier colonies that were vulnerable to internal subversion by revolutionary movements as well as to foreign attacks. Consequently, local loyalty must be gained by good government, attentive to local sensibilities and interests. Enlightened thought may have inspired the rational pragmatic design of Spanish policies, but political realism and necessity suffice to explain the basic motivation of most decisions. In sum, since metropolitan authorities necessarily designed imperial strategies in transatlantic perspective, one can scarcely understand the range and scope of the internal transactions with and between local elites and different social and ethnic groups in Luisiana and West Florida without reference to Spain’s international relations.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 86

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Part II

Circulations

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 87

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 88

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

Chapter 4

Slaves and Poor Whites’ Informal Economies in an Atlantic Context Sophie White

One September day in 1764, Foÿ, a thirty-​­ five-​­ year-​­ old Bambara (non-​ ­ uslim) slave was sitting in front of the entrance to the poor hospital in New M Orleans. He was cutting out shirts and breeches from a length of linen sail cloth and readying to sew the panels together with a borrowed needle. The eyewitness describing this scene, Mama Comba, the fifty-​­year-​­old enslaved Mandinga woman who had lent him the needles and who lived at the hospital, added with emphasis that Foÿ had done his sewing in the open, and that “he did not hide.”1 A number of points can be inferred from this account. First, that Foÿ (also known as Louis) had a use in mind for the European-​­style garments that he had chosen to manufacture from his length of imported linen cloth. Second, that he had the clothes-​­making skills needed to transform cloth into tailored garments. Third, that no one had thought it unusual to find a slave sewing in a public space in town, rather than under the watchful eye of his master. Fourth, that this act of making clothes, one that had gone largely unnoticed by those passing by the hospital that day, had in fact seemed brazen to Mama Comba. She knew the cloth to have been stolen and Foÿ to have been a runaway. Foÿ had come to Louisiana from Saint-​­Domingue and had run away from his owner, Blouin, in the Illinois Country. The linen sail cloth that he had been cutting and sewing had been among a large quantity of clothing and laundry that he was accused of stealing from settlers; a number of enslaved

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 89

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

90

Chapter 4

Africans testified in court about his infractions, providing a complex picture of his movements and of their commercial transactions with him. This testimony was further complicated by Foÿ’s interrogation under oath in court, and eventually (in conformity with French judicial practice) under torture, which caused an admission of guilt for the theft of the laundry as well as the theft of tobacco, poultry, and a hog.2 Among those he had robbed was Widow Celain, a white seamstress from whom he had taken her large pile of sewing work. Her testimony revealed that at the time of the theft, she had been working on making a shirt for the slave Jean-​­Baptiste and a printed cotton short gown (jacket) for the slave Geneviève. These garments seem to have been commissioned by the enslaved Africans Jean-​­Baptiste and Geneviève themselves (not by their masters), for it was they who were identified in the court record as owning the garments, and they who pursued Foÿ for restitution and led to his eventual arrest. In an act of self-​­policing, Jean-​­Baptiste had tracked down Foÿ as the robber and convinced or forced him to lead the way to the shirt. He promptly had him captured and taken to Widow Celain “to see if Foÿ would return her other effects.” The widow took over at this point and called the guards.3 In the intervening period between the robbery and his eventual arrest, Foÿ had swiftly disbursed the stolen clothing and laundry in exchanges that highlighted slaves’ consumption of goods, but also their role in the colonial provisioning system. Foÿ had gifted certain items to slaves, including to women; he had pawned other clothing items; and sold still others. The records of the prosecution provided details of the sale of these stolen garments to fellow slaves and on the open market (sometimes by using accomplices to make the sales), and in town as well as on neighboring plantations. Among his transactions, Foÿ was accused of offering one of the stolen shirts for sale to Kebbé, a slave on the large Villars Dubreuil plantation on the outskirts of New Orleans, settling on a price of three piastres after apparently assuring Kebbé that the shirt was not stolen. He sold a petticoat for three piastres to the slave Femmeca belonging to Mr. Renard, underscoring the degree to which these sales were extensions of the cash economy.4 Thefts, and the wider system of economic transactions that relied on the market for stolen goods, were key facets of the broader informal economies in Europe. In Louisiana as well, robberies constituted a key alternative source of products for those segments of the population locked out of the market due to their status and/or their inferior economic buying power. The analysis of the specific patterns of stealing—​­and fencing—​­textile goods shows that theft

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 90

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Informal Economies 91

cultures in French colonial Louisiana, and beyond, were profoundly shaped by European cultures of consumption pertaining to the act of thieving and the use of those consumer networks in place for the disposal and redistribution of stolen clothing. Slaves’ tactics for the acquisition and disposal of textile goods closely mirrored European practices, where, “just as it appears to have been reasonably unexceptional to sell cloth door to door, so it was to sell stolen garments in public.”5 So in Louisiana, a slave like Foÿ making clothing from stolen fabric, even in a public venue, did not raise any eyebrows, for making clothes in public was a commonplace, normal event that would go unnoticed. The parallel between theft cultures in Louisiana and in Europe further suggests that Africans’ involvement in robberies was predicated on knowledge transferred directly from colonists down to the specific techniques for refashioning stolen cloth and clothing into market-​­ready products. The evaluation of slave criminality in light of European practices pertaining to the theft and redistribution of apparel reveals that it is not the retention of West African practices that mattered where thefts by slaves were concerned, but contact with complicit settlers, as the enslaved acclimated and responded to the material and sartorial cultures they encountered in the New World.

Theft: Supply or Demand? A tremendous body of archival material survives that documents how the dress of the enslaved was intertwined with their informal commercial activities in French colonial Louisiana.6 These are judicial records of investigations and prosecutions in which the enslaved testified in person, giving them a voice, however circumscribed, that was denied to them in the English colonies. It should go without saying that the very premise of slaves as thieves is untenable, given that the enslaved were themselves “commodified.” Investigations and prosecutions in Louisiana reflected French cultural notions of criminal activities, notions that were increasingly polarized around slaves’ infractions: marooning, rebellions or bodily injury, and especially crimes of property.7 These were cases that disproportionately targeted the enslaved (primarily males) to the exclusion of settlers, especially after the 1720s; that generally ignored thefts committed from slaves; and that also reflected a distinction and imbalance between court-​­mandated justice and informal punishments meted out by masters on plantations.8 The interpretation of slaves’ testimony in criminal records is highly problematic. But it is also rich with

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 91

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

92

Chapter 4

potential since difficulties in the interpretation of these sources are offset by the valuable information provided about a range of slave activities, some of these legitimate. Slaves’ economic activities rested on an uneasy if often elastic relationship between customary practices and legal constraints. When Jean-​­Baptiste pursued Foÿ for restitution of his new clothing, he was showing himself to be invested in the potential of dress to assert or contest status, to construct community and economic agency, to facilitate or disrupt inter-​­ and intra-​­ethnic power relations, and even to engineer social control within black spaces.9 But he was also revealing the place of slaves in a marketplace in which networks of thieves stole textile goods, and receivers altered, unpicked, remade, and then pawned or resold these to a new consumer, activities that transcended the premise that masters were responsible for dressing slaves. Within the Atlantic, cloth was the largest single category of consumer items sent to the colonies and usually the most valuable; it was also the second biggest household expenditure item after food.10 It retained its value through multiple cycles of ownership and could be used as a unit of exchange, pawned, traded, bartered. Its importance in West Africa is seen in its role in the slave trade, where it was among the key commodities deployed in the purchase of slaves.11 There as in the colonies, this imported cloth consisted of textiles manufactured in Europe but also Asia, revealing how problematic the Atlantic world paradigm becomes when applied to material culture.12 In Louisiana, the clothing of slaves was a constant preoccupation of colonial officials charged with ensuring the survival and upkeep of human chattel. Article 18 of the 1724 Code Noir pertaining to slaves dealt with the subject of clothing alongside the other major component of a slave’s maintenance, his food. It merely specified that apparel be issued on a yearly basis, pending the council’s advice as to what exactly to provide. The functional character of slave clothing was reiterated in Article 20, which granted slaves recourse to the law should their masters fail to provide adequately for their needs. No such cases are known to have been brought, and in any case, Article 24 forbade slaves—​­like servants—​­from testifying for or against their master.13 Runaway slaves did invoke a lack of food and clothing as a motive for marooning, but no defense succeeded on this basis.14 In practice, then, slaves had ineffective legal recourse if masters failed to provide them with clothing, heightening the reliance on alternative sources of supply. Many of these alternative sources of supply were legitimate according to French law and custom, including gifts and bequests from masters; ad-​­hoc distributions from estates; and purchases made as a result of a slave’s (limited) autonomous role as purveyor of services,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 92

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Informal Economies 93

foodstuffs, and labor.15 But for most slaves and poorer settlers in Louisiana, cloth and clothing were commodities to which they often only had access through theft and the outcome of thefts. Property crimes posed an implicit threat to the social order that was magnified in slave societies.16 But it is important to remember that the concrete outcome of a robbery for the thief was the access to material goods. As with the example of Foÿ, who could convert his stolen goods into a range of other items, robberies gave slaves access to the marketplace for other goods and services. Foÿ’s various transactions across New Orleans and its environs are also reminiscent of those of itinerant peddlers in France. Like peddlers, runaway slaves in Louisiana served as valuable intermediaries between town and plantation, with slave cabins providing a key space for negotiating a range of licit and illicit transactions.17 In turn, the presence of stolen goods in the marketplace increased the supply and range of consumer items available for purchase or trade by the enslaved and the poor. This correlation between the theft of clothing and the circulation of second-​­hand goods was a feature of the economy of early modern Europe (and also present in Anglo-​­America), where thieves and their accomplices filled in the deficiencies in supply.18 The ability of many disadvantaged segments of the population to consume beyond their means depended on the cyclical movement of goods being put into circulation by means of robberies, with some of these goods entering legal channels of provision at this point. As a means of obtaining goods and participating in the economy, theft proved especially worthwhile to those, like the enslaved, who were most devoid of legitimate options for the acquisition of material goods. For these groups, stealing or gaining access to stolen or fenced goods (usually at very competitive prices) might represent a valuable way to acquire desirable commodities or necessities. In effect, stolen goods helped alleviate inequities among a wider range of consumers than just the circle of thieves. As seen through the investigation against Foÿ, most thefts were crimes of opportunity, a result of a slave indiscriminately grabbing a pile of available clothes, often (as in Europe) from a washing line.19 The thief might not retain these randomly acquired goods for his immediate or personal consumption. Instead, he or she sometimes deployed them in the initiation and consolidation of affective, sexual, and non-​­sexual kin and patronage relations. Given the value of cloth and clothing and the haphazard nature of what could be taken in the course of a robbery, stolen goods might also be intended as a commodity to be put into circulation, sold or exchanged for other more

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 93

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

94

Chapter 4

desirable or needed goods. Items acquired in such circumstances also usually required that they be transformed to minimize the risk of recognition, confiscation, and prosecution; robbers usually relied on legitimate service providers for work that to seamstresses, laundresses, and tailors was indistinguishable from the legitimate orders they received from the enslaved. And once transformed, these refashioned goods were ready for recirculation in the local marketplace and offered for consideration by new groups of consumers who benefited from access to stolen goods, but who were not in and of themselves engaged in illicit activities. This process provides a benchmark against which to judge the influence of a parallel but illicit exchange economy involving poor settlers, Africans, and (especially in settlements beyond New Orleans) Indians.20 Like the poor in Europe, many slaves like Foÿ and his accomplices bridged licit and illicit means of provision and consumption. For example, the twenty-​­three year-​­old Creole slave Louis, belonging to Alexis-​­Philippe Carlier (the comptroller of Louisiana), admitted responsibility for the theft of some goods.21 Some of these items were apparently soiled, for he paid a female slave one piaster to launder three pairs of breeches and two shirts. He offered other items as gifts, and he also commissioned some clothing and bedding to be made from the cloth. For example, Louis stated that “he had cut enough fabric to make two pairs of breeches and a waistcoat of cholet [linen], which he had given Cupidon, Mr. Villars Dubreuil’s slave, to make them up.”22 Louis was not here showing himself to be capable of tailoring garments. He had not cut the fabric to shape (skilled work that Cupidon was capable of). What Louis had undertaken was to simply cut out two pieces of cloth that he had estimated would be needed for two pairs of breeches. That he was able to commission someone else to do the skilled work of tailoring (measuring, cutting a pattern, and sewing a three-​­dimensional garment) illustrated Louis’ participation in, and integration within, the economy as a consumer. It also underlined his immersion within European gender conventions. That it was a male to whom Louis had turned for the construction of the garment upheld a European gender division of labor regarding clothes’ making, marking the transfer of such practices from Europeans to the enslaved. Female family members and seamstresses were responsible for the making of small clothes and linens (such as shifts, petticoats, handkerchiefs), while tailored garments for men and women were the exclusive preserve of male tailors; slaves generally adhered to this European gender division of labor when commissioning the making of clothing to order.23 At the same time,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 94

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Informal Economies 95

that it was a slave, Cupidon, who had provided this service to Louis underlined Cupidon’s immersion in European tailoring methods since the desired styles were European fashion breeches and a sleeveless waistcoat. Similarly, in the Illinois Country forty years earlier, another slave being prosecuted for theft and plotting to maroon, Pierre Pericaut, described going “one Sunday to the habitation of M. de Boibriand in order to make repairs to the skirt owned by a female slave, at her husband’s request.”24 Slaves across the colony took their place as goods and service providers, their transactions centered on European material culture.

The Intersections of Licit and Illicit Consumption The records of criminal investigations offer evidence of the widespread economic involvement of African men and women (enslaved and free) in the apparel trades, and whether in New Orleans or in outposts such as Natchitoches or the Illinois, and whether in urban environments or on plantations. Drawing on dress-​­related skills for which they were known to the wider community, and which they put to use for their own profit, independently of their masters, they forged a permanent place for themselves (legitimately and otherwise) within the local economy as suppliers of goods and services. In doing so, they often acted in cahoots with fellow blacks, free, enslaved, and maroon, but also with Indians and with settlers and soldiers. Slave owners and officials were certainly concerned about the repercussions of slave criminality. But, as in other colonies, they were especially anxious about the role of poor settlers in inciting or benefiting from crimes of property by slaves, crimes whose end result was the offloading of stolen goods in the marketplace.25 A succession of laws addressed these concerns about the interactions between Africans and colonists. A 1723 decree was aimed at preventing the purchase from slaves of clothing, chickens, produce, game, or anything else. In the 1724 Code Noir, Article 15 only allowed slaves to sell products and merchandise when they had their master’s written permission; the law imposed hefty fines on colonists who flouted the regulation.26 In order to enforce this statute, men were to be posted in each marketplace with the explicit task of monitoring the goods brought to market by slaves and checking that they had permission slips from their masters. In this emphasis on the surveillance of slaves, colonists were echoing anxieties about transgressions by the poor in France, where the activities of peddlers and second-​­hand

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 95

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM

96

Chapter 4

clothes’ dealers were subject to special scrutiny.27 The police code of 1751, formulated in the colony, differed from the Code Noir in its focus on providing ways to control specific types of behavior. While it included some oversight of poor whites, its main emphasis lay in controlling enslaved and free blacks.28 In Louisiana as in other Atlantic societies, a distinction was increasingly practiced between French and African freed people with regard to their punishment for breaching the social order. The police code did penalize settlers who provided alcohol to slaves or free blacks, or who fenced goods stolen by slaves.29 But only one of these categories of people could be deprived permanently of their freedom, for the freedom of Africans was not absolute but reversible. The free Jean Baptiste found this out in 1743 when he was convicted of the theft of fine shirts and handkerchiefs, in consequence of which his freedom was permanently rescinded.30 In France, the poor were still disproportionately prosecuted and they were subjected to a judicial structure shaped to respond to their crimes (mostly petty ones) over others.31 There, a poor Frenchman’s theft of four handkerchiefs might carry a sentence ranging from three years in the galleys to hanging.32 The same pattern can be discerned in judicial records of Canada, where poor whites remained the targets of judicial prosecutions.33 In contrast, most criminal investigations in French colonial Louisiana were aimed at the infractions of Africans, whether slave or free. This shift suggests that the judicial process in Louisiana was now premised on racial rather than class profiling, for few whites of any rank were accused of theft after the 1720s, though they remained subject to surveillance in their social and commercial interactions with the enslaved.34 The 1751 police code channeled the anxieties of local officials and elites by imposing strict restrictions on the movement of slaves, including their participation in commerce as both consumers and providers. In the period after 1751, questions posed by investigators in the course of interrogations revolved around identifying the networks in place for the theft, concealment, and sale/barter of stolen goods. Especially prominent in the questioning of the witnesses and accused was whether a third party had incited the thief to steal. Testifying as a witness in the case against Louis belonging to Carlier, the twenty-​­five-​­year-​­old slave Margueritte was asked if she had not told him to go fetch some linen and that she would make him some clothes; the same question was asked of another witness.35 Such questioning had the potential to name accomplices and reflected the belief that thefts were often tied to other forms of undesirable activity.36 Similarly, the recirculation through resale or

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 96

22123

8/2/13 10:12 AM



Informal Economies 97

exchange of stolen clothes that resulted in the redistribution of wealth constituted a threat to the social order. Authorities in the French Atlantic (as in the British Atlantic) had long-​­established concerns toward those who stole goods with a view to resale.37 In projecting these anxieties onto slaves in Louisiana, it was simply that the prosecutorial target had shifted between France and Louisiana: from poor disenfranchised whites in the former to free and enslaved Africans in the latter. In contrast to France and New France, in Louisiana after the 1720s the enslaved bore the brunt of prosecutions for theft. But the extant investigations brought against them open a vista onto the illegal activities of a wider group of settlers and especially of poor whites. Few of them were prosecuted, but their role in inciting theft, fencing stolen goods, or supplying slaves in contravention of official ordinances was occasionally brought to the fore. Indeed, settlers were often directly blamed for slave criminality. It is primarily through the interrogations of the accused and their witnesses that we gain insights into the commercial activities of those white inhabitants who collaborated with slaves, accused for their role in inciting slaves to steal or for their part as fencers. The case against the slave Jupiter and his suspected accomplice Alexandre provided an even more complicated combination of illicit and potentially licit transactions all stemming from the initial theft of a sum of paper money. This 1744 investigation concentrated less on the slaves’ original crime than on the purchases from the settler Dusigne and his wife. The French couple had apparently advertised to slaves their willingness to deal with them, in this instance selling sixty livres’ worth of jewelry to Jupiter. Jupiter then claimed that he had pawned the earrings with the (African) tailor Louis, in exchange for a pair of breeches costing ten livres. Jupiter even implicated his master, the Chevalier de Pradel, claiming that it was he who had changed the stolen notes. Pradel had charged Jupiter with selling foodstuffs from the plantation, a custom that had provided Jupiter with a justification and cover for his regular presence in the New Orleans marketplace.38 This case exemplifies the workings of a local exchange economy that incorporated access to the cash economy. But it also illuminates the persistence in Louisiana of European models of re-​­distribution of stolen goods, in which Frenchmen of lower economic standing were core participants. This interrogates the process whereby slaves forcibly taken from West Africa became attuned to the codes and conventions of theft cultures derived from another part of the Atlantic world.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 97

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

98

Chapter 4

“S’il n’y avait point de receleurs, il n’y aurait point de voleurs” (If There Were No Middlemen, There Would Be No Thieves) Slaves’ familiarity with—​­and interest in—​­the forms and materials of European (and Asian) manufactured goods was a theme that recurs throughout the documents.39 But cross-​­cultural exchanges that incorporated the consumption of exotic or prestige trade goods were long-​­standing practices among different West African nations prior to, and after, contact with Europeans, confounding attempts to reduce cultural exchanges to ahistorical binaries of tradition or assimilation. This point reiterates Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec’s critique in this volume of the dichotomy between the Africanization and Creolization models that are often applied to Louisiana slavery. Material culture, with its focus on uncovering the meaning of specific objects as they are deployed in a particular context, similarly forces us to heed his call to root our studies in time and place. And what is especially significant in the records documenting enslaved Africans’ involvement in the illicit recirculation of apparel is that the cutting and transformation of stolen cloth and clothing was a hallmark of robberies throughout Europe, a tactic premised on the need to render tailored items unidentifiable.40 It is difficult to state definitely that these tactics had no precedent in West Africa. But it is intriguing that these maneuvers are directly traceable to European sartorial conventions of tailored garments, as opposed to the draped cloths predominantly characteristic of West African dress (especially for the non-​­elite and non-​­Muslims such as Foÿ who were in the majority in Louisiana).41 Draped cloths held the possibility that the textiles might be unraveled and rewoven, but this was as distinct and as specialized a technique as that of modifying tailored clothing.42 The fact that European clothing was cut and constructed—​­in other words, tailored to fit rather than wrapped and draped—​­meant that slaves had to adopt specific tactics to pass off stolen clothing. These ploys derived from established means of stealing and fencing such goods in Europe where the norm consisted in turning cloth into new garments, picking apart tailored clothing to dissimulate distinguishing features of cut and construction, or removing identifying laundry marks that were inked or embroidered. The goal was to turn the stolen items into more suitable, desirable, or marketable goods. Slaves learned that they needed to dissimulate and offload stolen goods,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 98

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Informal Economies 99

and their testimony was consistent in revealing that they generally sought to do so promptly, as Foÿ had. These transformations took specific forms, including the removal of laundry marks or initials that were inked or embroidered to facilitate the identification of the owner when sent to be laundered, or the dissimulation of other distinguishing cut and tailoring features. The slave Brasouvant from Cannes Bruslées had not been swift enough in transforming the load of laundry in his possession (and that he claimed to have obtained when it had accidentally fallen off a cart). He was arrested less than two days after the theft was committed, wearing one of the stolen shirts, and in possession of six more shirts and eight sheets. All of these were intact, none had been picked apart and remade, and officials recognized the laundry “as belonging either to the King’s Hospital or to the Ursuline sisters.” A few weeks later, Sister Magdelaine corroborated that the items were indeed “marked with the [Hospital’s] regular [laundry] mark.”43 Once they had transformed the goods, slaves also learned from colonists that they could benefit from preexisting redistribution channels run by middlemen and women. The fencing of stolen goods in Louisiana as in Europe relied on the collective involvement of thieves, seamstresses, used-​­clothes dealers, pawnbrokers, and fencers/receivers. Slaves’ familiarity with such intermediaries (and their criminal tactics) interrogates the process whereby knowledge about these practices might have been transferred from Europeans to Africans. How these criminal networks were reconstituted in the colonies, and how slaves became familiar with the modus operandi of criminals in Europe, raise questions about the transfer of knowledge across geographies and populations, from one part of the Atlantic to the other and from one Atlantic people to another. These considerations were at the forefront of officials’ concerns about social and economic interactions between colonists and the enslaved in Louisiana and other Atlantic colonies. The framers of the 1724 Code Noir feared that settlers would incite slaves to pilfer manufactured goods. Article 15 specified a fine of only six livres for the illicit purchase from slaves of foodstuffs, wood, or grain. It mandated a massive fine of 1,500 livres (approximately the price of an enslaved African) for those who had purchased manufactured goods, clothing, or linens from slaves. It further specified that colonists who bought such goods were also to be “pursued extraordinarily as thief-​­fencers” (voleurs receleurs), meaning those who knowingly dealt in stolen goods.44 Tacitly admitting the failure to enforce this aspect of the 1724 Code Noir, the 1751 police code reiterated the concern with limiting settlers’ corruption of slaves.45 Twelve years after the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 99

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

100

Chapter 4

1751 police code, Nicolas Chauvin de La Frénière, the first Creole attorney general of Louisiana, continued to explicitly, and angrily, blame poor whites for inciting slave theft: The edges of the town are infested with quantities of people. . . . ​[They] are the first at the market, and consume instead of helping to provide, and in order to accelerate their fortune, and suffice for their enormous expenditures, they falsify the alcohol that they sell, and expose slaves to violent illnesses by giving them alcohol, they incite them to pillage and steal from their masters without distinction everything that they find, whether handkerchiefs, towels, empty bottles.46 The anxieties expressed in such local statutes reiterated, in a colonial setting, the well-​­known French proverb that “there would be no robbers if there were no fencers.”47 These laws were explicit in asserting a role for whites in shaping slave criminality. A criminal investigation from 1723 at the cusp of the massive (and definitive) wave of African forced migration to Louisiana illuminates the concrete ways that knowledge about European criminal practices might be transferred from whites to blacks. In that year, Marie Lespronne, a twelve-​­year-​­old orphaned servant girl was brought before the court. Her master, the Chevalier de Morand, had accused her of having robbed him of clothing and household textiles. During the interrogation, Marie justified her role in the theft by claiming that it was her twenty-​­four-​­year-​­old stepmother, Marie Dubois, who had forced her to it. The young Marie went on to volunteer further details about the broader circle of contacts who, knowingly or unknowingly, had enabled the theft and disposal of the goods. Consistent with her claim that she had been coerced, Marie stated that she had passed on all the stolen goods to her stepmother and two of this woman’s friends. In return, her stepmother had bought her a pair of yellow wool stockings, purchased from another French woman with merchandise to sell, Madame Auvillé. Marie also named her stepmother’s two co-​­conspirators. One was Marie Rousseau, the twenty-​­five-​­year-​­old wife of Governor Bienville’s steward and indigo-​­maker. The other accomplice, whom Marie accused of tying her up and beating her, had taken “three or four handkerchiefs and two or three collars” from the booty. This second accomplice Marie identified as a négresse and “the wife of the nègre Jacob.”48 This trial showcased the same cast of characters familiar from accounts of theft in Europe, illuminating the parallels between colonial and European

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 100

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Informal Economies 101

exchange networks for the trade in secondhand (including stolen) goods.49 The outcome of thefts, as reported in court cases from Europe, usually entailed the pawning and resale of stolen clothes, and two characters stood on hand to facilitate this. One, Madame Auvillé was a trader or retailer, likely therefore to be able to pass off any stolen clothes as merely second-​­hand. Remond, the husband of Marie Rousseau, had testified that year in another case about the resale of a pair of ill-​­gotten stockings. The court did not take issue with any aspect of Remond’s role in the case. But the details of the testimony hint that he may have been aware that he was fencing a stolen item of clothing. The stockings had been brought to his house to sell one night at dinnertime by a négresse woman identified as the wife of Le Roy (a French locksmith), in a case that primarily involved colonists. That Remond was approached in these circumstances meant that Remond and his wife were known, even among Africans, as fencers, for indeed Remond did not purchase the stockings in order to keep them. Rather, in an act straight out of the fencer’s playbook, he moved to another locale, the house of Aubuchon, where he offered them for sale to a group of voyageurs who were being entertained there. It was at this point and in this place that the original owner of the stockings, Chapron, recognized his property and seized them. This, then, was a clear-​­cut example of fencing stolen goods. The legal and illegal worlds of the informal economy that might bring together Africans and whites were bridged by Remond and mediated by a space, Aubuchon’s, that, like inns and taverns across Europe and North America, brought strangers together and facilitated a range of shady transactions.50 That twelve-​­year-​­old Marie Lespronne’s stepmother was identified as married to a brewer in New Orleans suggests that they too ran a tavern. His wife would also be well placed to take advantage of the illicit activities with which taverns were intimately, though not exclusively, linked.51 The 1723 court case correlates in most details with the prosecutions for crimes of property brought against the poor throughout Europe. Only in the inclusion of an African woman among the network of accomplices did it differ markedly from the patterns of theft and distribution found in one part of the Atlantic world, Europe. Notwithstanding the elision of her name in the court record, the négresse’s collusion with two white women apparently went so far as to include a direct role in tying up and beating up Marie Lespronne, a French girl. Her goal was to coerce the girl to commit a crime of property from which she stood to profit. Through her role as an accomplice to colonists, this African was initiated into and learned to fit within this Atlantic world model of criminality. But though colonists might be penalized for

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 101

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

102

Chapter 4

colluding to sell alcohol or goods to slaves after this decade, they were rarely prosecuted for theft itself. The runaway slave Foÿ, prosecuted in 1764 for the theft of laundry, was convicted and sentenced to be broken on the wheel, his body to be left on a pole on the chemin du Bayou. Foÿ’s accomplice Marie-​­Jeanne was sentenced to be birched throughout the town, her shoulder branded with the letter “V” (for voleur—​­thief) for her role in fencing goods he had stolen. Mama Comba and Louizon, convicted of housing him, were condemned to the psychological torture of having to witness his execution.52 As seen in this prosecution from the close of the French regime in Louisiana, crimes of property and the interwoven cultures of consumption and criminality onto which they were mapped were no longer associated with poor whites but with slaves. For the enslaved, exposure to European tactics pertaining to the theft, transformation, and redistribution of clothing might well have lethal consequences, as it did for Foÿ. But for all those other slaves who participated in the informal economy, whether legally or illegally, theft and popular consumerism accorded them a degree of agency. It also provided a degree of continuity with the huckstering and peddling activities familiar from West Africa. Ironically, it would be through immersion in the European framework for the redistribution of (European) goods that the enslaved might re-​­create in America this continuity with their ancestral past.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 102

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Chapter 5

“Un Nègre nommè [sic] Lubin ne connaissant pas Sa Nation”: The Small World of Louisiana Slavery Jean-​­P ierre Le Glaunec

In 1795, a slave named Lubin, along with five other African slaves, was put up for sale by Guillaume Despau. Despau was a French man of modest origins from Libourne, an inhabitant of New Orleans at least part of the year, the owner of several farms or plantations in Opelousas, and the husband of Marie Sophie Carrière—​­the daughter of Jean Carrière, a French man, also from Libourne, a merchant and planter based apparently in Opelousas.1 Antoine de Saint Amand, the commandant of St. Charles Parish, recorded the sale on January 18. Lubin, who would have been in his late teens, and three of his African fellows—​­Lucie, Jean, and Jupiter—​­were sold to Antoine Foucher, an inhabitant of the parish. His plantation was located on the prosperous left bank of the river (known today as the east bank), approximately twenty-​­five miles north of New Orleans, between the rice and corn farm of Louis Dué, a non-​­slaveholder, and François-​­Joseph Delhommer, known to have been a cotton planter with fifteen slaves in 1804.2 It is unclear what crop was grown on Lubin’s new master’s plantation in 1795, but it is known that four years earlier Foucher had exchanged indigo for an African slave.3 In 1804, Foucher was one of the nineteen sugar planters of the parish—​­though he ranked last in terms of output.4 He then owned fifteen slaves, nine males, and six females, who lived in close proximity with nine whites. Lubin, along with seventeen other slaves, probably arrived from Africa, via Saint-​­Domingue, in 1786. He was purchased by Despau from Jean Dupuy,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 103

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

104

Chapter 5

the captain of the slave ship Marquez de Sonora.5 Despau may have taken his new slaves to Opelousas, where the Carrière, his wife’s family, had apparently established themselves since at least the late 1760s, but nothing is certain on this part of the story. What we do know for certain is that in April 1790, at least twelve of the Africans purchased in 1786 were seized by Jean Dupuy for default of payment. One of the seized slaves was “Loubin,” age twelve, probably our man. Despau was able to pay off at least part of his debt and reclaim some of his labor force; indeed, five of the men and women seized in 1790 appear again in the records in 1799 as Despau’s property. And as we know, Lubin still belonged to the French man in 1795. Sale records are common occurrences in Louisiana’s parish archives. Why then focus on Lubin among all slaves? Because, in a way, his sale stands out: for its details, or more revealingly as will be seen shortly, its absence of details, and for the type of questions that can be inferred for historians of Lower Louisiana and the Atlantic world. The present article is an attempt to probe into Lubin’s world—​­or at least to shed light on a small facet of it. As an African slave like, and unlike, many others, Lubin is an ideal guide in the present article’s endeavor to think again about the context in which the slave cultures and communities of Lower Louisiana (as seen through one particular parish, St. Charles) could take shape between ca. 1780 and ca. 1812. One important caveat should be added here: I mean by guide not that we shall be able to follow Lubin in concrete terms—​­as, indeed, Lubin will not be the central agent in most of the narrative. Too many silences surround his story, and it would be very awkward to deduce generalizations from the hardly known life of an African slave in his late teens. Lubin’s story should be understood instead as one way to open a window—​­one that builds on the historiography but also tries to depart slightly from it—​­on the small but expanding world of Louisiana slavery in the Spanish and early American period. The most expensive of all the men and women offered for sale by Despau, Lubin was a carter, a footman, and a cowboy. He could break horses, oxen, and cows. He could handle the axe and the pickaxe; he could row, hunt, and even serve as a house slave. In the Atlantic world of material goods and human commodities,6 Lubin was no trifle. He was a teenage African skilled worker with many social attributes that made him highly marketable and desirable. Yet, in some ways, he “lacked” something: he did not “know” what his African “nation” was. The sale record reads, “Un Nègre nommè [sic] Lubin ne connaissant pas Sa Nation.” Though not explicit, the formulation indicates

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 104

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 105

that Lubin was asked about his supposed sense of African “identity.” As Deborah Jenson has recently recalled, “These nations appear to have been defined to a considerable extent by the slaves themselves.”7 Despau was in New Orleans and the parish commandant had probably no other way of knowing where the slaves supposedly “came from” than asking them directly. Their supposed African “nations” could not only have been the simple product of an ethnocentric need for categorization. Though they did not necessarily refer to a specific and well-​­defined sense of “ethnic” belonging, they were not just convenient, imposed forms of social identification and marks of state control, a view supported by some historians. As Paul Lovejoy, Gwendolyn Hall, James Sweet, and Douglas Chambers, among others, have shown, African “nations” also served as personal and desired forms of self-​­representation—​ ­though always fluctuating ones—​­across the Atlantic world.8 In our case, however, Lubin supposedly did not know what to respond. Of course, he may have simply refused to answer—​­a sign of his refusal to market himself in the absence of his master. Or maybe he would have preferred to reply with a different vocabulary, one not “national” in its connotations—​­and maybe he did so without it making the record. Or, indeed, he simply did not know or remember what his “nation” was, if ever he had or was given one, as he would have been only about eight when he arrived in Louisiana. Naturally, this absence of “nation” does not make of Lubin a less African slave than one with a “nation”—​­whether desired or not. It is impossible to know whether he would have defined himself as a man from a specific African “nation,” and whether his sense of self-​­representation would have been at variance or in accordance with his actual cultural practices. This article rests on this apparent silence, whether voluntary or not. It feeds onto its many possible implications. To put it more clearly, Lubin’s answer, or lack of answer, makes him stand out of a historiographical mold that has relied heavily on the existence of those African “nations.” Because it does not quite fit, Lubin’s story presents us with the possibility of rethinking not only the way we have interpreted labels and categories that were applied to and/or mobilized by slaves in Louisiana, in particular African “national” ones, but also the context in which slaves like Lubin would have had to live and define themselves. To put it differently, the “silence” produced by the record invites us, specifically, to break free from one of the foundational dichotomies of the history of Louisiana slavery: the “Creolization” vs. the “Africanization” models.9 It prods us to reconsider what this dichotomy—​­a mostly ideological one, as Richard

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 105

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

106

Chapter 5

Price has recently explained10—​­has left vastly untouched: namely the conditions and the contextual elements that influenced and shaped the formation of slave cultures and communities in colonial and early national ­Louisiana—​ ­conditions much better known for most other regions of the Atlantic like the Caribbean, the thirteen colonies and the early republic, or Brazil.11 So much attention has been paid to African “nations” in Louisiana as clear signs of either undeniable “Africanization” or African cultural homogeneity—​­that is, the transfer or survival of specific African “cultures,” or undeniable “Creolization” or African cultural heterogeneity leading to a Creole culture, implying rapid acculturation to the local “cultures”12 (one thinks in particular of the much written about “Bambara”/“Bamana” and “Congo”)—​­that something central has been obscured in the process. Ethnic categories—​­whether desired or not—​­cannot and will not tell it all, in particular if they are used in a way that tends to caricature the different positions adopted in the historiography. To quote Deborah Jenson again, who refers to Saint-​­Domingue but whose words could well apply to Louisiana, “In a certain sense, to echo Simone de Beauvoir concerning gender, one ‘was not born but became’ Creole or African. . . . ​Especially for children or young people who may have been severed from witnesses of their earlier life, socioethnic identities were only fully realized contextually, whether in the first lurching step off a fetid ship or in a delicate ballet of overt, implicit, suppressed, or refashioned identities in the ongoing pursuit of social survival, alliance, and mobility.”13 “Socioethnic identities were only fully realized contextually”: keeping those words in mind, I propose that we step back and look again at the contextual elements that shaped Louisiana slavery in the Spanish and early American period. This movement backward, which I envision as a dual process of renewed “historicization” and “contextualization”14—​­namely a return to the “historical particulars”15 and more specifically a return to what T. H. Breen called the “constraints upon choice”16 and “upon cultural adaptation”17—​­is exactly what Lubin’s story invites us to do. In what follows, I propose therefore to examine some of the contextual constraints that affected the formation of slave cultures and communities in Lower Louisiana, in particular St. Charles Parish, between ca. 1780 and ca. 1812. I would like to show in particular that contextual constraints probably played against a broad re-​­Africanization of slave communities, a view largely shared so far when it comes to consider the way specific African cultures were transferred and maintained in Louisiana. The logical conclusion is not that there was a linear, clear, extensive “Creolization”—​­that is, a complete

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 106

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 107

loss of everything African if one sticks to the understanding of “Creolization” often found in the Louisiana historiography—​­of the same slave communities. Maybe the specificity of Louisiana slavery in this period was not the cultural homogeneity or heterogeneity of its slave communities—​­themes that have dominated the historiography through an emphasis on African ­“nations”—​­but the sheer speed at which it all changed, at which different men and women circulated from one place to another, probably confusing as they did any patterns of continuity.

“An Enormous Presence” A study of estate inventories notarized in St. Charles Parish between 1780 and 1818—​­in cases of succession, marriage, remarriage, or sale—​­almost inevitably leads one to conclude, as historian Gwendolyn Hall did sixteen years ago, that Africa-​­born men and women were indeed an “enormous presence.”18 Africans and their plethora of “nations” inform all indicators of slave life. If one relies on the 121 existing inventories—​­forty-​­eight in the 1780s, thirty-​­six in the 1790s, and thirty-​­seven up to 1818—​­Africans account for a majority of the slave labor force. If they only represent 36.4 percent of the 2,093 slaves ­inventoried—​­as opposed to 38.3 percent of Creoles or America-​­born enslaved men and women and 25.3 percent of slaves of unspecified origins—​­they do represent 52.4 percent of all adult slaves. The proportion of adult Africans is the highest in the 1780s with 62.7 percent, then dwindling to 56.2 percent in the 1790s, and 44.1 percent between 1800 and 1818. It is true, also, that certain “nations” are recurrent in the inventories and that slaves of the same “nations” are often clustered on the same plantations. Unlike Lubin, more than 86 percent of all Africans are identified by one or more “national” labels. Of these—​­sixty-​­seven in total—​­thirteen account for almost 82 percent of identified Africans. They are, in order of numerical importance: “Congo” (172 occurrences), “Manega/ Madinga/Madiga/Mandinga” (68), “Mina/Minan” (53), “Senegal” (39), “Tiamba/Kiamba” (36), “Nago” (34), “Bambara” (33), “Poular/Poulard” (25), “Nard” (23), “Canga” (22), “Fon/Fond” (14), and “Hibou/ Ibo” (17). If one relies on the work of historians Philip Curtin, David Geggus, Daniel Littlefield, Michael Gomez, and Gwendolyn Hall, those thirteen labels would roughly indicate that most Africans in St. Charles Parish were divided between those coming from Greater Senegambia (“Manega . . . ,” “Senegal,” “Bambara,” “Poular . . . ,” “Nar . . .”) and West Central Africa (“Congo”),

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 107

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

108

Chapter 5

with significant contingents of slaves from the Bight of Benin (“Mina . . . ,” “Tiamba,” “Nago,” “Fon . . .”), and the Bight of Biafra (“Hibou . . .”). It is more than tempting to conclude that such “enormous presence” and clustering would have encouraged the rapid circulation and penetration of African cultural practices and beliefs in Louisiana. There is almost a natural step to be made between the proliferation of African “national” categories and the possibility of broad cultural Africanization. As in most plantation societies, African males outnumbered females, a clear sign that Louisiana was then receiving gender-​­skewed shipments of new Africans. African females account for 33 percent of all adult Africans in the 1780s, 26 percent in the 1790s, and 22.4 percent in the first eighteen years of the nineteenth century. The overall adult sex ratio—​­including Creoles and slaves of unspecified origins—​­is not much more to the advantage of women. There were 172.3 men for every 100 women in the 1780s, 169.2 in the 1790s, and 206.9 thereafter (adult women, in other words, accounted for 36.7 percent, 37.1 percent, and 32.6 percent of all adult slaves). This gender imbalance is in turn reflected in the ratio of adults to children. There were only 63.1 children per 100 adult women in the 1780s, the number of children increasing to 89 in the 1790s and 95.6 between 1800 and 1818. Though an improvement compared to the 1780s, slaves in early American St. Charles were not able to reproduce naturally and any increase in the censuses would therefore be attributable to increased forced migration. No doubt Africans would have been an “enormous” presence compared to the demographic situation at the close of the French period and the early years of the Spanish era—​­after years of non-​­importation. The ubiquity of African “nations” speaks to this massive presence. What is more, Africans seemed clustered by broad regions of origin. Lubin may not have “known” his “nation” but he would probably have been in close contact with other adult Africans. The conclusion that slave “communities” in St. Charles P ­ arish—​­and by extension, all parishes in Lower Louisiana affected by the slave trade—​ u ­ nderwent a massive cultural “re-​­Africanization” is thus tempting, considering the strong African bias of the inventories. And yet such a conclusion may not reflect accurately on the historical conditions of slave life—​­the “delicate ballet” to which Deborah Jenson has referred—​­that Lubin and the other Africans like him experienced. First, it is important to stress that the inventories of St. Charles Parish—​ t­his would be valid for other parishes as well—​­over-​­represent the weight of medium and large indigo and also sugar plantations. The existence of small

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 108

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 109

indigo, and in particular rice farms—​­some of them engaged in subsistence farming and on which very few slaves lived, and where credit must have been limited to buy new Africans—​­is usually silenced. Twenty indigo farms and plantations were inventoried in the 1780s, sixteen in the 1790s, and four in the early nineteenth century—​­when they were being replaced by sugar plantations. In comparison, only four and seven rice farms—​­with an average of five slaves each—​­were inventoried in the 1780s and 1790s despite the fact they vastly outnumbered their indigo counterparts. In 1804, it is known that there were seventy-​­eight rice farms in the parish compared to thirty-​­five indigo, cotton, and sugar establishments. Second, it must be added that the inventories underrepresent or tend to silence the numerical importance of the St. Charles inhabitants who were not slaveholders like Louis Dué, one of Lubin’s white neighbors. Third, inventories give no indication about the size of the white presence, and very little can be imputed from such sources about the slaves’ work patterns, both factors that would need to be taken into account. Because of the many silences of the inventories, one wonders if there has not been a tendency to identify, perhaps, more patterns of continuity and homogeneity than was probably the case. For example, if Africans and males indeed dominated the adult slave population on the whole, there were also many exceptions to the rule at the micro and macro levels. A good illustration is provided by the inventories of two neighboring estates taken in 1792 and 1793: the indigo plantation of the widow Jean Pisero, Cécile Le Vasseur, and that of Louis-​­Augustin Meuillon—​­who specialized in indigo and plank manufacturing.19 Cécile Le Vasseur’s plantation was composed of sixty-​­six slaves, twenty-​ ­nine men, thirty-​­five women, and two slaves whose sex is unknown. Adult Africans were just under 50 percent of the total adult population; their presence might thus have seemed “enormous” to an observer. The situation, however, was probably more complex. First, and obviously, more than half of the adult population was locally born, some very old like Joseph the “commandeur,” or driver, and Joseph the “forgeron,” or blacksmith, aged 60 and 70, respectively. The sons of some of the first Africans taken to French Louisiana, those skilled and privileged slaves lived most of their lives without fresh arrivals of Africans for most of the French period and the first fifteen years of the Spanish era. It is impossible to know how they defined themselves primarily, but clearly it is uncertain whether they, and the many others like them—​­in particular those born toward the end of the French period—​­welcomed new

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 109

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

110

Chapter 5

arrivals of Africans. There were also three mulattoes on the plantation who occupied skilled and privileged positions: Jeane was a seamstress; the other two were brothers who served as domestics and hairdressers. Though strongly “Africanized,” in numerical terms, the plantation of Cécile Le Vasseur also had an internal dynamic—​­as exemplified in the sexual black/white proximity incarnated by the three mulattoes. The plantation was balanced in terms of adult sex ratio: there were twenty-​­two adult men and women. The ratio of children to adult females was one of parity, an improvement on the average parish figure, though one that could not ensure the natural reproduction of the slaves. But the figure conceals a situation, also more balanced. Slave mothers either had two or more children or, if they had only one, the child was usually young, a possible indication that the mothers were only starting to have children. One slave, a “Creole” named Louison, the partner of Joseph the blacksmith, was the mother of three: Catiche, 11, Izabelle, 4, and Hiacinte, 3. Marianne, possibly a Wolof, aged 37, was the mother of four: Xavier, 13, Céleste, 9, Julie, 4, and Nanette, 1. The slave world of Cécile Le Vasseur’s plantation was organized around fourteen slave cabins, a hospital, an “indigoterie,” the whole surrounded by hundreds of wooden posts, fragile material indicators of a rather stable community in the making. Life next door on the plantation of Louis-​­Augustin Meuillon must have been quite different. Men there far outnumbered women: there were forty-​ ­one men for eighteen women, a ratio that had hardly changed since 1782, when the estate was first inventoried. Adult Africans represented 70 percent of the adult population. Most Africans, owing to their ages, would have arrived in the Spanish period, and most adult Creoles were fairly young. There were only five children—​­for sixteen adult women. Most adult women—​ ­unlike the females next door—​­were of African origin except two Creoles, one from Jamaica, the other one from Louisiana. A further important difference was the presence of a sawmill, “un beau moulin à scie,” on Meuillon’s ground. It is probable that most men were occupied felling wood and making planks, whereas women were in charge, mostly, of the cultivation of indigo and other domestic tasks. Of course, there must have been forms of communication between the slaves of Meuillon and those of Le Vasseur—​­fences were only symbolic and fragile demarcations, as travelers often observed—​­but on which terms? Would the Creole or more established African male slaves of the widow Pisero have welcomed the competition of the younger Africans of Louis-​­Augustin Meuillon? Would Meuillon’s new African slaves have “Africanized” their Creole and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 110

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 111

older African neighbors? Would they have desired it? Clearly, the situation must have been a complex one of “contention,” as Nigel Bolland has described how the process of “Creolization” worked.20 The broader question of which African languages were mutually intelligible to the Africans present in St. Charles Parish must also have been one of “contention.” If John Thornton stresses the existence of three main cultural groups on the slave coast of Africa—​­Upper Guinea, Lower Guinea, and Angola—​­if a certain level of linguistic proximity and homogeneity did exist within each of those broad cultural groups, John Thornton also makes it clear that slaves taken from the area around the river Congo did not speak languages intelligible to slaves originating from Upper Guinea—​­for example, Senegambia.21 Since most Africans listed in the inventories were either from one or the other region—​­that is, if one relies on “national” appellations—​­one wonders how “Congo” slaves could have simply integrated the world of Senegambians, as tensions must have existed between the two groups. Inventories are a marvelous source for historians of Louisiana slavery. They can be deceptive, however, as one may rely too much on simple numerical patterns of repetition without necessarily attempting to identify the complex relationships, solidarities, and tensions that made and unmade the slave neighborhoods on a daily basis. Inventories, and their listings of “nations,” also tend to obscure the way new Africans arrived in Lower Louisiana and how they made their ways to such parishes as St. Charles.

The Louisiana Slave Trade, Purchasing Patterns, and the Internal Market in Slaves First, contrary to what has often been said,22 the African slave trade to Spanish and early American Louisiana—​­which brought our guide, Lubin, in 1786—​­was always, at best, erratic. For that reason alone, it was probably never quite sufficient to create the conditions of an “accomplished”23 “Africanization” of slave communities such as those of St. Charles, compared to other plantation societies. African slaves never really “poured” into Louisiana the way they did in Saint-​­Domingue, Jamaica, Cuba, or South Carolina, for ­example—​­so much so that a thriving re-​­export trade existed in those societies.24 Lubin simply stopped meeting and talking to “new” Africans just a couple of years after his own arrival in Louisiana. Unlike what many slaves in the New World experienced, a history recently told by Stephanie Smallwood,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 111

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

112

Chapter 5

“one [in Louisiana] could [at times almost] completely escape the saltwater.” In Spanish and early national Louisiana, “every cargo that left a slave ship in the Americas was [not] closely followed by a trail of others.”25 Smuggling excluded—​­which has often tended to be exaggerated—​­I have calculated elsewhere that Louisiana received about 20,000 Africans between 1763, when Louisiana was ceded by France to Spain, and 1812, when it reached statehood.26 Few slaves arrived in the late 1760s and 1770s due to Spanish mercantilist regulations and Atlantic turbulences, in particular the conflict in the thirteen colonies. The flow of slave arrivals increased in the second half of the 1780s, following the liberalization of the Louisiana trade, in particular from Dominica, Jamaica, and Martinique. It was again reduced in the early 1790s because of new turbulences, in particular from Saint-​­Domingue. It was interrupted entirely, or almost so, between 1796 and 1803, and then again for parts of 1804 and 1805. In this whole period, slaves rarely arrived in very large numbers, except perhaps in the late 1780s. In the 1770s, for example, Africans arrived by a few dozen at most; in the early nineteenth century, they often numbered ten or fewer. Shipmate solidarity, so prevalent in such Caribbean islands as Jamaica, and often referred to in runaway slave advertisements, must have been generally limited in Lower Louisiana. From an Atlantic perspective, Spanish and early American Louisiana was only marginally involved in the African slave trade. Of course, this is also true for the early French period: after all, “only” about 5,000 Africans were taken to Lower Louisiana between 1719 and 1731, with a minimum of 290 in 1726 and a maximum of 1,324 in 1721.27 If African slaves did not “pour” into French Louisiana, they did not have to assimilate, however, with established Creole communities, some third and fourth generations, a situation specific to Africans like Lubin coming into St. Charles Parish, and other parishes, in the Spanish and early national era. On an annual basis—​­that is, when the trade was not prohibited or severely restricted—​­slaves generally entered the mouth of the Mississippi by the hundreds, and only rarely so by the thousands—​­as in a brief spell in the late 1780s as well as the three years preceding the end of the Atlantic trade in 1808. In comparison, at least 40,000 Africans were taken to Saint-​­Domingue in 1790 alone, from the French slave trade only, up from average annuals of 13,600 in the 1760s and 27,500 in the 1780s.28 In Jamaica, despite a considerable re-​­export trade in the 1770s through the 1800s, thousands of Africans arrived and stayed on the island. Herbert Klein has calculated that an average 8,000 or so Africans were retained in Jamaica annually between the 1780s

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 112

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 113

and the end of the Atlantic trade.29 Data uncovered by Roderick McDonald has further shown that in peak years, such as 1793, 1799–1800, and 1807, more than 15,000 Africans were retained in Jamaica.30 In 1793 alone, over 21,000 African slaves were purchased by local planters, a figure that roughly corresponds to the estimated total number of Africans taken to Louisiana in the entire Spanish and Territorial era, almost fifty years. When in Louisiana, Lubin and the many Africans like himself were faced with challenges of adaptation unknown to other Africans in the Black Atlantic. They did not lose or were brutally stripped of their African cultures, but they probably had no other way but to adapt differently, and quickly, as Louisiana became a veritable crucible of change. The African slaves brought to Louisiana who did not die soon after their arrival—​­a cursory look at the funeral records of the St. Louis cathedral in New Orleans shows peaks of mortality when the slave trade was open—​­were dispersed among several parishes, from Orleans south to Pointe Coupée north, including St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, the Acadian coast, Iberville, the western parts of the colony and territory—​­as in Opelousas, where Lubin may have lived before arriving in St. Charles—​­but also English and then American posts further up the Mississippi. Demand must have been particularly high in and around New Orleans. The wood mills that dotted the landscape below the city as far as the English Turn had to be manned. Slaves were no doubt badly needed to run the tar and livestock farms located behind the city in the neighborhoods of Bayous St. John and Gentilly, and to work on the indigo and rice plantations located directly above the French Quarter at Tchapitoulas and Cannes Brulées. After all, there were at least four to five times as many slaves in Orleans as in neighboring St. Charles. Unfortunately for comparative purposes, no descriptions exist of the economic basis of the farms and plantations of Orleans Parish. What is certain, however, is that planters in St. Charles would have met with stiff competition when new arrivals of Africans were advertised and put up for sale in the capital. A recognition of this competition is no anecdote. Conditions on the ground, such as the evolving local dynamics of slave offer and demand, need to be taken into account when pondering the way slaves would have formed and reformed their communities. Slave-​­purchasing patterns are another way of shedding light on the geographical dispersal and circulation of new Africans.31 The reality is that a majority of new Africans were not bought and settled in large or even moderately large groups, thus drastically limiting the possibilities of “maintaining

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 113

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

114

Chapter 5

specific African cultural practices”32 in the long term, a process of thwarted “Africanization” that historian Lorena Walsh has recently identified for the Lower James naval district of Virginia. Africans in St. Charles Parish may not have been “dispersed onto widely scattered estates,” as Philip Morgan has written about Virginia, but not unlike Virginia, it seems that they “found themselves purchased in tiny lots . . . ​resident on small plantations, soon surrounded by a majority of native-​­born slaves, and brought into close contact with whites.” “All of this,” Morgan tells us, “was not conducive to an African ethnic identity.”33 Also, because the demand for Africans was probably not met most of the time, one should also take into account the market in Creole slaves—​­slaves born in Louisiana, the thirteen British colonies, and the Caribbean. Clearly, even though some of the Creoles were first-​­generation, their expectations of slave life would have been far different from those of newly arrived Africans with whom they had to live and create communities. One way to look at the purchasing patterns of Africans—​­whether “brut” or already established—​­ and Creoles in Spanish and early American St. Charles is to study bills of sales. For the purpose of this article, all existing acts of sale for St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, and Orleans between 1765 and 1812 were analyzed.34 Records show that new Africans were usually bought singly or in pairs (42.1 percent), or in small groups of three to five (23.3 percent), a pattern that hampered, in all probability, a rapid circulation and a long-​­term transfer of African cultures in the slaves’ new homes. The way new Africans were purchased, namely in small lots, is a reflection of three realities: the slave trade to Lower Louisiana was limited in scope; credit must have been restricted; and the need for new slaves was on the whole rather moderate owing to the dominant types of crops grown at the time—​­rice, indigo, and tobacco. One may object to the small size of the sample. A comparison with how all new African slaves were purchased in New Orleans—​­where most such sales were conducted—​­is therefore in order. A study of the sales of 2,788 new slaves between 1771 and 1809 yields the same conclusion, with a slight nuance. More than 46 percent of all newly imported Africans were purchased singly or in pairs, and another 14.7 percent in small groups of three to five. Overall, only about 23 percent of all new Africans were taken to plantations in groups of more than eleven. Large groups of new Africans were much more common at two specific junctures of Louisiana history, between 1786 and 1789 and between 1807 and 1808. As discussed earlier, this is when the Louisiana slave trade reached, each time, its apex—​­with Africans arriving annually by the thousands. Each time,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 114

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 115

the “normal” purchasing patterns were reversed. In 1787, for example, only 20.6 percent of all new Africans were sold singly or in pairs; the percentage falling the following year to 11 percent. As noted before, those years were exceptional in all regards as African slaves entered Louisiana by the hundreds only in other years. If the Louisiana slave trade had been more regular and had not been affected adversely by revolutionary turbulences at the turn of the 1770s and 1780s, and by the end of the transatlantic slave trade, overall purchasing patterns of new slaves might have been more on par with the years 1786–1789 and 1807–1808. The cultural “Africanization” of slave communities may have been, in this case, a much more palpable reality. It is not always possible to assume from the records that Africans sold were necessarily newly arrived. And clearly, some were not as in the case of Louis, the “Guinea” domestic of Martin Navarro, the intendant of Spanish Louisiana in the 1780s, who in 1788 was sold to François Trépagnier, one of the largest plantation owners in the upper section of St. Charles. Other Africans arrived in St. Charles already established in families, as in the case of a “Mandinga” family composed of two adults and two children, shipped from Barbados and purchased by Pierre Saint Amand in 1783. New Africans, in other words, had to compose with more “established” Africans or Africans coming from other parts of the Americas. Most Africans not identified as newly imported were also very rarely sold in groups, as more than 73 percent were purchased singly or in pairs and the rest in small groups—​­as in Lubin’s case. One should be careful not to overemphasize the importance of external slave arrivals and downplay in the process the internal market in slaves—​ ­whether it concerned “established” Africans or Creoles. This market existed because of succession sales, intra-​­family, or neighborhood sales, or simply because of surplus situations. Because the African trade was generally limited in size and restricted in time, it is not impossible that this market would have been just as important as the market in new Africans, if not more so. The way Ambroise Brou, a St. Charles indigo planter with twenty-​­three slaves in 1804 and, perhaps, a sugar planter with forty-​­five slaves in 1820, bought some of his slaves is a case in point. In 1792, Brou bought a thirty-​­year-​­old new African and in 1799 a seventeen-​­year-​­old male, also newly imported. In 1803, he purchased one mother and her two children, origins unspecified. The same year, another three—​­all born in Louisiana—​­made it from New Orleans to his indigo establishment, located on the right bank of the Mississippi (known today as the west bank), in the upper section of the parish. In January 1812, he purchased three slaves, ages thirteen and fourteen, origins of two

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 115

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

116

Chapter 5

unknown and the other from the Carolinas. A few months later, he bought four Africans—​­three males and one female between the ages of seventeen and thirty-​­five, who had either arrived in Louisiana in late 1808 or early 1809 or who had just made it as part of the growing intra-​­continental trade. If the fifteen slaves recorded in the notaries’ books are representative—​­there is no reason to think otherwise—​­Brou would have bought “only” six Africans as opposed to four confirmed Creoles and also possibly six more—​­the probability is strong that slaves with unspecified origins would have been Creoles. Slaves never “poured” at once, and all together, on the indigo plantation of Ambroise Brou. Some were newly arrived; others made it in families; others arrived from the Atlantic seaboard. Another interesting case is provided by the indigo (then sugar) plantation of Alexandre Labranche,35 located on the left (east) bank of St. Charles Parish. Its slave population was fifty-​­six in 1780 (twenty-​­six Africans and thirty Creoles, thirty-​­four men and twenty-​­two women),36 ninety-​­seven in 1804 (fifty-​­two men and forty-​­five women),37 and eighty-​­three in 181038 (at which time the male/female ratio is unknown). Sale and probate records show that Labranche bought at least thirty slaves between 1781 and 1810 and that he sold a minimum of five.39 Of the thirty slaves, ten were African, all bought singly or in pairs over a period of fourteen years, except for a group of five—​­in two families—​­following the sale of Louis Meuillon’s plantation in 1793.40 The remainders were slaves born in Louisiana, and some origins were unclear. Naturally, the ten African slaves bought by Labranche could have bonded with other Africans from neighboring plantations; they could also have congregated with others who shared their languages and cultural heritages in New Orleans. But the many possibilities of interaction available to them should not obscure the fact that plantations in St. Charles also had internal logics of their own. The ten Africans bought by Labranche could not always be traveling to visit others. They had time-​­consuming tasks to perform; they were busy looking after their provision grounds; they socialized and created families on their plantation—​­a fact influenced by the near gender parity. As exemplified by the plantations of Ambroise Brou and Alexandre Labranche, “new” slaves brought to farms and plantations in Spanish and early national St. Charles were not, therefore, always African. Indeed, at least 283 Louisiana Creoles were purchased or exchanged by St. Charles Parish inhabitants between 1765 and 1812, plus an additional sixty-​­five Creoles from New England, Georgia, the Carolinas, Jamaica, and Saint-​­Domingue. The origins of another 216 slaves were not specified, but there is a strong chance

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 116

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 117

they were also Creoles—​­it was probably assumed that no mention of origin would mean so. If so, more Creoles than Africans would have been sold to St. Charles farmers and planters (565 compared to 527). Contrary to Africans, moreover, Creoles often arrived in families, a pattern further complicating the possibility of “Africanization” of slave communities. Of course, some Louisiana Creoles may only have been first-​­or second-​­generation, but the possibilities of inter-​­generational tensions must also be taken into account.41 Beneath the surface of an “enormous” African presence, it is now apparent that one needs to take into account a web of factors that played a role in determining the nature of slave cultures and the shape of slave communities in Spanish and early national St. Charles (and by extension all of Lower Louisiana). Among those factors are particularly erratic arrivals of new Africans, purchasing patterns that tended to stress the individuality of new Africans, and internal exchanges of slaves who were not always African but often Creole. There may have been a strong, absolute numerical presence of Africans—​­one signaled by a plethora of “nations”—​­but this presence, when contextualized, tends to legitimize a more careful approach to how slave cultures and communities would have been shaped. Besides the lack of clear staple crops until late in the eighteenth century and erratic arrivals of new Africans, the most important factor was in the end the inherent smallness of Lubin’s world, a reality that has been too little studied so far.

The Smallness of Louisiana Slavery in This Period It has been noted that new Africans, established Africans, and Creoles were generally bought singly or in small groups. This pattern, I argue, speaks to the ingrained “smallness” of slave life in Spanish and early national St. Charles—​ ­and by extension the whole of Lower Louisiana. After all, only about 1,700 slaves were reported in the 1788 St. Charles census, 1,614 in 1804, 2,174 in 1809, and 2,367 in 1811. This “smallness” begs today for reconsideration. The simple reality is that farms and plantations were rarely very large. As a consequence, the proximity between whites and blacks—​­and the subsequent surveillance of the former over the latter—​­was probably much more important than previously thought.42 Inventoried indigo plantations in St. Charles had an average of 21.8 slaves in the 1780s, 27.2 in the 1790s, and 23.2 in the early 1800s. Inventoried rice farms had an average of 5.7 slaves in the 1780s and 5.3 a decade later. The proportion of slaves living on rice farms as opposed

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 117

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

118

Chapter 5

to indigo plantations is not known before 1804—​­it was then 30 percent—​­but it must have been far greater, in particular in the early 1780s, before the slave trade was revived and the cultivation of indigo really took off.43 Overall in 1804, 37 percent of all slaves lived on farms with fewer than twenty slaves, and about 30 percent lived on plantations that counted between twenty-​­one and fifty. The percentage of slaves living on small farms of twenty or fewer decreased markedly between 1804 and 1810, when sugar was developed, but about half of all slaves still lived in 1810 on plantations with fewer than fifty men and women—​­even more so on the right (west) bank where rice still dominated. This was a very limited degree of concentration compared to the South Carolina Lowcountry, for example. Whites in such a context must have had a real impact on slave life, one suggested for example in the number of mulattoes reported in inventories, as in the seamstress and the two domestics and hairdressers of Cécile Le Vasseur mentioned earlier. If it is true, as Emily Clark and Virginia Gould tell us, that “the ties between European culture and the enslaved men and women inhabiting the plantations that lined the Mississippi . . . ​were more tenuous” than in New Orleans, this tenuousness should not be exaggerated. Many rural blacks in St. Charles Parish—​­in particular on the right (west) bank—​­also “lived in close proximity to Europeans,”44 a proximity even more apparent when compared to such plantation societies as Jamaica, Saint-​­Domingue, or South Carolina. The slave to white ratio was fairly stable in late Spanish and early American St. Charles, oscillating between 2.3:1 in 1785 and 2.8:1 in 1810—​­with a peak of 3:1 in 1788 and a low of 2.2:1 in 1804. The ratio varied depending on the agricultural orientation of the farms and plantations. In 1804, 30 percent of all St. Charles slaves lived on rice and corn plantations with a black-​­to-​­white ratio of 1.2:1. Rice plantations were located mostly on the right (west) bank of the river—​­with the exception of those belonging to Verloin Degruy, Pierre Pain, and the free mulatto Charles Paquet—​­as opposed to those of cotton and sugar, concentrated on the left (east) bank. The ratio was 2.1:1 on indigo plantations—​­almost all on the right (west) bank—​­3.9:1 on cotton establishments, and 3.8:1 on sugar. In comparison, the average black-​­to-​­white ratio in Jamaica was about 10:1 at the turn of the eighteenth century, often dramatically more skewed in predominantly sugar parishes east and west of the island. Of course, as Michael Gomez has argued in Exchanging Our Country Marks, the “proximity” argument has its limits. On some plantations, such as those of Pierre-​­Marie Cabaret de Trépy, Louis Habine, and Jean-​­Noël Destrehan—​­all on the left (east)

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 118

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 119

bank—​­the black-​­to-​­white ratios in 1810 would have reminded an observer of the Caribbean. Also, slaves in St. Charles were clearly mobile; they visited friends and family members; they traded and hunted, and were obviously not always under the close supervision of whites. If a “culture of coercion” due to white presence existed, there was also a “culture of volition” among slaves.45 The fact that many planters in St. Charles were related to each other through marriages must have further encouraged, to an extent, the creation of such black solidarities and “cultures of volition.” Whites would have visited each other frequently and would have been accompanied by some of their slaves—​­domestics, cart drivers, slave boatmen, etc.—​­who in turn would have socialized with other slaves. Slaves at succession sales were often bought by neighbors or family members, another factor no doubt contributing to the formation of cross-​­plantation communities. “Exchange and interaction among slaveholding units [in St. Charles Parish must have been] extensive, such that an individual’s familial, social, and cultural world was by no means confined to the particular unit on which she or he lived.”46 If the proximity argument has limits, it must not be overlooked entirely. Mobility, too, had limits as slaves were required to perform their tasks, such as tending the cattle, repairing tools, mending the levees and the fences, plowing the fields, planting them with corn and beans, thrashing the rice, making bread, and so on. One should also take into account, in other words, what Michel Rolph-​­Trouillot would call the “regimentation” of the slave labor force, “the nature and degree of such regimentation necessarily [skewing] the daily expressions of cultural creativity.”47 The close proximity between masters and slaves in the Spanish and early national era is hinted at in a rare document found at the Spanish National Library.48 In a memorial to the Spanish king dated July 23, 1790—​­that is, right after the Louisiana slave trade reached its apex—​­the New Orleans Cabildo remarked that most inhabitants in the colony would never be able to apply the new royal prerogatives on the treatment of slaves in the Spanish Empire. Indeed, the newly envisioned regulations—​­such as separating sexes at work, providing plantations with priests, setting aside Sundays and holidays for religious practice and education, or again promoting slave marriages—​­could only be enforced, according to the authors, on large establishments. Such was not the case in Louisiana, where the inhabitants working side by side with their slaves was the norm. Most inhabitants did not have more than a couple of slaves, “no tienen mas que dos, tres, ó quatro.” They may have exaggerated their case in order to be exempted from the law. Yet other sources point to the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 119

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

120

Chapter 5

same daily proximity between whites and blacks. One of them, for example, is the travel narrative of Charles-​­César Robin, published in 1807, as in the following extract: “At sunrise, the negroes must go to the fields. . . . ​They are supervised either by a negro driver, a white overseer or by the owner himself, which is the most common case.”49 It is not trivial that the plantation owner would take his slaves personally to work in the morning. This, of course, could not have prevented the circulation and penetration of African practices, but such white/black proximity would also likely have accelerated the formation of cultures specific to Louisiana, cultures informed by processes of coercion, volition, as well as contention involving Africans, Creoles, as well as whites. The “smallness” of Lubin’s world comes into sharper focus when compared to the world in which most St. Charles slaves would have lived after Louisiana’s accession to statehood. As indicated by the 1820 census, proximity between whites and blacks was eroded sharply, the black-​­to-​­white ratio evolving from 2.8:1 in 1810 to 4.2:1 in 1820. Plantations were dramatically enlarged between the two censuses in an effort to increase the output of sugar and cotton. Less than 13 percent of all slaves lived on small farms with fewer than twenty slaves in 1820, compared with 37 percent sixteen years earlier. Almost half of all slaves lived on plantations comprising between fifty-​­one and a hundred slaves and 20 percent on large estates with more than a hundred. Lands and slaves were concentrated in fewer hands and dedicated almost exclusively to the cultivation of sugar and cotton. After 1812, the internal trade in slaves between the Upper and Lower South and Louisiana took off, a trade bringing to the sugar parishes of Lower Louisiana disproportionate numbers of young, male adults—​­often in large groups—​­as the work of Michael Tadman has recently shown.50 Lubin’s world, that of the Spanish and early American period, was, by all accounts, a much more intimate one.

Conclusion It is not without irony that most of the basic conditions that could have contributed to a long-​­term cultural “Africanization” of Spanish and early American St. Charles—​­and by extension a representative part of the region—​­were met only when new Africans stopped arriving in the territory. After 1812, slaves arrived from the Upper and Lower South on an almost continuous basis—​­as opposed to the erratic patterns of the colonial and early national African trade—​­often in very large groups and also families. Slaves were

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 120

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



“Un Nègre nommè Lubin” 121

concentrated on large and very large plantations and the proximity between whites and blacks became very tenuous as ratios became more and more imbalanced. It is impossible to know whether Lubin saw this development on the ground. No doubt, however, that if he did, it looked dramatically different from what he had experienced when Despau sold him to Antoine Foucher in 1795. By looking at a variety of sources—​­in particular probate inventories, acts of sale, censuses, and slave trade records—​­and by taking Lubin as a guide into the small world of Lower Louisiana slavery, this chapter has proposed to think again about the contextual elements that affected the formation of slave cultures and communities in Spanish and early national Louisiana. The first argument put forward has centered on a call for a historiographical turn, one involving a move away from African “national” labels and categories, a paradigmatic move inspired symbolically and accidentally by Lubin’s recorded silence in the St. Charles Parish registers. It has been suggested, second, that in a search for “historical particulars,” the repetition of African “national” labels in such primary sources as probate inventories, and the “enormous” African presence to which they seem to point, should not be construed as undeniable signs of “Africanization.” Only by picturing the complexity of slave neighborhoods can one start imagining the many “constraints” that Africans faced on their arrival in Louisiana. Such constraints, it has been argued, played usually against a deep and accomplished cultural “re-​­Africanization” of slave communities in the period. Similarly, it has been argued, third, that the way new Africans arrived in Lower Louisiana and the internal dynamics of the slave trade did not favor a rapid penetration and circulation of African, ethnic cultural practices. For a long time, the Louisiana slave trade looked like that of early Virginia much more so than mid-​­eighteenth-​­century South Carolina or eighteenth-​­century Jamaica. It has been argued, finally, that between ca. 1780 and ca. 1812 Louisiana slavery was a small world marked by a strong proximity between whites and blacks. In short, Lubin’s world was that of a slave society in the process of a massive expansion, not one favoring the recreation of an imagined Africa. In the period under study here, it seems that new African slaves had no choice but to negotiate and renegotiate on a constant basis the terms of their cultural and social coexistence with more established slaves, whether Creole or African. This does not mean that new Africans lost everything they carried with them. I prefer to picture the world of slavery in this era as a crucible of constant adaptation for all slaves involved, whether newly arrived

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 121

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

122

Chapter 5

or established Africans, locally born slaves, or slaves born elsewhere in the Americas. “Circulations” was a key factor in this process.51 By circulations, I mean a truly dialectic, dynamic, and cross-​­fertilizing approach to how slave cultures and communities were affected—​­and “restructured”52—​­by the Louisiana-​­specific circulations of men and women like Lubin—​­whether between plantations, parishes, or rural and urban areas, or the three of them—​­in the period extending between the beginning of the 1780s, when the African slave trade picked up again after decades of inexistence, and the 1810s, when Africans in Louisiana met with the challenge of coexisting with a massive influx of American slaves.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 122

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Part III

Intimacies

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 123

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 124

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Chapter 6

Caribbean Louisiana: Church, Métissage, and the Language of Race in the Mississippi Colony during the French Period Cécile Vidal

Over the Spanish and early American periods, the slave trade from Jamaica, Dominica, and Martinique was very important, as Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec has highlighted in the previous chapter. This testifies to the centrality of the connections with the Caribbean, in addition to transatlantic migrations, in shaping Louisiana society and culture. Already during the French regime, these intercolonial relations between Louisiana and the West Indies, in particular with the French Antilles, were essential, and might have been even more intense than those with metropolitan France. In 1979, Thomas Fiehrer underlined that colonial Louisiana was “an appendage of the French and Spanish West Indies.”1 More recently, Ann Laura Stoler has compared the relations connecting Saint-​­Domingue and the Mississippi colony to the ones linking Barbados and South Carolina.2 Nevertheless, Louisiana was not, according to Peter Wood’s expression about South Carolina, “the dependent servant of an island master—​­in short, the colony of a colony.”3 Saint-​­Domingue did not play any role in the foundation of Louisiana, despite the participation of some freebooters, sailors, and soldiers from the island in d’Iberville’s expeditions and the shipment of food in the first years of the colony. While the development of South Carolina was first related to the exportation of cattle to Barbados, it was much later that the intercolonial trade between Louisiana

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 125

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

126

Chapter 6

and Saint-​­Domingue arose.4 The connections between the two colonies thus became closer and intensified after several decades; more goods, migrants, news, and so on began to circulate between them. Yet in their contribution to the book published at the occasion of the exhibit organized in 2006 at the New Orleans Historical Collection on relations between Saint-​­Domingue and Louisiana, Alfred E. Lemmon and John H. Lawrence deplored that, despite the many-​­faceted common history of these two colonies, historians have until now focused mostly on the arrival of the Saint-​­Domingue refugees in New Orleans at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century.5 Not only important connections developed between the Antilles and Louisiana as soon as the first half of the eighteenth century, but the successful plantation society of Saint-​­Domingue became a model to imitate for the Louisiana officials and settlers, as travel narratives demonstrate.6 All ships coming from France or Africa to New Orleans had to make a stop in a West Indian port—​­most chose Cap français in Saint-​­Domingue—​­in order to restock with water and food before the difficult crossing of the Gulf of Mexico: all European migrants to Louisiana spent some time in the island at the occasion of their transatlantic crossings and became “agents of cultural cross-​ ­pollination.”7 Hence, faced with the great challenge of forming a new colony, which, like South Carolina, very quickly became a slave society without experiencing the stage of a society with slaves,8 the settlers could use their metropolitan cultural baggage and benefit from the Antilles’ antecedence and experience. In addition to the modified Code Noir they inherited from the West Indies, they also had some practical knowledge about the way the slave system and interracial relations actually worked in the islands. They tried to make sense of the new phenomena they were confronted with in light of the Saint-​­Domingue model, as the example of métissage will show.9 There is an intense debate about the importance of métissage—​­the current French scholarly term for what people in the eighteenth century conceived of as interracial sexuality—​­in Louisiana in comparison with the West Indian colonies.10 However, it is impossible to precisely evaluate the level of métissage in a slave society. In fact, one can only analyse the way its by-​­products—​ c­hildren of mixed ancestry—​­were registered. To study the way métissage was recorded in the Mississippi colony, one can use a source that has been underexploited for that purpose until now: the sacramental records of New Orleans.11 They covered the whole of St. Louis Parish, which included the city and its surroundings. The Louisiana capital is not representative of what

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 126

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 127

happened in the whole colony, although its population included 33 percent of the settlers and 25 percent of the slaves of the Lower Mississippi Valley in 1763.12 Nevertheless, it is especially interesting to study métissage in New Orleans, since the urban environment, which always eases exchanges of all sorts, was as favorable to the phenomenon as the number of white settlers and black slaves was balanced there.13 At the same time, the city was the place where the social control the authorities and elites wanted to enforce could be the most effective. This essay takes the particular topic of métissage in New Orleans as a case study to assess the level and nature of West Indian influence on Louisiana as the two regions maintained multiple and intense relations. It continues the reflection on the impact of connections and circulations on local social dynamics, explored in Part II of this book, while focusing specifically on interracial sexuality, conjugality, and parenthood. The analysis of the cultural interactions will lead naturally to comparing the societies and cultures that developed in the continental and island colonies under French sovereignty in the Caribbean Sea, and to reconsidering the previous comparative works by Thomas Fiehrer, Laura Foner, Gwendolyn M. Hall, and Thomas N. Ingersoll.14 The chapter establishes that practices concerning métissage in Louisiana were influenced by those of the islands and that a common imperial racial culture, conveyed by an increasingly standardized slave law, a similar colonial policy toward interracial relations, and identical vocabulary of métissage, united the Antilles and Louisiana. However, the essay also explains how the attitude of Louisiana authorities and settlers toward métissage differed from that of the West Indian officials and planters, because of the specific local demographical, economical, and legal circumstances.

The Respected Prohibition of Interracial Marriages The prohibition of interracial marriage in the Louisiana Code Noir of 1724 was not extended to the other French colonies of the Caribbean basin, where these unions remained licit. Nevertheless, over the course of the eighteenth century, their numbers tended to decline under the pressure of local authorities and social taboos in the Lesser Antilles and Guiana. Only in Saint-​ ­Domingue’s southern province, where they were much more frequent in the first half of the eighteenth century, did their number remain stable after 1760.15 In this general French Caribbean context, one would expect that the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 127

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

128

Chapter 6

prohibition of interracial marriage in Louisiana would have been respected, especially in the colony’s sole city and capital. This was indeed the case most of the time. For this particular reason, the Mississippi colony stands apart from all the other slave and colonial societies under French sovereignty in the Americas. Because it was founded very late, it did not experience decades of legal void regarding the status of slaves and free people of color, and inherited, only five years after the beginning of the slave trade with Africa, a Code Noir that had been modified by four decades of operation in the West Indies. Thus, French Louisiana never experienced a period of more liberal legislation and official policy toward mixed unions. They were forbidden almost from the start, and this very early official prohibition had a great influence on the attitudes of local authorities and settlers toward métissage in general. While historians often rightly point out that the Codes Noirs were hardly applied,16 with respect to interracial marriages the law was enforced. There were, however, a few exceptions. Some very rare interracial unions were celebrated in New Orleans, as sacramental records testify. In all slave societies that prohibited interracial marriages, there were always a few individuals to contravene the law. For example, such unions, which were forbidden in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, happened in the three British colonies in the eighteenth century, although they were not very numerous.17 The same phenomenon occurred in Louisiana. Very interestingly, one of the few interracial marriages solemnized in New Orleans during the French period concerned a free man of color from Martinique. It took place in 1725 with the permission of the colony’s general commandant, Boisbriant. This Canadian officer, who acted as interim governor, had been commandant of the Illinois Country between 1718 and 1724, where numerous marriages between Frenchmen and Native women had been and were still performed by Jesuits.18 This first New Orleans interracial marriage joined together Jean-​ ­Baptiste Raphaël—​­a nègre libre born in Martinique, the son of Jean Raphaël, habitant, and Marguerite from St. Christophe, who lived on the island19—​­and Marie Gaspart—​­born in Bruges in Flanders, the daughter of Jean Gaspart, a drummer in Mr. Le Blanc’s unit, and of Agnès Simon.20 Like the witnesses, who included her mother and several soldiers and sailors, the bride belonged to the white lower classes. Since Jean-​­Baptiste Raphaël was also an outsider, it is not so surprising that the officials gave their consent to a marriage that contravened the very recently promulgated Code Noir.21 No other interracial union between a man of African or mixed descent and a white woman appears in the New Orleans archives.22 However, in 1764,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 128

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 129

a Capuchin gave his marriage blessing to a couple formed by a white man and a woman who was probably of mixed descent. In 1764, Jean Louis Billiot, born in St. Charles Parish on the German Coast, the son of Louis Billiot dit Bon and Marie Enef Conrarde, married Marie Elisabeth, the Martinique-​ ­born natural daughter of deceased Durant.23 Nothing in the parish register indicates that Marie Elisabeth was a free woman of color. One can only assume it, since she was an illegitimate child. In that case, it would mean that she succeeded in passing as white. In 1764, the situation was different than in 1725: it seemed now out of the question to authorize an interracial marriage, even exceptionally. A similar evolution happened in Martinique, where the last marriage that has been found between a European man and a free Négresse took place in Fort-​­Royal in 1749. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the white Creoles in the island stopped marrying women who did not pass as whites.24 The fact that it was two free people of color from Martinique who were responsible for the two rare infringements upon, or circumventions of, the legal prohibition of interracial marriage in French Louisiana is very important. It shows that the colony was not influenced only by the West Indian white racial culture. The few free blacks who migrated from the islands to the Mississippi colony were not completely helpless in the face of the racial order the Louisiana elites tried to impose; they brought their own conception of interracial relations and did not merge into Louisiana society without putting up a fight. Apart from these two cases, the New Orleans marriage registers include only two other interracial unions that both took place both in 1731 and that both concerned a Frenchman and an Indian woman. They united Mathurin L’Horo with Marie, “free Native woman of the Cavitta village located in America,” the widow of Antoine Bacanal deceased in Natchez, and Joseph Turpin, the son of Alexandre Turpin and Charlotte Beauvais from Kaskaskia Parish, with Hyppolitte, sauvagesse (Indian woman), the daughter of “Catherine, the former servant of Sr. Chauvin La Frenière,” the latter being a witness to the wedding.25 The Louisiana Code Noir did not address the question of marriage between French and Natives. However, even before the Code came into force, local officials had already developed a specific policy on the subject in order to halt the numerous French-​­Indian weddings celebrated by missionaries in Louisiana, particularly in the Illinois Country where there were hardly any white women. Whereas the legislation on marriages between whites and blacks in Louisiana was influenced by the situation in the West Indies, the legislation on marriages between Frenchmen and Indian women followed the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 129

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

130

Chapter 6

debate in Canada. Moreover, unlike the Code, which was imposed on the colony by the state, the legislation on marriages between French and Natives everywhere in New France always originated with local authorities, the governor, the intendant or commissaire-​­ordonnateur, and/or the Superior Council. If the Crown consented to or even promoted the prohibition, it never took the pains to issue a specific royal ordinance on the subject either in Canada or in Louisiana.26 This is probably a sign that this category of interracial unions appeared less unacceptable to the imperial center in the eighteenth century. Likewise, quasi-​­marriage and marriage to Indian women were more openly tolerated than with black women in the colony, certainly because the Natives were not associated with slavery to the same degree as people of African descent.27 Apart from these general reasons, the two marriages celebrated in New Orleans between a Frenchman and an Indian woman were accepted because, in one case, the bride was already the widow of a French settler and, in the other, she was probably the illegitimate daughter of a rich planter of the colony. It is worth noting that this planter belonged to a Canadian family, whose implication in the fur trade led some of its members to settle in Upper and then Lower Louisiana at the beginning of the eighteenth century. They brought with them an openness to métissage with Indian women typical of the fur trade personnel.28 It reveals the kind of influence the Upper Country could also exercise on Lower Louisiana elites who were born from the numerous alliances concluded between Canadian and French migrants in the first decades of the century.29 Since the New Orleans marriage registers are incomplete, one can imagine that other interracial unions were solemnized, which is confirmed by the baptism registers.30 In 1748, Marie Anne and Magdelaine, the legitimate daughters of Pierre Roguet, very likely a white, and Magdeleine, a métis (mixed-​­blood), were baptized.31 The previous year, the baptismal sacrament was also conferred to Jean-​­Paul. The infant was born eight months before to Jean Leflot, “who has declared that he was the father and that he intended to marry Christine mulâtresse, the mother of the concerned child.” This marriage has not been found, but, a few years later in 1754, one Christine, a mulâtresse libre, appears once again in the baptism registers, although one cannot be sure that it was the same woman. She was then married to Jean La France and the couple had their legitimate child baptized. In 1755, the baptism of another child of this couple took place, but this time the mother’s color was not recorded.32 Nevertheless, these interracial marriages were exceptional, particularly those between a white and a person of African or Afro-​­European

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 130

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 131

descent, not only because they were forbidden by the Code Noir, but also because they were despised by most of the colony’s white population.

The Recording of Métissage by Missionaries in Sacramental Records These few interracial marriages represent the first clues that demonstrate that métissage did exist in the city and in the colony. The fact that illegitimate interracial unions were widespread also appears through the baptism registers of New Orleans that were kept by the Capuchins in charge of St. Louis Parish’s cure.33 Very quickly, the priests began to record the imagined degree of métissage of the free or enslaved children of color.34 For instance, the term mulâtre (mulatto) appears in the remaining baptism registers as early as 1730.35 Since no ruling ordered them to do so, this attention to métissage might seem surprising at first sight, but it might have been a way for the church to measure and denounce the extent of the phenomenon.36 Between 1723 and 1726, Father Raphaël complained several times to his superior, the Abbé Raguet, about the numerous affairs and concubinages between masters and slaves of Native American or African descent. Unlike the Dominicans of the Lesser Antilles in 1722, the New Orleans Capuchins did not try to impose special penances to the slaves who had a child with a white man.37 Instead of putting the blame on the enslaved women, Father Raphaël asserted that, according to the “law recognized by all Christians,” those abused by their masters should be manumitted. His proposal went far beyond the Code Noir, whose Article 6 only made provision for a fine on the master who had a child with his slave—​­a measure that was never applied—​­and the confiscation of the enslaved women with the child to the benefit of the hospital. It specifically mentioned that the woman and child could not be manumitted. If the Capuchin was unable to impose such a radical measure, he claimed implicitly in 1726 that he had succeeded in reducing “the number of those who kept young Native American or Negro women to satisfy their overindulgence,” although “there were still enough to scandalize the church.”38 Indeed, the sacramental records reveal that interracial sexuality did not disappear or even diminish. During the French regime, the various terms of color appeared in time following the rising progression of métissage or at least the authorities, missionaries, and settlers’ perception of the phenomenon, as shown in Tables 6.1 and 6.2. Moreover, when they mentioned the color or degree of métissage, the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 131

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 132

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

3

6

9

12

74

84

82

67

1752

1753

1754

3

54

1748

1751

6

66

1747

7

5

65

1746*

6

4

82

1745

64

3

77

1744

96

5

389

Total

1750

1

112

1733

1749

2

1

72

1732*

2

1

2

4

1

1

3

1

10

2

1

1731

1

3

37

97

1730*

3

2

71

Sauvage, Sauvagesse, Indien (Indian)

1729*

Quarteron, Quarteronne (Quadroon)

Négrillon, Négritte (Negro boy or girl)

Year

Mulâtre, Mulâtresse, Mule (Mulatto)

1

1

1

1

6

4

2

Métis, Métisse (Mixedblood)

Griffe (Sambo)

30

9

21

9

15

23

26

20

9

5

2

1

1

Without any term of color

111

101

114

88

121

96

85

95

79

91

83

411

119

75

100

44

73

Total

Table 6.1. Ethnic and Racial Labels of the Enslaved Children in the Baptism Certificates of New Orleans, 1729–1733 and 1744–1769

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 133

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

8

396

34

1962

1769

Total

26

1

7

1

1

1

4

3

4

1

2

22

2

1

1

1

1

1

Source: Sacramental records of St. Louis Cathedral, Archdiocese of New Orleans. *Incomplete data are due to missing pages in the registers.

10

16

1768

58

1764

28

88

63

32

93

1762

1763

1767*

37

28

81

1761

24

28

107

1760

25

27

103

1759

74

21

82

1758

101

18

88

1757

1765

17

93

1766

12

17

70

1755

1756

42

1

1

1

1

5

2

3

5

5

5

2

4

3

10

1

7

1

1

25

767

148

87

93

23

76

84

5

1

3

10

3

9

11

20

3225

193

116

194

159

179

178

124

136

118

149

136

115

121

134

109

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 134

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

1758

3 4

2

4

1 2

2

2

2

1757

1756

2

1

1

1755

0

1

3

6

1754

3

1

2

1753

3

3

1

1

3

2

2

1751

2

2

2

1

2

1

1752

1

1750

1749

1

1

1747

1748

4

1

1

1746*

2

1

2

1

Total

1745

Without any term of color

1

Griffe (Sambo)

1

Métis, Métisse (Mixedblood)

1744

Sauvage, Sauvagesse Indien (Indian)

Mulâtre, Mulâtresse (Mulatto)

Négrillon, Négritte (Negro boy or girl)

Years

Quarteron, Quarteronne (Quadroon)

Table 6.2. Ethnic and Racial Labels of the Illegitimate Children Born to Free Women of Color in the Baptism Certificates of New Orleans, 1744–1769

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 135

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

1

1

1

2

Source: Sacramental records of St. Louis Cathedral, Archdiocese of New Orleans. *Incomplete data are due to missing pages in the registers.

43

2

35

6

3

Total

7

2

4

3

101

10

9

4

4

8

2

5

1

6

1

10

5

1769

19

1

1

1

1768

1767*

1766

1765

1764

1763

1762

1

6

6

5

2

1760

1761

1

1

1759

136

Chapter 6

priests first used the racial labels erratically. They did not give them unique and fixed definitions, such as the ones Moreau de St. Méry proposed in his later taxonomy in his history of Saint-​­Domingue, where he tried to rationalize métissage and classify individuals of mixed origins according to their degree of “white blood.”39 During all the French period, the most common racial categories were métis (mixed blood) and, most of all, mulâtre (mulatto), which referred to a first degree of métissage. In the first decades, both were used indifferently to describe children of Euro-​­Indian or Euro-​­African descent; it is only from the 1740s that the racial vocabulary acquired more fixity: mulâtre was then nearly always reserved for the children of a négresse (negro woman) and a “white” or unknown father, while it is only in the 1760s that métis was mostly used to designate the children of a sauvagesse (Indian woman) and a “white” or unknown father. In the 1750s, two new terms appear in the registers: mule, which was a much more pejorative synonym of mulâtre,40 and quarteron (quadroon), even though it was not used systematically to qualify children whose parents were a mulâtresse and a “white” or unknown father.41 For a very long time, the children of a mulâtre(sse)/nègre(sse) couple or the children born to the mixed unions of people of Indian and African descent were not labelled with a specific word. It was only in the 1760s that the label griffe (sambo) appeared in the registers with this double meaning.42 Thus, in the last decades of the French regime, the sacramental records reached a degree of precision which is found in no other document, with categories related not only to first but second degrees of métissage and to other unions than the ones between people of European and African descent: administrative correspondence, notarial deeds, trial records, and private letters did not use the terms quarteron and griffe before 1769. Not all baptism certificates, however, included terms of color or métissage: some priests frequently forgot to specify it. In fact, the way of recording the baptismal ceremonies of free or enslaved and children of color in the registers was not standardized, as was the case for the whites, and varied according to the missionaries during the period. Some were more negligent than others. Father Irénée, for example, who officiated during the 1750s, even forgot to write down the first name of the baptized child. Father Dagobert, who regularly recorded the free or enslaved children of color’s racial categories in the 1740s, 1750s, and early 1760s, almost completely stopped doing so from 1765. He also mentioned less systematically the color of the parents and godparents, using the term slave alone instead of nègre (esclave) (negro male [slave]) or négresse (esclave) (negro female [slave]). This new negligence

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 136

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 137

could be explained by a surge in the number of baptized enslaved children. While the number of baptisms rose regularly during most of the period, following the natural growth of the slave population, the rise accelerated suddenly in the mid-​­1760s: it is possible that, with the cession of New Orleans and the western part of the colony to Spain, the French missionaries tried to get ready for the arrival of their Spanish colleagues, fearing their judgment on their evangelizing work.43 Anyway, even in the late 1760s, Father Dago­ bert did not stop paying attention to color and métissage since he apparently always indicated if a mother or a godparent was a mulâtre or a mulâtresse. In general throughout the period, to compensate for the lack of terms of color to describe the children, the term for the mother and sometimes even for both parents was mentioned: the priest not only recorded that the mother was a négresse, a mulâtresse, or a sauvagesse, but on a number of occasions he also added that the “unknown father” was “white.”44 Other missionaries took the time to correct some certificates in order to record the imagined right degree of métissage for either the baptized, the mother, or the godparents. The most common change was from négrillon or négritte and nègre or négresse to mulâtre or mulâtresse. Similarly, in 1767, a priest was about to write mulâtre but changed his mind, instead writing mucarteron (muquadroon).45 Likewise, in the first three sheets of a new register begun at the outset of 1759, the certificates from January 1 to March 25, 1759, were also copied out from the last pages of the previous book. In the process, the Capuchin modified the spelling of some names and added some information: he notably specified that a godfather called Jacques Ferand, who was first mentioned without any term of color, was a free mulâtre.46 What were presumed to be mistakes made by French Capuchins during the first half of the eighteenth century were also corrected later during the Spanish period or the nineteenth century.47 Thus, the attention to métissage and the way it was recorded varied according to the priests. Even though French missionaries might not have been as systematic and meticulous as their later colleagues, they were far from being color-​­blind and had a racial culture that has not been revealed until now. The way missionaries recorded baptisms most of the time reflected only their own point of view. However, they could sometimes be influenced by the personal relationships they had with the concerned enslaved or free person of color. This probably explains why, for example, Father Archange recorded the baptism of Marie-​­Adélaïde, whose mother was Marie Chataudain, fille habitante de cette ville (unmarried woman residing in this city), with no mention

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 137

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

138

Chapter 6

of status (free or enslaved) or color. He only indicated that the father was unknown and that the baptized was a “natural child.” However, the Chataudain were probably a family of free people of color: Louis Chataudain, mulâtre libre, thus served as godfather in a slave baptism around the same time.48 Hence, the fact that sometimes missionaries did not mention color shows that slaves and free people of color, who appeared as parents and godparents, were not completely helpless before the racial identification the priests imposed on them and on their children in the sacramental records. There was a place for unspoken negotiation for the people of African descent who maintained special relationships with members of the white community. At the end of the 1750s, the rate of métissage (at least of its recording in the registers) was very high, much more than in Saint-​­Domingue: because of the demographic composition of the Louisiana population, opportunities for interracial sexual relations were much more numerous in the Lower Mississippi Valley. In 1762, 31 percent of the baptized enslaved children bearing a term of color in New Orleans were of mixed origins, against 4 percent in 1744 and 22 percent in 1759. Among the 2,458 baptized enslaved children bearing a term of color from 1744 to 1769, 19 percent were presented with a category indicating mixed origins.49 Moreover, as shown in Table 6.2, 71 percent of the baptized illegitimate children born to a free woman of color and bearing a term of color from 1744 to 1769 were designated with a mixed racial label. This very high rate of métissage could be explained by several causes. First, as everywhere in the Americas, masters most often manumitted the women with whom they were engaged in a conjugal/sexual relationship and the children born from these unions.50 Thus, it is not surprising that many of the free women of color whose illegitimate children were baptized were themselves designated with a mixed racial label: they included forty-​­one négresses, forty-​ ­one mulâtresses, five sauvagesses, and three métisses. Three other women were qualified as libre (free). Since this status was never mentioned for whites, it was also an indication of their nonwhite or mixed racial origins.51 Finally, the free women of color who were not married, which was the case for most of them—​­the relation to marriage of the free people of color being very different during the French period from the one described in Emily Clark’s essay in this volume for the territorial and antebellum period—​­were no doubt particularly vulnerable to the white men’s assiduous attentions.52 Among this group of free women of color, the presence of several free sauvagesses and métisses is remarkable. They hardly appeared at all in the archives.53 For instance, when the censuses began to count the affranchis (freed)

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 138

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 139

separately in 1763, the category was divided in four sub-​­categories, negro men, negro women, negro boys, and negro girls, and did not deal with free people of Indian descent.54 Moreover, if we consider only the period from 1744 to 1769, when the use of racial categories was more precisely established, Table 6.1 clearly demonstrates that the great majority of baptized enslaved children bearing a term of color were of African or Euro-​­African descent (96.98 percent). Those of Native or Euro-​­Indian descent were very few (2.6 percent), while those of Afro-​­Indian descent were the least numerous (0.04 percent). This is in agreement with the fact that Native slaves accounted for only 3.6 percent of the total colonial population in Lower Louisiana in 1726 and 0.9 percent in 1737—​­4 percent of the urban population in 1726 and 1.5 percent in 1737. In 1763, Indian slaves numbered only 2 percent of the population in the entire Lower Mississippi Valley.55 On the other hand, the rate of métissage was higher for enslaved children of Indian descent (70 percent) than for those of African descent (18 percent). There were several reasons for this. The first was linked to demographic conditions: most Native slaves were women, and they did not have many opportunities to have sexual relations with an Indian male partner. The two other reasons are more uncertain. It is possible that settlers from the New Orleans region had a preference for conjugal relationships and/or sexual intercourse with Native women, as was clearly the case in the Illinois Country.56 Missionaries might also have registered métissage with Indian women more easily. Such a habit of mind clearly appears in the travel accounts of the officer Jean-​ ­Bernard Bossu. In his narrative published in 1768, he described, for example, the New Orleans population in the following manner: “There are inhabitants of four kinds, that is Europeans, Americans, Africans, or Negroes, and Mixed-​­Blood. The Mixed-​­Blood are those born from Europeans and Natives from the country that we call Savages.” Bossu openly acknowledged only the French-​­Indian métissage, while in describing the population of Havana in his 1777 narrative he listed four racial labels, “mulâtres, métis, quarterons, jambos” (mulattoes, mixed-​­bloods, quadroons, sambos), to account for the various mixes between Spanish, Indians, and Africans.57 His description of the Louisiana capital, meant for the metropolitan public, contrasted sharply with the city censuses, which as early as 1732 began to count mulâtres and mulâtresses alongside nègres and négresses, but only the sauvages and sauvagesses among slaves.58 If, as these excerpts from Bossu’s narratives testify, the vocabulary of métissage in all American colonies drew its inspiration from the one first

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 139

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

140

Chapter 6

developed in Spanish America, the taxonomy used throughout the period in Louisiana—​­nègre, mulâtre, quarteron, métis, griffe—​­was inspired by that of Saint-​­Domingue, since in Martinique and Guadeloupe métis designated a child born to a white and a black, quarteron that of a white and a métis, and câpre that of a black and a mulatto.59 In the Spanish colonies of the eighteenth century, as it would be the case in Spanish Louisiana, the words pardo (light-​­skinned) and moreno (dark-​­skinned) were then preferred to mulato and negro, which first appeared in the sixteenth century and inspired the vocabulary of the French West Indies in the seventeenth century.60 In the first half of the eighteenth century, however, the Louisiana categories were less numerous than in the Antilles (the terms tierceron or mamelouk and sang-​ ­mêlé were not in use), in part because slaves had been in great number in the colony for less than two generations. They were also more confused because slaves were of African or Indian descent. They partook nonetheless of the same racist and discriminatory conceptions against nonwhites, which tended to became more prevalent in the islands in the course of the eighteenth century, particularly after the Seven Years War. How did the Louisiana priests acquire this racial culture they obviously did not have at the beginning of their apostolate in New Orleans? Very little information is available on these men’s origins, with the exception of Father Raphaël. They were the first Capuchins from the province of Champagne to serve in an overseas colony, those in the West Indies coming from the province of Normandy,61 and all the archives of the Capuchin province of Champagne were destroyed during the French Revolution.62 This does not mean that missionaries from the islands and the continent did not maintain close relations. For instance, in one diatribe against the Jesuits, Father Raphaël—​­who had arrived in the colony on The Galathée, which stopped on its way from France at Cap français in 1723—​­explained that he had himself seen in Saint-​­Domingue that they gave some cures in the island to the vessel’s chaplains, because they lacked missionaries.63 Likewise, in the early 1750s, an anonymous report compared the New Orleans church with that of Cap français.64

The White Fathers’ Silence Unlike their West Indian colleagues, the Louisiana missionaries largely concealed the names of the white fathers of illegitimate free or enslaved children who were mulâtre or métis. However, they were sometimes mentioned in the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 140

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 141

registers, even when these men had a child with a female slave. In 1748, a six-​­year-​­old métis, François, the son of Simon Goussot, certainly a white, and a sauvagesse (the certificate does not indicate if she was free or enslaved), was baptized. It was probably the same man (this time his name was spelled Gousot) whose sauvagesse slave had a daughter with a soldier called Ratine a few years later. As in the previous case, the register did not explain who mentioned the father’s name. In 1754, the name of the white father was revealed by the godmother, Anne Gabrielle Grisa, who had delivered the mother, a sauvagesse (the certificate does not indicate if she was free or enslaved). As in the home country the midwives asked the mothers in labor for the father’s name, and it was believed that, because they were suffering and might die, they told the truth. The missionary who did not write down the mother’s name recorded that the father was François Printans, the servant of Mr. de La Masilière. In the same way, in 1750, the priest wrote down that François was the “natural son of Cristal the chargé d’affaires of Mr. de Noyant, with Marianne negro woman belonging to Mr. Lemel dit Bellegarde.” It is possible that the master was responsible for the leak, François Lemel being the child’s godfather. He might have wanted to compel the father to buy and to take care of the child.65 In another case, it was the slave who revealed the paternal identity. In 1752, during the baptism of her mulâtresse daughter Marie-​­France, Angélique, the négresse of Sr. Teriere, declared that the child was “his master’s work.” She probably tried to get some favor or even her manumission that way.66 Finally, in 1751, Louis Rançon, a merchant in New Orleans, claimed that he was the father of Louis François, designated as a mulâtre libre in the register’s margin. He gave him “his freedom, being born to Marie-​­Jeanne enslaved négresse of Mr. Volant captain commanding the Swiss troops.”67 In theory, the merchant should have submitted this freedom certificate to the governor and commissaire-​­ordonnateur. The documentation does not reveal whether he did so and what happened to the child. This case was exceptional for two reasons: on one hand, most of the white fathers whose names were mentioned in the registers belonged to the middle or lower classes, while Louis Rançon was a wealthy merchant;68 on the other hand, few enslaved children categorized as métis or mulâtres were manumitted officially. When they were, the family tie to the white father, who was the owner, was not publicly recognized.69 Very interestingly, a few years later, Rançon (Ranson) succeeded in getting Marguerite, the daughter of one of his slaves, recorded as “born free” (in the margin she was designated as a free mulâtresse) in her baptism certificate. However, this time he did not mention that he had manumitted her and did

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 141

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

142

Chapter 6

not claim that he was her father. In fact, he is mentioned in the certificate only as the slave’s owner, and it is impossible to know if he was even present at the ceremony.70 Other masters followed Louis Rançon’s example and manumitted their putative offspring. Thus, the parish registers include two other certificates dealing with a mulâtre(sse) child recorded as free, while his or her mother was presented as a slave, with no mention of any manumission. However, in the first case, a few years before, the master, Antoine Meullion, a surgeon and planter in Pointe Coupée, had freed the mother, a négresse called Charlotte, and her two-​­year-​­old son, Louis, but the woman was to get her freedom only if her master went to France or died.71 In another baptism, the master, Louis Chancelier, was present and declared his newborn mulâtre slave, Charles, free.72 This public manumission could draw suspicion on the master, because it looked like a disguised confession of paternity. Curiously, the names of the white fathers of illegitimate children born to a free woman of color were even more often concealed that those of the enslaved children.73 Apart from the case of Jean-​­Paul and his mother Christine mentioned above, the only other exception concerned Nicolas, born to Ma­ rianne, a free mulâtresse and a Spaniard in 1750.74 Moreover, the free women of color who appeared as mothers in the baptism certificates usually bore only a first name, and when they also had a last name it was rarely one that belonged to a white family of the colony. Inevitably, however, there were a few exceptions.75 For instance, Angélique Chavane, free mulâtresse, had two children baptized, Augustin in 1754 and Adélaïde, a quarteronne, four years later.76 In the same way, missionaries let some free people of color and even a slave, all mulâtres or mulâtresses, who were the godfathers or godmothers of children of color, bear the last name of their (former) master and/or father.77 The fact that all these men and women served as godparents probably means that they maintained privileged relations with the Capuchins who granted them this favor in return. Nevertheless, most free people of color were only given a first name not only in the parish registers, but also in the notarial deeds and trials.78 They had to wait for the beginning of the Spanish period to take advantage of their former master and/or father’s last names.79 Thus, the official situation of the Louisiana free people of color under the French regime was very different from those of the West Indies, where many free mothers of color still managed to get the white father’s name recorded in the sacramental records in the first half of the eighteenth century.80 This practice was so widespread that in 1752 the Martinique intendant, Hurson,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 142

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 143

ordered that the expression “unknown father” be specified in the certificates of illegitimate free children of color, unless the white father specifically authorized the use of his name. Three years later, the Superior Council of Port-​­au-​­Prince made the same decision.81 This legislation might have had an impact in Louisiana, even though it was not promulgated there. If the expression “unknown father” appeared from 1731 in the New Orleans registers, its use became more widespread in the 1750s (previously, only the mother was specifically mentioned in most cases) and, de facto, the registers no longer mentioned the name of a white father. In 1769, the superior of the Capuchins, Dagobert, first wrote down the name and quality of the father of a slave belonging to the Capuchins, but then he crossed them out and replaced them with the expression “unknown father.”82 Despite these few cases, sexual and/or conjugal relations between white men and African or Native American women were not revealed and recognized publicly and officially most of the time in New Orleans during the French regime, especially after the church more firmly established itself in the early 1720s. Métissage between people of European and African descent in particular ought to have been kept secret. Therefore, it is not surprising that there are no cases of open concubinage between a white man and a black woman in the archives, except for the early complaints by Father Raphaël. Judicial proceedings, travel accounts, and private correspondence show that the white men who did not have a white woman (mother, spouse, daughter, etc.) to take care of their houses did not rely on a free or enslaved ménagère, but took board and lodging at a white neighbor’s or at the inn.83 If sexual and/ or conjugal relations between whites and blacks frequently existed, interracial concubinage and cohabitation were not widespread and even less exhibited during the French period: the ménagère did not constitute an institution as in the islands.84 The word ménagère is even missing from the Louisiana documents of the first two-​­thirds of the eighteenth century. The interethnic relations and the racial conceptions that developed in the colony of Mississippi were influenced by those of the West Indies, but they also differed from them.

Métissage in the French Empire and Louisiana Hence, this article contributes to the transformation of the debate that has developed on métissage in Louisiana. By focusing on the French regime and the first decades of the nascent colony, it shows how officials and settlers reacted

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 143

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

144

Chapter 6

in practice to a phenomenon most of them had not previously encountered and experienced, before their arrival in the Mississippi Valley, except for their stay in the Antilles. The attitude and reaction of missionaries toward métissage did not develop in total isolation; they were deeply influenced by the racial culture of the French West Indies, with which Louisiana maintained multiple and intense relations. The adoption of the vocabulary of métissage that was in use in Saint-​­Domingue was not anecdotal. This taxonomy conveyed an extremely racist conception of the colonial and slave society; it established a strict hierarchy according to the degree of “white” blood. By assigning a more and more elaborated racial identity to children born from mixed unions, priests tried to fight the perturbations to the socio-​­racial order in formation brought about by the rising métissage. Once again, it demonstrates how the action of naming, labeling, and classifying is of fundamental importance, and how it played a major role in the progressive construction of social and racial barriers.85 If, at first sight, the Catholic Church seemed to have played an integrative role by actively evangelizing slaves and free people of color in Louisiana, it also contributes by its practices regarding their integration into the Christian community to the formation of a fragmented and segregated society and culture. Moreover, while the debate on métissage in Louisiana was previously focused on its level and importance, this essay is more concerned with the attitude of the authorities and the society toward the phenomenon. All slave societies of the Americas experienced métissage; each time Europeans, Africans, and Indians met, some métissage happened. However, and more important, what differentiates these various slave societies is the degree of public recognition displayed by the government and society toward métissage, its legal authorization or prohibition, its official or unofficial toleration, its public or private existence. Thus, the chapter demonstrates, on the one hand, that métissage was a widespread phenomenon, much more important than in the French West Indies, and, on the other hand, that métissage was most of the time hidden and kept secret. In New Orleans and around the city, there were very few infringements to the prohibition of interracial marriage. Therefore, métissage was closely linked with illegitimacy. And the general rule was the lack of official acknowledgment and the public silence of the white fathers. Nevertheless, more work would be necessary to analyze how these enslaved or free children of color, born from these illegitimate mixed unions, who were rejected from the public sphere, were sometimes socially integrated in the private realm of family life, even within prominent officers and/or planters’ families.86

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 144

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Caribbean Louisiana 145

Thus, if interethnic relations and racial conceptions in Louisiana were influenced by those in the islands and if a common imperial racial culture developed in the whole French Empire, the Mississippi colony experienced some phenomena that would develop in Saint-​­Domingue and the Lesser Antilles only after 1763, Louisiana playing no role in the process. The quasi-​ a­bsence (or the rarefaction in the case of the West Indies) of interracial marriages, the conspiracy of silence on interracial unions and illegitimate children of color, and the increasing attention to color and métissage existed in Lower Louisiana (at least in New Orleans and its region) as early as the first half of the eighteenth century. Therefore, the existence of some cultural transfers between the West Indies and Louisiana did not prevent the latter from being very different from the islands and similar, to some extent, to the thirteen colonies.87 Consequently, whereas Eliga Gould has proposed to replace comparative history with “connected history” in Atlantic studies, this essay underlines that it is necessary to keep on making comparative history, if only to measure the limits of the cultural transfers and exchanges revealed by “connected history.”88 It also demonstrates how slave societies of the New World differed from each other by a combination of demographic, economic, legal, and cultural factors.89 The differences between Louisiana and Saint-​­Domingue on the matter of métissage have several explanations. First, the Mississippi colony was founded relatively late and very quickly became a slave society: contrary to most of the French and other American colonial societies in which slavery developed, it did not experience decades of legal void regarding the status of slaves and free people of color; it inherited, only five years after the beginning of the slave trade from Africa, a Code Noir that had been modified after four decades of operation in the West Indies. Moreover, the small duration of the French regime (two generations) and of the slave trade from Africa (twelve years between 1719 and1731) slowed down the formation of a populous group of free people of color. Besides, the weak economic development of the colony impeded the rise of a free people of color’s elite in such a short time. The absence of an important migratory flux from the parent country also played a significant role. French Louisiana benefited from only one migratory wave from France between 1717 and 1722. Afterward, the colony received few new migrants, and those who came arrived individually and sparingly, while the migrations to Saint-​­Domingue remained important all along the eighteenth century, and even picked up after 1763. In the Mississippi colony, single young men were not numerous enough to disturb significantly the socio-​­racial order in formation.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 145

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

146

Chapter 6

Finally, the unbalanced number between whites and blacks was much less important in Louisiana than in Saint-​­Domingue. The difference between the two colonies was comparable to that between Virginia and South Carolina. In his comparison between the Chesapeake and the Lowcountry, Philip D. Morgan has demonstrated that in slave societies interracial sexual relations were more frequent when the number of blacks and whites was balanced, but also that they were then much less tolerated and open.90 In Saint-​­Domingue, it was only after 1763, when the number of free people of color rose and most of all their economic power greatly increased, constituting a rising threat for the whites’ domination, that the discriminations toward them amplified. Métissage was also more and more negatively viewed by the authorities and the white society, although it remained very high. At the same time, the situation in Louisiana evolved in relation to the economic and demographic transformations it experienced (the renewal of the slave trade from Africa and the rise of the plantation economy) and under the influence of another imperial slave law and racial culture, as Mary Williams’s and Emily Clark’s essays in this volume demonstrate: the colony, at least its western part and its capital, was now under Spanish sovereignty.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 146

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Chapter 7

Private Lives and Public Orders: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Legitimacy in Spanish Colonial Louisiana Mary Williams

Few choices seem more personal than the decisions to have sex, to marry, or to bear a child, and yet those choices have long been subject to regulation through laws, religious doctrine, and social mores. For quite some time, historians have examined these forms of regulation to learn more about particular societies and how those societies developed hierarchies of gender, race, and class. In studies of the American colonies, whether French, Spanish, or English, a focus on the regulation of sexuality has provided new information about the development of the idea of race within the Atlantic world and how it differed in time and in character in each of the three colonial empires. Yet scholars have only recently undertaken studies of sexuality in colonial Louisiana. For many years, Louisiana’s reputation for degeneracy and disorder discouraged many scholars from undertaking studies of sexuality in the colony. For many, it made little sense to study the laws and social mores governing sexual conduct if the population simply ignored them. Early studies thus tended to focus on the more picaresque elements of sexual disorder in colonial Louisiana, relating incidents of misbehavior rather than engaging in a rigorous analysis of the law codes, prescriptive literature, correspondences of colonial elites, or the vast sacramental, civil, and notarial records available for study.1 In recent years, however, a growing number of historians have undertaken careful examinations of the laws and mores governing sex and marriage

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 147

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

148

Chapter 7

in Louisiana. They have also studied the enforcement of these rules to determine whether the population and, indeed, the elites governing them followed the rules, whether they ignored them or whether they adapted them to suit the local environment. For example, Guillaume Aubert, Cécile Vidal, and Jennifer Spear have convincingly demonstrated the centrality of laws restricting the marriages of French persons and Indians and those prohibiting marriage between French persons and African slaves to the development of ideas of racial difference.2 While these works have added immeasurably to the information available about the French colonial period and about the role of laws regulating sexuality in defining hierarchies of race in it, less is known about the laws regulating sex and marriage in the Spanish colonial period and their effect on existing racial hierarchies in Louisiana.3 In this essay, I examine the laws governing sex and marriage in Spanish colonial Louisiana and their influence on racial hierarchies in the colony. To do so, I focus on the influence of these laws on the position of interracial families following the cession of Louisiana to Spain. My argument is twofold. I suggest that the transfer of Louisiana to Spain and the subsequent importation of Spanish law into the colony greatly affected the legal and social regulation of sexual relationships between whites and persons of African descent and the families formed by them. This occurred because Spanish law and the judicial officials enforcing it granted privileges that these men and women and their families had not possessed under the French, including the right to marry, to donate property to one another and to their children, and to provide for the manumission of enslaved lovers and children. However, I also suggest that the impact of Spanish law was blunted by the resilience of the legal and social precedents established by the French. The lasting influence of these precedents limited the degree to which men and women were willing and able to use the options available to them under Spanish law. Significantly, the conclusions I draw also illuminate the benefits of an Atlantic perspective for the study of Louisiana because it is necessary to explore not only the system of Spanish laws regulating sexuality but also the French laws and customs in force prior to the cession to Spain and the unique local environment into which both were imposed.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 148

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 149

Race and the Regulation of Marriage The cession of Louisiana to Spain introduced new and different laws regulating sexual relationships between whites and persons of African ancestry in Louisiana. Whereas France forbade marriages between whites and blacks in the 1724 Code Noir, Spain permitted most of its subjects to marry across color lines at the time it acquired Louisiana. The reluctance of Spain to prohibit interracial marriage entirely proved to be significant for those men and women involved in relationships crossing lines of color and legal status in Louisiana. It allowed a small number of them to marry and thus to acquire the rights accorded to married couples and their legitimate children. It also facilitated the greater toleration of interracial relationships and families formed outside of marriages. The willingness of Spanish officials to tolerate interracial relationships occurring outside of marriage enabled many of these couples to acknowledge their relationships to one another and to their children. It also allowed them to take advantage of relatively liberal Spanish policies permitting the donation of property to lovers and illegitimate children and allowed them to provide for the families they formed across color lines in ways not available to them during the French period.4 Though few in number, marriages between whites and persons of African ancestry began to occur shortly after France ceded Louisiana to Spain. Indeed, the first Spanish governor may have sanctioned the celebration of the first marriage across lines of color and legal status following the cession. Shortly after his arrival in 1766, the newly appointed governor, Antonio de Ulloa, instructed his personal chaplain to marry a white man and an enslaved woman according to the French planters outraged by his actions. Though the planters were shocked that such a marriage was permitted, it was soon followed by a second. In 1769, a white francophone named Jean Paillet and a free quadroon named Catherine Villeray registered their marriage contract with the Spanish government. While no sacramental record of Paillet and Villeray’s marriage has been located, religious officials consistently referred to their children as legitimate, indicating that the two had married in a valid ceremony.5 For couples, such as Villeray and Paillet, the ability to marry was most significant. They benefited from two important principles of Spanish law: community property and forced heirship. The principle of community property required a married couple to share equally in the property acquired during

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 149

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

150

Chapter 7

their marriage, regardless of whether one person contributed more to the household income than the other.6 A second legal principle, forced heirship, extended the benefits of marriage from the couple to their children. Forced heirship limited the degree to which men and women were able to dispose of their property freely because it required that certain blood relatives be favored when property passed after a person’s death. Legitimate children, not surprisingly, benefited most from forced heirship. They inherited the entire estate when their parents died without leaving a will. They were also guaranteed the vast majority of their parents’ estate even if their parents wrote a will because Spanish law required those men and women with legitimate children to leave their children a specified portion of their estates. This portion was known as the legítima and consisted of at least four-​­fifths of the estate. It then allowed them to give the remaining one-​­fifth, an amount aptly called the disposable portion, as they wished. By allowing marriage across lines of color and legal status, Spanish law granted interracial couples and their families these privileges if they married.7 While Paillet and Villeray married across racial lines in Spanish colonial Louisiana and benefited from the legal protections granted to married couples and their legitimate children, only a few other couples chose to do so.8 There are several reasons why few men and women chose to marry across racial lines in Spanish colonial New Orleans although interracial marriage was permitted. On the most basic level, the reluctance of men and women to marry across lines of color and legal status must be understood in the context of the marriage patterns in the community as a whole. Few interracial marriages occurred in part because the men and women most likely to marry were the elite white planters for whom the material benefits of marriage, such as the protection of a lineage through the production of legitimate heirs and the orderly transfer of property from one generation to the next, had the most value. Not coincidentally, these elite planters were also the persons most invested in the racial hierarchies established under the French. By contrast, marriage was much less common outside the propertied elite. For example, most persons of African descent remained unmarried during the Spanish period. The vast majority of slaves never married because most slaveholders, aside from the notable exception of the Ursulines, refused to let their slaves marry.9 Most free persons of color also remained unmarried, although Emily Clark notes that a growing number of free black men and women chose to marry. Uneven sex ratios almost certainly affected the frequency with which free men and women of color married. Since women composed between 60

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 150

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 151

to 70 percent of the free black population, many had little alternative but to search for a mate outside the free black community. Moreover, a large number of free persons of color were unable to wed because they could not afford to pay the high fees charged by Spanish priests to perform the ceremony. Others may have simply found the tangible benefits of marriage to be too small to offset its cost. Still others were satisfied by the community’s recognition of their relationships.10 Significantly, the low marriage rate was not limited to persons of African descent alone. With a substantial 4.8 percent of the population marrying in 1777, white men and women were far more likely to marry than were slaves and free persons of color at the outset of the Spanish period. However, the proportion of white men and women who married during the Spanish colonial period dropped from 4.8 percent in 1777 to 2.1 percent in 1791 before falling to 1.9 two years after Spanish rule had ended. The precipitous drop in the rate of marriage among whites indicates a significant number of whites would marry late in life or not at all. Moreover, many of these unmarried whites were non-​­elite men and women who lived near, socialized with, and established business ties to free persons of color and slaves. Much like the free men and women of color with whom they often associated, non-​­elite whites frequently may have found that the material benefits of marriage were not sufficient to offset its cost and may have found community recognition and acceptance of their relationships to suffice. Possessing neither the amount of property nor the pretentions to genteel status claimed by elite white men and women, non-​ e­ lite whites had significantly less need to protect a lineage through the birth of legitimate children and the smooth transmission of property from generation to generation. Significantly, if common whites were less likely to marry than their elite brethren, their tendency to establish close social and business ties with persons of African descent ensured that they were at least as likely as, if not more so than, their elite counterparts to be involved in sexual relationships across color lines.11 Placing interracial marriages within the broader context of marriage patterns in Spanish colonial New Orleans offers insight into the community marriage patterns limiting the numbers of interracial marriages. Both the tendency of the elite to marry and that of the men and women outside the elite to remain unmarried ensured that few men and women would marry across lines of color and legal status because the factors influencing their marital status also affected the degree to which they would be willing or able to marry across color lines. For example, the common white men and women

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 151

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

152

Chapter 7

whose more humble status ensured that they maintained close ties to free blacks and slaves married somewhat infrequently because they lacked the property and rank to enable and to encourage them to wed. Elite white men and women, however, married more often than their non-​­elite counterparts. They possessed both the rank and property that made marriage more appealing and more accessible. Yet the rank and property that elite men and women possessed frequently discouraged them from marrying across racial lines. With a lineage to uphold and property to secure, they tended to seek spouses whose socio-​­racial status mirrored their own.12 Significant as it was, the low rate of marriage in New Orleans alone does not fully explain the rarity of interracial marriages. Put simply, while the marriage rate in New Orleans was low, it was nonetheless not so low that it fully accounts for the infrequency with which men and women married across racial lines. It seems clear that factors beyond the tendency of many non-​­elite New Orleanians to remain unmarried contributed to the reluctance of many men and women in New Orleans to choose a spouse of a different socio-​­racial group.13 Men and women were also reluctant to marry across racial lines in Spanish colonial Louisiana because the antipathy toward interracial marriage established in the French period remained strong and affected the degree to which those persons involved in interracial relationships were willing to use the options available to them under Spanish law. For example, many francophones, especially the elite men and women most likely to wed, remained deeply attached to the laws and cultural practices in force during the French period and sought their return. They strongly opposed the introduction of Spanish law to Louisiana because they believed that the Spanish laws and customary practices governing slavery, including those permitting interracial marriage, were far too lax and worried that their implementation in Louisiana would prove detrimental to the social order or, at the least, to the position of the planter class within it. Their opposition to the introduction of Spanish laws and customary practices to Louisiana first led several French planters to foment a rebellion against Governor Antonio de Ulloa, who had already alienated them when he helped a white man marry a black woman.14 In the memorial they sent to Louis XV of France to justify their actions and to beg his assistance, the planters included the interracial marriage Ulloa had sanctioned in their list of complaints and argued that his willingness to flout the custom of the country rendered him and, by extension the Spanish, unsuitable to govern the colony. While Ulloa’s decision to sanction an

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 152

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 153

interracial marriage was far from the only grievance included in the memorial, which also included a lengthy complaint about the impact of Spanish mercantile policies on existing trade networks in the colony, its inclusion was nonetheless important because it revealed the authors’ concerns that the transfer to Spain had the potential to alter the established order of the colonial society, whether that order involved the continuation of established trade networks or the continuation of the prohibition of marriage between whites and blacks.15 While the ringleaders of the rebellion were executed, imprisoned, or exiled after Spanish rule was restored to Louisiana, many of their peers shared their opposition to Spanish laws governing slavery and the position of persons of African descent, including those permitting interracial marriage. These men argued that Spanish policies were ill suited to Louisiana with its unique French heritage, and they actively lobbied the Spanish government to exempt Louisiana from Spanish slave laws and, instead, allow local officials in Louisiana to write a slave code specific to the colony with its unique local culture and conditions. In 1777, the planters received the opportunity for which they had waited when Governor Bernardo de Gálvez received permission from the Spanish Crown to allow Louisiana residents to draft a slave code specific to Louisiana. A few short months later, the Cabildo, the town council functioning as a local government, presented Gálvez with a set of laws, called the Loi Municipale, regulating slavery in the territory. As might be expected given the attachment of local planters to the French laws regulating slavery, the Loi Municipale was modeled after the 1724 Code Noir. However, the Cabildo had not merely replicated the earlier code but had continued to refine it in order to address the changing social landscape of Louisiana and to strengthen further the boundaries separating whites from free persons of color and slaves. For example, the Loi Municipale reinstated the prohibitions against marriage between whites and blacks found in the 1724 Code Noir. But befitting a society in which métissage was not uncommon, it also contained a new measure barring marriages between whites and mulattoes. Moreover, while the 1724 Code Noir forbade concubinage between free persons, both white and black, and slaves, the Loi Municipale issued a more targeted prohibition when it forbade concubinage between white men and both black and mulatto women, whether free or enslaved. By ignoring concubinage between free blacks and slaves and focusing upon concubinage between whites and both free and enslaved women of color, the gender-​­specific measure demonstrates that local authorities were far less concerned about the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 153

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

154

Chapter 7

immorality of sexual relationships between free persons of color and slaves than they were about the disruptive impact of sexual relationships between white men and women of African ancestry.16 Although Governor Bernardo de Gálvez seems to have decided that the slave code was too great a departure from Spanish practices to receive royal approval and did not present the 1778 Loi Municipale to the Spanish Crown, thus ensuring it was never adopted, the Loi Municipale nonetheless reflected the persistence of the belief, established in the French colonial period and held by many elite white planters, that interracial marriage and concubinage must be prohibited in order to maintain white supremacy in the colony.17 While Gálvez dashed the hopes of many planters when he refused to send the Loi Municipale to Spain, many Spanish bureaucrats were sympathetic to the planters’ desire to prohibit interracial marriage and concubinage. Indeed, despite the fact that most men and women were free to marry across lines of color and legal status in the Spanish Empire, the societies of the Spanish American colonies had become highly stratified along lines of race, rank, and gender long before the acquisition of Louisiana. Most relationships with persons of African descent remained unsanctified by marriage. The Spanish Crown, believing that such stratification was natural and necessary to the maintenance of order, sought to ensure that its empire remained divided along those lines.18 To that end, it promulgated the Royal Pragmatic on Marriage in 1776 and extended it to its colonies two years later. The Pragmatic required all whites and noble Indians under the age of twenty-​­five to obtain parental permission prior to marriage. It also granted to parents the right to oppose the marriage of their child to a person of substantially lower social status and allowed them to disinherit any child who married without obtaining prior permission. Since social inequality had been traditionally understood in terms of racial inequality in the Spanish Empire, the Pragmatic quite explicitly permitted parents to oppose the marriage of their child to a racial inferior.19 While the Pragmatic was intended to reinforce the socio-​­racial order by requiring young whites and Indians to receive permission from their parents prior to marrying and permitting white parents to oppose their white children’s marriage to a person of an inferior socio-​­racial status, it was often used very differently in Louisiana. In no case was the Pragmatic used to prevent the marriage of a white to a person of African ancestry. Instead, in every case but one, the Pragmatic was used to halt the marriages of white couples on the basis that one person occupied a substantially lower position in society even

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 154

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 155

though both held the same racial status.20 Even the case in which a parent objected to the marriage of his child because he believed her intended husband to be her racial inferior failed to fall neatly under the Pragmatic’s jurisdiction because it did not involve the marriage of a white to a person of African descent. Instead, it involved the marriage of two persons of mixed descent, albeit ones possessing different degrees of racial admixture. It also raised the question of whether a person of mixed ancestry, whose racial status indicated that she possessed more white than African blood, occupied a higher social status than another person of mixed ancestry, whose racial status denoted that he possessed more African than white blood.21 In that case, heard in 1788, a white man named D. Jean La France, whose marriage to a free mulatto named Christine is identified by Cécile Vidal in the previous chapter, opposed the decision of his legitimate daughter, Catherine, to wed Bartholomé Bautista. He insisted that the marriage must be prevented because his daughter was a quadroon and thus possessed more white blood and a higher social status than did Bartholomé Bautista, whom he described as a griffe. Though rooted in the disparity he believed to exist between his daughter’s status and that of Bautista, La France’s opposition to Catherine’s marriage was probably exacerbated by the fact that her sister had married a white man three years earlier. La France may have hoped that Catherine would make a similar match. He may also have worried that her desire to marry a griffe would not only lower her social status but would also serve to remind others in the community that both she and her sister were women of color and thus stymie any hopes he had to elevate further his family’s status. Much to his disappointment, La France soon discovered that few of his peers shared his belief that Catherine’s social status was significantly higher than Bartholomé Bautista’s. In fact, only a few days after he filed the suit, La France withdrew it and acknowledged that “sensible persons” had convinced him that there was no significant difference in status between his daughter and her fiancé. Even had he not been persuaded to drop his suit, the Spanish courts were not likely to have ruled in La France’s favor since the Pragmatic only applied to white children and not to those of color, a fact that might have been used to persuade La France to drop his opposition to Catherine’s marriage.22 The cases involving the Royal Pragmatic on Marriage heard in New Orleans reveal that the young society was becoming increasingly complex. They also reveal that divisions within both the populations of whites and of free persons of color had begun to appear even though those divisions were neither universally accepted in the society nor easily addressed by the Pragmatic

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 155

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

156

Chapter 7

itself. However, the fact that no suit was filed under the Pragmatic to prevent the marriage of a white person to one of African ancestry coupled with the fact that few marriages between whites and persons of African ancestry appear in the sacramental or civil records suggested that the white inhabitants of New Orleans, however divided they may have been, remained disinclined to marry persons of African descent.

Concubinage, Illegitimacy, and the Donation of Property Since great prejudice against persons of African ancestry prevented many men and women from marrying across color lines in Spanish colonial Louisiana, most sexual relationships between whites and persons of African descent in Spanish colonial Louisiana were not sanctified by marriage. The prejudice that ensured that many men and women were unwilling to marry across color lines had significant material consequences, as it denied to the men and women involved in these relationships the legal protections guaranteed by marriage, including the right of a spouse to receive community property and of legitimate children to receive the majority of their parents’ estates. Nonetheless, in contrast to the Code Noir promulgated by the French in 1724, Spanish authorities in colonial Louisiana permitted men and women involved in informal relationships across color lines to donate property to one another and to their children, provided they remained within specified limits. Most obviously, these limits required men and women to guarantee that any legitimate children they had would receive the legítima and that spouses would receive their half of the community property before they were able to transfer any property to their illegitimate children or their lovers. In so doing, they ensured that it was impossible for men and women to slight their legitimate families to provide for their illegitimate ones.23 The degree to which men and women were permitted to give property to their lovers and illegitimate children varied. For example, those persons involved in informal relationships occupied a most ambiguous position. Though they lacked the legal protections given to married couples, they were nonetheless able to give property to one another if they wished and if they provided for their forced heirs as mandated by Spanish law. They had two different legal options to transfer property to their sexual partners. If they wished to transfer property to their lovers during their lifetimes, they visited

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 156

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 157

a notary and filed an act of donation in which they specified the property they wanted to give. If they were only concerned that their lovers be provided for after their death, they simply wrote a will in which they gave property to them. For example, in 1797, D. Pierre Calazar, a native of New Orleans, divided his property between his free quadroon lover, Charlotte Wiltz, and their four children.24 Three years later, D. Pierre Dauphin divided his estate between Marta, the free black woman with whom he had lived for more than twenty-​­five years, and the eleven children they had together.25 While Charlotte and Marta benefited from the ability of their lovers to leave property to them, most other free and enslaved women of color involved in sexual relationships outside of marriage were not as fortunate since the men with whom they were involved had little legal obligation to provide for them. In contrast to married couples, those men and women living in concubinage lacked a clear right to a share of the property acquired by their lovers during the course of their relationship, and so they were seldom able to obtain a settlement if their lovers refused or neglected to provide for them. While the laws regulating the donation of property to persons living in concubinage applied to men as well as to women, these laws were far more likely to affect women than men since women in New Orleans tended to possess less property than men and to be engaged in household rather than in wage labor. If women were more vulnerable than men should their lovers fail to provide for them, then free black women were more vulnerable than white women and enslaved women were the most vulnerable of all. More likely to be involved in sexual relationships outside of marriage than were white women, free black women were less likely to be protected by the guarantees of community property. Enslaved women, of course, were the most vulnerable of any women in New Orleans since they were constrained in their ability to refuse the sexual advances of their masters.26 Indeed, the case of Magdalena Canella illuminates the vulnerable position in which women of color might find themselves once their relationships with their lovers ended. A free mulatto, Canella was forced to file suit to attempt to retain possession of a slave she believed her former lover, Louis Beaurepos, had given her. Beaurepos had purchased a young slave named Adelaide at an auction in 1770. He then had permitted Canella to maintain the girl in her home and to profit from her labor for seven years. Since Beaurepos had allowed her to retain possession of Adelaide for so long, Canella assumed that he had simply given the girl to her, an assumption that was shared by the three free women of color and the white man whom she presented as

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 157

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

158

Chapter 7

witnesses. Beaurepos, however, insisted that he had only intended to lend Adelaide to Canella and noted that he had not transferred ownership to her in a formal act of donation, which was required by Spanish law and would have been witnessed and archived by a notary. Since Beaurepos retained a notarial act indicating that he had purchased Adelaide and since Canella lacked any such proof that he had given the girl to her, the local court decided in favor of Beaurepos and permitted him to regain possession of the young woman.27 Significantly, Beaurepos was able to claim sole ownership of Adelaide because he had never married Canella. Had they married and then separated formally, Canella would have been entitled to an equal share of almost all the property Beaurepos acquired during the time they cohabitated as a married couple, including Adelaide.28 As some men and women used the liberal aspects of Spanish laws governing donations of property to provide for their lovers, others used these laws to provide for their illegitimate children. Indeed, illegitimate children, including those born to interracial couples, enjoyed substantial rights under Spanish law. As had the Coutume de Paris, the French laws in force in Louisiana, Spanish law divided illegitimate children into two distinct categories, natural children and bastards, based upon their natal status. It also defined natural children as the children of those men and women able to marry at the time of conception and bastards as the children of reprobated unions, such as adulterous relationships, incestuous relationships, and those sacrilegious relationships involving persons who had taken vows of chastity.29 However, the Spanish law in force in Louisiana departed from the French in the manner it treated the illegitimate children of interracial couples. The French Code Noir of 1724 subjected the illegitimate children of whites and persons of African ancestry to unique discriminatory measures. By forbidding whites to give property to free blacks and slaves, it ensured that the white men and women involved in interracial relationships would have great difficulty if they tried to transfer property to their illegitimate children. By contrast, Spanish law did not differentiate between the children of interracial couples and those of endogamous relationships. Rather, it determined the status of the child and the rights the child possessed to receive maintenance and property from his or her parents based solely upon whether the parents’ relationship was merely illicit or whether it was also reprobated. Indeed, in 1794, Spanish authorities in Louisiana confirmed the right of mixed-​­race illegitimate children to receive property from their white parents when it permitted the young mulatto son of a white man to succeed to his father’s estate.30

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 158

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 159

Since Spanish law did not differentiate between the children of interracial liaisons and those of endogamous ones, it granted the children of interracial couples in Louisiana greater access to their parents’ property than they had possessed under the French regime. Nonetheless, the rights of mixed-​­race illegitimate children to receive property from their parents were limited. The natal status of the child was the primary determinant of that child’s ability to receive maintenance and property from his or her parents. Of the two types of illegitimate children, bastards occupied the lower status and possessed only limited rights to maintenance and to receive property from their parents because Spanish law was determined to prevent the children of reprobated relationships from infringing upon the position and status of their parents’ legitimate families. Gender also greatly influenced the degree to which bastards were able to receive maintenance and gifts of property from their parents. Bastards were only guaranteed maintenance from their mothers since Spanish law required mothers to provide for all their children, regardless of their natal status. They were not entitled to support from their fathers because the inability of their mothers to control their sexual desires excused their fathers from being required to provide for them. Bastards also enjoyed only limited rights to receive gifts of property from their parents. Fathers were allowed to donate to their bastards a maximum of one-​­fifth of their estates, which was merely the amount men and women were permitted to give freely under Spanish law, regardless of whether they had legitimate children. The mothers, however, were permitted to give their bastard children as much as their entire estate as long as they had no legitimate or natural children. But if a mother had legitimate or natural children, she was able to give her bastard children only one-​­fifth of her estate, the same amount of property a father was permitted to give to his bastards.31 Although not endowed with the position of legitimate offspring, natural children occupied a more favorable position than bastards because their parents had been able to marry at the time of conception. They were thus entitled to receive maintenance from both their parents and to receive more significant donations of property as well.32 In contrast to bastards, gender affected neither the ability of natural children to receive maintenance from their parents nor their ability to receive gifts of property. However, the presence of other family members did influence the ability of natural children to receive property since Spanish law always privileged the interests of families formed through marriage. It thus ensured that the rights of natural children to inherit from their parents impinged as little as possible on the position of legitimate

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 159

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

160

Chapter 7

children. If a parent had legitimate children, then they were able to donate no more property to their natural children than they were able to give to their acknowledged bastards; they were only able to give a maximum of one-​­fifth. They were also required to subtract the costs of maintenance from the fifth since Spanish law considered maintenance to be an inheritance received in advance. However, if parents had no legitimate offspring, then both mothers and fathers were able to donate as much as their entire estate to their natural children. Significantly, parents were not required to donate the maximum amount in either case. Once they had provided adequate support to maintain their children until they attained their majority, they were permitted to give as much or as little as they desired. By contrast, of course, legitimate children were always entitled to receive four-​­fifths of the estate.33 In Spanish Louisiana, as elsewhere in the empire, white men used these laws to provide for the children they had by free black and enslaved women. For example, D. Pierre Darby divided his substantial estate between his free black companion, Nanette, and the seven children he had by her. Since Darby had never married and had no children, he was permitted to leave his property to Nanette and their seven children.34 D. Juan Antonio Lugar also left considerable property to his natural children by free mulatto María Juana Prudhome. In the will he wrote in 1801, Lugar divided his estate between his two surviving children. He also left a small bequest to their mother, although they had separated several years earlier and she had married a free mulatto.35 While Lugar and Darby left their children substantial inheritances, few white men chose to donate as much. Most elected to give small donations of property. For example, Jean-​­Baptiste Macarty, a man who reached adulthood during the Spanish period, left most of his estate to his legitimate white children as required by law. But he also left his natural son, Théophile, only a small portion of his estate and he also granted his legitimate heirs permission to reduce the bequest to Théophile should they find it to be excessive.36 Spanish officials in Louisiana not only permitted bachelors, such as Darby and Lugar, to leave property to their natural children, but they also permitted less regular donations of property. For example, the 1794 case that confirmed the right of natural children of mixed-​­racial descent to receive property from their white fathers also confirmed the right of a particular mixed-​­race child to receive property from his father in unusual circumstances. In it, a Spanish judge permitted a free mulatto named Charles Begin, who was a little more than one year old, to inherit his white father’s estate although his father had died without leaving a will. Since Spanish law granted natural children access

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 160

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 161

only to one-​­sixth of their fathers’ estates when they died intestate, the court’s decision to permit Begin to receive the entire estate was both highly irregular and highly significant, especially since Begin’s father was also survived by a legitimate sister whose claim to his estate superseded that of his natural son.37 When it ruled in favor of Charles Begin, the Spanish court may have been influenced by two important factors. First, his father had never married and had no legitimate children whose position would be endangered if his natural son were permitted to inherit. Second, Begin’s father had taken steps to provide for his son in the short period of time between Charles’s birth and his own death. For example, he had acknowledged that Charles was his son by his slave, Maria, and had manumitted him eight months after he was born. The court, perhaps aware that Spanish law required a father to provide for his child once he acknowledged the child formally in baptismal or notarial records, interpreted the actions of Begin’s father to indicate that he intended to provide for his son. Given that Charles’s father wanted to provide for his son and had no legitimate children to be injured should Charles inherit, it decided to permit Charles to have the entire estate. Ironically, the single most valuable asset in the estate Charles Begin inherited was his mother.38 While the inheritances received by free persons of color and slaves from their fathers ought not to diminish and, indeed, do not diminish the important role of hard work in the accumulation of property by the free black community, the ability to give property across lines of color and racial status nonetheless possessed a powerful practical and symbolic importance. Through donations of property to their free black children, some white men and, indeed, some white women may have been able to ensure that their children received a certain degree of financial assistance, if not security. They may also have ensured that those children were able to acquire training in a trade or the capital with which to begin a small business.39 Not only did these gifts of property serve a practical purpose, but they also were highly symbolic whether or not the whites giving the property intended them to be. The 1724 Code Noir had intended to maintain white supremacy within a multi-​­racial society not only by subjecting persons of African ancestry to many strong discriminatory measures but also by limiting the degree to which whites were able to give property to persons of African ancestry, thus ensuring that the property of white families remained in the hands of whites. By permitting whites to give their property to free persons of color, particularly those who were their children, Spanish authorities allowed whites to transfer property to family members and other close associates who

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 161

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

162

Chapter 7

were not white rather than requiring them to maintain property exclusively within the hands of white family members. In a society in which many elites continued to believe that inheritance was one of the primary means through which property and status were transferred, the decision of the Spanish to allow property to be passed across racial lines was most significant.

Spanish Policies Regulating Manumission and the Donation of Property The ability of men and women to donate property to their lovers and illegitimate children, regardless of whether their relationships transgressed lines of color and class, becomes far more significant when it is considered with Spanish policies regulating manumission. While the French Code Noir of 1724 required men and women to receive permission from the Superior Council before they manumitted their slaves, Spanish law provided several means by which slaves were able to acquire their freedom. Masters were permitted to manumit their slaves freely or for services rendered to them, and they were not required to obtain permission from local authorities before manumitting their slaves. Slaves and persons acting on their behalf were also permitted to purchase their freedom from their masters, a practice known as coartación, regardless of whether their masters wished to free them. In such a case, the slave or the person acting upon his or her behalf was permitted to request a carta de libertad before the governor’s tribunal. Then at least two assessors declared the value of the slave, and upon the receipt of that sum the tribunal issued the slave’s carta. Since it had not been possible for masters to manumit their slaves without receiving permission from local authorities or for slaves to obtain their freedom through self-​­purchase or without the consent of their masters in the French period, the implementation of these policies enabled the manumission of a much larger number of slaves in the Spanish period than in the French.40 Among the slaves manumitted under Spanish rule were the enslaved mistresses and children of white men. For example, in 1798, Louis Laumonier provided for the manumission of his slave, Catherine, because she was the mother of his three children.41 But, while Laumonier openly acknowledged his relationship to Catherine, not many other white men acknowledged a familial relationship with the enslaved women and children they freed. Most referred simply to the “amor y cariño” existing between themselves and the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 162

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Private Lives 163

slaves they manumitted. Because “amor y cariño” was a formulaic phrase that encompassed platonic relationships as well as familial relationships between slaves and masters, it is necessary to examine manumission records carefully before suggesting that the women and children freed by white and free black men were their mistresses and illegitimate offspring. Nonetheless, it is possible to uncover the existence of familial relationships involving white men and their manumitted slaves through careful research in sacramental, baptismal, notarial, and census records. One such family involves a white man and cooper, Raymond Gaillard, his mulatto slave, Marion, and their children. Gaillard manumitted Marion and her six quadroon children in 1773. While the manumission itself does not necessarily reveal a familial relationship between Gaillard and the slaves he manumitted, additional information gleaned from other sources suggests that one existed. In 1775, two years after manumitting Marion and her children, Gaillard made a donation of property to the children. Three years after that, in 1778, a census taker found Gaillard living with Marion and eight children on Ursuline Street. Twenty-​­four years later, Marion confirmed the relationship between herself and Gaillard when she identified Gaillard as the father of five surviving children when she wrote her will in 1802.42

Conclusion The cession of Louisiana to Spain altered the legal and social regulation of sex and marriage between whites and persons of African ancestry in Louisiana. From a purely legal standpoint the changes were remarkable. Men and women in Spanish Louisiana were permitted to marry across lines of color and legal status and to donate property across lines of color and legal status when they were denied those rights under the French. However, the precedents established by the French law and social practice remained influential following the cession to Spain, due in part to prejudices against persons of African ancestry present within the Spanish Empire into which Louisiana was incorporated, and they greatly affected the manner in which men and women in the colony chose to utilize the possibilities granted to them by Spanish law. Thus only a very few men and women married across lines of color and legal status, and most sexual relationships between whites and persons of African ancestry occurred outside the bonds of matrimony. Yet, though few men and women in Louisiana married across lines of color and legal status

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 163

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

164

Chapter 7

in the Spanish period and most engaged in sexual relationships unsanctified by marriage, a significant number of them recognized the significance of Spanish laws allowing whites to leave property to free persons of color and to slaves, even when those persons of color were their lovers and illegitimate children. These men and women used these laws to ensure that their sexual partners and illegitimate children received shares of their estates. These acts of donation proved to be most significant, not only because they provided free persons of color with property and slaves with the means to acquire their freedom, but also because they endowed relationships across lines of color and legal status with a degree of legal recognition and protection that had been previously denied to them.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 164

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Chapter 8

Atlantic Alliances: Marriage among People of African Descent in New Orleans Emily Clark

As the quadroons on their part regard the negroes and mulattoes with contempt, and will not mix with them, so nothing remains for them but to be the friends, as it is termed, of the white men. The female quadroon looks upon such an engagement as a matrimonial contract, though it goes no farther than a formal contract by which the “friend” engages to pay the father or mother of the quadroon a specified sum. The quadroons both assume the name of their friends, and as I am assured preserve this engagement with as much fidelity as ladies espoused at the altar.1 —​­Karl Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-​­Weimar Eisenach (1828)

The traveling German aristocrat Karl Bernhard was the first to publish a description of the custom that came to be known as plaçage, and to pronounce it to be the typical mode of sexual partnership for free women of color in New Orleans. On the basis of nine weeks in New Orleans in the late winter of 1826, Bernhard etched an archetype for the city’s femmes de couleur libres, of the “quadroon balls” where they met wealthy white suitors, and of the illicit concubinage to which they were driven by their refusal to mix with men of African descent. His portrait was retraced, often word for word, in dozens of subsequent travel accounts, newspaper stories, and literary fiction.2

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 165

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

166

Chapter 8

The popular poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow contributed to the canon with his moonlit tribute to “The Quadroon Girl” in 1842, and so did Harriet Beecher Stowe when she created the character of Eliza in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The public ball that Bernhard attended became the iconic setting for the New Orleans free woman of color. The private social occasions at St. Louis Cathedral that presented a very different tableau would have been inaccessible to such visitors, but they were arguably equally representative of the lived reality of the city’s free people of color. The Catholic nuptial festivities that united Baltasar Noel Carriere and Maria Scipion Sarpy on a late summer day in 1822 were not unusual during the decade of Bernhard’s visit. The parents of the bride and groom looked on as their children made their vows, along with the crowd of friends and relatives, black and white, who filled the nave. The officiating priest, Antonio Sedella, carefully recorded the details of the occasion in the sacramental register that held the records of Baltasar’s parents’ wedding, his grandparents’ wedding, and the sacramental unions of hundreds of other people of African descent.3 Historians of New Orleans and its free people of color have generally accepted the plaçage paradigm that emerged from the antebellum torrent of literary production that followed in the wake of Bernhard. And they have generally embraced its corollary, a self-​­conscious, racially and socially exclusive, free black community that is supposed to have upheld a “three caste society” in the city.4 The sacramental and notarial records exploited in this essay and Rebecca Scott and Jean Hébrard’s new book contest the hegemony that plaçage has exercised over the history of the free women of color in New Orleans.5 Scott and Hébrard’s research uncovers patterns of life partnership between free women of color and men of European descent of modest means, quasi-​­marriages that bear little resemblance to the transitory arranged concubinage with elite whites that was supposed to have been ubiquitous among the city’s free women of color. This essay explores another pattern of sexual association that chips away at the plaçage paradigm: sacramental marriages between free women and men of African ancestry.6 The sacramental registers of New Orleans between 1759 and 1830 reveal marriage to have been a common practice among people of African descent throughout the seventy-​­year period. Within that continuous phenomenon, shifting patterns suggest that marriage was a protean medium of expression and action that served a variety of functions over time, shaped by historical realities as well as by the identities and values that people of African descent claimed for themselves and their children. Although marriage was by no

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 166

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 167

means the norm for people of African descent throughout these seven decades, by the 1820s the gap in the marriage rates between people of color and whites was decreasing.7 In the case of free blacks of New Orleans ancestry, the marital rate may well have been approaching parity. The English observer Harriet Martineau’s pronouncement in the 1830s that plaçage, “the Quadroon connexions in New Orleans,” was “all but universal” needs to be laid to rest. Marital choices and habits revealed in the sacramental registers also disturb the long-​­standing presumption of a “three caste society” in antebellum New Orleans. Laura Foner’s characterization of free people of color in New Orleans as a clearly demarcated, self-​­consciously coherent community that recognized and observed boundaries between themselves and enslaved people of African descent on the one hand and free people of unmixed European descent on the other has anchored the analytical framework for studies of New Orleans race relations since the publication of her influential article forty years ago.8 The parish marriage registers suggest a less tidy reality. Marriage joined the free to the enslaved, the Louisiana-​­born to the African-​­born, the skilled and the propertied to the newly freed, and those labeled dark to those labeled light. The nuptials celebrated at St. Louis Cathedral bridged the Atlantic, knitted together the circum-​­Caribbean, and traversed linguistic divides. The conception of the New Orleans free black community as a self-​ ­conscious monolithic “third caste” with a specific social and racial function in the city is shattered by the variety of the alliances made by hundreds of men and women who ignored the markers of rank and race that are presumed to have bound them.

Methodology, Sources, and General Patterns The majority of sacramental acts performed in the New Orleans area were recorded in the registers of St. Louis Church, which became St. Louis Cathedral in 1794. St. Louis Parish marriage records for 1730–1758 have been lost, and although records exist for 1720–1730, few of these register unions between people of African descent. Beginning with 1759, the St. Louis Parish registers have a nearly continuous run, with acts for all years between 1759 and 1774 and between 1777 and 1830.9 The vast majority of marriages between people of African descent were recorded in a single volume kept from 1777 to 1830, in which analysis is facilitated by the continuity in recorders. Of the 579 acts in this register signed by the priest who officiated at the marriage rites, 412

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 167

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

168

Chapter 8

(75 percent) bear the signature of Antonio de Sedella, a Capuchin friar who served St. Louis Parish between 1782 and 1789 and again between 1797 and 1829.10 This essay focuses on marriage among free people of African descent. Nearly all the marriages between people of African descent recorded in the sacramental registers involved at least one and usually two free partners. Slave-​­to-​­slave marriage became rare in Spanish colonial New Orleans, and although there is significant evidence that marriage between enslaved people was not uncommon during the French colonial period, the absence of marriage registers between 1730 and 1759 makes it difficult to develop a full portrait of the institution among enslaved people of African descent (see Table 8.1). The most that can be said is that since significant numbers of enslaved people did marry in French colonial New Orleans, the frequency with which free people of color married during the Spanish and early national period does not represent a complete innovation in the culture of intimate association.11 Whatever purpose marriage may have served for the enslaved, the institution decreased precipitously among them after 1770 and virtually disappeared after 1800, following changes in law related to regime changes from French to Spanish in the first instance and Spanish/French to American in the second.12 Upticks in Louisiana’s participation in the international slave trade and its plantation economy would also have acted to suppress marriage rates among the enslaved.13 Among the growing population of free people of color, by contrast, the incidence of marriage increased significantly, and in the 1820s, when Table 8.1. Marriages in St. Louis Parish, 1759–1830 1759– 1770

1770– 1780

1781– 1790

1791– 1800

1801– 1810

1811– 1820

1821– 1830

Total marriages among people of African descent

70

15

40

56

88

133

261

Both spouses enslaved

65

3

12

13

3

2

0

Both spouses free

5

10

22

32

83

128

189

One spouse free, one enslaved

0

1

3

5

2

2

0

Status of one spouse unknown

0

1

3

3

0

1

4

Unraced

0

0

0

0

0

0

68

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 168

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 169

free people of color represented 24 percent of the total population of New Orleans, they made up an equal proportion of the total marriages (see Figure 8.1).14 The habituation to marriage among the enslaved during the French period was almost certainly a factor in this trend, and a particular attachment to sacramental marriage among New Orleans–born free people of color is borne out by the evidence of the late colonial and early nineteenth-​­century records. The population of free people of African descent in New Orleans experienced two significant episodes of growth that resulted in two successive communities with markedly different constituencies of origin. The first began to emerge in the late 1770s, when the relatively liberal provisions for manumission under Spanish slave law began to make their mark in the city. The population of free people of color at the end of the French period, estimated at slightly less than 100, had grown to more than 800 by 1788. By 1805, more than 1,500 free people of color constituted nearly a third of the city’s free inhabitants. This population was dominated by people born in Louisiana, though natives of Africa were also represented, along with free people of color born elsewhere in the Caribbean and North America. With the influx in 1809 of over 3,000 free people of color born or formerly resident in Saint-​­Domingue, the city’s native libres were instantly rendered a minority constituency within the free black community.15 Although the francophone free black population of antebellum New Orleans has generally been viewed in vaguely monolithic 200

Figure 8.1. Marriages among free people of African descent in New Orleans, 1759–1830

180

Number of marriages

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 169

1759– 1770– 1781– 1791– 1801– 1811– 1821– 1770 1780 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

170

Chapter 8

terms, one of the most significant revelations of the marriage records is that the Domingois and native-​­born libres may have constituted distinct social networks prior to 1830.16

Divergent Trajectories: Orleanians and Domingois During the decade that followed the influx of Saint-​­Domingue refugees, native-​­born Orleanians sustained a markedly higher incidence of marriage than did Domingois. Some 197 native Orleanians constituted 66 percent of the individuals who pronounced nuptial vows at St. Louis Cathedral. Those sixty-​­five spouses born in Saint-​­Domingue or in the refugee communities of Santiago and Barracoa, Cuba, accounted for only 22 percent of the spouses. Although there are no demographic studies that establish the size of the general population of free people of marriageable age, let alone the representation of Orleanians and Domingois within it, the difference is striking. The disparity is all the more notable in light of the demography of the Domingois refugees. Some 1,297 (42 percent) of the refugees were under the age of sixteen when they arrived in 1809 and might be expected to have come of age to marry between 1810 and 1820.17 The family backgrounds of brides and grooms in New Orleans between 1810 and 1830 yield an intriguing piece of information that hints at a poignant response to the disrupted lives of the Domingois refugees. Nearly a third of the Dominguan brides and almost a fourth of the grooms in the 1810s were the legitimate children of married parents. Since sacramental marriage among free people of color was on the increase in late colonial Saint-​­Domingue, perhaps their unions represented continuity with that trend. The twenty-​­one marriages that united one refugee to another may indeed signal attempts to refashion or sustain family networks marked by their pre-​­revolutionary participation in sacramental marriage. There is even a tenuous indication of a stronger Domingois commitment to sustaining intergenerational sacramental marriage than among Orleanians during this decade. Between 1810 and 1819, the legitimate children of Saint-​­Domingue refugees constituted a greater proportion of the spouses produced by the refugee community than did the legitimate children in the pool of brides and grooms with New Orleans roots.18 This associational pattern is all the more affecting in light of the reversal that occurred between 1820 and 1830. Brides born in New Orleans who

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 170

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 171

claimed legitimate birth status were increasingly represented among all brides in the 1820s, but brides born in Saint-​­Domingue to married parents were substantially less numerous in the 1820s among those receiving the nuptial sacrament than had been the case in the 1810s. During the next decade, married parents produced 24 percent of the city’s native-​­born brides, but only 11 percent of the brides from Saint-​­Domingue claimed legitimate birth status. The representation of legitimate sons among New Orleans–born grooms remained roughly the same in the 1810s and 1820s, but the proportion of legitimate grooms among Saint-​­Domingue refugees experienced as precipitous a drop as that of Saint-​­Domingue brides (see Table 8.2). One further piece of information is worth noting: in the 1820s, more male Saint-​ ­Domingue refugees married than did their female counterparts. Seventy-​­five male refugees married between 1820 and 1830, compared to fifty-​­eight of their female counterparts. These figures suggest that a significant subset of free black Saint-​­Domingue refugees managed to preserve an existing commitment to sacramental marriage during the decade following their arrival in New Orleans, but in the 1820s the intergenerational perpetuation of a marital tradition among refugees seems to have lost momentum. Among native Orleanians, especially among brides, it gained ground. The divergent trajectories in Orleanian and Domingois free black marriage patterns are likely a product of the traumata associated with refugee status than a manifestation of differing matrimonial values. Pre-​­revolutionary free black Domingois, particularly the elite, demonstrated a marked commitment to marriage as a vehicle for upward social and economic mobility and a marker of status. In their book, Scott and Hébrard reveal the persistence of that value when Edouard Tinchant, the married descendant of a Domingoise refugee, proposed a law in 1867 that would insist on a woman’s right to marriage regardless of race.19 Tinchant’s personal and political commitment to marriage, like the marriage pattern of legitimate Domingoises brides in the 1810s, confirms that marriage remained important to many of Dominguan heritage. However, by the 1820s, as the refugees evolved as an immigrant population, exigency may have run roughshod over marital tradition and social aspiration. The general scholarship on immigration suggests that young women born to immigrant parents are especially vulnerable to the effects of the economic and social rupture that follow their parents’ relocation and are much more likely historically to fall into illicit sexual liaisons and prostitution than native-​­born young women.20 A suggestive passage in the early records of the New Orleans Orphan Asylum hints that young women born to refugee

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 171

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

172

Chapter 8

parents may have been slipping into this behavior pattern in the late 1810s. Writing in 1817, the asylum’s founders explained that they were motivated to establish their institution by the young women among the “fugitives from the islands of St. Domingo and Cuba,” whom, they hoped, the new asylum could prevent from “yielding to the temptations of vice to procure a momentary suspension of their wretchedness.”21 The orphan asylum accepted only girls of unmixed European descent, but if the white Saint-​­Domingue refugees were deemed susceptible to falling into concubinage or prostitution, the risk for their free black counterparts must have been equal or greater. The sacramental records do lend support to the observations of Karl Bern­ hard and others who describe quadroon balls and plaçage in the 1820s and 1830s. They suggest that one subgroup of the free black female population might well have begun at this time to frequent balls patronized by white men of means with an eye toward forging intimate partnerships outside of marriage. Those same records suggest, however, that the archetype of the quadroon described by Bernhard was not a species native to New Orleans, but a transplant. Domingoises were more likely to have turned so visibly to the strategy of illicit liaisons in those decades than were native Orleanians. The New Orleans families that had their origins in the illicit liaisons between white men and women of African descent that Cécile Vidal so effectively surveys for the colonial period were less and less likely to reprise such arrangements in the early nineteenth century. The evidence among native Orleanians, particularly those born within sacramental unions, indicates that marriage became an increasingly desirable, and attainable, objective. But while Domingoises refugees may have continued to aspire to marriage for themselves and their children, the social and economic dislocations of the revolution may have put it increasingly beyond reach by the 1820s. The refugee grandmother of Edouard Tinchant managed to find a Dominguan groom in New Orleans, but she may well represent a minority among her peers.

Communities, Networks, Alliances The difference in the incidence of marriage among Orleanians and Domingois is not enough to suggest the existence of two distinct free black communities within the city after 1809, but other patterns in the sacramental records indicate that there may have been networks and alliances defined by birthplace and ancestry rather than a shared global racial identity. There is

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 172

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 173

also evidence that points to New Orleans–born women as the key agents of assimilation of non-​­native free blacks into Orleanian kin and social networks. The incidence of endogamy is one indicator that birthplace and ancestry influenced marital choices. Orleanians were overwhelmingly endogamous, marrying other natives of the city 64 percent of time. When they married outsiders, they were most likely to choose Saint-​­Domingue refugees: sixty-​ o ­ ne Orleanians took partners from among the refugees, almost entirely during the 1810s and 1820s. The refugees themselves were less likely to marry one another than were Orleanians: endogamy characterized 47 percent of their unions. Since endogamy did, however, characterize half of the marriages among those belonging to the third-​­largest geographically defined group, African-​­born spouses, it is reasonable to suggest that free people of color in New Orleans who married were slightly more inclined to choose partners who shared their regional ancestry. Among non-​­Orleanians, gender is a significant feature in marital patterns: foreign grooms were much more frequent than foreign brides. There were 116 grooms from Saint-​­Domingue, compared to ninety-​­five brides born in that colony. The gender disparity was even more pronounced for people born elsewhere in the Caribbean. Thirty-​­four Caribbean men entered sacramental unions in New Orleans, compared to eleven women. Exogamous behavior among New Orleans brides tracks these figures. Orleanians married fifteen of the Caribbean grooms, nearly half, and thirty-​­eight Saint-​­Domingue refugees, accounting for a third of the marriages of male refugees. New Orleans brides also chose partners who, from their perspective, were even more alien. Genevieve Goudine married New Yorker James Craig in 1829. Theresa Maret also chose an anglophone partner in Benjamin, the free man of color from London whom she married in 1802. But Silvania Guani was perhaps the most adventuresome of all when she married Pedro Luis Andres, born in Mauritius and “de Nacion Yndio,” in 1824.22 Free women of color with roots in New Orleans thus clearly played a significant role in incorporating non-​­native free blacks into established local social and economic networks. This was especially the case in the 1820s when this pattern of geographic intermarriage was most prevalent. At first glance, the gender ratio among free people of color during this decade seems to explain this phenomenon. In 1820, there were 966 free men of color and 2,189 free women of color.23 However, we do not know if this gender imbalance was equally distributed in the free black population across age groups and between New Orleans natives and Saint-​­Domingue refugees. Given the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 173

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

174

Chapter 8

extremely skewed sex ratio in the first generation of refugees, it is reasonable to postulate more gender balance among Orleanians.24 At the same time, a narrowing of the gender gap in the free black population during the 1830s suggests that the imbalance was greatest among adults. The sex ratio among New Orleans free people of color in their late teens and early twenties in the 1820s may have been much less skewed than the summary population statistics suggest. If this was the case, the role of New Orleans–born free women of color in enlarging and diversifying the city’s locally rooted social and economic networks takes on a different resonance, pointing to cultural as well as demographic forces at work. Creole women of color may have chosen foreign mates not simply because they were forced by demography to look beyond their own native-​­born community, but because they and/or their families were open to or valued exogamy. The Caribbean grooms originated from a wide variety of places, including Caracas, Venezuela, Jamaica, Curacao, Guadalupe, and Martinique.25 Lorenz Vivant of Guadalupe and Jorge Francisco of Martinique may have sought refuge and stability in New Orleans from the revolutionary disruption in the French Caribbean through marriages with New Orleans women, but they may also simply have been sailors who found themselves in the city in the course of their work.26 The appearance in the city of Juan Joseph Fite of Curacao and Pedro Luis Andres of Mauritius is almost certainly linked to their participation in long distance trade. Revolutionary disruption would have brought men and women to New Orleans in roughly equal measure, but trade and sailing service did not, circumstances that help explain the regular appearance of Caribbean and other foreign grooms in New Orleans weddings and the dearth of similar brides.27 Saint-​­Domingue refugees formed the largest group of foreign grooms who took New Orleans brides, and, as has been noted, they were more likely to marry into New Orleans families than their female counterparts, especially in the 1820s. Female refugees were disadvantaged in the marriage market. New Orleans brides could offer both native and foreign grooms the advantages of their connections to local economic and social networks, as well as, in some cases, dowries. Female refugees had less to offer, both socially and materially, to prospective grooms or their families. Male refugees, on the other hand, may have been attractive as a source of labor to New Orleans free families of color, especially to those who were engaged in skilled trades. This scenario is most clearly suggested by the circumstances of two marriages in the Populus family of New Orleans.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 174

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 175

Maria Martina Populus married Hipolite Lafargue of Port au Prince in 1815, and her cousin, Maria Populus, married Agustin Alexandre of Port au Prince in 1827. Their fathers, Vincent and Maurice Populus, respectively, ran a successful shoemaking business that occupied several prominent locations on Bourbon Street in the 1810s and 1820s. The shop must have been both prosperous and its products in demand in the booming port city, because in 1816 Maurice invested a substantial sum to purchase a skilled cobbler. Two other Populus brothers were tailors and dry goods merchants with shops nearby. During the 1820s, when the city’s population nearly doubled, the demand for the services and goods produced by the Populus apparel enterprises would have been substantial and the cost of non-​­family labor high. The incorporation of a refugee groom into this family may well have been seen as a boon rather than a burden.28 Membership in the free black militia, discussed below, may also have played a part in the Populus brothers’ willingness to incorporate refugee men into their family. Considerations such as those that may have been an incentive for the Populus brothers are not sufficient to explain the larger, general growth in marriage among free people of color in the city in the nineteenth century. One could easily argue that this population merely reflected larger trends in the United States at this time. Recent scholarship suggests that Anglo-​­American sexual mores underwent a significant transition in the post-​­Revolutionary era. The tolerance for a certain amount of sexual license, particularly premarital and extramarital sexual activity, evaporated, replaced by a more rigorously and widely applied expectation for sexual continence within marriage.29 Free people of color in early national New Orleans may have embraced marriage in order to stake a claim to the republican respectability for which it was an essential requirement in antebellum America. If that was so, New Orleans libres should be understood not as an exotic and exceptional group of people perched uncomfortably on the geographic, racial, and cultural periphery of the United States, but as only one of many groups of Americans who consciously yoked themselves to national conceptions of morality and gender conventions. There were, however, several cultural and social factors that antedated the Louisiana Purchase that would also have inclined free Orleanians of color toward marriage. Their well-​­established Catholicism is the most obvious of these. The church exhorted its members to marry, and many free people of color may have needed no other reason to seek the sacrament.30 Participation in the free black militia units instituted during the Spanish regime may well have been another factor.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 175

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

176

Chapter 8

In the classic Iberian formulation that would have prevailed during the youth of many of the patriarchs of the city’s leading free families of color, men achieved honor through military valor and by protecting the virtue of their wives and daughters. Female virtue was defined as sexual continence except within sacramental marriage. This second requirement of honor expressed itself in Spanish colonial America in a veritable obsession with legitimacy as a prerequisite for public status and privileges.31 Honor was obviously beyond the reach of the enslaved, but free men of color who were exposed to the Iberian construction of honor in late colonial New Orleans could and did seek to fulfill both of its requirements. The men who undertook this project were those who were admitted to the most public and respected occupation to which men of African descent could aspire in Spanish colonial America: military service. Dozens of free black men of New Orleans took advantage of the opportunity to earn honor through military service in the Spanish free black militia in the late eighteenth century and again in 1815, when free black troops were mobilized to fight in the Battle of New Orleans.32 Many of these men and their families appear frequently among the marriage records of New Orleans, suggesting that they sought fulfillment of the second requirement of traditional Iberian honor. Three generations of the Carriere clan pepper the marriage registers of St. Louis Parish. Lieutenant Noel Carriere was decorated for valor in the Spanish expeditions against the British at Mobile and Pensacola in 1781, and rose to become captain of the free moreno militia of New Orleans in the 1790s. His son and namesake, Noel Carriere fils, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the moreno regiment at the end of the colonial period.33 Both father and son married in the church, the former taking Mariana Thomas as his bride in November 1778 and the latter marrying Luisa Gonzales in 1806.34 Ten years after his own nuptials, Carriere père was legitimated by the marriage of his father, African-​­born Joseph Leveillé, and Marie Therese Carriere in 1786. The wedding may well have occurred at the request of the young officer, who understood the value attached to legitimacy by the Spanish crown he served.35 In addition to Noel fils, six other children of Captain Carriere were married in the church: Mariana in 1807, Pelagia in 1809, Maria Noel in 1811, Ana in 1812, and Maria Deseada and Baltasar Noel, both in 1822.36 Men who had served as officers in the free black militia stood frequently as witnesses at the weddings of other members of the libre community, communicating the value they ascribed to marriage at the same time that they

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 176

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 177

lent their status as military men to the occasion. Noel Carriere was the most zealous of the militia wedding sentinels, making an appearance at thirty-​­one weddings between 1782 and 1804, the year he died.37 Among the younger officers who followed in his wake, the most prominent was Lieutenant Jean Doliole, who stood at ten weddings between 1812 and 1829, including the nuptials of his fellow militia officer, Charles Porée, in 1812. About midway through his run as a frequent ceremonial witness, Doliole submitted to the sacrament himself, marrying Hartanza Dussuau early in 1818 and legitimating three young children at the ceremony.38 Militiamen Charles Porée and Maurice Populus each appeared in seven weddings between 1802 and 1825, with Vincent Populus joining his brother on two occasions.39 The spouses at these ceremonies, in most cases, were not born into legitimate partnerships, so the militiamen presided over the spread of the tradition of marriage among the free black population and may well have encouraged the practice among prospective spouses who were not born to married parents. Marital patterns in the Populus family itself confirm the value militiamen placed on marriage and suggest that militia affiliation might also create an entrée for Domingois grooms into established native kin and economic networks. Maurice Populus, who married Artemisa Celestin in 1804, presided over the weddings of his daughters Margarita in 1821 and Maria in 1827, both to Dominguan grooms who served in the second battalion of the free black militia, which was raised from refugees to fight in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Maurice’s brother, Vincent, never married in the church, but he saw four of the children borne him by Mariana Navarro married at St. Louis Cathedral: Francisca in 1808, Maria Martina in 1815, Dorothea in 1815 and again, as a widow, in 1826, and Carlos in 1819. Maria Martina married second battalion veteran Hipolite Lafargue, a native of Port au Prince.40 In addition to securing the honor of militiamen and their families, marriage created blood kin ties that expanded and formalized the fictive kin network created by the brotherhood of military service. Social and economic relationships that would otherwise have been limited to the orbit of the militia were extended, creating wider circles of association through which capital and social influence circulated to advance the interests of free blacks of all backgrounds. In its advancement of social and economic standing through military service and marriage, the New Orleans free black militia paralleled that of pre-​­Revolutionary Saint-​­Domingue. The relationships between Orleanians and Domingois that can be teased out of the marriage records hint that this common ground proved crucial to paving the way for some interweaving

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 177

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

178

Chapter 8

of these two regionally defined groups before 1830.41 The free black militia was not, however, midwife to anything as clearly defined as a “third caste,” or a self-​­conscious community defined by its race.

Contingent Marriages In contrast to the militiamen who promoted the institution of marriage for ideological reasons and to strengthen and extend social and economic networks, a significant group of free people of color married in the late 1820s for immediately practical reasons. Following the adoption of the first Louisiana civil code in 1808, and again upon its revision in 1824, unprecedented numbers of free people of color seem to have been prompted to marry in order to legitimate children. The forced heirship of legitimate children was codified in the code of 1808, a provision that would have encouraged marriage among all Orleanians who wanted to ensure the transmission of their wealth to their children. Free people of color may have been especially inclined to pursue the extra security that marriage might afford their children given other provisions of the 1808 code that discriminated against free people of color and signaled a new level of vulnerability.42 Over the fifteen-​­year period spanning from 1811 to 1824, thirty couples legitimated children at their marriage ceremonies.43 In 1824, Louisiana adopted a revised civil code that explicitly provided that children born before marriage were considered legitimate upon their parents’ subsequent marriage, equal to any children born to the same parents after their marriage, and thus eligible to inherit under the terms of Louisiana’s forced heirship provisions.44 This legislation precipitated a sudden tide of legitimating weddings. Over a six-​­year period between July of 1824 and 1830, twenty-​­eight couples acknowledged children as part of their marriage records, constituting 41 percent of the sixty-​­eight couples who legitimated children at their marriage ceremonies in St. Louis Parish before 1830.45 Although in some cases these marriages seem to have been prompted by the imminent death of one of the parents, in most instances this was not the case.46 Nor were most of these weddings between couples in the early stages of family formation. Native Orleanians Juan Castelan and Mariana Cheval, for example, legitimated ten children at their wedding in 1811, ranging in age from twenty-​­five-​­year-​ o ­ ld Juan fils to two-​­year-​­old Melicen. And, with a crowd of “many people of both sexes” looking on, six children of San Dominguans Joseph Jamet and Melania Urisse were legitimated by their marriage in 1825, the eldest being

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 178

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 179

twenty-​­year-​­old Luisa Esteban and the youngest eighteen-​­month-​­old Maria Clara.47 The refugee community is especially noticeable in the post-​­1825 spate of weddings, participating in sixteen (57 percent) of them.48 The Panic of 1819 and the Missouri Crisis in 1820 did not produce a similar surge in marriages, but they do seem to have affected the formalities of many weddings. Between June 1819 and May 1825, the notary Christoval de Armas stood as a witness at thirty-​­four marriages. A slight majority of these involved at least one spouse born outside of New Orleans, and these foreigners were overwhelmingly Saint-​­Domingue refugees, suggesting that this group felt especially vulnerable in the wake of these two developments. Oddly, most of the Saint-​­Domingue spouses appear in weddings that took place before the Denmark Vesey conspiracy of 1822, which might have been expected to affect them more noticeably, given the connections made between Vesey’s plot and Haiti.49 This suggests that, although both the Panic of 1819 and the Missouri Crisis sparked surges in anti-​­black sentiment, the Panic was the most immediate cause of the appearance of the notary de Armas at weddings in the early 1820s. The sacramental register had been deemed a sufficient official record on its own for decades in New Orleans. Enlisting a notary as a witness, a commissioned clerk whose records of civil acts were recognized by judicial authorities, provided additional insurance that a marriage would be deemed legitimate.50 The impact of the Panic was felt until 1823, after which de Armas attended fewer and fewer weddings. Marriage partners who sought de Armas as a witness did so, it seems, to protect their financial assets and the inheritance rights of their spouses and future children. Foreigners who could not offer copies of locally accessible baptismal records and notarial documents verifying their inheritance and property rights would have been especially likely to seek the presence of de Armas at their nuptials.

Color Consciousness “As the quadroons on their part regard the negroes and mulattoes with contempt, and will not mix with them,” Karl Bernhard assures his readers, “so nothing remains for them but to be the friends, as it is termed, of the white men.”51 Bernhard and others supposed that color consciousness and an implied desire to “whiten” their children so that they could pass into white society were controlling factors in the choices that free women of color made in the formation of sexual partnerships. Such evidence as there is, however,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 179

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

180

Chapter 8

suggests that if anyone was preoccupied with the color of the partners chosen by free women of color, it was their parents. The white planter Juan LaFrance sought a legal injunction in the fall of 1788 to prevent his daughter’s marriage to a suitor of a darker color label under the terms of the Royal Pragmatic on Marriage, the Spanish law of 1776 that inhibited marriage between “unequal” partners. Persuaded by “sensible persons” that there was really no “diversity of class” between his quadroon daughter Catalina and Bartolomé Bautisto, a grifo, Lafrance withdrew his objections and Father Antonio Sedella promptly joined the couple at a wedding ceremony.52 We do not know whether such family dramas were common, but the marriage register does tell us that the cross-​­category marriage of Catalina LaFrance and Bartolomé Baitosta was not unique. Sixteen women married men described as being of a darker color category than they between 1793 and 1824. There may have been more such cross-​­category marriages in the 1820s, but because the generic de couleur libre was almost always used in place of specific color category labels after 1820, it is not possible to tell. Twelve of these unions involved women described as quadroons and grooms identified as mulattoes, and two grifa women and two mulatto women married men described as nègres. Not all white fathers shared Juan LaFrance’s objections to their light-​ s­ kinned daughters’ marriage to men labeled with darker color classifications. The quadroon Maria Josepha Reuseve, daughter of “Señor” Bautista Reuseve and free mulatto Catalina, married mulatto Santiago LeDusse in 1793. Antonio Gonzales, a native of Puerto de la Oratava in the Canary Islands, raised no objections as the three bans were read during the weeks in 1806 that preceded his grifa daughter Luisa’s marriage to Noel Carriere fils, identified as a nègre.53 And Joseph Fondall, a white man, attended the wedding of his quadroon daughter, Maria Josepha, to mulatto Juan Foucher in 1809 and made certain that the officiant, Antonio Sedella, recorded that he stood as witness to the ceremony along with three mulatto men.54 There is nothing in most of the cross-​­category marriage records to suggest why brides chose grooms with darker, and therefore supposedly inferior, color labels than their own. The exceptions are striking, however, and suggest once again the importance of military service as a mark of honor in the free black population. The marriage of grifa Luisa Gonzales to nègre militia officer Noel Carriere is one of three cross-​­category marriages involving militiamen as grooms. Free black militia officer Maurice Populus, described as a mulatto, married Artemisa Celestin, labeled a quadroon, in 1804. In 1809,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 180

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 181

militiaman Francisco Porée, a mulatto, married Petrona Lugar, identified as the quadroon daughter of Maria Juana Justis and Juan Lugar, presumably a white man.55 Most, but not all, of the cross-​­category marriages involved native Orleanians born to families long established in Louisiana. The prominence of several of these families, most notably the Populus and Carriere clans, suggests that standing in the community, turning on factors such as military service and wealth, overrode racial ancestry in the choices made by brides and their families, if, indeed, racial ancestry was a factor at all. The existence of two cross-​­category marriages between Saint-​­Domingue refugees indicates that at least in this, their marriage patterns paralleled those of Orleanians. Yet it may be that the 1812 marriage of quadroon Isavel Francisca, a native of Saint Marc and mulatto Juan Bartolome of Port au Prince, and that of mulatto Renato St. Aubin and quadroon Maria Eulalie, born in Saint Marc and Port au Prince, respectively, reflect different motives for these quadroon brides of mulatto men.56 As has been suggested, marriage for Saint-​­Domingue brides may have been less easily achieved than by New Orleans–born women. If there had been a cultural preference for color category homogamy among the Saint-​ ­Domingue brides, it would have been difficult to sustain in New Orleans.

Conclusion Not so long ago, a historian of New Orleans’s free people of color wrote, “Free black women were not expected to marry.”57 If nothing else, this study of marriage among people of African descent shows that this was not true for all free black women, particularly those born legitimately into long-​­established New Orleans families. It also cautions against viewing the city’s antebellum free black population as a homogeneous and static “third caste.” Before 1830, there seem to have been several fairly recognizable networks among the city’s free blacks, some rooted in ancestry, and one anchored in the shared experience of military service. Although membership in these networks overlapped, the high rate of endogamy among native-​­born Orleanians, Domingois, and African-​­born libres suggests that there was no “free black community” that recognized itself as unified by race and status. The most established of these networks, that centered on native-​­born Orleanians, did incorporate through marriage a substantial number of “foreigners” from throughout continental America, Africa, the circum-​­Caribbean,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 181

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

182

Chapter 8

and beyond. The endogamy of this community was not absolute, attesting to the porous boundaries of identity and community that mark New Orleans’s vital connection to the Atlantic world. At the same time, this locally rooted libre population seems to have figuratively circled its wagons in the face of the tide of free black Domingois who arrived in the city in 1809. Racial solidarity was not enough to override the economic and political challenges posed by the refugees. Husbanding their own hard-​­won economic security and already fighting against an increasingly racist political and social milieu, native-​­born Orleanians would have seen little advantage to the attenuation of their social and economic strength that would have resulted by incorporating the Domingois into their networks. And since the refugees of African descent were widely feared by whites to be infected with the virus of racial rebellion, free black Orleanians may have hoped to guard their political safety by keeping their social distance from the Domingois. The failure to open established free black networks to refugees for political and economic reasons may, in turn, have introduced another reason for discouraging marriage between Orleanians and Domingoises in the 1820s. As the sacramental registers suggest, free black daughters of Saint-​­Domingue refugees may well have found themselves reluctantly abandoning the respectability of marriage achieved by so many of their parents’ generation. In New Orleans, some, perhaps many, reprised the role of ménagère, “a woman who combined the roles of professional manager and personal companion to white men” in colonial Saint-​­Domingue.58 This arrangement closely resembles the practice that came to be known as plaçage in antebellum New Orleans. Lacking the familial and business connections to the white community that native Orleanians of color enjoyed, young Domingoises would not have found it easy to meet prospective white partners in the normal course of events. There would have been no white uncles and cousins to make discreet introductions, no occasion to meet prospective suitors from among those who patronized the cabarets, rooming houses, and shops over which many native free women of color presided. For the refugee women, the balls that explicitly advertised themselves as venues where only white men and free women of color were welcome would have played a critical part in negotiating security for themselves in a difficult environment. It is telling that the first New Orleans ball that was advertised as one exclusively for free women of color and white men was organized by the Dominguan refugee Auguste Tessier.59 Karl Bernhard and other outside observers who wrote about the “quadroon balls” and plaçage of New Orleans would not have known whether the francophone free

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 182

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Atlantic Alliances 183

women of color they saw at these balls were the daughters of New Orleans families or Saint-​­Domingue refugees, but Orleanians would. Native Orleanian free black families, which showed themselves to have been increasingly committed to marriage as a marker of social status and respectability in the early nineteenth century, would have been even less inclined to welcome Domingoises brides if refugees had come to be associated with illicit partnerships that originated in the public space of the ballroom.60 The quadroon placée first described in Bernhard’s account has no point of origin other than New Orleans. Hers is the image of the city’s free black women that has prevailed in historical memory and the American imagination. The respectability so carefully cultivated by the Carrieres, Populuses, and hundreds of other Orleanians of color has been eclipsed by a tragic interloper who continues to serve the prurient dreams of the antebellum racist regime.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 183

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion

Beyond Borders: Revising Atlantic History Sylvia R. Frey

On a balmy day in 1803 a crowd gathered in the Place d’Armes to witness the transfer of the French colony of Louisiana to the United States. After presenting the keys of the city to William C. C. Claiborne, the new American governor, the French colonial prefect, Pierre Clément, Baron de Laussat, led the dignitaries to the balcony of the Cabildo, until recently the seat of Spanish municipal government, to observe the ritual lowering of the French flag and the raising of the American flag. As the French tri-​­color met the American stars and stripes at mid-​­point on the flagpole, “both banners paused for a moment,” Laussat remembered. That moment stands as a visual metaphor for the ambiguous place of Louisiana in the young American republic and in U.S. historiography. Louisiana was no longer technically or institutionally French, yet the umbilical link between France and the former colony was not finally severed until the mid-​­nineteenth century. The nostalgic claim of some Louisianians to “Frenchness” preserved a place for them in the Gallic cultural world, while their enthusiastic participation in the plantation Atlantic drew them ever closer politically and economically to their fellow American citizens, particularly southerners. In the end the distinct identity Louisianians fashioned for themselves left a trace on the American psyche and memory that located it on the margins of colonial American history and mainstream historiography. The mark may be permanent. In the twenty years since the publication of two path-​­breaking works, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s Africans in Colonial Louisiana and Dan Usner’s Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, scholars have given closer scrutiny to the processes that created Louisiana’s complex identity.1 They tell the story of a lush, chaotic

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 184

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 185

place that was in some ways a microcosm of the entire history of the United States, played out more intensely in New Orleans than anywhere else. Despite the growth of a significant body of research on the French and Spanish colonial world, much of Atlantic world historiography still tends to break along national fault lines. When it does transcend national boundaries, the focus tends to be on British and Spanish “entanglements.”2 Unfortunately, national fault lines are not particularly reliable guides to understanding the deep underlying forces shaping Atlantic world history. The essays in this volume suggest an alternative paradigm that transits national borders and deploys a different framework of fault lines of race, demography, religion, gender, and geography. Louisiana, whose history crosses four national fault lines in the space of twenty years, is a good place to test that approach. During the late eighteenth century and the first two decades of the nineteenth century New Orleans was a city at the crossroads of the Atlantic world. A central locus for competing colonial empires, it was a vital pressure point where imperial pretensions were acted out in complex choreography with one another and with hemispheric and local interests. The location of New Orleans at the center of shifting alliances between the great powers gives Louisiana a prominence in Atlantic world historiography it has not previously enjoyed and suggests a new Atlantic geography with New Orleans at the center of interconnected Atlantic worlds. The collapse of French rule in North America in 1763 and Spanish imperial decline beginning in the late eighteenth century caused a radical reshaping of the political contours of the Gulf South and the place of New Orleans in the region and ultimately in the United States. But disparate imperial aspirations and distinctive styles of imperial government, combined with the push and pull, this way and that, of local and hemispheric pressures left deep imprints on the character of society: in the social and racial order installed by Spain, in the persistence of Gallic culture in Louisiana.

Empires The emergence of racial ideologies and racial orders is one of the great fault lines, perhaps the great fault line, in studies of Atlantic history. The study of racial orders and ideologies makes it possible to examine Atlantic history from a variety of different angles, a kind of intellectual compass that points in all directions—​­to Europe, to French, Spanish, and British colonies on the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 185

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

186 Conclusion

North American mainland, and to the British West Indies and the French and Spanish Antilles; to the body and sexual identities as a crucial component of racial ideologies; to the discourse of gender and race. New demographic approaches, the deployment of gender analysis, and modern linguistic techniques offer methodological tools to expand the parameters of understanding of this complex subject and drive research in exciting new directions. As the methodological and geographical boundaries of American history are expanded, simultaneous processes and interactions within and across imperial boundaries are revealed, making it clear that the origins of any colonial racial order cannot be isolated from other imperial contexts or divorced from broader Atlantic trends but must be seen as part of an immersive environment, the sum total of words and images as well as people, circulating through cultures, on streets, in drawing rooms, coffee houses, and taverns, in finally what is called the collective memory. The construction of “race” is rooted in the genealogy of “nation,” part of a long historical process stretching over two centuries before culminating finally in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when formal definitions of “nation” were elaborated. The essays in this volume address, either explicitly or implicitly, some of the more problematic aspects of the subject. Alexandre Dubé ’s essay opens a curtain on the transition to “empire.” His exhaustive analysis of the “careers” of officers of the plume engaged by the Ministry of the Navy illuminates the process by which the abstract entity of “empire” became “a certain practice of empire” largely through the cumulative efforts of clerks and warehouse keepers, commissaires-​­ordonnateurs, and intendants. Linked together in a series of personal and political relationships between metropolis and colonies and between colonies themselves—​­a theme that resonates through the essays of Cécile Vidal and Guillaume Aubert—​ ­the men of the plume constituted a government bureaucracy dedicated to the grand political end articulated by Abbé François Piquet to the governor and intendant of New France: “To extend the empire of Jesus Christ and the King.”3 Although in the early modern period European regimes had different points of departure, and starkly different practices, all shared common criteria for determining the boundaries of belonging to the new imperial order. Continental Europeans defined themselves first and foremost as Catholics, while Britons defined themselves by reference to Protestantism. For over 130 years the great struggle between Protestant Britain and Catholic France dominated world politics until Napoleon’s defeat settled the contest. Time and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 186

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 187

time again, in war after war, religion was a terrain of struggle around which allegiances were forged and social and political unity affirmed. The role of religion in determining racial categorization was also linked to the belief that individuals existed as part of groups whose peculiar traits set them apart from other members of society. Located in concepts of “blood,” it formed part of a new discourse that emerged in fifteenth-​­and sixteenth-​­century Spain.4 In its original formulation, the Spanish concept of limpieza de sangre emphasized “Old Christian” ancestry untainted by Jewish, Muslim, or heretical elements and was originally designed to exclude Jews and Gypsies from the sociopolitical community by constituting them as separate groups. In France, “blood purity” was a cultural strategy to preserve the “pure blood” of the old aristocracy.5 Until the late seventeenth century, the majority of the English gentry supported the conventional canons of gentility, blood, birth, and land. But in Stuart England, a realignment of social relationships got under way around 1660. By the end of the seventeenth century, the sovereignty of blood as the basis of structural divisions in society had been largely replaced by wealth, and a “language of sorts” had emerged to describe what Keith Wrightson calls “an essentially dichotomous perception of society.”6 These regimes were extended to the Atlantic colonies, where in theory Indian and African Christians were eligible for integration into the sociopolitical order and for most of the century social categories in all three colonial empires were relatively fluid. In the late seventeenth century a historical shift in the conventional terminology of social descriptions began to emerge in colonial regimes. Whereas certain similarities existed between French and Spanish colonies, a starkly different model of racial classification emerged in British mainland America. In contrast to French centralizing tendencies, the process of defining race in the British mainland colonies was determined in part by the silence of the common law on the subject of slavery, which allowed colonial legislators to define the social meaning of racial difference; in part by the plurality of colonial legal systems, which produced some variations in the rules regulating interracial relations between northern and southern colonies; in part by religious plurality, which made it difficult to impose religious orthodoxy; and in part by an inherited “sorting” process that cleaved colonial society into black and white. Winthrop Jordan’s work and most studies thereafter trace the “peculiar bifurcation” of mainland colonial society to a Virginia law of 1660, when “mulatto” first entered the colonial legal lexicon—​­which dovetails precisely

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 187

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

188 Conclusion

with a parallel shift in the language of class and ethnicity in England. As they traveled across the empire, the concepts of difference were reconfigured in terms of color. Carl Nightingale’s chronology and global geography of color concepts suggest that the dichotomy of “black” and “white” was first used in the sugar islands of the British West Indies beginning in 1661. It then circumnavigated the empire appearing in a Virginia law of 1662, which continued to use “Christian” to differentiate whites from blacks, in New York statutes in 1723, and in Madras, India, about the same time.7 Although “black” and “white” were not yet “racial” concepts, over the course of the seventeenth century mainland plantation societies evolved a series of increasingly race-​ ­specific rules. Virginia’s law of 1691 used “white” as a defining term for the first time and criminalized all interracial sexual acts, thereby effectively excluding individuals of African and Indian descent from white definitions of marriage and legitimacy. This “template of binary difference,” as Kathleen Brown calls it, made “whiteness” an exclusive legal category and effectively limited the size of the free black population.8 One recent study suggests that the relatively small size of the free black populations of Virginia and South Carolina did not present a serious threat to the existing social order and provided “less need or occasion to encourage caste consciousness” that characterized Britain’s island colonies.9 In contrast to the decentralized development of biracial social orders in British America, Cécile Vidal, Alexandre Dubé, and Guillaume Aubert’s chapters trace the development of a common imperial racial culture in Louisiana during the French regime. Vidal’s systematic study of the language of race shows that out of the Spanish and French fixation on blood a new language was born. Spain provided the original vocabulary, but in the course of transmission from the metropolis the lexicon of mésalliance and limpieza de sangre took on quasi-​­biological formulations in response to European encounters with Native peoples in New France and subsequently with increasingly large numbers of enslaved Africans in the Antilles. The growth of the free black population, the rising incidence of interracial cohabitation and métissage by white men with black women, are closely correlated with the elaboration of a social vocabulary based on “blood” distinctions. As the size of the mixed-​ r­ ace populations increased, the need for social differentiation became more acutely felt and more elaborately articulated in the generic language of blood and lineage.10 Vidal’s conceptualization of the spatial dynamics of racial cultures juxtaposes the transoceanic traffic in color concepts within the Spanish, French,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 188

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 189

and British empires. By drawing into her schema the French island of Saint-​ ­Domingue as well as Martinique and Guadeloupe, she exposes the circuits along which intellectual currents traveled from one society to another. Driven by intercolonial trade and migration that was partially dictated by Atlantic winds and currents, in the matter of slavery and interethnic relations the spatial movement of racial categories helped to shape a common French imperial culture based on the development of a vocabulary of métissage. Vidal’s analysis reveals multiple streamlines—​­local, hemispheric, metropolitan. Each current had its own sources but they were linked together by career bureaucrats of the plume corps.11 Alexandre Dubé’s study of a succession of commissaires-​­ordonnateurs for Louisiana uncovers a transatlantic web of naval administrators who served as conduits for the transmission of ordonnances, the official documents intended to promote the standardization of practices throughout the empire. Agents of empire linked directly to policy makers in Versailles, the employees of the plume were important voices shaping the colonial political scene and the processes of empire building. Having spent their entire careers moving from metropole to one colony and from one colony to another, they were also deeply embedded in colonial administration. Their practical experience in French colonies made them effective vectors for the transmission of information about emergent racial identities in the colonies. The process of racialization during the French regime was thus a reciprocal action of the state represented by the plume and local actors in colonial societies. It followed a circuitous route, unwinding from its class-​­based metropolitan axis, circulating through the French islands—​­the sieve for the inflow of intellectual currents into Louisiana—​­recirculated through Versailles to emerge finally in a single flow as “imperial” policy in the Code Noir of 1724. In each step the racial lexicon became progressively more complex and elaborated through the end of the French period. Guillaume Aubert’s essay also focuses on Louisiana, the great fault zone between the biracialism of British North America and the more complex racial orders to the south. Using Louisiana as a template, Aubert examines the Mississippi colony’s place in the empire from different angles to expose the inner workings of the transatlantic dynamic. He describes different sets of relationships—​­between empires and within empires between colony and metropolis and within colonies between populations of European origins and Africans and Amerindians—​­a busy crisscross of vectors held together by the scaffolding of race.12 Aubert’s research offers a detailed picture of how

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 189

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

190 Conclusion

Atlantic racial orders were continually remade in the interplay between imperial and hemispheric forces and the realities of local situations and demographic environments. The symbiotic relationship between empire and religion and empire and local society is also sharply etched out in Aubert’s analysis of the Codes Noirs of 1685 and 1724. A product of the complex engagement of imperial aspirations and colonial realities and the tensions between church and state, the 1724 Code condensed a vast and sometimes contradictory compendium of fears and anxieties over the growth of the free black population into fifty-​­four articles that reasserted equality for free people of color even as it established racial difference. The rule prohibiting “white subjects, of both sexes, to marry with the blacks” recognized the local social and cultural practice embodied in the census of 1721, which marked for the first time an effort by local elites to differentiate themselves from enslaved and free people of color through a racial vocabulary that deployed “white” and “French” as synonymous terms.13 The distinction between “white” and “black” ultimately created cross-​­class loyalties that were an essential component of national identity. This deliberate shaping of the plantation racial order culminated in a provision allowing for the enslavement of free blacks convicted of assisting enslaved runaways. Aubert’s point that this last provision signaled that “African ancestry carried a stigma that even free birth could not erase” suggests, if not legal symmetry, then moral equivalence between British and French slave codes. “Whiteness” and “blackness” remained for the most part a loosely defined political category until the eighteenth century, when protracted wars involving all of the great empires in shifting alliances dramatically reshaped the geopolitical face of the Atlantic world and made cultural and political identity relevant and compelling in an unprecedented way. Louisiana was a pivot—​­in some cases, the pivot—​­around which these events turned, as Sylvia Hilton’s study of Louisiana during the Spanish period demonstrates. Hilton echoes a theme that resonates through all the essays in this volume—​­that imperial policies were not dictated by Paris or Madrid or London, but were the result of accommodations or “negotiated concessions” between metropolitan centers and various local interest groups on the edges of empire. Spain’s immigration policy is a case in point. Unable to populate Louisiana and caught between potentially threatening crosscurrents of international rivalries, Madrid turned to immigration as a strategic tool in its efforts to defend its vulnerable frontiers and to hold the world together. In a far-​­reaching decision, Spain abandoned its venerable immigration policy and opened its doors to

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 190

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 191

the waves of immigrants flowing across its borders and lifted the religious restrictions that were the main tenet of Spanish foreign policy for 300 years. The extension of religious tolerance—​­similar in intent and purpose to the British Quebec Act of 1774—​­to Protestant Anglo-​­Americans, who formed the bulk of the immigrant population, and the end to formal efforts to transform indigenous peoples and Africans into fellow Catholics, signal the end of the great experiment embodied in Isabella’s command to create “one country, one ruler, one faith.” Hilton’s essay captures the tenuousness and instability of European empires in a period when everything was changing. It points to a shift in the discursive terrain in Atlantic world politics that contributed to the unsettling of eighteenth-​­century empires and foretells the letting go of empires. The story unfolds in different places and at different times yet is globally linked by shared concerns over the nature of empire and the relationship between colonies and metropolitan centers. What began as debates over local issues among white provincial elites in Virginia, South Carolina, Jamaica, and Barbados evolved into questions of larger political principles—​­legislative rights, rights of conscience, legal rights, ultimately the bounds of colonial and imperial authority. In the end, thirteen of Britain’s thirty-​­three Atlantic colonies rejected their British identity in favor of a new “American” identity and national independence. The same pre-​­Revolutionary discourse that enlarged the definition of liberty by reference to slavery sealed the boundaries of “whiteness” in the new American nation with Congress’s passage of the Naturalization Act of 1790, which restricted naturalization to “free white persons.” Louisiana, at the crossroads of competing empires, is different yet connected in powerful ways to the mainstream history of the new emerging American political culture. The rich work produced by French colonial studies in recent years reveals that ideas surrounding political rights and national citizenship emerged from imperialism, was defined in multiple sites, and was forged by an assortment of political actors. The white insurgents who led the “Louisiana rebellion” of 1768 to protest the French cession of the Louisiana colony to Spain after the Seven Years War followed the North American pattern in their patriotic rhetoric and professions of loyalty to France. Their self-​ ­definition as citoyens français and their claims to all the rights and privileges of la nation française echo pre-​­Revolutionary protest rhetoric in the French Antilles and throughout the British colonial world. As in the broader Atlantic, the debate over political rights was molded by a combination of factors, including imperial mercantile policies, as Hilton points out, and, as Mary

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 191

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

192 Conclusion

Williams adds, regulations involving matters of race. The Louisiana insurgents’ indignation over the humiliation suffered by la nation française was set in motion by the marriage of a white Spaniard to an enslaved woman. The imposition of Spanish law, which, as Mary Williams points out, temporarily expanded the rights of interracial couples to marry and permitted interracial unions outside of marriage, justified new forms of exclusion to protect the ersatz unity among whites created by the Code Noir of 1724.14

Circulations If, as James Lang famously wrote, the Spanish Atlantic was an “empire of conquest” and England an “empire of commerce,” France was, above all, an “empire of culture.” Like the eighteenth-​­century British Empire, France was operating under the same set of assumptions about the proper relationship between colony and metropolis, that is, that the interests of the metropolitan center took precedence over those of outlying possessions. In practice, transatlantic trade served reciprocal needs if it provided unequal benefits—​­vast wealth to the parent country, a steady supply of African slaves, essential commodities and luxury goods to the colonies. But transatlantic trade routes that conveyed cargoes of European wines and brandy were also “cultural waterways,” to borrow a metaphor from Clare Lyons.15 All the eighteenth-​­century imperial powers shared a common vision of transforming their colonies into outposts of civility, but France, more than Britain, was driven by the urge to maintain an ordered, hierarchical society through the transmission of culture. To do this, the metropolis relied upon a network of administrative, military, and diplomatic personnel and officers of the plume whose theoretical and practical knowledge of the French Empire was accumulated through years of service in France’s far-​­flung possessions and who owed their careers, and hence their loyalty, to the Crown. These French functionaries and their Spanish counterparts established dominion over the political landscape, but priests and nuns whose civilizing mission took them to the far corners of the French Empire inscribed French culture on the social landscape. The French regime lasted only a few years, from the founding of the colony in 1699 to the session of the colony to Spain in 1762. But in that brief period of time the cultural contours of colonial society were set for the next century. Unlike Britain, whose unrestricted immigration opened their

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 192

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 193

colonies to multinational and multi-​­religious groups, France restricted migration. In contrast to British America, with its growing diversity of faiths and the absence of an ecclesiastical establishment, the French colonial enterprise had a strong religious dimension that helped to shape the development of New Orleans and the African American religious community in particular. The Code Noir, which banned Jews from the colony and proscribed every “mode of worship except Catholicism,” sealed New Orleans from the danger of competing faiths that complicated the task of imposing orthodoxy in British America.16 The geographic isolation provided by the winding Mississippi River made it possible for French missionaries and female religious orders to establish a spiritual monopoly in Louisiana that replicated that of the mother country and helped shape the cultural universe of the colony in distinctive ways. Article 2 of the Code Noir, which required that all slaves in the province “be instructed and baptized in the Catholic religion,” had no counterpart in British America. Although Capuchin monks had been proselytizing Africans in Kongo since the fifteenth century and “conversion” was part of the creolization process in the Kingdom of New Spain, aside from a few converts made by Anglican priests in the southern colonies the conversion of enslaved peoples in the Atlantic world had not figured prominently on the agenda of either Protestantism or Catholicism. But a confluence of events changed that. The arrival in New Orleans of French Ursuline nuns in 1727 coincided with the first wave of global evangelical Protestantism that swept the Atlantic world from London to Boston, from New South Wales to Philadelphia, from Lowland Scotland to Charleston, South Carolina. A crusading movement dominated by religious visionaries, it featured innovative ritual, racial, and gender norms that were profoundly important for African Americans and women, who streamed into evangelical churches in record numbers, forming a numerical majority in many of them. The effect was to broaden the base of American religion by drawing into its orbit new constituencies from the margins of society—​­plain folk, African Americans, Native Americans, and a preponderance of women. The cascade of events that followed symbolically blurred national boundaries, ushered in a new era of female religious leadership, fundamentally reshaped the religious landscape, and transformed the demographic face of Christianity by drawing into its fold hundreds, eventually thousands, of enslaved Africans and free people of color. Riding the spiritual currents of French Catholic reform history of the late seventeenth century, female religious orders led by the Ursulines seized the initiative to found and shape female-​­focused religious communities that

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 193

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

194 Conclusion

carried on a range of community functions, including the establishment and operation of hospitals and schools at Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers, and New Orleans. Driven by a sense of apostolic mission, which implied educating for empire, the first contingent of Ursulines in New Orleans exploited the spiritual obligation of the Code Noir’s Article 2 by opening their doors to enslaved girls and young women of mixed race.17 Within months of their arrival in the frontier town the small community of Ursulines had twenty boarders, three “ladies,” three orphans, and seven slave boarders “to instruct for baptism and first communion, besides a great number of day students, female blacks and female savages who come for two hours a day for instruction.” Colonial elites, poor whites, Indians, and enslaved and free girls of color emerged from their schools grounded in the language and faith of France, tied intellectually, emotionally, and culturally to the mother country.18 Educating for empire helped shape the politics of consent, but it also produced forms of resistance that cut across imperial boundaries. The rise in the state-​­sponsored slave trade to the French Caribbean in the late seventeenth century and the enormous growth in the British trade to the Americas gave rise to an incipient antislavery movement that was transnational in scope. The active antislavery ministry of zealous Capuchin monks described by Guillaume Aubert to protest the state-​­sponsored slave trade and the antislavery sermons of the African descendant Padre Antônio Vieira in Bahia formed a network that connected Africa, the Iberian Atlantic, the French Atlantic, and Brazil into something like a Catholic Atlantic.19 A separate but linked process led by an active minority of antislavery Quakers and Mennonites emerged almost simultaneously in Pennsylvania. Although they had a limited number of channels through which to effect change, together they established a humanitarian historiographical tradition that raised the first serious challenges to the legitimacy of the slave trade and of slavery itself. That intellectual tradition forms the leading edge of the great eighteenth-​­century religious antislavery wave. It was not only empires or elites that shaped and reshaped the “interior frontiers” of the nation, as Anne Stoler reminds us, but the “cross-​­national figures” who “moved within, between, and outside” the old imperial and cultural boundaries.20 The small stories of individuals such as Lubin, the “guide” through Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec’s analysis of St. Charles Parish slave society, and Foÿ the central figure in Sophie White’s study of cultures of consumption, unravel the complexities of black-​­white relations in a society where nothing was fixed. Their depiction of a dialectical, dynamic process upsets

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 194

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 195

the common wisdom about how race relations were structured. Le Glaunec deploys Lubin, a slave brought from Africa to rural St. Charles Parish in Louisiana via Saint-​­Domingue, to expose the elastic nature of the migratory spheres in which identities were invented and reinvented. He asks us to consider what the implications are of Lubin’s inability to recall his own nation, or ethnic identity. For Le Glaunec it suggests that the passage from an ethnic to a “Creole” identity in the “small worlds” of marginal plantation areas such as St. Charles Parish in Louisiana or the Lower James River in Virginia was substantially different from the process that occurred on larger, more specialized units with larger slave populations, thereby calling into question prevailing theories of re-​­Africanization and creolization.21 Lubin’s failure to remember his ethnic origins places him on a cultural continuum, at a moment in time when he had—​­to borrow Richard D. E. Burton’s formulation—​­lost one world and “had not yet fully gained or created another.”22 Le Glaunec’s analysis of estate inventories suggests that the “circulations” of men and women such as Lubin through many lands before finally ending up on a habitation somewhere on the fringes of francophone Louisiana sculptured a different cultural landscape compared with other plantation societies. Fluid and linguistically heterogeneous, the ethnically diverse population was made up of a substantial portion of slaves who came to Louisiana by way of Jamaica, Dominica, Saint-​­Domingue, Martinique, and Cuba.23 Depending on how much time they had spent in other places, they would have already gone through a process that Burton calls “de-​­Africanization” before arriving in Louisiana, leaving open the possibility that they might have brought with them an anglicized or hispanicized version of African culture. Le Glaunec’s data shows that until the large influx of Africans began after 1800, Louisiana’s rural enslaved population circulated within a “small world” of habitations, or farms, and plantations in close proximity to whites, evidence for which is found in the number of mulattoes in parish records. Even while participating in the European world, however, the heterogeneous enslaved population was engaged in an act of cultural identification through the creation of a language that went beyond the borders of any single nation. Finding themselves on the edge of francophone Louisiana, they drew together strands from all the lands through which they had passed to create a different kind of French, a mixture of African languages, French, Spanish, and Native American, with bits of slang thrown in, a lingua franca that brought together different ways of speaking and thinking and cohered into a

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 195

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

196 Conclusion

stable Creole that was alike and unlike the sources of its inspiration, probably during the Spanish period.24 Sophie White deploys an Atlantic-​­wide telescope to show the intersection of Lubin’s “small” rural world with Foÿ’s larger urban world and locates them both in an elastic framework within which she finds a continual process of cultural reinvention that in fundamental ways resembles developments in the British colonial world. Although their worlds overlapped each other, as a resident of a busy port city Foÿ enjoyed certain advantages over his rural counterpart. His roots in Saint-​­Domingue, which accounted for two-​­fifths of France’s overseas trade, probably prepared him for active participation in complex economic processes, including rudimentary forms of investment and production. Foÿ was, in fact, part of a black entrepreneurial tradition running from Africa around the Atlantic world. Enslaved people began to create their own local economic subcultures very early on, indications of which are present in laws passed by the Massachusetts General Assembly barring all persons from buying or receiving goods from slaves. It is highly significant that the first editorial published in an American newspaper in Boston in 1706 protested that “Negroes” were “much addicted to Stealing, Lying and Purloining.”25 The eighteenth century’s consumer revolution created new gateways to outer worlds and opened up a wide range of material and social connections between enslaved peoples. Ports such as New Orleans, Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston that were heavily involved in sea-​­borne traffic were conduits for the transfer of European economic cultural practices that moved on and off ships along with cargoes of goods and ‘parcels’ of slaves. Rather than simply adjusting, enslaved people such as Foÿ appropriated, transformed, and finally subverted European economic principles and practices. Although their participation in the illicit trade in textiles had practical dimensions, it was also infused with political and cultural meanings. The resale and gifting of specialized luxury products such as English-​­made calicoes and fustians and Indian cottons to less privileged sectors of society transgressed both class and racial lines and functioned as an expression of collective identity and political agency. If, as White’s essay reveals, enslaved people engaged in the emerging consumer culture on their own terms, they also simultaneously shaped their own beauty standards to create a diasporan aesthetic. Contacts with Europeans and participation in international trade brought a different aesthetic model to African descendants. But European clothing styles were radically

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 196

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 197

altered in translation. Required by law to dress in trousers or coarse dresses and aprons, enslaved men and women slyly subverted the laws and European notions of style by combining elements that existed in parent cultures with European standards of dress to create a constructed appearance that Shane White describes as “an act of cultural bricolage, the imaginative mediation of an African-​­born slave in a new, European dominated environment.”26 The development of a diasporan aesthetic would gain speed with the explosive growth of the new African population after the turn of the nineteenth century. The beadings and body markings worn by many of the new African arrivals recalled tribal identifications and the continent at a moment when feelings of displacement struggled with attachment to a new place and to new friends and family, creating new possibilities for different ethnic groups to become “African.” The simultaneous process of creolization forecasts the cultural tension if not cultural divide that emerged in the late nineteenth century between the culturally French, mostly free black population of New Orleans and the increasingly diverse, mostly enslaved population of Louisiana’s rural parishes.

Intimacies Both in the private and public aspects of their lives black and white, enslaved and free were entwined with empire. The clothes they wore, the food they ate, the alcohol they consumed, and those they married or formed sexual liaisons with were all marked by empire. More perhaps than any other area of life, sexual intimacy was the terrain upon which racial identities were structured. Winthrop Jordan’s pioneering work White over Black was among the first works to point to the importance of what Albert Hurtado has called the “intimate frontiers” of empire, the sexualized and racialized strategies of exclusion that England developed in Ireland and later in North America.27 Jordan’s analysis pointed out that conceptions of race are integrally linked to the body and specifically to male genitalia and sexuality. In contrast to Jordan’s emphasis on the masculine body, gender analysis strongly suggests that the emasculation of black men was in fact preceded by the systematic appropriation of the productive and reproductive powers of black women. Texts and images produced by English, French, Italian, and Dutch travelers were translated into various languages, informing one another and creating a narrative that differentiated between European and African peoples, laid down

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 197

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

198 Conclusion

biological markers of racial difference, established a language of race and racial hierarchy, and inscribed them on women’s bodies. By the mid-​­eighteenth century the roots of racialist ideology had been inscribed on the bodies of black women in what Jennifer Morgan calls “dual value,” “a body both desirable and repulsive, available and untouchable, productive and reproductive,” a concept that echoes Jordan’s notion of desire and aversion.28 In Atlantic slave societies, fears around sexuality were closely tied to the figure of the black woman, particularly the free woman of color, whose mixed-​ ­race children were an unsettling reminder of the permeability of social and racial barriers.29 Black women and women’s sexuality haunt the literature of the eighteenth century and are a major focus of colonial laws, which invariably focus on the control of black female sexuality lest they cross forbidden sexual and racial boundaries. In order to tame the rampant sexualities associated with black men and especially women, imperial policies resorted to the stabilizing influence of monogamous marriage. Both Catholic and Protestant empires held a common ideal of marriage as a monogamous institution, although Catholics insisted on the superiority of celibacy, which Protestants viewed as an insult to God. The diversity of people who made up plantation societies had different definitions of marriage. The fact that Africans brought marriage ideals and practices that in some cases departed from the monogamous model was generally viewed by white Christians as a threat to stability, and imperial regimes resorted to various strategies to enforce the Christian ideal. The fact that slave marriages had no legal recognition or protection in Anglo-​­America did not prevent evangelical Protestant churches from insisting that enslaved couples make “vows of mutual constancy,” albeit without benefit of clergy. In congregationally organized churches practices varied widely, some insisting that the sanctity of marriage was unaffected by forcible separation, other sanctioning “divorce,” still others equivocating.30 A somewhat different approach was mandated by the Code Noir, the promulgation of which is a definitive moment in the history of Louisiana, a time when racial attitudes hardened in response to demographic developments, when anatomies of difference were being elaborated, and when a new category of “race” was defined, developments that are detailed in Emily Clark and Cécile Vidal’s essays. In Louisiana the Code Noir’s legal prohibitions on interracial marriage and the recognition of marriage between enslaved people unambiguously marked the boundaries of race. But institutional Catholicism was the vehicle for the management of sexual and conjugal relations

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 198

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 199

that were central to imperial policies. In contrast to the Antilles, where few instances of marriage among slaves were recorded,31 Clark’s careful analysis of sacramental records shows an increase in marriages between enslaved people during the French period before declining during the Spanish and American periods, perhaps because neither Spanish nor American law proscribed it. Compliance with the Code Noir was perhaps a factor; more likely explanations were the Catholic churches’ insistence on sacramental marriage for baptized bond people, growing recognition of intra-​­racial marriage as an index of respectability, and a gradual movement toward Christian concepts of marriage by African Catholics.32 Vidal’s essay stresses the paradoxical nature of religion in the evolution of racial attitudes. While she identifies Saint-​­Domingue as the principal source for racial grammar, she makes the Catholic Church the institutional channel though which racial taxonomies became fixed in Louisiana. The adoption of various terms of color that came straight from the islands were inscribed in Louisiana’s sacramental records by parish priests in response to the rising rate of métissage. Erratically at first, then with increasing precision, they elaborated racial categories based on skin color that both determined and defined hierarchical differences that lay between white, black, and mixed-​­race Catholics and made the progeny of mélange des sangs a class—​­some argue a caste—​­apart. Although the living legacy of métissage made it hard to gloss the regularity with which white men crossed the racial and sexual boundaries in violation of the Code Noir, in Louisiana the distinctive double standard, concealed through a conspiracy of silence in official records, in essence licensed interracial sexual liaisons and effectively reinforced colonial hierarchies. Despite the change in imperial regimes following the Seven Years War, French influence persisted even as French colonial power dissolved. By the end of the French regime the idea of racial difference was deeply embedded in cultural consciousness. Although Spanish law permitted marriage across racial lines, few instances are recorded among the hundreds of marriages performed during the Spanish regime. Nevertheless, as Mary Williams points out, Spain left its mark on Louisiana culture in the impetus Spanish law gave to the free black community. Williams sees the strengthening of the free black community in New Orleans as the legacy of two Spanish legal traditions, coartación, the right of self-​­purchase, and the legítima, the principle of forced inheritance. Coartación opened a smoother, more rational route to freedom as a slave right than did forms of manumission based on the master’s prerogative that were available in British and French slave societies, while legítima,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 199

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

200 Conclusion

the idea of property as a heritage, facilitated the growth of large, prosperous free black communities in urban centers throughout the Spanish Atlantic. In each of the European empires the freed black population developed differently. By 1810, New Spain, which had the second largest slave population, had the largest number of free blacks in the Americas. In the British mainland colonies the free black population was small until the American Revolution provided an impetus for loosening the constraints on manumission. Even so, Virginia’s free black population, which grew to 20,000 by 1800, still represented only about 5 percent of Virginia’s black population. South Carolina’s 3,000 freed people of color represented only 2 percent of the state’s black population in 1800.33 In the French Antilles, the most common avenue to freedom was unofficial conjugal manumission. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, local laws requiring administrative approval and the payment of taxes for manumissions resulted in the very slow growth of the free black population before the nineteenth century.34 Owing to its dual heritage, Spanish Louisiana occupied an in-​­between position. Slaves in Louisiana continued to obtain freedom through graciosa manumissions, but growing numbers bought their freedom with money or service. Coartación is significant not only because it established the right of enslaved people to use the legal system but also because it implicitly undermined the concept of planters’ property rights.35 Williams’s essay reminds us again of the colonial connections established through empires. Legal practices traveled through overlapping networks between diasporic contexts via the medium of the empire; coartación, for example, depended less on Castilian legal codes and more on economic and cultural transmission from Cuba. Although manumission was recognized in Castilian codes, coartación was not written into law until 1842. It evolved as a right claimed by enslaved people beginning in the 1590s. The Spanish sindico, transplanted to Cuba by the Real Cédula in 1789, established it as a customary right. The practice migrated from Cuba to Louisiana through the medium of the empire while Louisiana was under the jurisdiction of Cuba. In some respects the demographic landscape of New Orleans bore greater resemblance to the Caribbean islands than to their mainland counterparts. The prosperous and dynamic community of free blacks in New Orleans became conspicuous in the service sector as midwives, seamstresses, butchers, bakers; in manufacturing as coopers, joiners, and carpenters, silversmiths and gunsmiths, as wholesalers and retailers in the commerce sector.36 Through their intersection with a diverse range of white people they learned

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 200

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 201

to navigate within, between, and across racial lines. The physical proximity of the races not only allowed but probably encouraged an identification of “Frenchness” that defined Louisiana society more generally. The fourth regime change in less than fifty years is marked by massive shifts in the “architecture of culture,” the demographic and material transformations that stimulate cultural innovations. The continental migration that started as a trickle during the Spanish regime grew dramatically into a mass migration of people that in some respects anticipated the great migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. New Orleans was an important axis for the whirling motion of humanity. Between 1790 and 1810, the Atlantic migration deposited some 3,000 in-​­migrants from the West Indies, over 10,000 refugees from Saint-​­Domingue, and hundreds of native French men and women. Between 1810 and 1830 the city’s population doubled every ten years, tripling between 1830 and 1840. By 1830 the city ranked fourth in terms of population behind New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, its port second only to that of New York.37 During roughly the same period approximately 300,000 African and creolized slaves from the Chesapeake were forcibly moved to the developing southwest. Over 100,000 slaves born in the Chesapeake ended up on frontier plantations in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri in the ten years following the closing of the slave trade, 26,000 of them in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri.38 Adding to the growing cultural complexity were an estimated 18,000 Africans carried into Louisiana between 1790 and 1810. Changes in marital patterns studied by Emily Clark have to be considered in the context of this massive demographic expansion after 1800. Her chapter exposes significant shifts in martial patterns in early nineteenth-​­century New Orleans and describes an articulated community with a complex, fluid class structure. Clark’s research suggests that the tradition of sacramental marriage established during the French period—​­which was not recognized in evangelical Protestant churches—​­served as a focal point for the creation of a free black social network and in the early national period for the incorporation of Saint-​­Domingan male refugees into the black community. But Clark’s chapter does more than that. It challenges us to think about the experience of diaspora across geographical and temporal distances as it focuses our attention on the relationship between place and generation and the meaning of home. It is about placement, a historical narrative of a group of people who have over time acquired freedom and established “homes” and a sense of belonging in New Orleans, however uncertain life there might have

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 201

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

202 Conclusion

been. Although geographically on the margins of the French world, many members of the free black community had a clear sense of their “Frenchness,” which in some cases had been inculcated in convents operated by white French religious women. A substantial part of the city’s African descendant population was French-​­speaking and at least nominally Catholic, and marriage according to the rites of the church was the norm. Despite regulations limiting their access to jobs, many found employment as skilled workers in the building trades and in commerce. By the turn of the century they had formed a close community—​­literally as well as figuratively—​­in neighborhoods such as Tremé and the Faubourg Marigny where they clustered, and in St. Louis Parish Church, where they married and baptized their children. In a sense the diaspora had become home. If they were reluctant to fully embrace the culturally close, French-​­speaking, Catholic Domingois, it was perhaps because they were an unsettling reminder of displacement and disruption.39 Despite a lingering nostalgia for things French, the culture New Orleanians were struggling to sustain was shading into a new sociocultural order. Although we are learning more about the process of cultural transformations in the city, we still know little about developments in rural Louisiana in the territorial and early national periods. What we do know is that after 1800 the process of cultural and racial identity formation diverged sharply as a result of a combination of factors. Among the factors contributing to the growing culture divide between urban and rural areas was the economic transition from habitation to plantation and the divergent compositions of immigrant populations. The vast majority of French-​­speaking, Catholic West Indian and European newcomers converged in New Orleans. In rural parishes several diasporas shared the same space. Africans speaking a variety of African languages and versions of French were transported directly into the fields in rural Louisiana. The influx of English-​­speaking Protestants from an Anglicized culture that was significantly older than the Franco-​­African culture that Lubin grew up in, and the significant presence of African Muslims, some of whom rejected any notion of kinship with either African or African descendants, would have complicated communication between the various ethnic groups.40 Linguistic studies suggest that language is the core around which other cultural elements coalesce. Strands of evidence produced by linguistic and demographic studies suggest that French Creole remained the primary language in rural Louisiana throughout the nineteenth century. Although we know very little about the linguistic processes by which English supplanted

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 202

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Conclusion 203

French, the evidence suggests that the shift to English happened primarily within the slave community and was spread downward through the enslaved population into the minority white population. The linguistic turning point appears to have been the decade of the 1830s, when over 20,000 American slaves were introduced into the state.41 Until then the ethnic exclusivity that characterized the Mina rebellion of 1791 and the great rebellion of 1811 suggests that on a continuum of identity the movement from ethnicity to race was very gradual.42 As the essays in this volume show, Louisiana’s unique culture was created by a confluence of cultural forces cross-​­cutting each other. New Orleans was a global crossroads for French, Spanish, African, and German immigrants. The creative tension endemic to the city produced a unique culture that was alike and unlike the sources that generated it. When the rest of the nation looks at Louisiana, they see it through their own cultural lens. It was a French-​ ­speaking colony in an English nation, Catholic in a Protestant sea, its legal system grounded in civil law rather than English common law, the French taste for order visible in the grid-​­like design of the city, its Afro-​­Caribbean influence apparent in its architecture and clearly identifiable in its Creole languages and music. New Orleans was fundamentally different culturally from every other American city: in its celebrated cuisine, a fusion of African, European, and Caribbean; in its linguistic heritage, which survives in black Creole, Cajun French, and the Spanish still spoken by Canary Islanders; in its civil law system; in its music, a remarkable vestige of African rhythms and musical patterns; and in its Catholic heritage that finds concrete expression in religio-​­secular celebrations such as Mardi Gras. Viewed through the fault line of race, New Orleans is very much in the mainstream of America: in its attitudes toward race; in its willingness to look the other way in the face of poverty; in its refusal to accept black poverty as a vestige of slavery; in the manner in which it ghettoizes the poor and other minorities. When we juxtapose imperial and national histories along fault lines of race, demography, gender, and geography we see a dispiritingly similar sameness underlying the seeming variety. Read together, they tell us that racial ideologies and structures were not a monolithic phenomenon but rather unfolded everywhere, in different forms, at different speeds, for different reasons, under different pressures, but always under pressure. The mental habit of dividing populations into distinct social categories was a transnational phenomenon, and future studies will necessarily involve crossing national boundaries and linguistic frontiers to examine more closely when and how

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 203

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

204 Conclusion

the historical shift in the conventional terminology of social description was consolidated in a language or in languages of race. It will mean explaining more precisely why the blood lineage argument failed to take hold on the continent, how language prompts distinctive alignments of power, and what the implications of those differences are in nomenclature. It will require a further expansion of the boundaries of gender studies to focus comparatively on forms of resistance—​­which appear to have been dominated or exclusively practiced by enslaved females—​­health culture and the doctoring arts, and the world of litigation, a form of resistance that appears to have been fashioned by women to keep their families intact. The ideologies of race that sustained Atlantic slave societies were the products of a cross-​­pollination of ideas. New studies of race must rely on a cross-​­pollination of disciplines and different national fields, Atlantic studies must embrace the French Atlantic, and U.S. history must include Louisiana before cotton.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 204

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Notes

Introduction 1. Registers of the Superior Council of Louisiana (hereafter cited as RSCL) 1766/06/04/03, 1766/06/05/01, 1766/06/05/02, 1766/06/05/03, 1766/06/05/04, 1766/06/07/06. For a first analysis of this case, see Cécile Vidal, “Francité et situation coloniale: Nation, empire et race en Louisiane française (1699–1769),” Annales HSS 63, no. 5 (2009): 1019–50. 2. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 3. Alison Games, “Teaching Atlantic History,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 163. 4. Ibid. 5. Aside from the article already quoted, see in particular “Round Table Conference: The Nature of Atlantic History,” Itinerario 23, no. 2 (1999): 48–176; Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Bernard Bailyn, ed., Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009); Nicholas Canny, “Writing Atlantic History; or, Reconfiguring the History of British Colonial America,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (1999): 1093–1114; Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, 1450–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 741–57; Alison Games and Adam Rothman, eds., Major Problems in Atlantic History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008); Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Silvia Marzagalli, “Sur les origines de l’‘Atlantic History’: Paradigme interprétatif de l’histoire des espaces atlantiques à l’époque moderne,” Dix-​­Huitième Siècle 33 (2001): 17–31; William O’Reilly, “Genealogies of Atlantic History,” Atlantic Studies 1, no. 1 (2004): 66–84; Cécile Vidal, “For a Comprehensive History of the Atlantic Word or Histories Connected in and beyond the Atlantic World?,” Annales HSS (English) 67, no. 2 (2012): 279–300. 6. Peter A. Coclanis, “Drang Nach Osten: Bernard Bailyn, the World-​­Island, and the Idea of Atlantic History,” Journal of World History 13, no. 1 (2002): 169–82; “Forum: Beyond the Atlantic: English Globetrotters and Transoceanic Connections,” William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2006): 675–742. 7. Trevor Burnard, “Only Connect: The Rise (and Fall?) of Atlantic History,” unpublished paper delivered at the international conference “From Colonies into Republics in an Atlantic World: North America and the Caribbean in a Revolutionary Age,” Université Paris VII, December 8–9, 2006.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 205

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

206

Notes to Pages 3–4

8. Lara Putnam, “To Study the Fragment/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World,” Journal of Social History 39, no. 3 (2006): 615–30; Rebecca J. Scott, “Small-​­Scale Dynamics of Large-​ ­Scale Processes,” American Historical Review 105, no. 2 (2000): 472–79; Francesca Trivellato, “Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?,” California Italian Studies 2, no. 1 (2011), http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0z94n9hq. 9. Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” 746. 10. David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” in The British Atlantic World, 1500– 1800, ed. David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 11–27 (21–22 for the quotations). 11. Robert Appelbaum and John Wood Sweet, eds., Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Peter C. Mancall, ed., The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 12. Joseph Zitomersky, “Race, esclavage et émancipation: La Louisiane créole à l’intersection des mondes français, antillais et américain,” in Esclavage et abolitions: Mémoires et systèmes de représentation, ed. M.-​­C. Rochmann (Paris: Karthala, 2000), 283–308. 13. John H. Elliott, “Afterword—Atlantic History: A Circumnavigation,” in Armitage and Bradick, The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, 234–35. On the British Atlantic, aside from Armitage and Braddick’s book, see notably Elisabeth Mancke and Carole Shammas, eds., The Creation of the British Atlantic World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 14. http://atlantique.mcgill.ca. 15. See, for instance, Jorge Cañizares-​­Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006); John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006); “Forum: Entangled Empires in the Atlantic World,” American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (2007): 710–99; Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan, “Introduction: The Making and Unmaking of an Atlantic World,” in Canny and Morgan, The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World, 9. However, there are some important exceptions, such as Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002); Donald W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History: Volume 1: Atlantic America, 1492–1800 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986); Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995); Lou H. Roper and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, eds., Constructing Early Modern Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1500–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 16. Jean Meyer, La France moderne (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 344. 17. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992). 18. In 1699, in preparation for the Spanish succession, the French state decided to establish a colony near the delta of the Mississippi essentially to prevent the English from doing it themselves.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 206

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Page 5

207

In 1803, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States, because it did not hold significant value after the reoccupation of Saint-​­Domingue had failed, and because France did not have the means to stop the British from conquering it after the collapse of the peace of Amiens. 19. Gwendolyn M. Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); Daniel H. Usner Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 20. See, for example, Guillaume Aubert, “ ‘The Blood of France’: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 2002); Arnaud Balvay, L’épée et la plume: Amérindiens et soldats des troupes de la Marine en Louisiane et au Pays d’en Haut (1683–1763) (Sainte-​­Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006); H. Sophie Burton and F. Todd Smith, Colonial Natchitoches: A Creole Community on the Louisiana-​­Texas Frontier (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2008); Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); Shannon Lee Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008); Alexandre Dubé, “Les biens publics: Culture politique de la Louisiane française, 1730–1770” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 2009); Kimberley S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997); Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999); Lawrence N. Powell, The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012); Jennifer M. Spear, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Sophie White, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). For an earlier historiography that belongs to a more traditional kind of colonial history but constitutes an indispensable pedestal on which one can build a more innovative social and cultural history, see, for example, Carl A. Brasseaux, Denis-​­Nicolas Foucault and the New Orleans Rebellion of 1768 (Ruston, La.: McGinty Publications, 1987); Carl A. Brasseaux, The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765–1803 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987); Light T. Cummins, Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775– 1783 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991); Gilbert C. Din, The Canary Islanders of Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1988); Gilbert C. Din, Francisco Bouligny: A Bourbon Soldier in Spanish Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993); Gilbert C. Din and John E. Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo: Colonial Louisiana’s First City Government, 1769–1803 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996); Gilbert C. Din, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763–1803 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999); Marcel Giraud, Histoire de la Louisiane française, 4 vols. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953–1974); Marcel Giraud, A History of French Louisiana, Volume 5 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991); Mathé Allain, “Not Worth a Straw”: French Colonial Policy and the Early Years of Louisiana (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1988); Jack D. L. Holmes, Gayoso: The Life of a Spanish Governor in the Mississippi Valley, 1789–1799 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965); Jack D. L.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 207

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

208

Notes to Pages 5–6

Holmes, Honor and Fidelity: The Louisiana Infantry Regiment and the Louisiana Militia Companies, 1766–1821 (Birmingham: n.p., 1965). 21. See in particular Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998); Ira Berlin, Generations of Captivity: A History of African-​­American Slaves (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003); Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin Books, 2001); Daniel Vickers, ed., A Companion to Colonial America (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003). 22. Caryn Cossé Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-​­Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997); Marjorie Bourdelais, La Nouvelle-​­Orléans. Croissance démographique, intégrations urbaine et sociale (1803–1860) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012); Emily Clark, The Strange History of the American Quadroon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013); Nathalie Dessens, From Saint-​­Domingue to New Orleans: Migration and Influences (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007); Richard Follett, The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007); Peter J. Kastor, The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004); Peter J. Kastor and François Weil, eds., Empires of the Imagination: Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009); Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999); Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec, Écrire l’absence. Les annonces d’esclaves en fuite de Louisiane, Jamaïque et Caroline du Sud, 1801–1815 (Paris: Karthala, forthcoming); Ann Patton Malone, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in ­Nineteenth-​­Century Louisiana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Judith Kelleher Schafer, Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994); Judith Kelleher Schafer, Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003); Shirley Elisabeth Thompson, Exiles at Home: The Struggle to Become American in New Orleans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009); Rebecca J. Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). 23. Games, “Teaching Atlantic History,” 167. 24. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1851 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 25. Gilles Havard, “Les Indiens et l’histoire coloniale nord-​­américaine: Les défis de l’ethnohistoire,” in Sociétés, colonisations et esclavages dans le monde atlantique. Historiographie des sociétés américaines des XVe–XIXe siècles, ed. Cécile Vidal and François-​­Joseph Ruggiu (Bécherel: Les Perséides, 2009), 95–142. 26. John K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 27. Gunvor Simonsen, “Moving in Circles: African and Black History in the Atlantic World,” Nuevo Mundo, Mundos Nuevos 8 (2008), http://nuevomundo.revues.org/index42303.html.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 208

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 6–7

209

28. See, for instance, Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004); Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint-​­Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990); Doris Garraway, The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); John D. Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-​ ­Domingue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Malick W. Ghachem, The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); David P. Geggus, Haitian Revolutionary Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); David P. Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds., The World of the Haitian Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, Haitian History: New Perspectives (Rewriting Histories) (New York: Routledge, 2012); Stewart R. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-​ ­Revolutionary Saint-​­Domingue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001); Christopher L. Miller, The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008); Bernard Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001); Jeremy D. Popkin, You Are All Free: The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss, Sweet Liberty: The Final Days of Slavery in Martinique (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 29. On this subject, see also her last book, which does not deal specifically with Louisiana but borrows most of its examples from it: Gwendolyn M. Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 30. Timothy H. Breen, “Creative Adaptations: Peoples and Cultures,” in Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 195–232. 31. Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal: McGill-​­Queen’s University Press, 2002), 65–100. 32. For a different characterization of colonial Louisiana as a society with slaves during most of the eighteenth century, see Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 77–92. For the differentiation between societies with slaves and slave societies, see also Philip D. Morgan, “British Encounters with Africans and African-​­Americans circa 1600–1780,” in Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 157–219. 33. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, xiii–xx. On the balance between various forces, see also David Eltis, Philip D. Morgan, and David Richardson, “Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History: Reassessing the African Contribution to Rice Cultivation in the Americas,” American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (2007): 1329–58. 34. For a presentation of different models of colonial development, giving varying importance to relations with the parent country, see Jack P. Greene, “Interpretative Frameworks: The Quest for Intellectual Order in Early American History,” William and Mary Quarterly 48, no. 4 (1991): 515–30. 35. Elliott, “Afterword—Atlantic History: A Circumnavigation,” 240.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 209

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

210

Notes to Pages 8–9

36. See also Sophie White, “Geographies of Slave Consumption: French Colonial Louisiana and a World of Things,” Winterthur Portfolio 44, no. 2/3 (2011): 229–48. 37. Bradley G. Bond, ed., French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), and William Boelhower, ed., New Orleans in the Atlantic World: Between Land and Sea (New York: Routledge, 2009), took some initial and pioneering steps in this direction. 38. On continental history, see Paul W. Mapp, “Atlantic History from Imperial, Continental, and Pacific Perspectives,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2006): 713–24; Peter H. Wood, “From Atlantic History to a Continental Approach,” in Greene and Morgan, Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal, 279–98. For a recent example of the continental approach applied to the Mississippi Valley, see Paul W. Mapp, The Elusive West and the Contest for Empire, 1713–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). On hemispheric history, see Jack P. Greene, “Comparing Early Modern Worlds: Some Reflections on the Promise of a Hemispheric Perspective,” History Compass 1, no. 1 (2003), http://www.blackwell-​­synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/1478-0542.026; Jack P. Greene, “Hemispheric History and Atlantic History,” in Greene and Morgan, Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal, 299–315. See also Caroline F. Levander and Robert S. Levine, eds., Hemispheric American Studies (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2008); Eric Hinderaker and Rebecca Horn, “Territorial Crossings: Histories and Historiographies of the Early Americas,” William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 3 (2010): 395–432. 39. I borrow this expression from Jacques Revel, who used it to advocate the necessity to combine a micro and macro approach. Jacques Revel, ed., Jeux d’échelles: La micro-​­analyse à l’expérience (Paris: Gallimard and Le Seuil, 1996). 40. Clark, Masterless Mistresses. 41. Shammas, “Introduction,” in Mancke and Shammas, The Creation of the British Atlantic World, 3–5; Jorge Cañizares-​­Esguerra, “Some Caveats about the ‘Atlantic’ Paradigm,” History Compass 1 (2003): 1–4; Games, “Atlantic History,” 744, 750, 754. 42. Eliga H. Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-​­Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (2007): 764–86. For criticisms of this trans-​­imperial conceptualization of the Atlantic world, see Jorge Cañizares-​­Esguerra, “Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?,” American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (2007): 787–99; James H. Sweet, “Mistaken Identities? Olaudah Equiano, Domingos Álvares, and the Methodological Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora,” American Historical Review 114, no. 2 (2009): 283n14. 43. Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” 747, 751–52. For works on the Atlantic world during the modern period, see Jorge Cañizares-​­Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, eds., The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000 (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007); Douglas Egerton, Alison Games, Jane C. Landers, Kris Lane, and Donald R. Wright, The Atlantic World (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 2007); Toyin Falola and Kevin D. Roberts, eds., The Atlantic World, 1450–2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008); Aaron Spencer Fogleman, “The Transformation of the Atlantic World, 1776–1867,” Atlantic Studies 6, no. 1 (2009): 5–28; Donna Gabaccia, “A Long Atlantic in the Wider World,” Atlantic Studies 1, no. 1 (2004): 1–27; Anthony E. Kaye, “The Second Slavery: Modernity in the Nineteenth-​­Century South and the

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 210

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 9–12

211

Atlantic World,” Journal of Southern History 75, no. 3 (2009): 627–50; J. R. McNeil, “The End of the Old Atlantic World: America, Africa, Europe, 1770–1888,” in Atlantic American Societies from Columbus through Abolition, 1492–1888, ed. Allan Karras and J. R. McNeil (London: Routledge, 1992), 245–68; James E. Sanders, “Atlantic Republicanism in Nineteenth-​­Century Columbia: Spanish America’s Challenge to the Contours of Atlantic History,” Journal of World History 20, no. 1 (2009): 131–50. 44. Simon P. Newman, “Brave New World: Beyond the English Atlantic,” William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2006): 380–84; Simon P. Newman, “Making Sense of Atlantic World Histories: A British Perspective,” Nuevo Mundo 8 (2008), http://nuevomundo.revues.org/index42413.html. 45. Kathleen Wilson, “The British Atlantic World (review),” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 5, no. 2 (2004). 46. On the fundamental role played by the first generations of settlers in the formation of new societies in North America, see Breen, “Creative Adaptations: Peoples and Cultures,” 204–7; Philip D. Morgan, “The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments,” Slavery and Abolition 18, no. 1 (1997): 122–45. 47. Cécile Vidal, “Le Pays des Illinois, six villages français situés au cœur de l’Amérique du Nord, 1699–1765,” in De Québec à l’Amérique française. Histoire et mémoire, ed. Thomas Wien, Cécile Vidal, and Yves Frénette (Sainte-​­Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 125–38. 48. On Upper Louisiana and the Illinois Country, see in particular Stephen Aron, American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Winstanley Briggs, “The Forgotten Colony: Le Pays des Illinois” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1985); Carl J. Ekberg, Colonial Ste. Genevieve: An Adventure on the Mississippi Frontier (Gerald, Mo.: Patrice Press, 1985); Carl J. Ekberg, French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Time (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998); Carl J. Ekberg, François Vallé and His World: Upper Louisiana before Lewis and Clark (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002); Carl J. Ekberg, Stealing Indian Women: Native Slavery in the Illinois Country (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007); William E. Foley and C. David Rice, The First Chouteaus: River Barons of Early St. Louis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983); Gilles Havard, Empire et métissages: Indiens et Français dans le Pays d’en Haut, 1660–1715 (Sillery and Paris: Septentrion and Presses de l’Université de la Sorbonne, 2003); Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Jay Gitlin, Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders and American Expansion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010); Tracy Neal Leavelle, The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); M. J. Morgan, Land of Big Rivers: French and Indian Illinois, 1699–1778 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010); Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); Clairborne A. Skinner, The Upper Country: French Enterprise in the Colonial Great Lakes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Tanis C. Thorne, The Many Hands of My Relations: French and Indians on the Lower Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996); Cécile Vidal, “Les implantations françaises au Pays des Illinois au XVIIIe siècle (1699–1765)” (Ph.D. diss., Paris: EHESS, 1995); White,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 211

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

212

Notes to Page 12

Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians; Joseph Zitomersky, French Americans–Native Americans in Eighteenth-​­Century French Colonial Louisiana: The Population Geography of the Illinois Indians, 1670s-​­1760s (Lund: Lund University Press, 1994). 49. Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal, Histoire de l’Amérique française (Paris: Champs Flammarion, 2006). 50. Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire; Spear, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans. 51. John G. Clark, New Orleans, 1718–1812: An Economic History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970); Gilles-​­Antoine Langlois, Des villes pour la Louisiane française. Théorie et pratique de l’urbanistique coloniale au 18e siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003); Samuel Wilson, The Architecture of Colonial Louisiana (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1987); Samuel Wilson Jr. et al., New Orleans Architecture, 7 vols. (Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1974–1989). 52. In his introduction, Thomas Ingersoll describes New Orleans as a “large urban-​­rural community.” He ranks it as a “town” and considers that it did not become a “city” before the end of the eighteenth century. See Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans, xv, xx, 27–33; Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 119–55. 53. Joseph Zitomersky, “Urbanization in French Colonial Louisiana,” Annales de Démographie historique (1974), 261–78; “Espace et société en Amérique coloniale française dans le contexte comparatif du Nouveau Monde,” in Les Français des États-​­Unis d’hier à aujourd’hui, ed. Ronald Creagh (Montpellier: Ed. Espace 34, CIRCAN, Université de Montpellier III, 1994), 43–74; “Ville, État, implantation et société en Louisiane française,” 23–48. 54. Paul Lachance, “The Growth of the Free and Slave Population of French Colonial Louisiana,” in French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World, 204–43; “The Louisiana Purchase in Demographic Perspective,” in Empires of the Imagination: Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase, ed. Kastor and Weil, 143–79. 55. Leslie Choquette, Frenchmen into Peasants: Modernity and Tradition in the Peopling of French Canada (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). 56. The specificity of urban slavery and of social and racial relations in New Orleans has been studied more thoroughly for the nineteenth century. See notably Virginia Meacham Gould, “In Full Enjoyment of Their Liberty: The Free Women of Color of the Gulf Ports of New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola, 1760–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1991); Virginia Meacham Gould, “ ‘If I Can’t Have My Rights, I Can Have My Pleasure, and If They Won’t Give Me Wages, I Can Take Them’: Gender and Slave Labor in Antebellum New Orleans,” in Discovering the Women in Slavery: Emancipating Perspectives on the American Past, ed. Patricia Morton (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 179–201; Virginia Meacham Gould, “ ‘The House Was Never a Home’: Slave Family and Household Organization in New Orleans, 1820–50,” Slavery and Abolition 18, no. 2 (1997): 90–103; Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, eds., Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003); Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South 1820–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). 57. See, for example, Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, eds., Slavery in New York (New York: New

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 212

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 12–13

213

Press, 2005); Mariana L. R. Dantas, Black Townsmen: Urban Slavery and Freedom in Eighteenth-​ ­Century Americas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Thelma Wills Foote, Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Mary C. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987); Franklin W. Knight and Peggy K. Liss, eds., Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture, and Society in the Atlantic World, 1650–1850 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991); Anne Pérotin-​­Dumon, La ville aux îles. La ville dans l’île. Basse-​­Terre et Pointe-​­à-​­Pitre, Guadeloupe, 1650–1820 (Paris: Karthala, 2000); Pedro L. V. Welch, Slave Society in the City: Bridgetown, Barbados, 1680–1834 (Oxford: James Currey, 2003). 58. Scholars studying the Indians are without a doubt the most reticent toward Atlantic history particularly because Native Americans are the only Atlantic players to have not participated in the forced or free mass migration that sparked the formation of the Atlantic world. See Amy Turner Bushnell, “Indigenous America and the Limits of the Atlantic World, 1493–1825,” Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal, 191–221; Paul Cohen, “Was There an Amerindian Atlantic? Reflections on the Limits of a Historiographical Concept,” History of European Ideas 34, no. 4 (2008): 388–410; Claudio Saunt, “ ‘Our Indians’: European Empires and the History of the Native American South,” in Cañizares-​­Esguerra and Seeman, The Atlantic in Global History, 60–75. Nevertheless, as Daniel Richter has underlined, Indians lived as much as Europeans and Africans in a “New World”: “Native People, of course, did not literally travel to this ‘Indians’ New World,’ but the changes forced upon them were just as profound as if they had resettled on unknown shores.” Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 41. 59. Apart from the works on Indians and Native American-​­European relations in Upper Louisiana and the Illinois Country already quoted, see in particular Morris S. Arnold, The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673–1804 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000); James Taylor Carson, Making an Atlantic World: Circles, Paths, and Stories from the Colonial South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007); Gilbert C. Din and Abraham P. Nasatir, The Imperial Osages: Spanish-​­Indian Diplomacy in the Mississippi Valley (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983); Kathleen A. DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade; Patricia K. Galloway, ed., La Salle and His Legacy, Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1982); Patricia K. Galloway, Practicing Ethnohistory: Mining Archives, Hearing Testimony, Constructing Narrative (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006); George Milne, “Risen Suns, Fallen Forts and Impudent Immigrants: Race, Power and War in the Lower Mississippi Valley” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oklahoma, 2006); Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy; Daniel H. Usner Jr., American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983); White, The Middle Ground; Patricia D. Wood, French-​­Indian Relations on the Southern Frontier 1699–1762 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1979–1980); Peter H. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M. Thomas Hatley, eds., Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 213

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

214

Notes to Pages 13–17

60. Trevor Burnard, “Review: Empire Matters? The Historiography of Imperialism in Early America, 1492–1830,” History of European Ideas 33 (2007): 87–107; Christopher Grasso and Karin Wulf, “Nothing Says Democracy Like a Visit from the Queen: Reflections on Empire and Nation in Early American Histories,” Journal of American History 93, no. 3 (2008): 764–81; Cécile Vidal, “Le(s) monde(s) atlantique(s), l’Atlantique français, l’empire atlantique français,” Outre-​­Mers. Revue d’Histoire 97, nos. 362–363 (2009): 7–37; Jean-​­Paul Zuñiga, “L’histoire impériale à l’heure de l’‘histoire globale’: Une perspective atlantique,” Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine 54-4 bis, no. 5 (2007): 54–68. 61. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea; James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Alexandre Dubé, “S’approprier l’Atlantique: Quelques réflexions autour de Chasing Empire Across the Sea, de Kenneth Banks,” French Colonial History 6 (2005): 33–44; Christopher Hodson and Brett Rushforth, “Absolutely Atlantic: Colonialism and the Early Modern French State in Recent Historiography,” History Compass 8, no. 1 (2009): 101–17. 62. Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C. Perdue, eds., Imperial Formations (Santa Fe and Oxford: School for Advanced Research Press and James Currey, 2007). 63. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Jack P. Greene, “Beyond Power: Paradigm Subversion and Reformulation and the Re-​­Creation of the Early Modern Atlantic World,” in Interpreting Early America: Historiographical Essays (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 33. 64. Judith Byfield, “Introduction: Rethinking the African Diaspora,” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 5 (for the quotation); Herman L. Bennett, “The Subject in the Plot: National Boundaries and the ‘History’ of the Black Atlantic,” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 101–24. 65. Simonsen, “Moving in Circles.” 66. Stephan Palmié, “Is There a Model in the Muddle? ‘Creolization’ in African-​­American History and Anthropology,” in Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, ed. Charles Stewart (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2007), 178–200; Stephan Palmié, “On Predication of Africanity,” in Africas of the Americas: Beyond the Search for Origins in the Study of Afro-​­Atlantic Religions, ed. Stephan Palmié (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 1–37; Richard Price, “Some Anthropological Musings on Creolization,” Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 22, no. 1 (2007): 17–36; Sweet, “Mistaken Identities?” 67. For an early view of acculturation as a dynamic and complex process, see Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, and Melville J. Herskovits, “Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation,” American Anthropologist 38, no. 1 (1936): 149–52; Melville J. Herskovits, Acculturation: The Study of Culture Contact (New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938). 68. Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947). 69. Gary B. Nash, “The Hidden History of Mestizo America,” Journal of American History 82, no. 3 (1995): 941–64. 70. Annette Gordon-​­Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997); Annette Gordon-​­Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2008); “Forum: Thomas Jefferson

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 214

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 17–22

215

and Sally Hemings Redux,” William and Mary Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2000): 121–210; Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999); Lucia Stanton, Free Some Days: The African-​ ­American Families of Monticello (Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Foundation, 2000). 71. “In First Lady’s Roots, A Complex Path from Slavery,” New York Times, October 8, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/politics/08genealogy.html (accessed November 1, 2009). 72. George F. Fredrickson, “From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Developments in Cross-​­National Comparative History,” Journal of American History 82, no. 2 (1995): 594. 73. Despite the fact that all unions could be considered as mixed, the qualification is most of the time reserved for interethnic and interracial unions. Thus, the idea of mixed unions or mestizaje/métissage/miscegenation is inseparable from race-​­thinking. The authors in this book only use these expressions and concepts to study what people of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries conceived as mixed unions.

Chapter 1 1. “Les Directeurs de la Compagnie des Indes nous ayant présenté que la province et colonie de la Louisiane est considérablement établie par un grand nombre de nos sujets, lesquels se servent d’esclaves nègres pour la culture des terres, nous avons juré qu’il était de notre autorité et de notre justice, pour la conservation de cette colonie, d’y établir une loi et des règles certaines, pour y maintenir la discipline de l’Église catholique, apostolique et romaine, et pour ordonner de ce qui concerne l’état et la qualité des esclaves dans lesdites îles [sic].” See Le Code Noir et autres textes de lois sur l’esclavage (Paris: Sépia, 2006), 39–40. 2. Le Code Noir, 39–66 (quotations 62, 64). 3. Laurent Dubois and John Garrigus, Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789–1804: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2006), 49. 4. Alan Watson, Slave Law in the Americas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), and Alan Watson, “The Origins of the Code Noir Revisited,” Tulane Law Review 71 (June 1997): 1041–72 (quotation 1053). For a different view, see Vernon Palmer, “The Origins and Authors of the Code Noir,” Louisiana Law Review 56 (Winter 1995): 363–90. 5. John Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-​­Domingue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 41. To be sure, this particular provision potentially undermined the Code’s racial ordering of colonial society and would be invoked by free people of color to circumvent fiscal discrimination in Saint-​­Christophe and Martinique. For Saint-​­Christophe, see Archives Nationales d’Outre-​­Mer (hereafter cited as ANOM) COL C8A 5 f. 18, “Copie d’une lettre écrite par le contrôleur général Le Pelletier à Dumaitz au sujet des affaires du Domaine d’Occident,” November 10, 1688. For Martinique, ANOM COL F3 91 f. 89–91v, Petition of “mulâtres et nègres libres de cette Isle Martinique” to Pas de Feuquières and Blondel, June 21, 1727. Recently, Malick Ghachem has showed quite convincingly how both slaves and free people of color invoked this and other provisions of the 1685 Code Noir to articulate their claims for equal citizenship during the Haitian Revolution, but he seems to be unaware of the Saint Christophe and Martinique precedents. See Malick Ghachem, The Old Regime and the Haitian Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 15.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 215

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

216

Notes to Page 23

6. Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 27. 7. See, for instance, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 155, 14. In some instances, the rigidification of racial hierarchies expressed in French Louisiana slave law is either ignored, understated, or denied to make way for an almost celebratory appraisal of the Code Noir’s “humanitarian” and “universalist” inclinations. See Mathé Allain, “Slave Policies in French Louisiana,” Louisiana History 21 (Spring 1980): 131, and Carl Brasseaux, “The Administration of Slave Regulations in French Louisiana, 1724–1766,” Louisiana History 21 (Spring 1980): 142. In a welcome departure, Jennifer Spear acknowledges the racial underpinnings of the 1724 Code Noir and makes a number of important comparative points with British North American slave law. Ultimately, however, she argues that the 1724 Code Noir’s provision against marriages between “whites” and “blacks” (Article 6) “was not primarily motivated by a concern for racial purity.” See Jennifer Spear, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 52–78 (quotation on 64). In another version of the relative absence of race in shaping colonial prescriptions and practices of social order in French Louisiana, Shannon Lee Dawdy argues that “the vocabulary of the Code Noir itself did not reflect Louisiana social categories [since] blanc was almost never used.” See Shannon Lee Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 199. For examples of the use of blanc in documents produced in Louisiana, see Cécile Vidal, “Francité et situation coloniale: Nation, empire et race en Louisiane française (1699–1769),” Annales HSS 63, no. 5 (2009): 1035–41. 8. The argument that Catholicism made for milder slave regimes than those found in Protestant colonies was first developed in Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947). Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), brings welcome nuance to the Tannenbaum thesis by rejecting its most romantic underpinnings, highlighting instead the specific ways in which the presence and actions of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans could mitigate the effects of racial slavery (see esp. 161–94). 9. Following Allan Greer and Kenneth Mills’s suggestive essay on the concept of a “Catholic Atlantic,” my interpretation of the Code Noir thus emphasizes transcolonial and transnational connections and tensions between church and state imperial projects and strategies of rule. Additionally, such an interpretation suggests the importance of considering the transatlantic “entanglement” of seemingly national historical phenomena. See Allan Greer and Kenneth Mills, “A Catholic Atlantic,” in The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000, ed. Jorge Cañizares-​­Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007), 3–20; and “AHR Forum: Entangled Empires in the Atlantic World,” American Historical Review 112 (June 2007): 710–99. 10. On the combined influences of Roman law and colonial jurisprudence, see Yvan Debbasch, Couleur et liberté, le jeu du critère ethnique dans un ordre juridique esclavagiste. Tome I: L’affranchi dans les possessions françaises de la Caraïbe (1635–1833) (Paris: Dalloz, 1967), 20–33; Bernard Vonglis, “La double origine du Code Noir,” in Les abolitions dans les Amériques. Actes du colloque organisé par les Archives départementales de la Martinique, 8–9 décembre 1998, ed. Liliane Chauleau (Fort-​­de-​­France: Société des amis des archives et de la recherche sur le patrimoine culturel des

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 216

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 24–25

217

Antilles, 2001), 101–7. In a rare acknowledgment of the racial underpinnings of the Code Noir, Joseph Roach writes that to the “totalizing trinity of une foi, un roi, une loi,” the 1685 Code Noir “added another and even more problematic term: ‘One Blood.’ ” See Joseph Roach, “Body of Law: The Sun King and the Code Noir,” in From the Royal to the Political Body: Incorporating the Political in Seventeenth-​­ and Eighteenth-​­Century France, ed. Sara E. Mezler and Kathryn Norberg (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 115. 11. Clarence J. Munford, The Black Ordeal of Slavery and Slave Trading in the French West Indies, 1625–1715 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 1:140–43; Gayle K. Brunelle, The New World Merchants of Rouen, 1559–1630 (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1991), 17; Robert Louis Stein, The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Régime Business (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 10–11. 12. Munford, The Black Ordeal, 1:140–43. 13. “Contrat pour l’établissement des Français à l’île Saint Christophe, 31 octobre 1626,” in Origines transatlantiques: Belain d’Esnambuc et les Normands aux Antilles, ed. Pierre Margry (Paris: A. Faure, 1863), 99. 14. Jean-​­Baptiste du Tertre, Histoire générale des Antilles (Paris: Thomas Jolly, 1667), 1:63–64. 15. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800 (New York: Verso, 1997), 282. 16. Jean Bodin, The Six Bookes of a Commonweale: A Facsimile Reprint of the English Translation of 1606, ed. Kenneth Douglas McRae (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), A79–A86, 41, 42. See also Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits français, Périgord 23, f. 209 v, “Arrêt de la cour du Parlement de Bordeaux” (February 1571). On Bodin, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 111–14. 17. My emphasis. Bodin, The Six Bookes, 43. Charles Verlinden, “Esclavage noir en France méridionale et courants de traite en Afrique,” Annales du Midi 78, no. 2 (1966): 335–43. 18. Jean Bodin, La Méthode de l’histoire, ed. P. Mesnard (Paris and Alger: Les Belles Lettres et Maison Carrée, 1941), 88. 19. Ghachem and other historians of French Atlantic slavery have rightly pointed out that while conversion to Christianity actually provided a powerful rationale for the enslavement of Africans, it also created a territorial “exception” to the French freedom principle. See Ghachem, The Old Regime, 68–69. The best introduction to the French freedom principle remains Sue Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France”: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien Régime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). In her recent and fascinating exploration of the medieval municipal law of Toulouse as a source for the French freedom principle, Peabody provides at least one example suggesting that as early as the fifteenth-​­century baptism was considered a precondition to enjoy the benefits of free soil. See Sue Peabody, “An Alternative Genealogy of the Origins of French Free Soil: Medieval Toulouse,” Slavery and Abolition 32, no. 3 (2011): 355. 20. Antoine Loisel, Institutes coutumières, ou Manuel de plusieurs et diverses règles, sentences, et proverbes du droit coutumier et plus ordinaire de la France (Paris: Abel l’Angelier, 1607). In commentaries inserted in the 1657 and 1665 editions of Loisel’s work, Paul Challine, avocat at the Parlement de Paris, concurred and explained that “according to the constitution of the Church, Baptism confers freedom.” Paul Challine cited Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica as the source: “hoc ius

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 217

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

218

Notes to Pages 25–26

Ecclesiae statuit, ut servus Iudaerum cum fuerit factus Christianus statim a servitude leberetur, nullo pretio dato [The church made the law that if the slave of a Jew became a Christian, he should forthwith receive his freedom, without paying any price].” The assertion that baptism conferred freedom to slaves who had found refuge in France could also be found in the many seventeenth-​ ­century editions of Hiérome Mercier’s Remarques du droit françois, the latest of which was published in Paris three years after the promulgation of the Code Noir as Remarques nouvelles du droit françois: “By the general Law of this Kingdom . . . ​when a serf & a slave finds refuge in France, as soon as he has reached its borders and is baptized, he is manumitted.” On Paul Challine, see Peabody, “There Are No Slaves in France,” 31, 153; Paul Challine and Antoine Loisel, Institutes coustumières, ou Manuel de plusieurs et diverses règles, sentences et proverbes, tant anciens que modernes, du droict coustumier et plus ordinaire de la France, avec les notes et observations de M. Paul Challine (Paris: Henry le Gras, 1657, and Paris: Nicolas le Gras, 1665), 4. For Mercier, see Remarques nouvelles du droit françois, sur les Instituts de l’empereur Justinien . . . ​Contenant les principes & les fondemens du droit françois; avec la resolution de plusieurs questions curieuses & necessaires, en matiere civile: et l’instruction parfaite du procez criminel, contre toutes sortes de personnes. Tirées des arrests, des coûtumes & des ordonnances. Par Me Jerôme Mercier (Paris: Robin, 1688), 8. 21. Among others, see Davis, Problem, 165–73, 187–94; Colin A. Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570–1650 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), 167–72. For examples of “ordinary” colonists challenging slavery, see Stuart Schwartz, All Can be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007), 164–67. 22. On the development of Catholic missions and Christianity in seventeenth-​­century Kongo, see John Thornton, “The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo,” Journal of African History 25, no. 2 (1984): 147–67. Although Thornton makes no mention of Catholic missionaries’ qualms about the slave trade in this work, his “African Political Ethics and the Slave Trade: Central African Dimensions” (http://www.millersville.edu/~winthrop/Thornton.html) shows that the Christian rulers of Kongo themselves occasionally raised objections to Portuguese slaving practices. 23. Teobaldo Filesi, “Tratta Atlantica Africana e Attaggiamento della Chiesa,” in Il Cristianesimo nel Mondo Atlantico nel Secolo XVII: Atteggiamenti dei Cristiani nei Confronti dei Popoli e delle Culture Indigeni (Vatican City: Libreria editrice vaticana, 1997), 257–58. The increasing presence of Dutch, that is, “heretical” slave traders in the region of Soyo undoubtedly fueled the Prefects’ anxieties about the religious consequences of the transatlantic slave trade. By contrast, Capuchins expressed no such qualms about domestic slavery. The slaves “who remain within Congo,” Father Serafino da Cortona wrote in 1659, “have only the name of slaves, being little differentiated from their owners who do not beat them, and some slaves have other slaves dependent on them.” On the expansion of the Dutch slave trader at the Soyo port of Mpinda, see Linda M. Heywood, “Slavery and Its Transformation in the Kingdom of Kongo: 1491–1800,” Journal of African History 50 (March 2009): 11–12. Father Serafino da Cortona is cited in Richard Gray, “The Papacy and Africa in the Seventeenth Century,” in Il Cristianesimo, 300. 24. In 1630, a report on the transatlantic slave trade from the papal collector in Lisbon had already prompted Propaganda to condemn the excessive cruelty of slave traders. Richard Gray,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 218

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 26–28

219

“Ingoli, the Collector of Portugal, the ‘Gran Gusto’ of Urban VIII, and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Ecclesiae Memoria. Miscellanea in onore del R. P. Josef Metzler O. M. I., ed. Willi Henkel (Rome: Herder, 1991), 179–86. 25. Antonio Brasio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana. Africa Occidental, XII (Lisboa: Agência Geral do Ultramar, Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca, 1952), 312–13; Filesi, “Tratta Atlantica,” 258–59; Gray, “The Papacy,” 300–301. 26. Maurile de Saint-​­Michel, Voyages des Isles Camercanes en l’Amérique (Le Mans: Hiérôme Olivier, 1652), 80–81. In a manuscript relation of the Antilles dated 1640, one Hyacinthe de Caen, a Capuchin who had accompanied Belain d’Esnambuc to the Antilles in 1633, felt it necessary to point out that all the “esclaves maures et nègres” transported to the islands had been “honestly sold.” An intriguing passage followed in which de Caen explained that enslaved women who had either “converted to our religion or married some Frenchmen” were “given back their freedom.” See Yvon Le Bras and Réal Ouellet, eds., Relation de l’établissement des Français depuis l’an 1635 en l’île de la Martinique, l’une des Antilles de l’Amérique / Jacques Bouton. Suivi de, Relation des îles de Saint-​­Christophe, Gardelouppe et la Martinique, gisantes par les 15 degrés au-​­deçà de l’Équateur / Hyacinthe de Caen (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2012), 134. I thank Allan Greer for making me aware of this edition of De Caen’s manuscript and for sending me a copy of the passage quoted here. 27. ANOM COL F3 91 f. 84, “Mémoire de M. de Ruau Palu, agent général de la compagnie des Indes, 30 novembre 1673.” 28. According to an eighteenth-​­century author, Louis XIII had allowed the French inhabitants of his newly established West Indian colonies to own slaves only after being convinced that it was the only way Africans could be converted to Catholicism. Jean-​­Baptiste Labat, Nouveaux voyages aux îles de l’Amérique (La Haye: P. Husson and alt., 1724), 2:38. 29. Pierre Pelleprat, Relation des Missions des PP. de la Compagnie de Iesvs Dans les Isles (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy & Gabriel Cramoisy, 1655), 55–56. See also Jacques Bouton, Relation de l’établissement des françois depuis l’an 1635 en l’isle de la Martinique (Paris: Sebastien Cramoisy, 1640), 102. 30. Du Tertre, Histoire, 2:483–84. 31. Du Tertre, Histoire, 2:502. Sue Peabody convincingly argues that since missionaries seemingly found a more receptive audience among enslaved Africans than among Caribs, the virulently “anti-​­black characterizations” found in early missionary literature were “softened considerably” by the 1660s. Yet she may be overstating her case in claiming that “conversion rendered black slaves ‘insiders’ ” (presumably on par with other Catholics) since evangelization was a primary justification for their enslavement. Sue Peabody, “A Nation Born to Slavery: Missionaries and Racial Discourse in Seventeenth-​­Century French Antilles,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 1 (2004): 126–33. 32. The Compagnie des Indes Occidentales (1664–1672), the Compagnie du Sénégal (1679–1684), and the Compagnie de la Côte de Guinée (1681–1696). 33. Munford, The Black Ordeal, 161. 34. ANOM COL G1 boxes 468 to 472, “Rencensements des Antilles.” 35. “Règlement de M. de Tracy, Lieutenant Général de l’Amérique touchant les Blasphémateurs et la Police des Isles. Du 19 Juin 1664,” in Loix et constitutions des colonies françaises de l’Amérique sous le vent, ed. Médéric-​­Louis-​­Elie Moreau de Saint-​­Mery, 6 vols. (Paris: by the author, 1784–90), 1:117–20 (hereafter cited as MSM).

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 219

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

220

Notes to Pages 28–33

36. ANOM COL F3 248 f. 686, “Extrait des avis de Mrs de Blénac et Patoulet sur divers objets d’administration que le Roi avoit fourni à leur discussion par sa lettre du 30 avril 1681, 3 Décembre 1681.” 37. Jaca and Moirans have been the object of several Spanish publications See especially J. T. López Garcia, Dos defensores de los esclavos negros en el siglo xvii (Maracaibo and Caracas: Biblioteca Corpozulia and Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, 1982), Miguel Anxo Pena González, ed., Francisco José de Jaca. Resolución sobre la libertad de los negros y sus originarios en estado de paganos y después ya cristianos. La primera condena de la esclavitud en el pensamiento hispano (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2002). The best account of Silva and his relationship to Moirans and Jaca is Richard Gray, “The Papacy and the Atlantic Slave Trade: Lourenco da Silva, the Capuchins, and the decisions of the Holy Office,” Past and Present 115 (May 1987): 52–68. See also John M. Lenhart, “Capuchin Champions of Negro Emancipation in Cuba, 1681–1685,” Franciscan Studies 6 (June 1946): 195–217; “Epiphane de Moirans, La liberté des esclaves ou défense juridique de la liberté des esclaves,” in Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire de la Martinique 6, ed. and trans. Robert Lapierre (Fort de France: Société d’Histoire de la Martinique, 1995); Edward R. Sunshine, A Just Defense of the Natural Freedom of Slaves: All Slaves Should be Free (1682) by Epifanio de Moirans: A Critical Edition and Translation of Servi Liberi Seu Naturalis Mancipiorum Libertatis Iusta Defensio (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007). 38. My account of Moirans and Jaca’s transatlantic tribulations is based on R.P. Bernard David, “La vie d’Épiphane de Moirans,” in “Epiphane de Moirans,” ed. and trans. Robert Lapierre, 13–18; López Garcia, Dos defensores; and Lenhart, “Capuchin Champions.” 39. “La liberté des esclaves,” 46. 40. “La liberté des esclaves,” 49. 41. “La liberté des esclaves,” 72–73, 29. 42. Lenhart, “Capuchin Champions,” 200–204. 43. Gray, “The Papacy,” 54, 56. Silva was alternatively identified in contemporary documents either as a “moreno born in Brazil” or a “pardo man born in this Kingdom of Portugal.” See Hebbe Mattos, “’Pretos’ and ‘Pardos’ between the Cross and the Sword: Racial Categories in Seventeenth-​ ­Century Brazil,” Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 80 (April 2006): 48–49. 44. Hebbe Mattos, “’Pretos’ and ‘Pardos’ between the Cross and the Sword,” 57–59. 45. Scritture Originali riferite nelle Congregazioni Generali, Archivio Storico ‘de Propaganda Fide,’ Vatican City (hereafter cited as SOCG) 73 f. 9v–​­10, “Lettere della S. Congregazione” (March 6, 1684). 46. SOCG 73 f. 10v–11v. 47. A transcript of the memorandum can be found in Lenhart, “Capuchin Champions,” 213–14. The original document is in Acta series: Acta de anno 1685, no. 14, March 12, Archives of the Propagada Fide. 48. Gray, “The Papacy,” 64. 49. Joseph Bergin, Crown, Church, and Episcopate under Louis XIV (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 229, 258; Jean Bérenger, “La Politique Ottomane de la France dans les années 1680,” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum 33, nos. 2–4 (1987): 193–201. 50. ANOM COL C8 B1 f. 63, “Le Provincial des Capucins de Normandie. Colonies.”

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 220

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 34–35

221

51. Janine Garrisson, L’Édit de Nantes et sa révocation (Paris: Seuil, 1987), 184–262. 52. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, L’Ancien Régime, 1610–1715 (Paris: Hachette, Pluriel, 1996), 300– 303. See also Pierre Blet, “Louis XIV et le Saint-​­Siège,” XVIIe siècle 31, no. 2 (1979): 137–54. 53. “S.C.S. Officii 20 Martii 1686,” item 230, in Collectanea S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide seu decreta instructiones rescripta pro apostolicis missionibus (Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide 1907), 76–77. There is some indication that French colonial authorities considered Capuchins to be troublemakers, although none seemed to have challenged the enslavement of Africans after 1685. Still, in the early eighteenth century, several officials expressed the desire to see them replaced by Jesuits. Indeed, contrary to their mendicant colleagues, members of the Society of Jesus already had a solid track record as enterprising slave owners in the Americas and counted among their ranks some of the most prominent proponents of the theological and moral legitimacy of enslavement as a means toward salvation. Sue Peabody, “ ‘A Dangerous Zeal,’” 69–70. On Jesuits and slavery, see for instance Sandra Negro and Manuel M. Marzal, eds., Esclavitud, economía y evangelización: las haciendas jesuitas en la América virreinal (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 2005); Margaret Olsen, Slavery and Salvation in Colonial Cartagena de Indias (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004); George Scelle, La traite négrière aux Indes de Castille: Contrats et traités d’Assiento (Paris: Larose, 1906), 1:717–19. 54. Indeed, in 1685, the controversial granting of the Spanish Asiento to a Dutch Protestant company raised the ire of the Council of the Inquisition and led Charles II to request an investigation that vindicated both the usefulness and legitimacy of the slave trade. Just six weeks after Charles’s initial request, the Council of the Indies argued that “there could not be any doubt as to the necessity of those slaves to support the kingdom of the Indies.” “With regard to the point of conscience,” the councilors invoked numerous “authorities” from famous Spanish theologian Luis de Molina to Diego de Avendaño, provincial of the Jesuits and professor of theology in Lima. All, they insisted, have “resolved that the sale and commerce of Negroes in America is legitimate.” A brief mention was even made of “two capuchins” who had tried to argue otherwise and had caused “such a commotion” in Cuba that they had to be banned from the Indies. Apparently unaware that the two capuchins were about to secure the support of the Holy See, the councilors concluded that one of the best proofs of the legitimacy of the enslavement of black Africans was that it had long been practiced “without any objection on the part of his Holiness.” See “Consulte du Conseil des Indes sur la légitimité du trafic négrier” (August 21, 1685) in Scelle, La traite, 1:836–40. The controversy and its context are detailed in Scelle, La traite, 1:641–749, especially 708–11 and 723–45. It is mentioned briefly in Davis, Problem, 195. A partial translation of the 1685 consulta in English can be found in Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, vol. 1: 1441–1700 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1930), 349–51. 55. Gray, “The Papacy,” 66. 56. Bouton, Relation, 99; du Tertre, Histoire, 2:477; Pelleprat, Relation, 20–23; Charles de Rochefort, Histoire naturelle et morale des Iles Antilles de l’Amerique (Rotterdam: Arnould Leers, 1658), 323. 57. On the use of the principle of partus sequitur ventrem (literally, “that which is brought forth follows the womb”) in other colonial contexts, see Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 92–93;

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 221

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

222

Notes to Pages 35–40

Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 132–35; Joe Dorsey, “Women without History and the International Politics of ‘Partus Sequitur ventrem’ in the Spanish Caribbean,” Journal of Caribbean History 28, no. 2 (1994): 165–207. 58. Du Tertre, Histoire, 2:512. 59. ANOM COL G1 470, Recensements Martinique. In 1687, the first general census of the French islands counted 877 “mulâtres et mulâtresses” for 18,887 whites and 27,258 “nègres, négresses, négrillons et négrittes.” 60. ANOM COL F3 91 f. 84–85, “Mémoire de M. de Ruau Palu, agent général de la compagnie des Indes, 30 Novembre 1673.” 61. ANOM COL C7A 3, “Arrêt du Conseil Supérieur de la Guadeloupe, 1er Juin 1680.” 62. ANOM COL F3 248 f. 686, “Extrait des avis de Mrs. de Blénac et Paoulet sur divers objets d’administration que le Roi avoit fourni à leur discussion par sa lettre du 30 avril 1681, 3 Décembre 1681.” 63. ANOM COL F3 248 f. 687. 64. ANOM COL F3 221 f. 607, “Lettre de l’Intendant Bégon au Conseil Souverain, 22 avril 1684.” 65. ANOM COL F3 269 I f. 73, “Lettre de MM. le Chevalier de Saint-​­Laurent et Bégon au Supérieur des Capucins, 22 Novembre 1684.” 66. Article 9 (1685), in Le Code Noir ou le calvaire de Canaan, ed. Louis Sala-​­Molins (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1987), 108. 67. Pierre-​­François-​­Régis Dessalles, ed., Annales du Conseil souverain de la Martinique, ou Tableau historique du gouvernement de cette colonie (Bergerac: J. B. Puynesge, 1786), 1:291. 68. Articles 57 and 59 (1685), in Le Code Noir, 196, 200. 69. Article 58 (1685), in Le Code Noir, 198. 70. Articles 33 and 35 (1685), in Le Code Noir, 156, 160. The Code, moreover, remained silent about the discriminating fiscal policies denying tax exemptions to free blacks and mulattoes adopted in 1671 and renewed in 1684. On free people of color’s response to these policies, see note 5 in this chapter. 71. Article 55 (1685) and Article 50 (1724) in Le Code Noir, 192–93. 72. ANOM COL F3 222 f.. 189, “Ordonnance du Gouvernement général des Îles-​­du-​­Vent, 15 août 1711.” 73. “Ordonnance du Roi, 24 octobre 1713,” MSM, 2:398. 74. Article 39 (1685), in Le Code Noir, 168; “Ordonnance du Roi, 10 juin 1705,” MSM 2:36; “Arrêt du Conseil de Léogane, 5 janvier 1711,” MSM 2:233. 75. Article 34 (1724), in Le Code Noir, 169. 76. Article 52 (1724), in Le Code Noir, 197. 77. Article 56 (1685), in Le Code Noir, 194. 78. ANOM COL C8A 15 f..43–44, September 21, 1703, Machault to Pontchartrain. 79. “Lettre du Ministre au Gouverneur Général des Isles, 26 décembre 1703,” MSM 1:716. 80. On this issue, see Guillaume Aubert, “The Blood of France: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 439–78.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 222

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 41–43

223

81. ANOM COL C8A 31 f.. 6–7, Feuquière and Bénard to minister, January 18 1723. 82. ANOM COL F3 252 f.. 543 and 577, “Reponces que produit . . . ​frere Andre mane prefect apostolique et Superieur General des missions de l’ordre des freres prescheurs.” 83. Article 9 (1685) and Article 6 (1724), in Le Code Noir, 108–9. 84. Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses, convincingly argues that the “Counter-​­Reformation apostolate [of the Ursulines] helped create opportunities for the enslaved of New Orleans to build community and [eventually] exercise leadership in a public institution,” although they “never intentionally acted to oppose or undermine the institution of slavery.” See esp. 161–94 (quotation 192). 85. Aubert, “Blood of France,” 439–78. 86. In the eighteenth century, some Caribbean planters seemed to have considered that baptism continued to hold emancipatory power, or at least thought of baptism as a possible strategy to circumvent the increasingly restrictive tenets of manumission law. In order to avoid official scrutinity, and possibly to eschew the payment of a “freedom tax,” some masters enlisted the help of priests and missionaries to have their slaves baptized as free. Indeed, the resort to baptismal certificates of freedom seems to have been common enough to warrant the issuance of at least five royal and local ordinances from 1736 to 1776 reminding all priests that they could not baptize “any child as free” without being presented with documents signed by colonial authorities attesting to the freedom of their mother. Failing to follow these procedures, the mention of freedom in baptismal records would be considered null and void, and the children thus baptized seized from their owners. See “Ordonnance du Roi, concernant l’Affranchissement des esclaves des Isles” (June 15, 1736), MSM 3:453–54; “Ordonnance de MM. les Général et Intendant concernant les affranchis” (September 1, 1761); “Ordonnance du chevalier de Saint-​­Mauris, commandant général et de l’intendant Peinier concernant les affranchissements” (February 5, 1768); “Ordonnance concernant la vérification des titres de liberté des affranchis” (December 29, 1774, for Martinique, and January 6, 1775, for Guadeloupe); “Arrêt du Conseil d’État du Roi, sur les affranchissements” (June 8, 1776), all cited in Abel Alexis Louis, “Les libres de couleur en Martinique des origines à 1815: L’entre-​­deux d’un groupe social dans la tourmente” (Ph.D. diss., Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, 2011), 117, 156, 127, 449. 87. Marcus W. Jernegan, “Slavery and Conversion in the American Colonies,” American Historical Review 21 (April 1916): 504–27; Davis, Problem, 203–22, 291–390; Michael Anesko, “So Discreet a Zeal: Slavery and the Anglican Church in Virginia, 1680–1730,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 93 (July 1985): 247–78; Robert C. Shell, “Religion, Civic Status and Slavery From Dordt to the Trek,” Kronos: Journal Cape History 19 (November 1992): 28–63; Mark A. Peterson, “The Selling of Joseph: Bostonians, Antislavery, and the Protestant International, 1689–1733,” Massachusetts Historical Review 4 (2002): 1–22; Kenneth P. Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards’s Defense of Slavery,” Massachusetts Historical Review 4 (2002): 23–59. 88. On the notion of a “Christian Atlantic” based on an analysis of the many similarities between Puritan and Catholic Iberian uses of demonology to justify their respective colonial aspirations, see Jorge Cañizares-​­Esguerra, “The Devil in the New World: A Transnational Perspective,” in The Atlantic in Global History, 20–37. 89. Edmund Gibson, Two letters of the Lord Bishop of London: the first, to the masters and mistresses of families in the English plantations abroad; exhorting them to encourage and promote the instruction of the negroes in the Christian faith. The second, to the missionaries there; directing them

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 223

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

224

Notes to Pages 44–46

to distribute the said letter, and exhorting them to give their assistance toward the instruction of the negroes within their several parishes (London: Joseph Downing, 1727), 10–11.

Chapter 2 I would like to thank Cécile Vidal and Sylvia Frey for their comments on this essay (as well as for their patience). This text was further enhanced through fruitful conversations with Catherine Desbarats, Guillaume Aubert, Gilles Havard, Manuel Covo, Brett Rushforth, H. V. Nelles, and Emmanuel Ledœuf. Many thanks are due to Vincent and Patricia Prestat for their incredible generosity and hospitality. I also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 1. Archives Nationales d’Outre-​­Mer (hereafter ANOM) COL C13A 35 f. 224–225, May 25, 1751, Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel de Villebois de la Rouvillière (Michel) to the Minister. 2. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 3. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009); David Lambert and Alan Lester, eds., Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 4. While there is some anachronism in dividing them so (see below), governors in the colonies, as representatives of the king, were given direct responsibility over military and diplomatic affairs, as well as final words on all matters; intendants were overseers of matters of “justice, police, and finances.” Superior councils served, under the eyes of governors and intendants, as courts, either as first jurisdiction or courts of appeal, as well as a body for promulgating police regulations. See, for instance, Guillaume Aubert’s contribution in this volume for their role in applying and modifying the Code Noir. 5. For an overview of state and centralization in the historiography of the early modern period, see Jacques Le Goff, ed., Histoire de la France, vol. 4: La longue durée de l’État, ed. Jacques Revel and André Burguière (Paris: Seuil, 2000), and James B. Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 6. The historiography of the French colonial world is still strongly divided between a first “American” empire and the later “African” and “Asian” colonies, with chronological boundaries, such as the French Revolution or even 1763, making it difficult for many topics to cross over. 7. James Pritchard, In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Kenneth J. Banks, Chasing Empire across the Sea: Communications and the State in the French Atlantic, 1713–1763 (Montreal: McGill-​­Queen’s University Press, 2003); Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998); Daniel Dessert, La Royale (Paris: Fayard, 1996). A slightly different reading subscribing to the theory of the moral failings of administrators can be found in Michel Vergé-​­Franceschi, “Fortune et plantations des administrateurs coloniaux aux îles d’Amérique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Commerce et Plantation dans la Caraïbe, XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, ed. Paul Butel (Bordeaux: Maison des Pays ibériques, 1992), 115–43.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 224

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 46–49

225

8. Jack Green and Amy Turner Bushnell, “Peripheries, Centers and the Construction of Early Modern Empires,” in Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820, ed. Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1–15. 9. Andreas Ander, Max Webers Theorie des modern Staates. Herkunft, Struktur und Bedeutung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot), 172–88. 10. William Beik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration,” Past and Present 188, no. 1 (2005): 195–224; J. F. Bosher, French Finances 1770–1795: From Business to Bureaucracy (1970; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 11. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain; Ann Laura Stoler and Carole McGranahan, “Refiguring Imperial Terrains,” in Imperial Formations, ed. Ann Laura Stoler, Carole McGranahan, and Peter C. Perdue (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2007), 3–42; Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Kathleen Wilson, “Introduction: Histories, Empires, Modernities,” in A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840, ed. Kathleen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1–26. 12. Alexandre Dubé, “S’approprier l’Atlantique. Quelques réflexions autour de Chasing Empire across the Sea de Kenneth Banks,” French Colonial History 6 (2005): 33–44. We owe much to J. Pritchard and Kenneth Banks, who offered comparisons outside of the usual colonial boundaries. 13. Examples of such categorizations in the various colonies of the French Empire: for Canada, see Dale Miquelon, ed., Society and Conquest—The Debate on the Bourgeoisie and Social Change in French Canada, 1700–1850 (Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing, 1977), esp. 83–104; for Saint-​ ­Domingue, Charles Frostin, Les révoltes blanches à Saint-​­Domingue aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (1975; Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008); for Louisiana, Shannon Lee Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 14. All of which, of course, immensely enrich our understanding of the navy’s servants background, if only narrowly by reducing, sometimes questionably, the field of analysis. Compare for instance Jean-​­Claude Dubé, Les intendants de la Nouvelle-​­France (Montreal: Fides, 1984), which solely focuses on the French past of the intendants of New France (rather than navy’s servants as a whole), and Céline Ronsseray, “Administrer Cayenne: sociabilités, fidélités et pouvoir des fonctionnaires coloniaux en Guyane française au XVIIIe siècle” (Ph.D. diss., Université de La Rochelle, 2007), which, while retaining a larger definition of colonial administrator, studies the extent of their local careers. On the reverse, Michel Vergé-​­Franceschi’s thèse d’État on the upper military echelons of the navy sometimes allows a glimpse of colonial service within the larger context of the fleets, if often unreflexively. Michel Vergé-​­Franceschi, Les officiers généraux de la Marine Royale, 1715–1774: Origines—Condition—Services, 7 vols. (Paris: Librairie de l’Inde, 1990). 15. Compare “carrière” in Jean Nicot’s Le Thresor de la langue francoyse (1606) to the Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, 4th ed. (1762), ARTFL Project, http://artfl-​­project.uchicago.edu. 16. Michel Antoine, “La monarchie absolue,” in The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime, ed. Keith Michael Baker (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 3–24; Dessert, La Royale, 22–29. 17. The division (and sometimes hatred) between épée and plume was once a theme of the navy’s historiography, somewhat lessened in recent years. See G. Dagnaud, L’administration centrale

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 225

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

226

Notes to Pages 49–51

de la Marine sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Librairie Chapelot, 1911); James Pritchard, Louis XV’s Navy: A Study of Organization and Administration, 1721–1748 (Montreal: McGill-​­Queen’s University Press, 1987), 37–39, and Michel Vergé-​­Franceschi, La marine française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: SEDES, 1996), 215. 18. Ordonnance de Louis XIV pour les armées navales et arcenaux de marine (Paris: Estienne Michallet, 1689). 19. Compare Hervé Drévillon, L’impôt du sang. Le métier des armes sous Louis XIV (Paris: Tallandier, 2005), with Jay M. Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600–1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994). For a contrasting view, see Guy Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661 to 1701 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 20. On ambition and emulation, see Smith, Culture of Merit, 214, and Drévillon, Impôt du sang, 390–436. These memoranda of service quite often make up the core of the personnel files contained within the Archives of the Navy and the Colonies: Archives Nationales (hereafter AN) Marine C2 and C7; ANOM COL E. Nearly 600 such dossiers (related to personnel who served in Louisiana and their relatives elsewhere) were analyzed for the purpose of this study. 21. AN Marine C7 280, Dossier Rochemore,“bien né”: marginal comment by M. De Givry. 22. Pritchard, Louis XV’s Navy, 37–54. 23. AN Marine C7 280, Dossier Rochemore; ANOM COL C13A 40, February 2, 1758, Rochemore to Accaron (premier commis of the colonial bureau at Versailles). 24. Jean-​­François Asselin, “Les officiers de plume dans la marine royale au XVIIIe siècle à travers l’étude de l’arsenal de Rochefort” (Master’s thesis, Université Paris-​­Sorbonne, 2000), 68. 25. The navy distinguished between rank (écrivain, écrivain principal, commissaire) and function (ordonnateur, contrôleur, intendant). 26. While James Pritchard rightly insists upon the variety in the set-​­up of colonial government (there, a governor; here, the absence of a comptroller), these seemed to have represented an “evolutionary” reading of colonies, from the less developed (and therefore, requiring less hierarchical sophistication) to the more settled (and therefore necessitating the whole cadre of navy personnel). Pritchard, Search of Empire, 230–66. 27. Of all the commissaires of French Louisiana (whether the commissaire-​­ordonnateur, or his second-​­in-​­command, the commissaire at Mobile), only one had been promoted before his appointment to Louisiana. Admittedly, it makes for a small corpus of nine individuals. Commissaires-​ ­ordonnateurs: Edme-​­Gatien Salmon (1731–1744), Sébastien-​­Ange Lenormant de Mézy (1744–1748), Honoré-​­Gabriel Michel (1748–1752), Vincent-​­Gaspard-​­Pierre de Rochemore (1758–1762), and Jean-​ J­acques-​­Blaise d’Abbadie (1763–1764). D’Abbadie held the title of “director” but was drawn from the pen. Commissaires: Louis-​­Joseph Bizoton, Jean-​­Baptiste Bobé-​­Descloseaux père, Crémont. Vincent-​­Guillaume Le Sénéchal d’Auberville, Denis-​­Nicolas Foucault. D’Auberville is the only one to have been promoted earlier to his coming to Louisiana for overseeing the fleet of L’Estenduère in 1746. 28. Retired: Bizoton (1733–1740) and Bobé-​­Descloseaux (1737–1762?). Disgrace: Salmon (1731– 1744) and Rochemore (1758–1762). Chains: Foucault (1762–1764; 1765–1768). Promoted: Lenormant de Mézy (1744–1748).

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 226

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 52–55

227

29. “Mériter mieux les grâces” in AN Marine C7 208, Dossier Michel de Cazeneuve, June 27, 1757, Michel de Cazeneuve to Machault. 30. Maurepas was minister from 1722 to 1749. Pritchard, Louis XV’s Navy, 42–43. 31. AN Marine C7 299, February 5, 1731, “Feuille au ministre.” 32. See Michel Antoine, Le gouvernement et l’administration sous Louis XV (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1978), and Bernard Barbiche, Les institutions de la monarchie française à l’époque moderne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2001), 123. 33. James Pritchard and Michel Vergé-​­Franceschi both recognized this peculiarity, for which the consequences on colonial justice have not been studied. Pritchard, Search of Empire, 251; Pritchard, Louis XV’s Navy, 38; Vergé-​­Franceschi, Marine, 320. 34. For the problems of the intendant of Rochefort to even judge matters regarding the community of Rochefort, see Martine Acerra, Rochefort et la construction navale française, 1661–1815 (Paris: Librairie de l’Inde, 1993), 117–19. 35. Charles O’Neill, Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966). 36. See the celebratory comments of the notary Rossard about Salmon, in ANOM COL E 357, Dossier Rossard. See also Marcel Giraud, History of French Louisiana, vol. 5: The Company of the Indies, 1723–1731 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991). 37. Donald Horton, “Michel,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/ index-​­e.html; ANOM COL C11A 85, October 6, 1746, Hocquart to the Minister; ANOM COL C11A 88, September 24, 1747, Hocquart to the Minister. For Michel’s son, Michel de Villebois, see AN Marine C7 208, Dossier Michel de Villebois. 38. ANOM COL C13A 25, May 29, 1740, Bobé-​­Descloseaux to the Minister. 39. ANOM COL C13A 28, April 1744, “La Louisiane”; ANOM COL B 78, April 30, 1744, Maurepas to Lenormant. 40. Alexandre Dubé, “Les biens publics : Culture politique de la Louisiane française” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University, 2010). 41. Daniel J. Usner Jr., Indians, Settlers and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 91; Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees and Navajos (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 47. 42. The numbers for Île Royale are taken from Catherine Desbarats, “Colonial Government Finances in New France, 1700–1750” (Ph.D. diss., McGill University 1994), 399. The situation for Louisiana is briefly described in Alexandre Dubé, “Limbourg, fusils et festins: l’approvisionnement des ‘Sauvages’ de la Louisiane, 1731–1752,” in Guerre et paix en Nouvelle-​­France, ed. Alain Beaulieu (Sainte-​­Foy: GID, 2003), 176–203. 43. Lenormant’s insistence upon the plantation economy is especially apparent in a long mémoire. Bibliothèque Nationale de France (hereafter BNF) Joly de Fleury 1726, Mémoire sur la Louisiane. 44. “Une économie mal entendue” in ANOM COL C13A 29, October 30, 1745, Vaudreuil to the Minister; ANOM COL C13A 30, April 2, 1746, Louboey (military commander at Mobile) to the Minister.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 227

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

228

Notes to Pages 56–60

45. Michel’s own household and acquaintances might also have included Natives. See Élizabeth Rocbert de la Morandière [Bégon] to Michel, December 15, 1748, in Lettres au cher fils: Correspondance d’Elisabeth Bégon avec son gendre (1748–1753), ed. Nicole Deschamps (Montreal: Boreal, 1994), 65. For the quotation, see ANOM COL C11A 88, September 24, 1747, Hocquart to the Minister. 46. ANOM COL E 257 bis, October 13, 1736, Dossier Michel, Instructions of Hocquart to Michel. 47. Élisabeth Rocbert de la Morandière to Michel, July 23,1751, in Lettres au cher fils, 367. 48. See Élisabeth Rocbert de la Morandière to Michel, March 21,1752, in Lettres au cher fils, 384. 49. These transpire mostly in the accusations leveled by his arch-​­enemy, the governor Louis Billouart de Kerlérec. See for instance ANOM COL C13A 40, January 17, 1759, Kerlérec to Accaron; ANOM COL F3 25, April 24, 1759, Kerlérec to Rochemore; but also in Rochemore’s own letters: ANOM COL C13A 41, January 3, 1759, Rochemore to the Minister. 50. Kerlérec’s worries over the strength of his own credit became more and more palpable as months pass after Rochemore’s arrival. ANOM COL C13A 41, May 4, 1759, Kerlérec to Lenormant. See also ANOM COL C13A 42, July 12, 1761, Kerlérec to the Minister. 51. ANOM COL C13A 29, November 9, 1745, Lenormant to the Minister; ANOM COL E 209, Dossier Gouvion; ANOM COL C13A 32, March 31, 1748, Lenormant to the Minister. 52. BNF Joly de Fleury 1726, Mémoire sur la Louisiane, c. 1749–1750. 53. BNF Joly de Fleury 1726, Mémoire sur la Louisiane, 110. 54. AN Marine C7 52, Dossier Carlier; AN Marine C7 52, Dossier Carlier (fils). For Carlier’s commercial transactions, see National Archives (United Kingdom), High Court of the Admiralty, July 2, 1756, Louis Perdriau to Carlier, Le Don de Dieu, 32, 181. 55. Horton, “Michel”; On Duparquier, see BNF Arsenal Bastille 11 592, Dossier Duparquier, and F. Chatin, “Duparquier,” Généalogie et histoire de la Caraïbe 37 (April 1992), 564. 56. This number is out of proportion to the administration of French provinces: the intendency of Paris, the largest of France, had sixty-​­five employees. The average number of employees of other metropolitan intendancies varied from eight to ten. Louisiana, like other colonies, lacked the intermediary institutions of government of Ancien Régime France. Bernard Barbiche, Institutions, 397; Françoise Martin, “L’intendance de Paris,” in Les institutions à la fin de l’Ancien Régime et sous la Révolution Française: Actes du colloque de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris, ed. Yves Durand (Paris: Ville de Paris, 1993), 29–58. Louisiana personnel taken from ANOM COL E, ANOM COL D2C 50, and Carl A. Brasseaux, France’s Forgotten Legion: Service Records of French Military and Administrative Personnel Stationed in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast Region 1699–1769 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000). 57. This distinguishes colonial warehouse keepers from those within arsenals, where they held brevets, yet did not follow the same career path as other navy administrators. Rather, warehouse keeper families operated in their own closed circuit, marrying in the local business communities and getting their sons to take over their jobs after themselves. Things seem to be much more blurry for Louisiana’s warehouse keepers. Pritchard, Louis XV’s Navy, 46–47. 58. Ongoing research in Louisiana’s parish records should bring the number up for the period between 1731 and 1758. Most names are in fact taken from lists from 1744 and 1777, as well as from

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 228

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 61–66

229

documents produced for the financial closing of accounts that took place between 1764 and 1772, leading to an overrepresentation of later date employees. 59. Lenormant found Carlier operating without any account books, relying instead on bills, receipts, and orders from post commanders to keep track of his inventory. ANOM COL C13A 29, October 22, 1745, Lenormant to the Minister. After denouncing to the minister the post commander’s tyranny over Carlier, Lenormant was attacked by the commander’s brother in New Orleans. ANOM COL C13A 31, March 28, 1747, Deposition by Lenormant. 60. ANOM COL C13A 40, December 31, 1758, Rochemore to the Minister. 61. See ANOM COL E 288, Dossier Lobinois, December 31, 1758, Rochemore to the Minister, and ANOM COL C13B 1, December 31, 1758, Carlier to the Minister. 62. AN Marine C7 52, Dossier Carlier, Carlier fils, Carlier d’Outre-​­mer; ANOM COL E 180, Dossier Fazende; ANOM COL E 176, Fassinde; ANOM COL E 158, Dossier Duparquier. 63. “Sur quoy il m’objecta que je n’étois qu’écrivain de colonie et qu’il estoit commissaire général . . . ​que cela étoit vray mais que j’étois pourvu d’un ordre du roy que je voulois suivre en tous points.” ANOM COL C11A 105, December 15, 1760, Carlier to the Minister. For the rest of the quarrel, see ANOM COL C13A 42, December 12, 1760, Rochemore to the Minister; ANOM COL C13A 42, March 4, 1761, Kerlérec to the Minister; ANOM COL C13A 44, “Avis des commissaires.” 64. ANOM COL E 288, December 1, 1758, Rochemore to the Minister. 65. On the “closing of the ranks” within the metropolitan eighteenth-​­century navy, see Pritchard, Louis XV’s Navy, 63. 66. The cession of Louisiana makes the future goals of Rouer de Villeré and Fazende difficult to discern. Rouer de Villeré took part in the rebellion of 1768 and was executed. Fazende remained as one of the last representatives of the French king in the colony, until 1772. 67. Dawdy, Devil’s Empire, 19; Michel Vergé-​­Franceschi, “Fortune et plantations,” 115–43. 68. It also might not. As Michel was well aware, the clerk responsible for summarizing and organizing matters related to the colonies at Versailles was Arnaud de la Porte, who was heavily suspecting of unduly favoring friends and turning a blind eye to even important financial misdeeds. De la Porte was eventually “retired” as he became compromised with Canada’s Intendant Bigot’s schemes. See Lettres au cher fils, 280–83. On Laporte, see Guy Frégault, François Bigot, administrateur français (1944; Montreal: Guérin, 1994), 290–93. 69. This bricolage has been, if obliquely, studied mostly for Canada: see, for instance, Gervais Carpin, Le réseau du Canada. Étude du mode migratoire de la France vers la Nouvelle-​­France, 1628–1662 (Sillery and Paris: Septentrion and Presses de l’Université de Paris-​­Sorbonne, 2001); Christophe Horguelin, La prétendue république. Pouvoir et société au Canada, 1645–1675 (Sillery: Septentrion, 1997). 70. ANOM COL C13A 41, January 3, 1759, Rochemore to the Minister. 71. Simply consider the insistence upon such titles in baptismal and notarial records. On honor within the navy, see Vergé-​­Franceschi, La Marine, 257–73.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 229

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

230

Notes to Pages 68–69

Chapter 3 1. Jeremy Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), 5. This study is part of research projects HUM2006–11365/HIST and HAR2009–13284 funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. Many thanks to Cécile Vidal and the anonymous readers, whose suggestions both encouraged me and helped me to improve this essay. I am especially indebted to Paul Hoffman for his wise and expert advice. 2. The Spanish spelling Luisiana will remind readers of this colony’s territorial extension. 3. This interpretation echoes the point made by Jeremy Adelman in “An Age of Imperial Revolutions,” American Historical Review 113, no. 2 (2008): 320, that “efforts to recast the institutional framework of imperial sovereignty” were made largely “in order to confront external pressures.” It could also illustrate “the shifting balance within the Atlantic between global and regional catalysts for change,” which is identified as one avenue of inquiry for Atlantic history by Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 748. 4. For illuminating discussions and applications of center-​­periphery interpretive models, see Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York: Routledge, 2002), especially the contributions by Amy T. Bushnell, Jack P. Greene, Lyman L. Johnson, and Susan M. Socolow. Amy T. Bushnell, “Gates, Patterns, and Peripheries: The Field of Frontier Latin America,” 15–28, rejects both the traditional national-​­imperial explanatory “paradigm of power” and the radical multiculturalist “paradigm of the victim” of the 1960s, arguing that the ideologically more neutral “paradigm of negotiation” is better suited to the study of early European imperialism in the Americas. For convincing applications of this interpretive theory to the Spanish case see, for example, John H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006); Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic, and Bartolomé Yun Casalilla, “Introducción,” in Las redes del imperio: Élites sociales en la articulación de la Monarquía Hispánica, 1492–1714 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009), 10–17. 5. Such a short essay cannot mention every group or aspect, but it aims to complement the opening chapter of James E. Lewis Jr., The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783–1829 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), which the author admits gives “fairly little attention” to Hispanic perspectives (10), and François Furstenberg, “The Significance of the Trans-​­Appalachian Frontier in Atlantic History,” American Historical Review 113, no. 3 (2008): 647–77, which deals mainly with French interest in the region and Franco-​­U.S. relations during this period. 6. Governor of Luisiana, Carondelet, to Secretary of State Manuel Godoy, Duke of Alcudia, August 18, 1794, Archivo Histórico Nacional (hereafter cited as AHN), Estado, 3899, res. 43: “a large population that will extend to both shores of the rivers Mississippi and Missouri, forming an invincible barrier which will protect the Internal Provinces.” Many other sources express similar ideas, such as in Gayoso to Aranda, Natchez, July 5, 1792, AHN, Estado, 3885 bis, exp. 7, n. 30: “The political system that must be adopted in this province should be to conserve it entirely under His Majesty’s rule so that it may serve as a barrier for the kingdom of Mexico against the ambitious

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 230

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 69–71

231

intentions of the United States”; Spanish ambassador in Washington, Carlos Martínez de Irujo, to Secretary of State Pedro Cevallos, Mont Plaisant, July 24, 1802, n. 288, AHN, Estado, 5630, on the need to settle colonists to form “a dike against the ambition of the Americans.” 7. See Carlos Marichal, Bankruptcy of Empire: Mexican Silver and the Wars Between Spain, Britain, and France, 1760–1810 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. 4–5, 9–12, 16–47. 8. Royal Instructions to Antonio de Ulloa, May 1 and May 22, 1765, Archivo General de Indias, Santo Domingo (hereafter cited as AGI, SD), 2543 and 2594. 9. Governor of Luisiana, Casa Calvo, to Secretary of State, Mariano Luis de Urquijo, New Orleans, October 8, 1800, n. 9, confidential, AHN, Estado, 3889 bis: “Its different situation, customs, and method of its inhabitants are not the same as those of the other provinces of these domains, and therefore it must be ruled and governed by other principles adaptable to its constitution, but without providing an excuse to deviate from our laws.” 10. See Jack D. L. Holmes, Honor and Fidelity: The Louisiana Infantry Regiment and the Louisiana Militia Companies, 1766–1821 (Birmingham: Louisiana Collection Series, 1965), and Gilbert C. Din, “’For Defense of Country and the Glory of Arms’: Army Officers in Spanish Louisiana, 1766–1803,” Louisiana History 43, no. 1 (2002): 5–40. 11. Many sources attest to this point. For example, O’Reilly to Arriaga, New Orleans, October 17, 1769, explained: “The defense of this province must consist solely of its defenders and in keeping the enemy occupied elsewhere.” Gilbert C. Din, “Protecting the Barrera: Spain’s Defenses in Louisiana, 1763–1779,” Louisiana History 19, no. 2 (1978): 195. 12. See Gilbert C. Din, “Empires Too Far: The Demographic Limitations of Three Imperial Powers in the Eighteenth-​­Century Mississippi Valley,” Louisiana History 50, no. 3 (2009): 261–92. 13. The number of free men of color in the New Orleans militia, for example, grew dramatically from 89 in 1779 to 469 in 1801. Megan Kareithi, “ ‘Yo, José Dupard, pardo libre natural y vecino de esta ciudad’: Masculinity, Race and Respectability in Spanish New Orleans,” Ìrìnkèrindò: A Journal of African Migration 5 (2011): 1–31, http://www.africamigration.com/Issue%205/Articles/ HTML/Megan-​­Kareithi_Masculinity-​­Race-​­Respectability.htm. The inhabitants of African descent, both free and slave, were actively involved in negotiating the conditions of their lives, and Spain’s international problems often clearly affected their particular circumstances, but the present essay does not discuss this group, mainly because the kinds of negotiations in which they engaged were similar throughout the Spanish Empire, as were the results. 14. See, for example, Pedro Gatell, “Memoria en la que se demuestra la absoluta necesidad en que se halla la Corte de España de poblar y fortificar la Luisiana, especialmente lo correspondiente a las riberas de los ríos Misisipi, Misuri, y el de San Bernardo, y las grandes ventajas y utilidades que le resultan de tan importante execusión,” La Habana, October 11, 1780, and Martín Navarro, “Reflexiones políticas sobre el estado actual de la provincia de la Luisiana,” 1782, both in Manuel Serrano y Sanz, ed., Documentos históricos de la Florida y la Luisiana, siglos XVI al XVIII (Madrid: V. Suárez, 1912), 353–79. 15. The transformative entanglements of U.S. independence and international relations in the Atlantic world are stressed in Leonard J. Sadosky, Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), and Eliga Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 231

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

232

Notes to Pages 71–73

World Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). Both books argue convincingly for a reevaluation of the importance if not the primacy of foreign affairs in driving state formation and in shaping politics. 16. James Wilkinson to Esteban Miró and Martín Navarro, New Orleans, September 3, 1787, AHN, Estado, 3888 bis, doc. 53. 17. The diverse grievances and fears of these groups are well known. See John Preston Moore, Revolt in Louisiana: The Spanish Occupation, 1766–1770 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976); Reinhart Kondert, “The German Involvement in the Rebellion of 1768,” Louisiana History 26, no. 4 (1985): 385–97; Carl A. Brasseaux, Denis-​­Nicolas Foucault and the New Orleans Rebellion of 1768 (Ruston: Louisiana Tech University, 1987); Jo Ann Carrigan, “Old and New Interpretations of the Rebellion of 1768,” in The Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History, vol. 1: The French Experience in Louisiana, ed. Glenn R. Conrad (Lafayette: University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1995), 610–16. 18. Two Hispanicized Irishmen, Carlos Bourke and Remigio O’Hara, to the King, April 22, 1801. AHN, Estado, 5537, clearly try to exploit this fear in their petition for land grants in Luisiana, arguing that they and their Irish relatives, as good Catholics, are surely “more worthy of His Majesty’s generosity than the sectarians of Calvin, Luther, Quakers, Methodists and Deists etc. that seek to settle in that country and who, in addition to being infidels, are prone to rebel against the monarchy.” 19. Gilbert C. Din, “Spanish Control Over a Multiethnic Society: Louisiana, 1763–1803,” in Choice, Persuasion and Coercion: Social Control on Spain’s North American Frontiers, ed. Jesús F. De la Teja and Ross Frank (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 50–52, 55–56, 65, 67, and with John E. Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo: Colonial Louisiana’s First City Government, 1769–1803 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), passim. 20. Ernest R. Liljegren, “Jacobinism in Spanish Louisiana, 1792–1797,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 22, no. 1 (1939): 47–97; Gilbert C. Din, “Father Jean Delvaux and the Natchitoches Revolt of 1795,” Louisiana History 40, no. 1 (1999): 5–33. 21. Andrew McMichael, Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785–1810 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008). 22. Sylvia L. Hilton, “Loyalty and Patriotism on North American Frontiers: Being and Becoming Spanish in the Mississippi Valley, 1776–1803,” in Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s-​­1820s, ed. Gene Allen Smith and Sylvia L. Hilton (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 8–38. 23. O’Reilly’s ordinance of 1770 regarding land grants, printed in French, is in Archivo General de Indias, Papeles de Cuba (hereafter cited as AGI, PC), 189B. English versions in American State Papers. X: Miscellaneous Documents (Washington, D.C.: Gales & Seaton, 1832–1861), 1:376, and in Louisiana Historical Quarterly 11 (1928): 237–40. 24. J. Barton Starr, “ ‘Left as a Gewgaw’: The Impact of the American Revolution on British West Florida,” in Eighteenth-​­Century Florida: The Impact of the American Revolution, ed. Samuel Proctor (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1978), 26, says that perhaps as many as two-​­thirds of the West Florida Loyalists stayed under Spanish rule and that many more moved to West Florida from East Florida.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 232

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 73–75

233

25. On Spanish perceptions of this migration, see Sylvia L. Hilton, “Movilidad y expansión en la construcción política de los Estados Unidos: ‘Estos errantes colonos’ en las fronteras españolas del Misisipí (1776–1803),” Revista Complutense de Historia de América 28 (2002): 63–96, online at http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/RCHA/article/view/RCHA0202110063A/28660. 26. Arthur P. Whitaker, The Spanish-​­American Frontier, 1787–1795: The Westward Movement and the Spanish Retreat in the Mississippi Valley (1927; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), 98, thought that the first memorial of September 1787 “was doubtless the joint product of their three minds.” Gilbert C. Din argues that the immigration project was mainly the work of the two Spaniards, in “The Immigration Policy of Governor Esteban Miró in Spanish Louisiana,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73 (1969): 155–75, and “Proposals and Plans for Colonization in Spanish Louisiana, 1787–1790,” Louisiana History 11, no. 3 (1970): 197–213. Jon Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 127–28, says that Miró and Navarro helped to write Wilkinson’s “Memorial” so that it could be forwarded to Madrid. For general studies of these two colonial officials, see Caroline Maude Burson, The Stewardship of Don Esteban Miró, 1782–1792 (New Orleans: American Printing Co., 1940), and Brian E. Coutts, “Martin Navarro, Treasurer, Contador, Intendant, 1766–1788: Politics and Trade in Spanish Louisiana” (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1981). 27. Royal concessions to immigrants to West Florida and Luisiana are in Miró’s Proclamation, New Orleans, April 20, 1789, AGI, PC, leg. 2370, in “Papers from the Spanish Archives relating to Tennessee and the Old Southwest, 1783–1800,” ed. Duvon C. Corbitt and Roberta Corbitt, The East Tennessee Historical Society’s Publications 20 (1948): 104–5, and Lawrence Kinnaird, ed., Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 1763–1794 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office for the American Historical Association, 1946–1949), 3:269–71. See also Valdés to Miró, Aranjuez, May 14, 1789, remitting seven Royal Orders on American immigrants, AGI, PC, 176–B. 28. “No es posible poner puertas al campo,” manuscript comment dated October 20, 1797, in margin of Irujo to Godoy, Philadelphia, August 5, 1797, AHN, Estado, 3891. 29. See for example Linda A. Newson, “Foreign Immigrants in Spanish America: Trinidad’s Colonisation Experiment,” Caribbean Studies 19, no. 1–2 (1979): 133–51; Juan M. Morales, Los extranjeros con carta de naturaleza de las Indias durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII (Caracas: Academia Nacional de la Historia, 1980); Jorge L. Chinea, “The Control of Foreign Immigration in the Spanish-​­American Colonial Periphery: Puerto Rico during Its Transition to Commercial Agriculture, 1765–1800,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 11, no. 1 (2002): 1–34, and “Irish Indentured Servants, Papists and Colonists in Spanish Colonial Puerto Rico, ca. 1650–1800,” Irish Migration Studies in Latin America 5, no. 3 (2007): 171–81. 30. Miró and Navarro to Antonio Valdés, New Orleans, September 25, 1787. AHN, Estado, 3888 bis, doc. 51, in José Navarro and Fernando Solano, ¿Conspiración española? 1787–1789: contribución al estudio de las primeras relaciones históricas entre España y los Estados Unidos de América (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 1949), 207–14. 31. James Mackay to Gayoso, San Andrés, November 28, 1798, in Before Lewis and Clark: Documents Illustrating the History of the Missouri, 1785–1804, ed. Abraham P. Nasatir (1952; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 2:587–89. Similarly, José Vidal to Casa Calvo, Concordia, September 27, 1800, AHN, Estado, 3889 bis: “The discontent among the inhabitants of Natchez is so

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 233

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

234

Notes to Pages 75–76

widespread that I dare to assure your excellency that more than two hundred honest families will emigrate to this side of the river as soon as the government allows it. Every minute they keep coming to ask me when the settlements will be formed on this side of the river. . . . ​They beg to know next month, so that they can form their settlements in order to reap the next harvest in the lands that they hope to receive.” 32. A number of examples of these oaths of allegiance have been published. See Henry P. Dart, ed., “The Oath of Allegiance to Spain,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 4, no. 2 (1921): 205–15, for several signed by the inhabitants of Pointe Coupée and Fausse Rivière in September 1769; “Loyalty Oath List for Pointe Coupée to the Government of Spain, 1769,” Louisiana Genealogical Register 11 (1964): 10–11; Loyalty oath, Natchez, January 4, 1787, AGI, PC, 13, in Jack D.L. Holmes, Gayoso: The Life of a Spanish Governor in the Mississippi Valley, 1789–1799 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), 20; one sent by Esteban Rodríguez Miró, governor of Luisiana, to Lt. Col. Charles de Grandpré, governor of Natchez, February 20, 1787, for use among the immigrants there, in Charles Gayarré, History of Louisiana: The Spanish Domination (Baton Rouge: Claitor’s, 1974), 3:202–3; James Wilkinson, Declaration [Loyalty Oath], [August] 21, 17[87], AGI, PC, leg. 2373, and Spanish translation, AHN, Estado, 3888 bis, doc. 58, in Navarro and Solano, ¿Conspiración española? 1787–1789, 185–86; oath taken by inhabitants of L’Ance á la Graice, November 30, 1789, and others signed at New Madrid in 1795 and 1796, in Louis Houck, ed., The Spanish Regime in Missouri (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1909), 1:319–21; a slightly different version dated January 12, 1790, AGI, PC, 2362; a longer version taken by inhabitants of Natchez who received royal permission to relocate in Concordia after 1797, in James A. Robertson, ed., Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, France and the United States, 1785–1807 (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), 1:162–64. 33. Jack D. L. Holmes, ed., Documentos inéditos para la historia de la Luisiana, 1792–1810 (Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas, 1963), 134, counted more than a hundred projects. There is as yet no good overall study of foreign immigration to the Spanish Mississippi colonies, although useful partial studies have been contributed by many authors. 34. See James Kennedy to Miró, New Orleans, March 1, 1788, and Royal Order of May 14, 1789, AHN, Estado, 3888 bis, nn. 111 and 112. Also Fernando Solano, “La colonización irlandesa de la Luisiana española: Dos proyectos de inmigración,” Estudios 80–81 (1981): 206–7. 35. For example, Miró to Grand-​­Pré, New Orleans, February 28, 1789, n. 506, AGI, PC, leg. 2362. 36. George Morgan to Gardoqui, Prospect (N.J.), September [later than 9], 1788, sent with Gardoqui to Floridablanca, October 24, 1788, doc. 296, AHN, Estado, 3894, in Navarro and Solano, ¿Conspiración española?, 241–48, and on Sevier, 271–73. There is another copy of Morgan’s “Plan for the Establishment of a Colony of Settlers on the Mississippi” in AHN, Estado, 3888 bis, doc. 237. 37. Pedro [Pierre] Wouves d’Argès to Floridablanca, August 1, 1787, AHN, Estado, 3889, exp. 6, doc. 15, in Navarro and Solano, ¿Conspiración española? 1787–1789, 225–29. Wouves D’Argès was a French adventurer who offered to recruit a large contingent of Kentuckians. See Gilbert C. Din, “Pierre Wouves d’Argès in North America: Spanish Commissioner, Adventurer, or French Spy?,” Louisiana Studies 12, no. 1 (1973): 354–75. 38. Diego [James] White to Ezpeleta, La Habana, December 24, 1788, AHN, Estado, 3888

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 234

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 77–79

235

bis, doc. 180, translated December 26, in Navarro and Solano, ¿Conspiración española? 1787–1789, 271–74. 39. Francis P. Burns, “The Spanish Land Laws of Louisiana,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly 11 no. 4 (1928): 557–81; Din and Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo, 259–61. 40. See Din and Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo, 261–74. 41. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 276, notes that Luisiana was “Spain’s most heavily subsidized colony,” which she suggests was a reflection of its strategic value from the perspective of Madrid. 42. For petitions connected with trade emanating from the Cabildo, which represented the merchant-​­planter elite, see Din and Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo, esp. 276–83. 43. Din and Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo, 277. 44. This important decree, dated January 22, 1782, is in Arthur P. Whitaker, ed., Documents Relating to the Commercial Policy of Spain in the Floridas, with Incidental Reference to Louisiana (Deland: Florida State Historical Society, 1931), 31–38, and Lawrence Kinnaird, ed., Spain in the Mississippi Valley, 2:1–4. 45. John W. Caughey, Bernardo de Gálvez in Spanish Louisiana, 1776–1783 (1934; Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1972), 250–51, stresses that “the privilege of direct trade with a foreign nation was absolutely unprecedented in Spanish colonial practice.” 46. See for example José Antonio de Hoa to Ramón López Angulo, New Orleans, April 27, 1801, and Juan Ventura Morales to José Vidal, New Orleans, August 29, 1801, both in AHN, Estado, 5538, exp. 16, on U.S. merchants who evaded paying import-​­export duties and fraudulently extracted silver. 47. Din and Harkins, The New Orleans Cabildo, 279–80. 48. See Glenn R. Conrad, “Friend or Foe? Religious Exiles at the Opelousas Post in the American Revolution,” Attakapas Gazette 12 (1977): 137–39, and “Some Observations on Anglo-​­Saxon Settlers in Colonial Attakapas,” Attakapas Gazette 19 (1984): 42–48. 49. George Morgan to Diego Gardoqui, September 9, 1788, AHN, Estado, 3894 and 3888 bis, in Navarro and Solano, ¿Conspiración española?, 241–48. 50. James Wilkinson to Esteban Miró and Martín Navarro, New Orleans, September 5, 1787, AGI, PC, 2373, and AHN, Estado, 3888 bis, in Navarro and Solano, ¿Conspiración española?, 187– 202. One of the conditions stipulated by George Morgan was expressed ambiguously as the “free toleration of religion.” Morgan to Gardoqui, September 9, 1788, cit. 51. See Jack D. L. Holmes, “Father Francis Lennan and His Activities in Spanish Louisiana and West Florida,” Louisiana Studies 5, no. 4 (1966): 255–68, and “Irish Priests in Spanish Natchez,” Journal of Mississippi History 29 (1967): 169–80; Gilbert C. Din, “The Irish Mission to West Florida,” Louisiana History 12, no. 4 (1971): 315–34. 52. See the discussions in Jack D. L. Holmes, “Spanish Religious Policy in West Florida: Enlightened or Expedient?,” Journal of Church and State 15, no. 2 (1973): 259–69, and Michael V. Gannon, “Mitres and Flags: Colonial Religion in the British and Second Spanish Periods,” in ­Eighteenth-​ ­Century Florida: The Impact of the American Revolution, ed. Samuel Proctor (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1978), 76–92.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 235

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

236

Notes to Pages 79–81

53. Aranda to Floridablanca, Paris, April 2, 1787, AHN, Estado, 3889, in Elena Sánchez-​­Fabrés, Situación histórica de las Floridas en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII (1783–1819): Los problemas de una región de frontera (Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1977), 155. 54. Bishop Luis de Peñalver to Carondelet, New Orleans, November 1, 1795. AGI, SD, 2673, and Carmen Cebrián, “La Iglesia en la Luisiana española,” 1:269. 55. Speech of Yaganehuma, Great Medal Chief of the Choctaw Nation . . . ​in the presence of Governor Esteban Miró, interpreted by Luis Forneret, January 3, 1788. AHN, Estado, 3898. 56. David J. Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and Their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), esp. 178–220, discusses changing Spanish attitudes and different policies toward “independent” Native American peoples in this period. For s­ eventeenth-​ ­century precedents of Hispano-​­Indian frontier diplomacy in South America and partial comparison with Luisiana and the Floridas, see Carlos Lázaro, La diplomacia de las fronteras en Indias ([Madrid:] Fundación Larramendi, s.a. [post-​­ 1998]), http://www.larramendi.es/i18n/catalogo_ imagenes/grupo.cmd?path=1000178. 57. Artículos convenidos por el coronel D. Esteban Miró, y el teniente coronel D. Enrique Grimarest, con la nación Chactá [Articles agreed by Colonel Esteban Miró and Lt. Col. Enrique Grimarest with the Choctaw nation], Mobile, July 13 and 14, 1784, AHN, Estado, 3888, 3885 and 3885 bis. 58. Again, this policy was unusual in Spanish America but not unique. Spanish officials in other margins of the empire also negotiated with Native peoples that successfully resisted political domination. See David J. Weber, “Bourbons and Bárbaros: Center and Periphery in the Reshaping of Spanish Indian Policy,” in Negotiated Empires, ed. Daniels and Kennedy, 79–103, and Bárbaros, passim. 59. This is amply illustrated in Spanish sources; for example, in Leyba to Unzaga, October 9, 1772, AGI, PC, 107, in Morris S. Arnold, The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673–1804 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000), 91. 60. Many sources are explicit in this respect as, for example, in Arturo O’Neill to Marqués de Sonora, Pensacola, July 11, 1787, AHN, Estado, 3888, exp. 1, in Charles A. Weeks, Paths to a Middle Ground: The Diplomacy of Natchez, Boukfouka, Nogales and San Fernando de las Barrancas, 1791–1795 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), 35, 19, stressing the need to understand Native cultures in order to cultivate more effectively the loyalty of the Indians. Quote from Arnold, The Rumble, 134. 61. Gilbert C. Din, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Indian Trade in Spanish Arkansas,” in Cultural Encounters in the Early South: Indians and Europeans in Arkansas, ed. Jeannie Whayne (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1995), 112–30; Arnold, The Rumble, especially 79, 81, 108–16, and 123–37. On the meanings of the term “father” in negotiations with North American Natives, see also Weeks, Paths, 29–30, and Weber, Bárbaros, 215–16. 62. Agreement made with the Indian Nations [Red River Caddos] in Assembly, Natchitoches, April 21, 1770, in Athanase de Mézières and the Louisiana-​­Texas Frontier, 1768–1780, ed. Herbert E. Bolton (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1913–1914), 1:157–58. 63. Copies of these treaties signed at Pensacola, May 30–June 1, and Mobile, June 23 and July 14, 1784, with relevant correspondence are in AHN, Estado, 3888, 3885 and 3885 bis. There are several

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 236

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 82–83

237

Spanish editions, for example, Abelardo Levaggi, Diplomacia hispano-​­indígena en las fronteras de América: Historia de los tratados entre la Monarquía española y las comunidades aborígenes (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2002), 283–91. English versions are in Vine Deloria Jr. and Raymond J. DeMallie, eds., Documents of Indian Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775–1979 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 1:122–30. See also Jack D. L. Holmes, “Spanish Treaties with West Florida Indians, 1784–1802,” Florida Historical Quarterly 48, no. 2 (1969): 140–54. 64. The main treaties were those signed at Natchez on May 14, 1792, Boucfouká on May 10, 1793, in AHN, Estado, 3898, and at Nogales on October 28, 1793, in AGI, Docs. Reales y Solemnes, 7, and AGI, PC, 42. Again, there are several Spanish and English editions of these treaties; Spanish, for example, in Levaggi, Diplomacia hispano-​­indígena, 291–300; English versions in Deloria and DeMallie, 1:134–36, and Weeks, Paths, 146–242, together with other relevant documents. 65. See Gilbert C. Din and Abraham P. Nasatir, The Imperial Osages: A Study of Spanish-​­Indian Diplomacy in the Mississippi Valley (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983). 66. See Elizabeth John, Storms Brewed in Other Men’s Worlds: The Confrontation of Indians, Spanish and French in the Southwest, 1540–1795 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996); F. Todd Smith, The Caddo Indians: Tribes at the Convergence of Empires, 1542–1854 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995); F. Todd Smith, The Wichita Indians: Traders of Texas and the Southern Plains, 1540–1845 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000); F. Todd Smith, From Dominance to Disappearance: The Indians of Texas and the Near Southwest, 1786–1859 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005); Arnold, The Rumble; Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). 67. For example, Unzaga to Piernas, New Orleans, August 21, 1772, in Din and Nasatir, The Imperial Osages, 82. 68. Bernardo de Gálvez, Instrucción formada en virtud de real orden de S.M., que se dirige al Señor Comandante General de Provincias Internas don Jacobo Ugarte y Loyola. México 26 agosto 1786, Art. 29, in Raíces hispánicas del oeste de Norteamérica: Textos históricos, ed. Sylvia L. Hilton (Madrid: Fundación Tavera; Dallas: Southern Methodist University, Clements Center for Southwest Studies, 1999), 11. Also online in Library of Congress, Historias Paralelas: España, Estados Unidos y la Frontera Americana, at http://international.loc.gov/cgi-​­bin/query/r?intldl/esbib:@ field(NUMBER+@od1(llesp+0005_0003)). English ed. by Donald E. Worcester, Instructions for Governing the Interior Provinces of New Spain, 1786 (Berkeley: Quivira Society, 1951). 69. For a detailed Spanish report on the northern British Indian trade, see Zenón de Trudeau, lieutenant governor of Upper Luisiana, to Carondelet, St. Louis, May 20, 1793, n. 73, in Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1:174–80. Other discussions of British control of commerce on both sides of the Upper Mississippi north of St. Louis are in Trudeau to Carondelet, St. Louis, November 12, 1792, and May 31, 1794, in Nasatir, Before Lewis and Clark, 1:162, 230. 70. William E. Foley and C. David Rice, The First Chouteaus: River Barons of Early St. Louis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 26, 36–38, and 73. 71. Again, this measure was unusual but not unique in this period. British traders and settlers shored up Spanish authority among the Indians of Mosquitia, too. See Doug Tompson, “The

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 237

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

238

Notes to Pages 83–89

Establecimientos Costeros of Bourbon Central America, 1787–1800: Problems and Paradox in Spain’s Occupation of the Atlantic Coast,” in Politics, Economy, and Society in Bourbon Central America, 1759–1821, ed. Jordana Dym and Christophe Belaubre (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2007), 157–84. 72. See William S. Coker and Thomas D. Watson, Indian Traders of the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Panton, Leslie & Company, and John Forbes & Company, 1783–1847 (Pensacola: University of West Florida Press, 1986), and William S. Coker, “The Columbian Exchange in the Floridas: Scots, Spaniards, and Indians, 1783–1821,” Colonial Latin American Historical Review 3, no. 3 (1994): 305–25. 73. Memorial de la Casa Panton, Leslie & Cía., San Agustín, July 31, 1784, and Céspedes to Bernardo de Gálvez, San Agustín, August 16, 1784. AHN, Estado, leg. 3901, exp. 5. See also Sánchez-​ ­Fabrés, Situación histórica, 38–40, and Coker and Watson, Indian Traders, 64–65. 74. Juan Ventura Morales to the Secretary of State, New Orleans, December 31, 1801, AHN, Estado, 3888. 75. The total cost of gifts, hospitality, salaries of interpreters, and diverse other expenses increased from about $4,000 in 1769 to $55,209 in 1794, when it represented about ten percent of the total administrative budget of Luisiana and West Florida. Holmes, Gayoso, 154. 76. See, for example, José de Gálvez to Bernardo de Gálvez, July 1, 1782, AGI, PC, 1375; O’Neill to José de Ezpeleta, Pensacola, October 19, 1783, AGI, PC, 36; Miró to Navarro, April 15, 1784, and Navarro to José de Gálvez, July 27, 1784, both in AGI, PC, 633; Miró to Bernardo de Gálvez, August 1, 1784, AHN, Estado, 3885, exp. 22, doc. 2; Miró to Marqués de Sonora, New Orleans, June 1, 1787, AGI, PC, 200, n. 12; Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, “Dictamen sobre los medios de asegurar el dominio de España en la Florida y Luisiana y sobre el proyecto para aumentar su comercio.” San Lorenzo, November 11, 1792, in Campomanes, Inéditos políticos (Oviedo: Clásicos Asturianos del Pensamiento Político, 1996), 311–12, or the summarized history of this policy in “Informe ministerial sobre los privilegios comerciales de Panton, Leslie & Cía.,” January 21, 1800, AHN, Estado, 3888, doc. 93. 77. “Speeches among the chiefs of the Chickasaw Nation,” San Fernando de las Barrancas, December 15, 1796, enclosed in Carondelet to Príncipe de la Paz, New Orleans, February 9, 1797, AHN, Estado, 3888. 78. Gayoso to Cherokee Nation, New Orleans, November 4, 1797, copy enclosed with Irujo to Prince of the Peace, Primrose Hill, near Philadelphia, September 17, 1798, AHN, Estado, 3897.

Chapter 4 1. Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana (hereafter RSCL) 1764/09/04/01 (the number corresponds to year/month/day/sequence); see also RSCL 1764/09/03/01, 1764/09/04/02, 1764/09/05/01, 1764/09/05/02, 1764/09/07/01, 1764/09/07/03 (request for interrogation under torture), 1764/09/08/01 (interrogation under torture), 1764/09/10/01 (torture), 1764/09/10/02 (sentence). In Louisiana, “Bambara” seems to have been a generic shorthand for non-​­Muslim; see Peter Caron, “ ‘Of a Nation Which the Others Do Not Understand’: Bambara Slaves and African Ethnicity in Colonial Louisiana, 1718–60,” Slavery and Abolition 18, no. 1 (1997): 98–121.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 238

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 90–92

239

2. On French judicial processes, including the role of judicial torture in criminal investigations, see Benoît Garnot, Crime et justice aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Imago, 2000), 121–30; André Lachance, Crimes et criminels en Nouvelle-​­France (Montréal: Boréal Express, 1984), 83–87; also Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), chaps. 1–2. 3. RSCL 1760/09/03/01. Thefts by slaves from fellow slaves, often those living on plantations, were not usually prosecuted, though they might be subject to internal regulation within the plantation or slave community. For an example of self-​­policing, see RSCL 1766/04/02/02, discussed in Sophie White, “ ‘Wearing Three or Four Handkerchiefs around His Neck, and Elsewhere about Him’: Slaves’ Constructions of Masculinity and Ethnicity in French Colonial New Orleans,” Gender and History 15 (November 2003): 528–49; also RSCL 1744/12/26/04, 1748/04/06/01, 1758/07/10/01, 1760/09/03/01, 1765/03/02/01, 1765/08/02/04, and 1766/06/30/01. 4. RSCL 1764/09/07/01, 1764/09/04/02. 5. John Styles, “Clothes and the Non-​­Elite in the North of England, 1660–1800,” in Échanges et cultures textiles dans l’Europe pré-​­industrielle, ed. Jacques Bottin and Nicole Pellegrin, Revue du Nord special issue no. 12 (1996): 306. 6. Historians of the English colonies have mined plantation accounts and runaway advertisements to probe slaves’ relationship to dress and the agency that it enabled. These sources have provided rich material for the analysis of the formal provision of apparel to the enslaved, and of the significance of dress in the construction of slave identity, including evidence of the preservation of West African sartorial traditions. See for example Linda Baumgarten, “ ‘Clothes for the People’: Slave Clothing in Early Virginia,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts 14, no. 2 (1988): 26–70; Steeve O. Buckridge, The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1760–1890 (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2004); Shane White and Graham White, Stylin’: African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008); Jonathan Prude, “ ‘To Look upon the “Lower Sort’ ”: Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in America, 1750–1800?,” Journal of American History 78, no. 1 (1991): 124–59; and David Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways: Self-​­Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-​­Century Mid-​­Atlantic,” William and Mary Quarterly 56, no. 2 (1999): 241–72. 7. As Melissa Niang notes in her study of criminality in Senegal, what constituted criminality in any given society and period depended on cultural values; see “La Criminalité au Sénégal” (Ph.D. diss., Université de Droit, d’Économie et des Sciences d’Aix-​­Marseille, 1995), 3–4. 8. Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal, Histoire de l’Amérique française (Paris: Flammarion, 2003), 349–53, and Cécile Vidal, “Private and State Violence against African Slaves in Lower Louisiana during the French Period, 1699–1769,” in New World Orders: Violence, Sanction, and Authority in the Colonial Americas, ed. John Smolenski and Thomas J. Humphrey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 92–110. 9. See White, “ ‘Wearing Three or Four Handkerchiefs,’ ” 532. 10. Robert S. DuPlessis, “Cloth and the Emergence of the Atlantic Economy,” in The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel, ed. Peter A. Coclanis (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 73. On

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 239

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

240

Notes to Pages 92–93

Louisiana, see John G. Clark, La Rochelle and the Atlantic Economy during the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 112–13. 11. Gaston Martin, Nantes au XVIIIe siècle. L’ère des négriers (1714–1774) (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1931), 46–53, and Jean Meyer, L’Armement nantais dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N, 1969); also Linda Heywood and John Thornton, “Central African Leadership and the Appropriation of European Culture,” in The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624, ed. Peter C. Mancall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 194–224; Joseph E. Inikori, “Slavery and Atlantic Commerce, 1650–1800,” American Economic Review 82, no. 2 (1992): 151–57, and “Slavery and the Revolution in Cotton Textile Production in England,” Social Science History 13, no. 4 (1989): 343–79. 12. Sophie White, “Geographies of Slave Consumption: French Colonial Louisiana and a World of Things,” Winterthur Portfolio 44, no. 2/3 (2011): 229–48. See also Colleen E. Kriger, “ ‘Guinea Cloth’: Production and Consumption of Cotton Textiles in West Africa before and during the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850, ed. Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Richard Roberts, “West Africa and the Pondicherry Textile Industry,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 31, no. 2 (1994): 117–45; Valérie Bérinstain, “Les toiles de l’Inde et la Compagnie des Indes, XVIIe -​­ XVIIIe siècles,” Cahiers de la Compagnie des Indes 2 (1997): 25–32. 13. Louisiana Historical Collections, Louisiana State Museum (hereafter LSM) III 2852.23 March 1724: Code Noir. 14. See, for example, RSCL 1748/06/11/02. 15. Slaves’ marketing and associated activities across the Atlantic have revealed evidence of the persistence in the New World of West African practices pertaining to marketing, with historians being especially attuned to the informal economy of the enslaved in terms of the production and marketing of foodstuffs. On Louisiana, see Daniel H. Usner Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 160–65 and 200–204, and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 176–79. On other Atlantic colonies, see, for example, Robert Olwell, “ ‘Loose, Idle and Disorderly’: Slave Women in the E ­ ighteenth-​­Century Charleston Marketplace,” in More than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas, ed. David Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 97–110; Betty Wood: Women’s Work, Men’s Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan, eds., The Slaves’ Economy: Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas (Portland, Ore.: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1991); Verene Sheperd and Hilary Beckles, eds., Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World (Princeton, N.J.: Marcus Wiener Publishers, 2000); Hilary Beckles, “An Economic Life of Their Own: Slaves as Commodity Producers and Distributors in Barbados,” Slavery and Abolition 12, no. 1 (1991): 31–47. 16. See Cécile Vidal’s discussion of Louisiana as a slave society in the introduction to this volume. 17. Laurence Fontaine, Histoire du colportage en Europe (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993); Margaret

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 240

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 93–96

241

Spufford, The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and Their Wares in the Seventeenth Century (1984; reprint, London: Hambledon & London, 2003). 18. As Beverly Lemire has argued in her work on theft and consumption in England, “Knowingly or unknowingly, these thieves relied on the pressures of popular consumerism and the deficiencies of existing production levels”; Dress, Culture, Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660–1800 (Palgrave: New York, 1997), 135. Daniel Roche has confirmed the “enduring myth of the old-​­clothes man as thief and cheat” and of the second-​­hand clothes dealer as the “almost obligatory intermediary between the sartorial culture of the rich and that of the poor” in France; see The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 331; see also Elizabeth C. Sanderson, “Nearly New: The Second-​­hand Clothing Trade in Eighteenth-​­Century Edinburgh,” Costume 31 (1997): 38–48 and contributions to Per una Storia della Moda Pronta: Problemi e Ricerche (Florence: E.D.I.F.I.R., 1991). On Anglo-​­America, see Marla R. Miller, The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 29–30, and Serena Zabin, “Women’s Trading Networks and Dangerous Economies in Eighteenth-​­Century New York City,” Early American Studies 4, no. 2 (2006): 305–11. 19. See RSCL 1747/02/17/01, 1764/08/02/01, 1764/09/04/01, 1764/09/04/02, 1765/10/26/02, 1765/10/29/01. 20. For an example from Natchitoches, see White, “Geographies of Slave Consumption.” 21. On Carlier, see Alexandre Dubé’s essay in this volume. 22. RSCL 176/509/09/02. 23. On this gender division of labor, upheld by the guild structure but beginning to be eroded in some respects over the eighteenth century, see Clare Haru Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001); also Nicole Pellegrin, “Les Vertus de ‘l’ouvrage’: Recherches sur la féminisation des travaux d’aiguille (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles),” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 46, no. 4 (1999): 747–69. 24. Kaskaskia Manuscript 25:8:13:1 and 25:8:28:1. 25. Beckles, “An Economic Life,” 41–44; also Elsa V. Goveia, “The West Indian Slave Laws of the Eighteenth Century,” in Shepherd and Beckles, Caribbean Slavery, 580–96. 26. Archives de la Marine, A 23 f.43, November 13, 1723, and LSM, Code Noir. 27. Olwen Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-​­Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 260–61. 28. ANOM COL C13A 35 f. 39, New Orleans, February 28–March 1, 1751; also Vaudreuil Papers, Loudoun Collection, Huntington Library, LO 222, September 26, 1750, Rouillé to Vaudreuil and Michel and O/S LO 257: [c. 1750], from Vaudreuil; also Thomas N. Ingersoll, “Slave Codes and Judicial Practice in New Orleans, 1718–1807,” Law and History Review 13, no. 1 (1995): 40–41. 29. White, “ ‘Wearing Three or Four Handkerchiefs,’ ” 534–35. 30. RSCL 1743/08/24/04. See also RSCL 1747/04/08/01, the case against the free slave Jeannette who was condemned to be reenslaved for her debts (the case is briefly discussed in Ingersoll, “Slave Codes and Judicial Practice,” 33). 31. Garnot, Crime et justice; also Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-​­Century France, chap. 9, and “The Urban Criminal in Eighteenth-​­Century France,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 67 (1984): 474–99.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 241

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

242

Notes to Pages 96–98

32. The sentences for the theft of handkerchiefs in France are cited in Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-​­Century France, 251n5. 33. Lachance, Crimes et criminels en Nouvelle-​­France, 43–49. 34. In 1731 a group of seven French soldiers, a settler, and his wife were prosecuted for theft and receiving. Four of the soldiers were court-​­martialed and sentenced to death for robbing the warehouses of Fort Condé and executed by firing squad (the other soldiers had escaped). The settler and his wife were sentenced to death for receiving the stolen goods, but their sentence was temporarily suspended pending the arrival in the colony of an executioner; see ANOM COL C13A 13 f. 197–201v, Beauchamps to Maurepas, November 5, 1731. The same document references a woman who was accused of being a receiver and whom the curate of Mobile had hidden in his garret for three weeks; an official report was made of this case, but the outcome is unknown. For two rare extant prosecutions of whites in the 1760s, for the theft of livestock, see RSCL 1764/04/04/01 and 1764/04/07/02; 1766/10/04/01. Conversely, in 1752 a settler, Delille Dupart, made a claim against another settler, Bertrand, whom he accused of killing a heifer and injuring the slaves who had accosted him. Dupart’s claim was for medical costs incurred in the treatment of his slaves; Bertrand himself was not arrested or prosecuted by the Superior Council; see RSCL 1753/03/08/02. 35. RSCL 1765/09/21/01and 1765/09/21/02. 36. See the incomplete list of slave crimes given in Hall, Africans, Appendix B, 399–401. 37. See Roche, The Culture of Clothing, chap. 12. 38. RSCL 1744/03/12/01, 1744/03/12/02, 1744/03/13/01, 1744/03/14/02, 1744/03/16/01, 1744/03/17/01, 1744/03/18/01, 1744/03/18/02, 1744/03/19/01; also A. Baillardel and A. Prioult, eds., Le chevalier de Pradel. Vie d’un colon français en Louisiane au XVIIIe siècle d’après sa correspondance et celle de sa famille (Paris: Librairie orientale et américaine Maisonneuve frères, 1928), 260–61. 39. White, “ ‘Wearing Three or Four Handkerchiefs.’ ” 40. See Sanderson, “Nearly New,” 43, for references to a number of cases that illustrate the practice of cutting cloth into garments (and removing any laundry markings), or taking garments to pieces, as a way to disguise stolen items. This work could be carried out either by the thief him or herself, or by shopkeepers and dressmakers who could be counted on for their discretion; see also Lemire, Dress, Culture, Commerce, 143. 41. On the textile and sartorial cultures in different West African societies, see for example Carolyn Keyes Adenaike, “West African Textiles, 1500–1800,” in Textiles: Production, Trade, and Demand, ed. Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 251–62, and in the same volume, Jan Vansina, “Raffia Cloth in West Central Africa, 1500–1800,” 263–82; Colleen E. Kriger, Cloth in West African History (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2006); John Picton, The Art of African Textiles: Technology, Tradition and Lurex (London: Barbican Art Gallery, 1995); John Gillow, African Textiles (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003), 17–106; John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); also Doran Ross, Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1998), and Helen Bradley Foster, “New Raiments of Self ”: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South (Oxford: Berg, 1997), chap. 1. 42. On the common practice of unraveling imported silks in Allada to provide thread for textiles rewoven there, see Thornton, Africa and Africans, 52.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 242

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 99–103

243

43. See also the references to two shirts, one with a laundry mark, the other one without, in the case against Cézard: RSCL 1764/04/25/06. 44. A similar emphasis on French soldiers and company employees as potential transgressors characterizes the “Reglemens de la Compagnie royalle du Senegal et Costes d’affrique,” March 14, 1721, ANOM COL C6 6, see esp. Articles 17, 18, 22, which dwell on clothing, but also 24 and 28. See also André Delcourt, La France et les établissements français au Sénégal entre 1713 et 1763 (Dakar: Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire, 1952), esp. 97, 105–6. My thanks to Guillaume Aubert for bringing these sources to my attention. 45. ANOM COL C13A 35 f. 39–52v, February 18, 1751, Regulations of Police for the Province of Louisiana. 46. RSCL 1763/09/03/01. See also the 1767 statute passed in Natchitoches, Natchitoches Archives (microfilm copy in Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) (hereafter NP), Miscellaneous Archive Records 1733–1819, #520, November 29, 1767. 47. Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, 5th ed. (Paris: Chez J. J. Smits et Ce, 1798). 48. RSCL 1723/05/20/01, 1723/05/22/02, and 1723/05/22/03. Marie Lespronne’s role in the robbery had no long-​­term repercussions for her life or reputation. She married a carpenter in 1730 and from 1732 to 1743 held leadership positions in the New Orleans Laywomen’s confraternity; see Emily Clark, “ ‘By All the Conduct of Their Lives’: A Laywomen’s Confraternity in New Orleans, 1730–1744,” William and Mary Quarterly 54, no. 4 (1997): 784 and 786. 49. See also Wendy A. Woloson’s discussion of pawning in early (Anglo-​­)America as a mainstream economic activity, “an essential way to obtain ready cash for everyone but the privileged few,” in “In Hock: Pawning in Early America,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 1 (2007): 35–81. 50. RSCL 1723/07/15/01. See, for example, Sarah Hand Meacham, “Keeping the Trade: The Persistence of Tavernkeeping among Middling Women in Colonial Virginia,” Early American Studies 3, no. 1 (2005): esp. 147–48, and Serena R. Zabin, ed., The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741 (Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2004), 25–27. Styles also points out in his study of non-​­elite clothing in the north of England that tailors and innkeepers often appeared in criminal trials as purchasers of stolen clothes, with innkeepers often operating as informal pawnbrokers; see “Clothes and the Non-​­Elite,” 295–308. 51. For example, see NP Conveyance Record Book 1: 1738–1765, #186, 1757/7, in which it was the wife of a blacksmith who had altered and possibly fenced textiles stolen by a group of slaves. 52. RSCL 1764/09/10/02.

Chapter 5 The chapter title translates as “A slave named Lubin who does not know his nation.” It is taken from St. Charles Parish Courthouse (hereafter SCPC), Acts of Antoine Saint Amand and Jacques Massicot, “Encan d’Esclaves appartenant au Sr. Despau,” January 1, 1795, no. 1262. 1. Brother Jerome Lepre, The Carrière Family: Jean Carrière and Marie Chauffert (New Orleans: the author, 1985), and The Despau Family (New Orleans: the author, 1985). About Despau, see also the New Orleans 1805 census and LSU Special Collections, Mss. 112. 2. Glenn R. Conrad, ed., The German Coast: Abstracts of the Civil Records of Saint Charles and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 243

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

244

Notes to Pages 103–106

Saint John the Baptist Parishes, 1804–1812 (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1981), 25; Glenn Conrad, ed., Saint Charles: Abstracts of the Civil Records of St. Charles Parish, 1700–1803 (Lafayette: USL History Series, 1974), 389–407. 3. Conrad, Saint Charles, 212. 4. SCPC, Acts of Antoine St. Amand, 1803–1804, “Récapitulation générale des individus du district St. Charles,” no. 1982. 5. Gwendolyn M. Hall, Afro-​­Louisiana History and Genealogy, http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave. 6. See Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007). 7. Deborah Jenson, “Jean-​­Jacques Dessalines and the African Character of the Haitian Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 69, no. 3 (2012): 618. 8. Paul Lovejoy, “The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of Ethnicity, Culture, and Religion under Slavery,” Studies in the World History of Slavery. Abolition and Emancipation 2, no. 1 (1997), http://www.yorku.ca/nhp/publications/Lovejoy_Studies%20in%20the%20World%20History %20of%20Slavery.pdf; Paul Lovejoy, “Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora,” in Identity in the Shadow of Slavery, ed. Paul Lovejoy (New York: Continuum, 2000), 1–29; Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks. The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 5; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, “African Ethnicities and the Meanings of ‘Mina,’ ” in Trans-​­Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora, ed. Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman (New York: Continuum, 2003), 65–81; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities: Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 22–54; Douglas Chambers, “ ‘My own nation’: Igbo Exiles in the Diaspora,” in Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity, and Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, ed. David Eltis and David Richardson (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 72–97. 9. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas; Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks; Kevin Roberts, “Slaves and Slavery in Louisiana: The Evolution of Atlantic World Identities, 1791–1831” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 2003); Thomas Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South (1718–1819) (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999). 10. The dichotomy is probably flawed from the outset, as the historians of “Africanization” usually call the hypothesis of Richard Price and Sidney Mintz the “Creolization” theory, though the word itself was not used by Mintz and Price. For an interesting synthesis on the question, see Stephan Palmié’s critical examination of “Africanization,” “Is There a Model in the Muddle? ‘Creolization’ in African Americanist History and Anthropology,” in Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, ed. Charles Stewart (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2007), 178–200. For a synthesis from the opposite point of view, see Douglas Chambers, “The Black Atlantic: Theory, Method, and Practice,” in The Atlantic World, 1450–2000, ed. Toyin Falola and Kevin Roberts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 151–73. 11. Michel Rolph-​­Trouillot calls those conditions “the historical conditions of cultural production” or the “concrete circumstances faced by the individuals” in “Cultures on the Edges: Creolization in the Plantation Context,” Plantation Society in the Americas 5, no. 1 (1998): 8–9 and 15–20.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 244

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 106–112

245

12. On this opposition, see, on the one hand, the work of Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and, on the other hand, that of Peter Caron and Thomas Ingersoll. 13. Jenson, “Jean-​­Jacques Dessalines,” 616–17. 14. Richard Price, “On the Miracle of Creolization,” in Afro-​­Atlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora, ed. Kevin A. Yelvington (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2006), 113–45: “The clarion call of the M&P essay was historicization and contextualization—the same careful exploration of sociohistorical particulars that Mintz (1971) had first called for in the study of Creole languages in the 1960s” (125). 15. Trouillot, “Cultures on the Edges: Creolization in the Plantation Context,” 8–9. Recent examples of this “return to the particulars” include Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 5, 7–8, and Anthony E. Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 1. 16. T. H. Breen, “Creative Adaptations: Peoples and Cultures,” in Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era, ed. Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 198. Breen further says that “a full understanding of the transfer and development of early American cultures . . . ​assumed a thorough knowledge of the specific historical contexts in which interaction occurred” (197). 17. Breen, “Creative Adaptations,” 205. 18. Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 283. 19. SCPC, Acts of Jacques Masicot, 1792–1793, “Succession de feue Dame Cécile Le Vasseur Vve Jean Pisero,” no. 1099, “Vente des esclaves effets et bestiaux de Mr Louis Meullion,” no. 1147. 20. Nigel Bolland, “Reconsidering Creolisation and Creole Societies,” Shibboleths: Journal of Comparative Theory 1, no. 1 (2006): 1–2. In other words, as T. H. Breen put it in 1984, “Timing of transfer, therefore, functioned as an important constraint upon cultural adaptation” (“Creative Adaptations,” 205). 21. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 22. Thomas Ingersoll, for example, stresses the importance of the slave trade in the Spanish period as a continuous phenomenon. While his position is justified by his overall theory of continuity, it is disproved by extant primary sources. See Mammon and Manon, 184. See also his “inundation” metaphor in “The Slave Trade and the Ethnic Diversity of Louisiana’s Slave Community,” Louisiana History 37, no. 2 (1996): 134. 23. Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 107: “Once accomplished, the Africanization of slavery was not necessarily completed, as in times creoles . . . ​reasserted themselves, only to be replaced by a new wave of African arrivals. Reafricanization frustrates any notion of a linear progression from African to Creole” (emphasis added). 24. An evocative comment on the state of the Louisiana slave trade in the Spanish period is that of Martin Navarro in June 1786, “El comercio de negros, no obstante la carencia de plata, continua, bien que lentamente [my emphasis],” Spanish National Library, “Collección de documentos sobre Luisiana,” “Oficio de Dn Martin Navarro al Marques de la Sonora,” folio 130. 25. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 5, 191,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 245

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

246

Notes to Pages 112–116

26. Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec, “Slave Migrations in Spanish and Early American Louisiana,” Louisiana History 46, no. 2 (2005): 185–209 and 211–30. See also “Slave Migrations and Slave Control in Spanish and Early American Louisiana,” in Empires of the Imagination: Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase, ed. Peter Kastor and François Weil (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2009), 204–38. See also Greg O’Malley, “Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Migration from the Caribbean to North America, 1619–1807,” in William and Mary Quarterly 66, no. 1 (2009): 125–72. 27. Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 60. 28. David Geggus, “The French Slave Trade: An Overview,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 126, 131. 29. Herbert S. Klein, “The English Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1782–1808,” Economic History Review 31, no. 1 (1978): 25, 33. 30. Roderick A. McDonald, “Measuring the British Slave Trade to Jamaica, 1789–1808: A Comment,” Economic History Review 33, no. 2 (1980): 254–55. 31. For comparative purposes, see the work of John Coombs on Virginia, “ ‘The Substantial Planters Have of Those Negro Slaves’: The Transformation of Elite Labor Forces and the Development of Slave Society in Early Colonial Virginia,” unpublished Harvard Atlantic History Seminar Working Paper WP#04CR020. Also Philip D. Morgan, “The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations, and New World Developments,” in Eltis and Richardson, Routes to Slavery, 139. 32. The words are from Lorena S. Walsh, “The Chesapeake Slave Trade: Regional Patterns, African Origins, and Some Implications,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 17. She refers to the slave purchasing patterns specific to the Lower James naval district, where most slaves arrived on trans-​­shipments from the West Indies. 33. Morgan, “The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade,” 139. 34. Farmers and planters in St. Charles may have purchased slaves in other parishes, but I assumed that most would have either drawn from the markets of New Orleans or neighboring St. John the Baptist. For records notarized in St. Charles, I used Glenn Conrad’s abstracts of civil records. For those notarized in Orleans and St. John the Baptist, I interrogated the database prepared by Gwendolyn Hall. I made four different searches in this database and looked, in the process, at the sales of over 20,000 slaves. First, I searched for all acts of sale notarized in Orleans Parish for which the origins of the purchasers were specified (658 records). Then I searched for all known sales of new Africans (2,788 records) and sorted the names of the purchasers by alphabetical order. The next step was to compare this list to another one combining all names reported in the St. Charles Parish civil records between 1770 and 1812 and those found in the 1804 and 1810 parish censuses. This way, a certain number of records not returned by my first query—the origins of the purchasers were not always indicated by the Orleans notaries—were brought to the fore. I repeated the process with all other known sales of Africans (1,246 records), Creoles and other slaves without specified origins (15,824 records), and all slaves sold in St. John the Baptist (553 records). I was thus able to single out the sales of 1,091 slaves—527 Africans, of whom 210 were newly arrived, 348 Creoles, of whom at least 283 were from Louisiana, and 216 slaves of unknown origins. 35. In 1804, it was the second most important sugar plantation after that of Jean-​­Noël

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 246

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 116–122

247

Destrehan’s sugar plantation. See SCPC, Acts of Antoine Saint Amand, “Récapitulation générale des individus du district St Charles,” no. 1982. 36. SCPC, Acts of Francois S. Bellile, no. 387, “Inventaire et vente des biens de Mr Labranche a la mort de sa femme,” December 5, 1780. 37. Conrad, “Récapitulation général [sic] des individus du district St. Charles,” Abstracts of the Civil Records, 389–407. 38. 1810 U.S. Federal Census. 39. Hall, Afro-​­Louisiana History and Genealogy, http://www.ibiblio.org/laslave. 40. SCPC, Acts of Jacques Massicot, no. 1147, “Vente des esclaves effets et bestiaux de Mr. Louis Meuillon,” January 16–18, 1793. Hall says it is a probate inventory. It is not. Meuillon is present at the sale. 41. See Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 14: “The African-​­born, despite the length of time spent away from their homeland, retained a psychic attachment and orientation toward Africa. The birth of American born children, however, created a crisis for African parents.” On tensions between “Creoles” and newcomers, see Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, introduction and 101. See also Kaye, Joining Places, 10. 42. On this proximity, see Daniel H. Usner, “ ‘The Facility Offered by the Country’: The Creolization of Agriculture in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” in Creolization in the Americas, ed. David Buisseret and Steven G. Reinhardt (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 35–62. 43. On indigo in the early Spanish period, see Spanish National Library, Mss/19265, “Memoria historica y politica sobre la Luisiana por Don Francisco Bouligny, Madrid, 16 de Agosto de 1776,” 15–16. 44. Emily Clark and Virginia Gould, “The Feminine Face of Afro-​­Catholicism in New Orleans, 1727–1852,” William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 2 (2002): 431. 45. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 10. 46. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 25. 47. Trouillot, “Cultures on the Edges,” 16. 48. Spanish National Library, “Memorial del Cabildo de NO al Rey,” Mss 19248, ff. 167–75. 49. C. C. Robin, Voyages dans l’intérieur de la Louisiane (Paris: F. Buisson, 1807), tome 3, 173. “Les nègres doivent, au lever du soleil, se rendre au champ. . . . ​Ils sont conduits ou par un commandeur nègre, ou par un économe blanc, ou par le propriétaire même, ce qui est le plus ordinaire.” 50. Michael Tadman, “The Demographic Cost of Sugar: Debates on Slave Societies and Natural Increase in the Americas,” American Historical Review 105, no. 5 (2000): 1534–75. 51. On “circulations” as a useful paradigm in the history of slavery, see Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 200. 52. The phrase is borrowed from Charles Stewart in his introduction to Creolization. History, Ethnography, Theory. In his concluding remarks, he proposes “a useful change of perspective on how creolization operates.” According to him (19), switching from the mixture metaphor to the idea of “restructuring” might help.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 247

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

248

Notes to Pages 125–126

Chapter 6 This essay was presented at the two workshops on Louisiana and the Atlantic world that took place in Paris at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and in New Orleans at Tulane University in November 2007 and April 2008; at the American History Research Seminar of the Rothermere American Institute, Cambridge University, in June 2008; and then at the Transitions to Modernity Colloquium, Yale University, in February 2009. I thank the participants in these workshops and seminars very much for their valuable comments. 1. Thomas Marc Fiehrer, “The African Presence in Colonial Louisiana: An Essay on the Continuity of Caribbean Culture,” in Louisiana’s Black Heritage, ed. Robert R. MacDonald and John R. Kemp (New Orleans: Louisiana State Museum, 1979), 3–31 (quotation on 3). 2. Ann Laura Stoler, Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 42. 3. Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974; New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 3–34 (quotation on 34). 4. Marcel Giraud, Histoire de la Louisiane française, 4 vol. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953–1974); A History of French Louisiana, vol. 5 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991). 5. Alfred E. Lemmon and John H. Lawrence, “Common Routes: St. Domingue and Louisiana,” in Common Routes St. Domingue—Louisiana (Paris and New Orleans: Somogy Art Publishers and Historic New Orleans Collection, 2006), 85; The Common Routes of Louisiana and Haiti: A Creative Power, special issue of Southern Quarterly 44, no. 3 (2007). 6. See, for instance, Jean-​­Bernard Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes occidentales (Paris: Le Jay, 1768), 5–19, 157, 179, 181; Jean-​­Bernard Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale (Amsterdam: Changuion, 1777), 5, 350–80; Dumont de Montigny, Regards sur le monde atlantique, 1715–1747 (Sillery: Septentrion, 2008), 91–93, 134–35; Antoine-​­Simon Le Page du Pratz, Histoire de la Louisiane (Paris: De Bure l’aîné, la veuve Delaguette, Lambert, 1758), 1:7–8, 30–33; 2:21, 39, 355, 359–61, 379–80, 384, 386–88; “Relation de Voyage de la Louisianne ou Nouvlle France fait par le Sr CAILLOT en l’année 1730,” Historic New Orleans Collection, 68–92, 108; [Marie Madeleine Hachard], Relation du Voyage des Dames religieuses Ursulines de Rouen à La Nouvelle-​­Orléans, with an introduction and notes by Gabriel Gravier (1728; Paris: Maisonneuve, 1872), 55–60, 95. See also Pierre Clément de Laussat, Mémoires, 157, quoted by Gabriel Debien and René Le Gardeur, “Les colons de Saint-​­Domingue réfugiés à la Louisiane (1792–1804),” Revue de Louisiane/Louisiana Review 10, no. 2 (1981): 135. 7. Lemmon and Lawrence, “Common Routes: St. Domingue and Louisiana,” 85–86. 8. For the distinction between “society with slaves” and “slave societies,” although he argues that French Louisiana society could not qualify as a “slave society,” see Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 77–92. 9. I use the French modern expression métissage, which was not used in the early modern period, since the word “miscegenation” has such a current racist connotation in present-​­day American society. However, the idea of métissage in the eighteenth century was no less related to

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 248

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 126–127

249

race-​­thinking than that of miscegenation. When the expression métissage appeared in the nineteenth century to designate hybridity or crossbreeds between first animals and then human beings, it was linked to the development of a scientific theory of race. Laurier Turgeon and Anne-​­Hélène Kerbiriou, “Métissages, de glissements en transferts de sens,” in Regards croisés sur le métissage, ed. Laurier Turgeon (Sainte-​­Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2002), 1–20. 10. Paul Lachance, “Existe-​­t-​­il un seul modèle colonial français en Amérique du Nord? Recherches récentes sur les relations raciales en Louisiane,” in De Québec à l’Amérique française. Histoire et mémoire, ed. Thomas Wien, Cécile Vidal, and Yves Frénette (Sainte-​­Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006), 139–53. 11. The parish registers, which are in the Archdiocesan Archives in New Orleans, hold records for the baptisms for the years 1731–1733 and 1744–1769 and the marriages for the years 1720–1733 and 1759–1769 (they continue during the Spanish period). There are also some certificates in the État civil des colonies in Aix-​­en-​­Provence, but they are only “extracts from the baptism registers of the parish church of New Orleans” from January 1729 to June 1730. Archives Nationales d’Outre-​ ­Mer (hereafter ANOM) COL G1 412. For a limited use of the New Orleans sacramental records to study métissage, see Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 111–15, 139–40; Lachance, “Existe-​­t-​­il un seul modèle colonial français en Amérique du Nord?,” 149–50; Jennifer M. Spear, “Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana,” William and Mary Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2003): 92–94; Jennifer M. Spear, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 79–82, 97–99. 12. Joseph Zitomersky, “Urbanization in French Colonial Louisiana (1706–1766),” Annales de Démographie historique (1974): 273. 13. In 1737, the population of New Orleans was 43.4 percent white, 55.1 percent African, and 1.5 percent Indian (the figures are, respectively, 25.5 percent, 74 percent, and 0.5 percent for all the French establishments of the Lower Mississippi Valley). In 1766, the city was 51.7 percent white and 48.3 percent African (39.1 and 60.9 percent, respectively, in the Lower Mississippi Valley). See Paul Lachance, “The Growth of the Free and Slave Populations of French Colonial Louisiana,” in French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World, ed. Bradley G. Bond (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 204–43. Those figures concern only the civil population, while each outpost included a number of military units that reinforced the white male overrepresentation. 14. Fiehrer, “The African Presence in Colonial Louisiana,” 10–17; Gwendolyn M. Hall, “The Franco-​­African People of Haiti and Louisiana,” Southern Quarterly 44, no. 3 (2007): 10–17; Laura Foner, “The Free People of Color in Louisiana and St. Domingue: A Comparative Portrait of Two Three-​­Caste Slave Societies,” Journal of Social History 3, no. 4 (1970): 406–30; Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans. 15. Lucien Abénon, La Guadeloupe de 1671 à 1759. Étude politique, économique et sociale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987), 1:54–55, 2:11; Gabriel Debien, Les esclaves aux Antilles françaises (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Basse Terre and Fort-​­de-​­France: Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe and Société d’histoire de la Martinique, 1974), 369–80; Léo Elisabeth, La société martiniquaise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 1664–1789 (Fort-​­de-​­France and Paris: SHM and Karthala, 2003), 259–344; Arlette Gautier, Les sœurs de Solitude. La condition féminine dans l’esclavage aux Antilles du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Paris:

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 249

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

250

Notes to Pages 128–130

Éditions Caribéennes, 1985), 169–70; Jacques Houdaille, “Trois paroisses de Saint-​­Domingue au XVIIIe siècle: Étude démographique,” Population 18, no. 1 (1963): 100–101; Jacques Houdaille, “Le métissage dans les anciennes colonies françaises,” Population 36, no. 2 (1981): 267–86; Anne Pérotin-​­Dumon, La ville aux îles. La ville dans l’île. Basse-​­Terre et Pointe-​­à-​­Pitre, Guadeloupe, 1650–1820 (Paris: Karthala, 2000), 689; Frédéric Régent, Esclavage, métissage, liberté. La Révolution française en Guadeloupe 1789–1802 (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2002), 203–4. 16. See, for example, Thomas N. Ingersoll, “Slave Codes and Judicial Practice in New Orleans, 1718–1807,” Law and History Review 13 (1995): 23–62. 17. Kirsten Fischer, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), 123; Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-​­Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 402; Robert Olwell, “Becoming Free: Manumission and the Genesis of a Free Black Community in South Carolina, 1740–90,” in Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas, ed. Jane G. Landers (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 6–7. 18. Cécile Vidal, “Les implantations françaises au Pays des Illinois au XVIIIe siècle (1699– 1765)” (Ph.D. diss., EHESS, 1995), 485–89. 19. One can assume that his father was white, since he was a habitant, and that his mother was of African or mixed descent because she did not bear a last name. Their son was nevertheless qualified as a free black and not as a free mulatto. However, the mixed ascendancy of Raphaël might have played a role in the authorization of this interracial marriage. 20. Archdiocese of New Orleans, Sacramental Records (hereafter SR) 30/06/1725. 21. ANOM COL B 43 f. 388–407, March 1724. Thomas N. Ingersoll (followed by Guillaume Aubert) has contested the existence of this interracial marriage and suggested instead that the woman was a mulatto, arguing that the priest could not have ignored the Code Noir. Both Ingersoll and Aubert point out that the marriage was classified as a marriage between two nègres in the margin. However, they miss the fact that this indication in the margin was certainly made in the nineteenth century when an index to this register was created, as the ink and writing demonstrate. Moreover, this interpretation also ignores the fact that the union was especially authorized by Boisbriant. See Guillaume Aubert, “ ‘The Blood of France’: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 473–74; Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans, 402 n. 97. 22. Apart from Jean-​­Baptiste Raphaël and Marie Gaspart’s union, the archives testify to only one case of possible sexual relations between a white woman and a black man. Records of the Superior Council of Louisiana (hereafter RSCL) 1764/07/10/02, 1764/07/14/03. 23. SR 10/09/1764. 24. Elisabeth, La société martiniquaise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 246, 259–61, 281–85, 290–95, 315–17, 413–19. 25. SR 03/07/1731, 07/11/1731. 26. Vidal, “Les implantations françaises au Pays des Illinois au XVIIIe siècle (1699–1765),” 489–96. 27. Vidal, “Les implantations françaises au Pays des Illinois au XVIIIe siècle (1699–1765),” 544, 554–57.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 250

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 130–136

251

28. Vidal, “Les implantations françaises au Pays des Illinois au XVIIIe siècle (1699–1765),” 93, 145, 308, 331, 438, 441, 566–70, 584, 589, 631–32. 29. Giraud, A History of French Louisiana, V, 274–76. 30. This is also confirmed by other sources. RSCL 1723/07/13/01, 1723/07/14/01, 1723/07/15/01; ANOM COL G1 412, October 30, 1726; Gwendolyn M. Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 128. 31. When I do not indicate it, the color was not mentioned by the missionary. 32. SR 17/12/1747, 25/04/1748, 02/06/1754, 12/04/1755. In 1729, a child born to a married couple was baptized. The father, François Lambert, was very likely a white man, but since the mother was called by only her first name, Marie Catherine, it is possible that she was not white. SR 22/02/1729. 33. On the Capuchins, see Roger Baudier, The Catholic Church in Louisiana (New Orleans: A. W. Hyatt Stationery Mfg. Co., 1939), 69–85, 90–99, 117, 152–59; Pierre Hamer, Raphaël de Luxembourg: Une contribution luxembourgeoise à la colonisation de la Louisiane (Luxembourg: Publication de la section historique de l’Institut grand-​­ducal, 1966); Charles E. O’Neill, Church and State in French Colonial Louisiana: Policy and Politics to 1732 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966); Claude L. Vogel, The Capuchins in French Louisiana (1722–1766) (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1928). 34. Missionaries also employed all these terms of color to describe the parents and godparents of these children. 35. The term mulâtre appears for the first time in 1726 in the funeral registers to designate a four-​­year-​­old child who belonged to Mr. Delorme, a former director of the Company of the Indies. ANOM COL G1 412, Extracts of the funeral registers of the parish church of New Orleans, 03/07/1726, Extracts of the baptism registers of the parish church of New Orleans, 16/01/1730. 36. The obligation for priests to record the exact phenotype or degree of métissage was not legally imposed in Martinique before 1778. Vincent Cousseau, “Les stratégies de métissage dans une colonie à esclaves: le cas de la Martinique (XVIIe–XIXe siècles),” in Figures d’appartenances (VIIIe–XXe siècle), ed. Michel Cassan and Paul d’Hollander, Temporalités 6 (2010): 33. 37. Elisabeth, La société martiniquaise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 222–23, 284; Vincent Cousseau, “La famille invisible. Illégitimité des naissances et construction des liens familiaux en Martinique (XVIIe siècle–début du XIXe siècle),” Annales de démographie historique 122, no. 2 (2011): 52. 38. Letter of Father Raphaël, dated August 30, 1723, quoted in Hamer, Raphaël de Luxembourg, 65–70; ANOM COL C13A 8 f. 416–420, May 16, 1724, The Capuchins of Louisiana to the Directors of the Company; ANOM COL C13A 10 f. 46v, May 18, 1726, Father Raphaël to Abbé Raguet. 39. Spear, “Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana,” 93–94. On Moreau de Saint-​­Méry’s racial taxonomy, see notably Doris Garraway, The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 260–75; John D. Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-​­Domingue (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 156–59. 40. SR 22/09/1752, 25/09/1753, ?/ ?/1754, 30/12/1757. The term was also used in the West Indies. See Elisabeth, La société martiniquaise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 301. In his Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les Français (1667–1671), Du Tertre underlines the Spanish origins of the word

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 251

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

252

Notes to Pages 136–138

mulâtre and explains that it is an “allusion to mules, because these poor children [mulattoes] are engendered by a white man and a black women, as the mule is the product of two animals from different species” (allusion aux Mulets, parce que ces pauvres enfants [les mulâtres] sont engendrés d’un blanc et d’une noire, comme le Mulet est le produit de deux animaux de différente espèce). In the middle of the eighteenth century, a debate had developed about the origins and unity of human mankind, in Europe. It opposed monogenists and polygenists (the advocates of the existence of one or several human “races”) and led to discussions about the mulattoes and their fertility. It is mainly in the nineteenth century that the belief in the infertility of the mulattoes sustained the development of a racist anthropology. See Garraway, The Libertine Colony, 267–75; Claude Blanckaert, “Of Monstrous Métis? Hybridity, Fear of Miscegenation, and Patriotism from Buffon to Paul Broca,” in The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, ed. Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003), 42–70. 41. SR 13/12/1751. 42. For the first occurrence, see SR 25/12/1760. 43. The missionaries kept baptizing a growing number of enslaved children after the arrival of the Spanish missionaries in 1766. The decline in the number of baptisms in 1768 is certainly related to the revolt against the governor Ulloa. 44. SR 09/06/1748, 13/12/1751, 28/03/1756, 12/12/1757. 45. SR 29/06/1752, 23/03/1755, 31/10/1759, 23/10/1764, 26/05/1765, 21/07/1765, 23/02/1766, 30/03/1766, 30/04/1766, 14/02/1767, 10/09/1769. 46. SR 08/03/1759. 47. SR 05/05/1746, 01/02/1756, 11/11/1758, 12/01/1764, 18/03/1764, 22/03/1767, 19/06/1768, 22/01/1769, 21/05/1769, 26/05/1769. 48. SR 14/09/1767, 29/09/1767. 49. It is difficult to draw some comparisons with other colonies because the rates of métissage are not always calculated in the same way. From 1760 to 1762, 14 percent of the enslaved children of Case-​­Pilote (Martinique) were born to a white father. There were between 12 and 14 percent of the slave population who were of mixed descent in Guadeloupe in the 1770s and 1780s, but this was the case with only 5 percent of the slave community in Saint-​­Domingue at the end of the eighteenth century. See Debien, Les esclaves aux Antilles françaises, 66–67; Arlette Gautier, “Les familles esclaves aux Antilles françaises, 1635–1848,” Population 55, no. 6 (2000): 25–26; Nicole Vanony-​­Frisch, “Les esclaves de la Guadeloupe à la fin de l’Ancien Régime d’après les sources notariales (1770– 1780),” Bulletin de la Société d’histoire de la Guadeloupe, special issue 63–64 (1985): 27–28, 37, 151–52. 50. Out of twenty deeds of manumission of one or several slaves, or related documents in the registers of the Superior Council of Louisiana, thirteen concerned women, women with children, or children manumitted by a single male master (not a woman or a couple). In most of these cases, the master probably manumitted his conjugal and/or sexual partner and/or their children. However, such manumissions were not systematic. For deeds of manumission, see RSCL 1728/07/21/02, 1729/10/22/01, 1735/06/04/01, 1735/06/04/02, 1735/10/09/01, 1736/03/28/01, 1737/07/11/01, 1738/02/15/03, 1740/02/24/02, 1742/05/24/01, 1743/07/16/01, 1743/11/30/02, 1744/07/14/01, 1744/07/14/02, 1745/11/14/01, 1746/02/01/03, 1747/06/20/01, 1757/07/01/01, 1758/07/01/01, 1762/01/22/01, 1762/01/22/02, 1762/02/08/02, 1762/04/10/01, 1767/07/20/03. For manumissions in wills, see RSCL 1736/08/11/03, 1738/08/26/03, 1738/09/07/01, 1739/03/04/04,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 252

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 138–141

253

1738/09/05/01, 1739/07/07/02, 1766/07/30/04, 1767/02/12/01, 1767/08/22/01, 1769/05/26/04, 1769/02/26/01, 1769/11/18/01; “Will of Joseph Default de Pontalba,” July 9, 1760, Louisiana Historical Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1940): 281–83. For other kinds of documents related to successions mentioning manumissions, see RSCL 1740/03/12/02, 1744/12/26/02, 1764/08/07/01, 1767/03/24/01, 1767/05/09/01, 1769/01/10/01; “Petition by Marion, Free Mulatto Woman,” February 6, 1745, Louisiana Historical Quarterly 13, no. 3 (1930): 517. 51. Exceptionally, in one certificate, the baptized child only was qualified as mulâtresse libre, while her mother was only presented as Marie Chateaulin, thus with both a first and last name. However, in a previous and in a later baptism certificate, the (presumably) same Marie Chateaulin, who was present as a godmother and then a mother, was labeled as a mulâtresse libre. SR 25/12/1760, 08/12/1763, 22/12/1768. 52. Aside from the 101 baptized free illegitimate children (of color) born to a single free woman of color (whether the name of the father was mentioned or not), there were only twenty-​­four baptized legitimate children born to a married couple, including a free woman of color between 1744 and 1769. 53. In 1764, a slave deserter knocked at four in the morning at the door of Marguerite, age thirty, a free sauvagesse who lived alone in the city with a twelve-​­year-​­old boy. According to the context, she was probably a prostitute. RSCL 1764/07/10/02. 54. Archivo General de Indias (hereafter AGI), Audiencia de Sto Domingo, Luisiana y Florida, Años 1766 a 1770, 2595–589, general census, 1763. 55. Lachance, “The Growth of the Free and Slave Populations of French Colonial Louisiana,” 222, 232. 56. Vidal, “Les implantations françaises au Pays des Illinois au XVIIIe siècle (1699–1765),” 544, 554–57. 57. “Les habitants y sont de quatre sortes, sçavoir, Européens, Américains, Africains, ou Nègres & Métisfs. Les Métifs sont ceux qui naissent des Européens et des naturels du pays que nous appellons Sauvages.” Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes occidentales, 25–26; Nouveaux Voyages dans l’Amérique septentrionale, 134. 58. ANOM COL G1 464, general census of New Orleans, January 1732; AGI, Audiencia de Sto Domingo, Luisiana y Florida, Años 1766 a 1770, 2595–589, general census, 1763. 59. Régent, Esclavage, métissage, liberté, 14–18. 60. Gwendolyn M. Hall, “African Women in French and Spanish Louisiana: Origins, Roles, Family, Work, and Treatment,” in The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillepsie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 260 n. 13; Kimberley S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 15–16. 61. Joseph Rennard, Histoire religieuse des Antilles françaises des origines à 1914 (Paris: Société de l’histoire des colonies françaises et Librairie Larose, 1954), 127. 62. Hamer, Raphaël de Luxembourg, 53. 63. ANOM COL C13A 10 f. 45v, May 18, 1726, Father Raphaël to Abbé Raguet. 64. Vogel, The Capuchins in French Louisiana, 41–42. 65. On the same day in July 1767, two different men bought and manumitted the child of a

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 253

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

254

Notes to Pages 141–143

slave, a mulâtresse in one case and a métis in another. New Orleans Notarial Archives (hereafter NONA) 20/07/1767; RSCL 1767/07/20/03. 66. SR 26/01/1748, 28/06/1750, 24/12/1752, 25/03/1754, 05/02/1757. 67. SR 19/06/1751. 68. Earl C. Woods and Charles E. Nolan, eds., Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans (New Orleans: Archdiocese of New Orleans, 1988), 2:234; Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 105; Gilbert C. Din, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763–1803 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 44–47. 69. On the other hand, in Saint-​­Domingue in the 1760s, the men who manumitted their children still often recognized them as members of their families. Garrigus, Before Haiti, 60–61. 70. SR 09/11/1760. 71. SR 17/07/1755, 07/05/1766; RSCL 1746/02/01/03. 72. SR 09/08/1761. 73. The sacramental records indicate the names of only nine of the fathers of the 101 illegitimate children born to a free woman of color between 1744 and 1769. Two of these named fathers were white, seven of African or Afro-​­European descent. Among the latter, at least three were slaves. Most of the time there was no mention at all of the father or only through the expression “unknown father.” In two cases, the priest indicated that these unknown fathers were blanc and in one case nègre. 74. SR 20/01/1750. However, the fact that in the baptism certificate of Pierre, the son of Charles Donné, the mother was only called by her first name, Anne Marie, could mean that she was nonwhite or from mixed descent. SR 26/11/1746. 75. Only ten certificates out of 101 from 1744 to 1769 included a free single mother of color with a last name. 76. SR 2503/1754, 19/03/1758. 77. SR 20/07/1746, 22/04/1753, 08/07/1755, 14/03/1756, 17/04/1756. 78. Only one exceptional request in a succession case reveals that the illegitimate son born to an Native American slave with her white master, who became a free trader, bore his father’s last name. NONA 02/03/1765, 04/03/1765, 08/03/1765, 12/03/1765. 79. AGI, Correspondencia de los Gobernadores de la Luisiana y la Florida Occidental, Años 1766–1824, Session Papeles de Cuba, legajo 188–A, “Liste de la qualité des naîgres libre de La Nlle Orléans faite par moi Nicolas Bacus capitaine moraine,” “Liste des nègres libres établis tant à 4 lieues de cette ville en remontant le fleuve que ceux de la ville,” “État des mulâtres et nègres libres,” “Rolle des mulâtres libres de La Nlle Orléans,” 1770. 80. Cousseau, “La famille invisible,” 47–54. 81. These measures were not then well applied, but when new rulings in Guadeloupe in 1763 and in Martinique in 1773 forbade the free people of color from taking their white fathers’ names, they were much more respected. In 1774, in Martinique, another ruling ordered the free people of color who had already adopted their white fathers’ names to change their last names. One year earlier, in Saint-​­Domingue, the Superior Council of Cap français even tried to create “onomastics

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 254

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 143–146

255

of color” and to compel the free people of color (in fact their natural children and the new and old freed men and women) to take “a nickname from the African idiom or from their profession.” However, this ruling was only partially applied. Some free people of color circumvented the law, taking a slightly modified version of their white father’s last name. See Abénon, La Guadeloupe de 1671 à 1759, 1:58; Debbasch, Couleur et liberté, 69–71; Elisabeth, La société martiniquaise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 105, 229, 317, 401; Garrigus, Before Haiti, 165–67; Stewart R. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-​­Revolutionary Saint-​­Domingue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 9–13; Régent, Esclavage, métissage, liberté, 159–60, 200–201; Dominique Rogers, “Les libres de couleur dans les capitales de Saint-​­Domingue: Fortune, mentalités et intégration à la fin de l’Ancien Régime (1776–1789)” (Ph.D. diss., Université Michel de Montaigne-​­Bordeaux III, 1999), chap. 5, sections 1a, 2. 82. SR 03/07/1765. 83. RSCL 1740/11/07/01, 1743/09/16/01, 1767/07/09/02, 1767/07/12/01, 1767/07/12/02, 1767/08/04/01, 1767/08/04/04, 1767/11/06/02, 1767/11/08/01, 1767/11/08/02; A. Baillardel and A. Prioult, eds., Le chevalier de Pradel. Vie d’un colon français en Louisiane au XVIIIe siècle d’après sa correspondance et celle de sa famille (Paris: Librairie orientale et américaine Maisonneuve frères, 1928), 75–76; “Relation de Voyage de la Louisianne ou Nouvlle France fait par le Sr CAILLOT en l’année 1730,” 99–100. 84. Gautier, Les sœurs de Solitude, 165–72; Garrigus, Before Haiti, 56–58; King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, 187, 191–93, 196; Pérotin-​­Dumon, La ville aux îles. La ville dans l’île, 669–74, 704–17; Frédéric Régent, “Structures familiales et stratégies matrimoniales des libres de couleur en Guadeloupe au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales de démographie historique 122, no. 2 (2011): 69–98; Rogers, “Les libres de couleur dans les capitales de Saint-​­Domingue,” chapter 10, section 2. 85. Thomas C. Holt, “Race, Race-​­making, and the Writing of History,” American Historical Review 100, no. 1 (1995): 1–20, esp. 7. 86. For instance, in December 1762 was recorded the baptism of the métive Susanne, born of an unknown father and a sauvagesse slave who belonged to Sr. Sentilly. But a later note, written in Spanish and added in the margin, revealed that the father was the master and that Indians’ slavery had been prohibited. Thus, even if the name of the slave’s father was officially hidden during the French period, it must have been public knowledge. SR 12/12/1762. 87. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans, 119–43. 88. Eliga H. Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-​­Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (2007): 764–86. 89. For a similar point of view, see, for instance, Garrigus, Before Haiti, 1–19; Donald L. Horowitz, “Color Differentiation in the American Systems of Slavery,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3, no. 3 (1973): 509–41. 90. Philip D. Morgan, “British Encounters with Africans and African-​­Americans, circa 1600– 1780,” in Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, ed. Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 157–219; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 398–412.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 255

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

256

Notes to Pages 147–150

Chapter 7 1. See, for example, Jack D. L. Holmes, “Do It! Don’t Do It! Spanish Laws on Sex and Marriage,” in Louisiana’s Legal Heritage, ed. Edward F. Haas (Pensacola, Fla.: Perdido Bay Press, 1983), 19–42. Holmes has great and invaluable knowledge of the Spanish records and he provides considerable information about cases involving marriage and sexuality in the colonial period. But he does not develop sexuality as a category of analysis, and his piece focuses more on the inability of Louisianians to follow regulations rather than providing more information about the nature and purpose of those regulations. 2. Guillaume Aubert, “ ‘Français, Nègres et Sauvages: Constructing Race in Colonial Louisiana” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1999); Cécile Vidal, “Les implantations françaises au Pays des Illinois au XVIIIe siècle (1699–1765)” (Ph.D. diss., École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1995); Jennifer Spear, “Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana,” William and Mary Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2003): 75–98; Jennifer Spear, Race, Sex and Social Order in Early New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 3. Aside from Holmes’s article, the notable exception is Spear’s work on sexuality and limpieza de sangre in the Spanish period; see Spear, Race, Sex and Social Order, 129–54. This work attempts to add to the foundation Spear provides by exploring the legal position of interracial couples and their children. 4. Verena Martinez-​­Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth-​­Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 11–13. 5. Archives Nationales d’Outre-​­Mer (hereafter cited as ANOM) COL C13A 48 f. 253, Statement of the Inhabitants and Traders of Louisiana on the Event of October 29, 1768, n.d.; Louisiana State Museum, Spanish Judicial Records, Record Group 2 (hereafter cited as SJR), Marriage Contract of Jean Paillet and Catherine Villeray, November 16, 1769; Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans 91, St. Louis Cathedral Baptisms of Whites, Book 6, 1767–1771 (hereafter cited as SLC, B6), Baptism of François Paillet, October 14, 1770. 6. Novissima Recopilación de las leyes de España (Madrid: Boletín Oficial del Estado, 1805) lib. 10, tit. 4, leys 1–9 (hereafter cited as NR). For a more detailed discussion of the regulation of married women’s property and of the legal position of women under Spanish law, see Silvia Marina Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985), 66–68. 7. NR, lib.10, tit. 20, ley 3. For an additional discussion of forced heirship, see Ann Twinam, Private Lives, Public Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 218–19. 8. For an example of another marriage occurring across color lines found in the sacramental records for marriages, see Marriage of Bautista Raphael, negre libre, and María Andrea Gotié, May 1, 1779, Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Libro primero de matrimonies de negros y mulatos de la parroquia de San Luis de la Nueva Orleans, en 137 folios (hereafter cited as SLC Nonwhite Marriages Book 1), No. 13, Da principio en 20 de enero de 1777 y acaba en 1830. Anecdotal evidence of marriages occurring across color lines may be found in baptismal, notarial, and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 256

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 150–152

257

judicial records. See New Orleans Notarial Archives (hereafter cited as NONA), Petition of D. Antonio Lugar, Acts of Esteban Quiñones, No. 69, September 10, 1793, for anecdotal evidence of marriages between whites and mulatto women. Perhaps the most persuasive evidence that marriages continued to occur across lines of color is the decision of the Ursulines to continue to accept the legitimate daughters of white men and quadroon women as borders in their school; see Archives of the Ursuline Convent, “Délibérations du Conseil,” October 31, 1797. The debate about the position of students of color is analyzed in detail by Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 134–35. 9. Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 91. Shannon Dawdy discusses the manner in which the planter elite and those aspiring to their status used marriage to forge alliances; see Shannon Lee Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 182–85. The Ursulines’ commitment to sacramental marriage among their slaves is discussed in Clark, Masterless Mistresses, 170–76. For another discussion of marriage patterns among the free people of color, see Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 90–95. 10. Slaves married at a rate of less than one percent throughout the Spanish period. Free persons of color married infrequently through much of the Spanish period. However, the numbers of marriage had increased by the end of the period. See Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 22, 91, and Emily Clark’s essay in this volume. 11. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 91. After 1791, many of these non-​­elite men and women doubtless included refugees from Saint-​­Domingue; for a discussion of the Saint-​­Domingue refugees settling in New Orleans, see Nathalie Dessens, From St. Domingue to New Orleans: Migration and Influences (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007). Detailed discussions of the relative integration of the city’s less elite residential spaces and of its social life may be found in Kimberly Hanger, “Household and Community Structure among the Free Population of Spanish Colonial New Orleans,” Louisiana History 30 (Winter 1989): 63–79, and in Jennifer Spear, “ ‘Whiteness and the Purity of Blood’: Race, Sexuality, and Social Order in Colonial Louisiana” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1999), 155–94. 12. For marriage patterns among the planter class, see Dawdy, Building the Devil’s Empire, 182–85; Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 169–71. For examples of cases in which a member of the planter class explains the qualities desirable in a spouse, see SJR Diligencias por Don Francisco Fontenelle sobre que Don Juan Bautista, le padre, le conceda celebra los Esponsales que tiene contratador con Doña Francisca Barrois, February 16, 1787, and the documentation presented to prove the legitimacy, purity of blood, and good character of Marie-​­Françoise Gerard, in Guillermo Náñez Falcon, ed., The Favrot Family Papers: A Documentary Chronicle of Early Louisiana, vol. 1 (New Orleans: Howard Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, 1988), 291. 13. To understand better the significance of the percentages of the population marrying, it is necessary to place those figures in a broader context. Economist Michael Haines has estimated that the crude marriage rate (or the number of marriages per 1,000 persons) for the former British

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 257

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

258

Notes to Pages 152–155

colonies in the early nineteenth century was roughly 33, or 3.3 percent. A marriage rate of 3.3 percent, if sustained, meant that the vast majority of men and women in a given society were expected to marry. See Michael R. Haines, “Long-​­Term Marriage Patterns in the United States from Colonial Times to the Present,” History of the Family 1, no. 1 (1996): 15–39. 14. For a brief account of Ulloa’s tenure as the governor of Louisiana, see Gilbert Din, Spaniards, Planters and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763–1803 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 35–41; for a detailed analysis of the revolt, see John Preston Moore, Revolt in Louisiana: The Spanish Occupation, 1766–1770 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976). 15. ANOM COL 48 f. 253, Statement of the Inhabitants and Traders of Louisiana on the Event of October 29, 1768, n.d.; Din, Spaniards, Planters and Slaves, 35–41. 16. Code Noir ou Loi Municipale, servant de règlement pour le gouvernement et l’administration de la justice, police, discipline et le commerce des esclaves nègres en Louisiane, entrepris par délibération du Cabildo en vertu des Ordres du Roi, que Dieu garde, consignés dans sa Lettre faite à Arnjuez le 14 de Mai 1777 (New Orleans: Antoine Boudousquie, 1778), Articles 6, 9, 10; Article 6 (1724 Code Noir), cited in Recueil d’Edits, Déclarations et Arrests de sa Majesté, Concernant l’Administration de la Justice & la Police des Colonies Françaises de l’Amérique, & les Engagés (originally published 1744; rpt., Paris: Libraires Associez, 1972), 138. 17. The question of whether the 1778 Loi Municipale was adopted has been hotly debated by historians of colonial Louisiana. For a detailed account of the history of Loi Municipale, see Din, Spaniards, Planters and Slaves, 75–79. See also Thomas Ingersoll, “Slave Code and Judicial Practice in New Orleans, 1718–1807,” Law and History Review 13, no. 1 (1995): 23–62, and Hans Baade, “The Law of Slavery in Spanish Luisiana, 1769–1803,” in Louisiana’s Legal Heritage, ed. Edward Haas (Pensacola, Fla.: Perdido Bay Press, 1983), 43–86. 18. The literature on the position of persons of African ancestry in the Spanish colonies is vast, as is the scholarship on the sistema da castas. For a review of the discriminatory measures enacted upon persons of African origin in the Spanish colonies, see R. Douglas Cope, The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660–1720 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 9–26. For a concise discussion of the origins of Spanish prejudices toward Africans in the colonies and its relationship to the concept of limpieza de sangre, see María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 483–85. 19. Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1989), 145–52, 200–225; Susan Socolow, “Acceptable Partners: Marriage Choice in Colonial Argentina 1778–1810,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. Asunción Lavrin (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1989), 209–46. For a more detailed legal study of the regulation of marriage in the Spanish Empire, see Daisy Rípodas Ardanas, El matrimonio en Indias: Realidad social y regulación jurídica (Buenos Aires: Conice, 1977), 317–60. For the text of the Pragmatic as well as the royal cédula extending the Pragmatic to the Americas, see Konetzke, Colección de documentos para la formación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493–1810 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1962), 3:406–13 and 438–42. 20. Seed, To Love, Honor and Obey in Colonial Mexico, 205–25. Although Seed proposes that substantial social inequality was understood as a difference in racial standing, she notes that other

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 258

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 155–158

259

factors, including distinctions between nobles and commoners and differences in wealth, were used to justify parental opposition to marriages. For an example of a case heard in Louisiana involving two whites, see SJR Diligencias por Don Francisco Fontenelle sobre que Don Juan Bautista, le padre, le conceda celebra los Esponsales que tiene contratador con Doña Francisca Barrois, February 16, 1787. Fontenelle was the son of a French planter while Barrios was the daughter of a tavern keeper. The case involving two persons of mixed race with different degrees of white blood is SJR Bartolomé Bautista, grifo libre, contra Juan LaFrance sobre impedir este el matrimonio de su hija con el dicho Bartolomé, September 6, 1788. 21. Vidal, “Caribbean Louisiana,” Chapter 6 in this volume; SJR Bartolomé Bautista, grifo libre, contra Juan LaFrance sobre impedir este el matrimonio de su hija con el dicho Bartolomé, September 6, 1788. 22. SJR Bartolomé Bautista, grifo libre, contra Juan LaFrance sobre impedir este el matrimonio de su hija con el dicho Bartolomé, September 6, 1788; SLC Marriages of Whites, Book 5, 39, Marriage of Juan Bautista Toupard and Carlota Lafrance, June 19, 1785; SLC Nonwhite Marriages, Book 1, 7, Marriage of Bartolomé Bautista and Catarina Lafrance, September 12, 1788; the case involving Catherine La France has received considerable attention from historians; see Spear, Race, Social Order, 141–42, and Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 95–96. 23. NR lib.10, tit. 20, ley 3. For a detailed discussion of forced heirship, see Twinam, Private Lives, Public Secrets, 218–19. 24. NONA f. 118, “Will of Pedro Calazar,” Acts of F. Broutin, No. 46, June 17, 1797. 25. NONA f. 93v–96, “Will of Pedro Dauphin, Acts of N. Broutin, April 3, 1800. 26. For information on the occupations of men and women in New Orleans and of the free black community in particular, see Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 55–87. For a case in which free black women sought a settlement from their former white lovers or to retain property given to them by those lovers, see SJR Janeta, Mulata Libre contra D. Marcos Darby, December 21, 1778. For a complex case in which an enslaved woman sued for her freedom from an abusive master, see SJR María Juana contra Juan Suriray, February 28, 1774. 27. SJR Magdalena Canella, Mulata libre contra don Luis Beaurepos para la posseción de su esclava Adelaida, January 20, 1777. On the requirement that business transactions, including sales, be recorded by a notary, see Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 13. 28. Had they married, Canella would have been entitled to all the property Beaurepos acquired and earned during the time they cohabitated as a married couple. She would not have been entitled to property he received through inheritance or a gift, however. See Arrom, The Women of Mexico City, 66–68. Not all free women of color involved in relationships outside of marriage with white men. Some enjoyed greater economic agency than a married woman because they retained control over their own property. For more information, see Kenneth Aslakson, “Making Race: The Role of Free Blacks in the Development of New Orleans’ Three-​­Caste Society, 1791–1812” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 2007). 29. NR ley 9, tit. 8, lib. 5; Las Siete Partidas del sabio rey D. Alfonso el nono (Madrid: Joseph Thomas Lucas, 1758) part. 4, tit. 15, ley I (hereafter cited as SP). For a more detailed discussion of the differences between natural children and the various types of bastards, see Twinam, Private Lives, Public Secrets, 127–40, and also Linda Lewin, Surprise Heirs: Illegitimacy, Patrimonial Rights and

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 259

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

260

Notes to Pages 158–163

Legal Nationalism in Luso-​­Brazilian Inheritance, 1750–1821 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003). 30. SJR Bernardo Izurra, curador y tutor del menor Carlos, mulato, hijo natural del difunto Carlos Begin su padre y de la Negra María Esclaba que fue este, declarando sus derechos, May 19, 1794; Article 52 (1724 Code Noir) cited in Recueil d’Edits, Déclarations et Arrests de sa Majesté, Concernant l’Administration de la Justice & la Police des Colonies Françaises de l’Amérique, & les Engagés, 155. 31. SP part. 4, tit. 15, ley I; SP part. 4, tit.13, ley 2; SP part. 4, tit. 15, leys 1, 3; SP part. 4, tit. 17, ley 12; SP part. 4, tit. 19, leys 4–6; SP part. 6, tit.13, leys 8–13. See also Twinam, Private Lives, Public Secrets, 118–20, 127–30, and 218–26. 32. SP part. 4, tit. 19, leys 4–6. 33. NR lib. 10, tit. 20, ley 5, 6. 34. NONA f. 291, Will of Pierre Darby, Acts of N. Broutin, No. 5, July 18, 1803. However, Pierre Darby’s will was opposed by his mother, Marie; she contended he was unable to leave property to his mixed-​­race children because he was unable to marry their mother. The Superior Court of the Territory of Orleans decided in the favor of the children. See Records of the Superior Court of the Territory of Orleans, New Orleans Public Library, François Darby et al. v. Marie Baschemin Darby, June 22, 1805. 35. NONA 39 f. 444v–447, Will of D. Juan Antonio Lugar, Acts of Pedesclaux, July 20, 1801; NONA 69 f. 413–420v, Petition of D. Juan Antonio Lugar, Acts of Quiñones, September 10, 1793. 36. NONA f. 491v–92, Will of Jean-​­Baptiste Macarty, Acts of N. Broutin, November 21, 1808. 37. SJR Bernardo Izurra, curador y tutor del menor Carlos, mulato, hijo natural del difunto Carlos Begin su padre y de la Negra María Esclaba que fue este, declarando sus derechos, May 19, 1794. 38. SJR Bernardo Izurra, curador y tutor del menor Carlos, mulato, hijo natural del difunto Carlos Begin su padre y de la Negra María Esclaba que fue este, declarando sus derechos, May 19, 1794. 39. For example, property provided by his father D. Louis Forneret enabled Charles Forneret to establish himself in business. See NONA, f. 163–163v, Power of Attorney, Acts of Francisco Broutin, June 29, 1799; NONA f. 203v–6, Will of Luis Forneret, Acts of Francisco Broutin, April 19, 1791. See also Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 72–73, 89–100. 40. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 17–54. 41. NONA f. 243v–247v, Will of Luis Laumonier, Acts of Francisco Broutin, November 8, 1798. 42. NONA f. 188, Act of Manumission, Acts of Almonester y Roxas, July 31, 1773; NONA 6 f. 240, Donation of property, Acts of Garic, October 7, 1775; 1778 Census; NON 6 f. 445, Will of Marion Dubreuil, Acts of Pedesclaux, June 16, 1802; NONA 42 f. 923, Addendum to Will of Marion Dubreuil, Acts of Pedesclaux, December 20, 1802. Marion Dubreuil also had five children from an earlier relationship with a free black man named Baptiste. Kimberly Hanger also discusses Gaillard and his relationship to Marion. See Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 35–36. It remains important to note that the manumission of enslaved mistresses and children, while significant, was hardly the sole source of the free black population in Louisiana. Slaves were freed because of their services, because of the existence of platonic affective ties between themselves and their masters, and also because they worked very hard to purchase their freedom and that of their loved ones. See Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, for a broader discussion of the growth of the free black community in New Orleans and the significant role of blacks themselves in its growth.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 260

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 165–167

261

Chapter 8 1. Karl Bernhard, Travels through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, sold in New York by G. & C. Carvill, 1828), 62. 2. See, for example, Harriet Martineau, Society in America: In Two Volumes, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (New York: Saunders and Otley, 1837), 116; Frederick Law Olmsted and Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveler’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States: Based upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations by the Same Author, 1st ed. (New York: Modern Library, 1984), 236; John F. Watson, “Notitia of Incidents at New Orleans,” American Pioneer 2, no. 5 (1843): 236. After the Civil War, George Washington Cable gave the discourse a second wind in his novel The Grandissimes, A Story of Creole Life (1880) and in a series of short stories, “Tite Poulette” (1874) and “Madame Delphine” (1881). 3. Baltasar Noel Carriere and Maria Scipion Sarpy, July 29, 1822, “Libro primero de matrimonios de negros y mulattos de la parroquia de San Luis de la Nueva Orleans; en 137 folios. Da principio en 20 de enero de 1777 y acaba en 1830,” Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. 4. See, for example, R. Randall Couch, “The Public Masked Balls of Antebellum New Orleans: A Custom of Masque Outside the Mardi Gras Tradition,” Louisiana History 35 (Fall 1994): 403–31; Monique Guillory, “Some Enchanted Evening on the Auction Block: The Cultural Legacy of the New Orleans Quadroon Balls” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1999); Kimberly S. Hanger, “Coping in a Complex World: Free Black Women in Colonial New Orleans,” in The Devil’s Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 218–31; Judith K. Schafer, Brothels, Depravity, and Abandoned Women: Illegal Sex in Antebellum New Orleans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009); Shirley Elizabeth Thompson, Exiles at Home: The Struggle to Become American in Creole New Orleans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009). 5. Rebecca J. Scott and Jean M. Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). 6. Paul Lachance, “Intermarriage and French Cultural Persistence in Late Spanish and Early American New Orleans,” Histoire sociale/Social History 15, no. 29 (1982): 47–81; and Paul Lachance, “The Formation of a Three-​­Caste Society: Evidence from Wills in Antebellum New Orleans,” Social Science History 18, no. 2 (1994): 211–42, esp. 227–28. Although Paul Lachance has already pointed out that marriage was on the increase and concubinage on the decrease among antebellum free women of color in New Orleans, he has generally accepted both the existence and the prevalence of plaçage among free women of color in the city. 7. Lachance, “Intermarriage,” 68–69. 8. Laura Foner, “Free People of Color in Louisiana and St. Domingue: A Comparative Portrait of Two Three-​­Caste Societies,” Journal of Social History 3, no. 4 (1970): 406–30. 9. Some sixty-​­five enslaved people married between 1759 and 1770, and there is indirect evidence for many more marriages in baptismal registers. There are a small number of marriage records for people of African descent in the registers of other parishes, but the runs of these registers are not as sustained as for the St. Louis Cathedral records. For example, those for St. Charles Boromeo Parish exist only for the years 1739–1755, and those for St. John the Baptist Parish commence in

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 261

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

262

Notes to Pages 168–170

1772. Earl C. Woods and Charles E. Nolan, eds., Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, vol. 3 (New Orleans: Archdiocese of New Orleans, 1989), xv. 10. “Libro primero.” 11. Cécile Vidal and Emily Clark, “Famille et esclavage à La Nouvelle-​­Orléans sous le Régime français (1699–1769),” Annales de Démographie historique 122, no. 2 (2011): 99–126. 12. There was no explicit prohibition of marriage between enslaved people in Spanish colonial slave law, but the slave code promulgated by the Spanish regime in 1777 did prohibit the intermarriage of enslaved and free partners, which may have had some impact on slave marriage. Code noir, ou loi municipale, . . . ​entrepris par Deli[b]ération [sic] du Cabildo en vertu des Ordres du Roi . . . ​ consignés dans sa Lettre fait à Aranjuez le 14 de Mai 1777 (New Orleans: Imprimerie d’Antoine Boudousquié, 1778). The Civil Code promulgated in territorial Louisiana in 1808 reiterated this Spanish prohibition and explicitly denied slave marriage any legal standing. Louis Moreau Lislet and Territory of Orleans, A Digest of the Civil Laws Now in Force in the Territory of Orleans (1808); Containing Manuscript References to Its Sources and Other Civil Laws on the Same Subjects (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University School of Law, 1968), 454–57, 499–500. It is notable, however, that despite its proscription, intermarriage between enslaved and free continued into the 1810s. See Table 8.1. 13. See Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 277–86. Three other works offer accounts of the maturation of Louisiana’s plantation economy that is accompanied by shifts in law, custom, and ideology regarding the enslaved and people of African descent that might have acted to suppress the marriage rate among them: Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998); Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999); and Daniel H. Usner Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 14. The population of free people of color in 1830 was 8,900, representing 24 percent of the city’s population of 36,632 and nearly a third of its free population of 27,716. Figures based on marriage registers of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, 1759–1830 and U.S. Census for 1830. 15. Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 17–54; Paul Lachance, “The Foreign French,” in Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization, ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 105, and, in the same volume, Joseph Logsdon and Caryn Cossé Bell, “The Americanization of Black New Orleans,” 206. 16. See, for example, Caryn Cossé Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-​­Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997); Bell, “The Americanization of Black New Orleans”; Lachance, “The Foreign French,” 127. 17. Lachance also notes the lower number of marriages involving brides and/or grooms from Saint-​­Domingue, which he uses as an index of this constituency’s presence in the general population without considering the possibility that its marriage rate did not mirror their representation in the population. Lachance, “The Foreign French,” 109. 18. On the importance of sacramental marriage among free blacks in Saint-​­Domingue, see

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 262

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 171–175

263

John D. Garrigus, “’To Establish a Community of Property’: Marriage and Race before and during the Haitian Revolution,” History of the Family 12, no. 2 (2007): 146–50; Stewart R. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig: Free People of Color in Pre-​­Revolutionary Saint Domingue (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 193, 198–99, 222–23; Dominique Rogers, “Les libres de couleur dans les capitales de Saint-​­Domingue: Fortune, mentalités et intégration à la fin de l’Ancien Régime (1776– 1789)” (Ph.D. diss., Université Michel de Montaigne-​­Bordeaux III, 1999). 19. Scott and Hébrard, Freedom Papers. 20. Barbara Meil Hobson, Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 35; Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 44. For a first-​­person account of an immigrant daughter who turned to prostitution, see Maimie Pinzer et al., The Maimie Papers (Old Westbury, N.Y.: Feminist Press, 1977). 21. “Board Minute Book, January 1817–January 1823,” in Poydras Home Records (Howard-​ ­Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University), 1–4, 59. 22. James Craig and Genevieve Goudine, July 21, 1829; Benjamin and Theresa Maret, December 9, 1802; marriage of Pedro Luis Andres and Silvania Guani, June 11, 1824, “Libro Primero.” Although Theresa Maret is not identified as a native of New Orleans in her marriage record, her mother, Jazinta Demazzlier, was a member of a prominent Orleanian libre family. See, for example, Charles E. Nolan, ed., Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, vol. 16 (New Orleans: Archdiocese of New Orleans, 2001), 113; Charles E. Nolan, ed., Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, vol. 18 (New Orleans: Archdiocese of New Orleans, 2003), 113. 23. The 1820 U.S. census lists 966 (31 percent) free men of color and 2,189 (69 percent) free women of color; the 1840 U.S. Census lists 3,779 (40 percent) free men of color and 5,638 (60 percent) free women of color. See also Lachance, “Formation of a Three-​­Caste Society,” 224. 24. Nearly half of the 1809 refugees (1,377) were adult women, and only 14 percent (428) were adult men; 42 percent (1,297) were under the age of sixteen. Lachance, “The Foreign French,” 109; and Lachance, “Intermarriage,” 70–73. 25. Apolinario Cienfuegos and Luisa Lorantée, September 10, 1828; Antonio Remy, son of Antonio Remy and Maria Brown, and Clemencia Garcia, November 11, 1820; Juan Joseph Fite and Camila Baptista, June 26, 1825, “Libro Primero.” 26. Lorenzo Vivant and Francisca, May 1, 1812; and Jorge Francisco and Ursula Mathieu, May 17, 1812, “Libro Primero.” 27. Apolinario Cienfuegos and Luisa Lorantée, September 10, 1828; and Juan Joseph Fite and Camila Baptista, June 26, 1825, “Libro Primero.” On sailors of African descent, see W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). 28. Maria Martina Populus and Hipolito Lafargue, July 1, 1815; and Maria Populus and Agustin Alexandre, December 27, 1827, “Libro Primero.” Maria’s father, Maurice Populus, was a slave owner. See September 16, 1820, Notarial Acts of Lavergne; June 16, 1812, Acts of Pierre Pedasclaux; April 5, 1816, Acts of M. DeArmas; New Orleans Notarial Archives. Maurice Populus was a lieutenant in the free black militia of New Orleans which was mobilized to fight under Andrew Jackson in

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 263

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

264

Notes to Pages 175–177

the Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815. Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, 54. Another of Maurice Populus’s daughters may also have married a Saint-​­Domingue refugee. Margarita Populus married Luis Morin in 1821. Morin was described as a native of Philadelphia, which was a popular destination for the earlier wave of refugees in the 1790s. Marriage of Margarita Populus and Luis Morin, July 16, 1821, “Libro Primero.” 29. Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 30. Emily Clark and Virginia Meacham Gould, “The Feminine Face of Afro-​­Catholicism in New Orleans, 1727–1852,” William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 2 (2002): 409–48. 31. See Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). 32. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 109–35; Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, 54–57. 33. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 120–21, 128. There were two regiments of free black militia in New Orleans, a moreno regiment for those classified with the Spanish color label negro, who would have been generally presumed to be of unmixed African descent, and a pardo regiment for those classified as mulattoes, generally presumed to be of mixed African and European ancestry. 34. Marriage of Manuel Carrier(e) and Mariana Thomas, November 16, 1778; and marriage of Noel Carriere and Lisa Gonzales, August 18, 1806, “Libro Primero.” Ann Twinam provides an example of how important legitimacy was to Spanish colonial men who sought public status in her account of a local election in Havana in 1786 in which a candidate’s victory was nullified when the illegitimate birth of his mother was exposed. Ann Twinam, “The Negotiation of Honor,” in The Faces of Honor, Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, ed. Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-​­Rivera (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 68–102. 35. Joseph Leveillé and Maria Teresa (Marie Therese) Carriere, May 14, 1786, “Libro Primero.” Candidates for high crown appointments and ordination in the Catholic Church were required to prove their legitimacy. 36. Mariana Carriere and Juan Silvanos Dáquin, August 4, 1807; Pelagia Carriere and Ursino Lacoste, May 3, 1809; Maria Noel Carriere and Augusto Raimond, March 17, 1811; Ana Carriere and Pedro La Violette, December 19, 1812; Maria Deseada Carriere and Carlos Pedro, July 27, 1822; and Baltasar Noel Carriere and Maria Leipron Sarpy, July 29, 1822, “Libro Primero.” 37. Bagarin (legitimate) and Torés, May 16, 1782; Apolon and Maria Magdalena, June 22, 1790; Pedro (legitimate) and Maria Theresa, November 3, 1791; Estevan and Francisca, September 3, 1792; Colon and Tutan, May 18, 1793; Juan Francisco and Maria Genoveva, July 8, 1793; LeDusse and Reuseve, July 9, 1793; Dejan and Maria Theresa Luisa, September 10, 1794; Pedro Claver (legitimate) and Celeste, October 8, 1794; Juan Bautista (legitimate) and Magdalena, February 14, 1795; Nicholas (legitimate) and Luisa (legitimate), November 25, 1795; Jose (legitimate) and Augustina, February 3, 1796; Agustin (legitimate) and Margarita (legitimate), May 29, 1797; Dupart and Maria, July 29, 1797; Noel and Rosa (legitimate), October 16, 1797; Antonio (legitimate) and Emelia, February 20, 1798; Galeaux and Dolion, November 3, 1798; Juan Bautista (legitimate) and Maria Thomas (legitimate), May 24, 1799; Renato (legitimate) and Margarita (legitimate), September 23, 1799; Santiago Zirilo and Maria, February 1, 1800; Rafael (legitimate) and Francesca, June 9, 1800; Salio and Dupart (legitimate), November 4, 1800; Santiago and Maria Luisa, January 31, 1801; Bricu and Dupart

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 264

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 177–179

265

(legitimate), February 3, 1801; Esteban Saulet and Clara, February 3, 1801; Meunien and Deslandes, February 4, 1801; Pedro Demuy and Juana, August 20, 1802; Nicolas Prevot (legitimate) and Maria Francisca (legitimate), November 17, 1802; Boisdore and Créel, September 27, 1803; Juan Bautista Pedro and Maria (legitimate), November 16, 1803; Sarpy and Catharina, March 8, 1804, all in “Libro Primero.” Carriere was buried on December 5, 1804, “St. Louis Cathedral Funerals of Slaves and Free Persons of Color, 1797–1806,” 169. 38. Carlos Porée and Francesca Catarina Macarty, February 1, 1812; Juan Luis Doliol and Hartanza Dussuau, February 15, 1818; Raphael Jons and Maria Francisca Cupell, January 19, 1812; Joseph Arauz (legitimate) and Luisa Valentin, June 8, 1815; Joaquin Asmar and Maria Beauepaux, September 21, 1816; Esteban Francisco and Melania Simon, December 7, 1816; Henrrique Fletchier and Heloisa Laville, October 22, 1827; Tomas Urquhart and Victoria Gallard (legitimate), January 19, 1828; Alfonso Fleury and Alexandrina Simon, February 28, 1828; Francisco Boisdore and Maria Josepha Sophia Olivier, May 24, 1828; Jean Ferbosse and Marie Genevieve Alzina Michel, May 31, 1829, “Libro Primero.” 39. Porée was a witness at marriages that took place on April 27, 1802; May 6, 1809; May 16, 1818; August 8, 1818; December 2, 1819; January 3, 1821; and March 19, 1825. Maurice Populus stood witness at the marriages on December 20, 1800; February 7, 1801; May 7, 1801; November 16, 1803; September 23, 1810 (with Vincent Populus); May 15, 1813; March 19, 1817 (with Vincent Populus), all in “Libro Primero.” 40. Marriage of Maurice Populus and Artemisa Celestin, March 22, 1804; marriage of Margarita Populus and Luis Morin, July 16, 1821; marriage of Maria Populus and Agustin Alexandre, 41. For a full discussion of the culture and marital strategies of free black militia families in pre-​­Revolutionary Saint-​­Domingue, see King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, 226–65. 42. Moreau Lislet and Territory of Orleans, A Digest of the Civil Laws Now in Force in the Territory of Orleans, 454–57, 499–500. 43. Marriage records 146, 151, 152, 155, 158, 166, 180, 181, 184, 185, 210, 225, 227, 254, 261, 266, 268, 269, 272, 276, 286, 288, 290, 302, 318, 321, 324, 331, 337, 339, 357, “Libro Primero.” 44. Louisiana Civil Code of 1825, Articles 203–211. The previous civil code of 1808 was silent on the effect of subsequent marriage on children born prior to the marriage. Louisiana Civil Code of 1808, Title VII:1. Although the revised code is known as the Civil Code of 1825, it was actually adopted and promulgated on April 12, 1824. Roger K. Ward, “Bijuralism in Louisiana,” http://www .barreau.qc.ca/congres/2001/pdf/18–ward.pdf, accessed August 23, 2007. 45. Marriage records 357, 362, 364, 366, 367, 378, 382, 391, 392, 405, 410, 428, 429, 449, 450, 458, 461, 468, 482, 487, 492, 503, 510, 512, 516, 525, 529, 538, “Libro Primero.” 46. For examples of marriages with one spouse on the point of death, see, for example, marriage records 269, 337, 392. 47. Marriage of Juan Castelan and Marian Cheval, November 22, 1811; marriage of Joseph Jamet and Melania Urisse, Januay 31, 1825, “Libro Primero.” 48. Marriage records 362, 364, 366, 367, 391, 392, 428, 450, 461, 468, 482, 487, 492, 516, 525, 529, “Libro Primero.” 49. Of the fifteen weddings involving spouses born in Saint-​­Domingue, nine occurred before 1822. “Libro Primero.”

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 265

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

266

Notes to Pages 179–184

50. On the Panic of 1819, see Murray N. Rothbard, The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962). 51. Bernhard, Travels through North America, 62. 52. Hanger, “Coping in a Complex World,” 222–23. There are no obvious points of comparison between the New Orleans case and other circum-​­Caribbean marriage patterns with respect to cross-​­racial mixing. For example, Robert McCaa, “Calidad, Clase, and Marriage in Colonial Mexico: The Case of Parral, 1788–90,” Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no. 3 (1984): 477–501, identifies a phenomenon he terms “racial drift” in a comparison of census and marriage records for a two-​­year period in late colonial Mexico. In the New Orleans case, the absence of a community of people identified as mestizo/a, on which much of this phenomenon turned, together with the longer timeframe and the significant numbers of the African-​­born and refugee population, is reflected in the New Orleans marriage register. 53. Marriage of Santiago LeDusse and Maria Josepha Reuseve, July 9, 1793; marriage of Noel Carriere and Luisa Gonzales, August 18, 1806, “Libro Primero.” The identification of Luisa Gonzales as a grifa is odd. Her mother, Luisa, is described as a nègre and her father, Antonio Gonzales is unraced, which usually indicated a “white” racial identity. It may be that Antonio was, like many Canary Islanders, of apparent mixed race, or that his daughter Luisa looked to Sedella, who recorded the ceremony, more like a grifa than a mulatto. In any case, Sedella took care to record what he and presumably the families of the spouses perceived as the unequal color categories of bride and groom. 54. Juan Foucher and Maria Josepha Fondall, May 9, 1809, “Libro Primero.” 55. Mauricio Populus and Artemisa Celestin, March 22, 1804; Noel Carriere and Luisa Gonzales, August 18, 1806; and Francisco Porée and Petrona Lugar, August 23, 1810, “Libro Primero.” 56. Juan Bartolome and Isavel Francisca, September 2, 1812; and Renato St. Aubin and Maria Catharina, March 26, 1814, “Libro Primero.” 57. Hanger, “Coping in a Complex World.” 58. King, Blue Coat or Powdered Wig, 187. 59. The French of the original 1805 advertisement reads: “Aguste Tessier . . . ​se propose de donner Bal deux sois par semaine aux femmes de couleur libres, ou les hommes de cou[leur] ne seront pas admis; is a diffé [ ] faire l’ouverture des Bals jus[que] Samedi 23 du courant.” Moniteur (New Orleans) November 23, 1805. Although Tessier was born in France, he immigrated to Saint-​­Domingue and was among the first wave of refugees who reached New Orleans between 1791 and 1808. Burial of August Tessier, October 13, 1817, St. Louis Cathedral Funerals, 1815–1820, 83, gives his birthplace as Paris. For his status as a Saint-​­Domingue refugee see Nathalie Dessens, “The Saint-​­Domingue Refugees and the Preservation of Gallic Culture in Early American New Orleans,” French Colonial History 8 (2007): 63. 60. Marriages in which native Orleanian grooms took Domingois brides fell from 7 percent of the total for 1810–1820 to 5 percent of the total for 1820–1830. Calculated from “Libro Primero.”

Conclusion 1. Gwendolyn M. Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-​­Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); Daniel H. Usner

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 266

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 185–188

267

Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992). 2. See, for example, John H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006); Eliga Gould, “Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-​­Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery,” American Historical Review 112 (June 2007): 764–86. One exception is Stanley L. Engerman, “France, Britain and the Economic Growth of Colonial North America,” in The Early Modern Atlantic Economy, ed. John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 227–49. 3. Archives nationales de l’Outre-​­mer COL C11A f. 98, February 8, 1752, Copy of François Piquet to La Jonquière and Bigot. 4. There is a vast literature on the subject. For recent studies, see Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 125, 127–28, and passim; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); Cécile Vidal, “Francité et situation coloniale: Nation, empire et race en Louisiane française (1699–1769),” Annales HSS 64, no. 5 (2009): 1019–50. 5. In his path-​­breaking study of European racial attitudes, Winthrop Jordan located the origins of racial thought in European encounters with Africans. Sociolinguistic techniques deployed in recent studies of European class development finds the roots of racial attitudes in Europe itself prior to the first encounters and associates them with the construction of a language of difference spurred by galvanic social and economic changes in Europe. See Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968). Recent research argues that in both Spain and France constructions of difference were rooted in lineage and originated in European metropolitan centers; see Guillaume Aubert, “The Blood of France: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 439–78, and Maria Elena Martinez, “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 3 (2004): 479–52. 6. A buoyant land market, the dramatic decline in male heirs of ancient families, the displacement of old families by parvenus enriched by law, learning, and commerce, and challenges raised by radical humanists and Calvinist intellectuals defied the conventional canon of gentility in ways that broke up traditional hierarchies and conceptions of lineage. See Patricia Crawford, Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (New York: Longman, 2004), 113–39; Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500–1700 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 20–47; Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 17–38, 45, 48. 7. Carl H. Nightingale, “Before Race Mattered: Geographies of the Color Line in Early Colonial Madras and New York,” American Historical Review 113, no. 1 (2008): 48–71, esp. 62–63. 8. Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 118, 122–23, 125, 135–36, 197–98, 212, 215. See also David R. Roediger, How Race Survived U.S. History (New York: Verso, 2008), 6, 28–29.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 267

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

268

Notes to Pages 188–194

9. Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-​­Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 12–17, 489, 490, 492; see also Paul Finkleman, “Crimes of Love, Misdemeanors of Passion: The Regulation of Race and Sex in the Colonial South,” in The Devils’ Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), which points out that the anti-​ ­miscegenation laws survived in the South until 1967 (132–33). 10. Aubert, “The Blood of France,” 439–78. For the free black population in New Orleans see Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 23, 27; Thomas N. Ingersoll, Mammon and Manon in Early New Orleans: The First Slave Society in the Deep South, 1718–1819 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 168, 235–35; for the French Antilles see Bernard Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635–1848 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 32. 11. Cécile Vidal, “The Language of Race and Ethnicity: The Use and Appropriation of Ethnic and Racial Categories in French Colonial Louisiana,” paper presented at the Southern Historical Association meeting, New Orleans, October 2008. 12. For an important essay on this subject, see Vidal, “Francité et situation coloniale.” 13. Vidal, “Francité et situation coloniale,” 1037–39. 14. See Vidal, “Francité et situation coloniale,” 1041–48, for an important analysis of this event and its relationship to national versus local identity; for the French Caribbean, see Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). 15. Clare A. Lyons, “Mapping an Atlantic Sexual Culture: Homoeroticism in Eighteenth-​ ­Century Philadelphia,” William and Mary Quarterly 60, no. 1 (2003): 119–54 (120 for the quotation). 16. For the spread of evangelical Protestantism see Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and the British Caribbean to 1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 128–29; for the difficulty of establishing the black Baptist church in Louisiana see Joseph Logsdon and Caryn Cossé Bell, “The Americanization of Black New Orleans, 1850–1900,” in Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization, ed. Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), 211–12. 17. Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). For the first French orders in New France see Leslie Choquette, “ ‘Ces Amazones du Grand Dieu’: Women and Mission in Seventeenth-​­Century Canada,” French Historical Studies 17, no. 3 (1992): 627–55; for Catherine Tekakwitha, see Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), esp. 127, 137, 217 n. 68. 18. Voices from an Early American Convent: Marie Madeleine Hachard and the New Orleans Ursulines 1727–1760, ed. Emily Clark (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007), 74, 78, 82–83. 19. “Two Slaveries—The Sermons of Padre Antônio Vieira, Salvador, Bahia [ca. 1633] and Sao Luis do Maranhao [1653],” in Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History, ed. Kenneth Mills, William B. Taylor, and Sandra L. Graham (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002), 218–33. 20. Ann Laura Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies,” Journal of American History 88, no. 3 (2001): 848.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 268

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Notes to Pages 195–200

269

21. Lorena S. Walsh, “The Chesapeake Slave Trade: Regional Patterns, African Origins, and Some Implications,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 146–47. 22. Richard D. E. Burton, Afro-​­Creole Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997), 13. 23. Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec, “Slaves, Migrations in Spanish Louisiana and Early American Louisiana: New Sources and New Estimate,” Louisiana History 46, no. 2 (2005): 185–209. 24. The first documented and explicit reference to a Creole language is found in the 1792 trial records of slaves accused of planning a revolt; see Thomas A. Klingler, “If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That”: The Creole Language of Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 44–46, 68. Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 172, 179–80, points to a similar development in Anglo-​­America, although in that case the solution was not to create a Creole language but to alter the syntax, meter, grammar, and idiom in such a way as to put “an indelible imprint on the language, in other words an ‘Africanized English.’ ” 25. Robert S. Desrochers Jr., “Slaves-​­For-​­Sale: Advertisements and Slavery in Massachusetts, 1704–1781,” William and Mary Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2002): 642, 644. 26. Shane White and Graham White, Stylin’: African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), 19. 27. Albert Hurtado, Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999). 28. See Jordan, White over Black, 137–38, 142–43; and Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 16; see also Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles. 29. The global demographic picture of enslaved populations in the Americas that developed in the 1980s held that the sex ratio favored males, a view which has prevailed for a quarter of a century. Recent statistical data reveal that although men dominated the Atlantic slave trade, women and children represented a significant proportion of the trade and by the mid-​­to late eighteenth century constituted a rough equilibrium of enslaved populations almost everywhere. See David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein, eds., The Trans-​ ­Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-​­ROM (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 85–113, esp. 105, 110–13. See also Barbara L. Solow, “The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A New Census,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 9–16 and David Eltis, “The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment,”,William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 17–46. 30. Frey and Wood, Come Shouting to Zion, 183–87. 31. Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 81–82, 84–85; see also Arlette Gautier, Les Sœurs de Solitude. La condition féminine dans l’esclavage aux Antilles du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Paris: Éditions Caribéennes, 1985). 32. Clark, Masterless Mistresses, 170–76. 33. Herman L. Bennett, Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-​­Creole

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 269

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

270

Notes to Pages 200–203

Consciousness, 1570–1640 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 1; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 15–17, 490–91. 34. Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 151, 153, Tables 8.1 and 8.2, 156–57, 160. In Martinique in 1802 there were only 6,578 free and mixed-​­race people compared to almost 80,000 slaves; in Guadeloupe the free, black, and mixed-​­race population was fewer than 8,000 compared to almost 82,000 enslaved people. 35. For the history of coartacíón see Alejandro de la Fuente, “Slaves and the Creation of Legal Rights in Cuba: Coartacíón and Papel,” Hispanic American Historical Review 87, no. 4 (2007): 659– 92; for the practice in Louisiana see Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, 25–26, 42–44. 36. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places, Tables 2.1 and 2.2, 58–59. 37. Marjorie Bourdelais, “La présence francophone à La Nouvelle Orléans (1803–1860)” (Ph.D. diss., École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2007), 1:86, 114–15, Table 2.1, 80. See also Marjorie Bourdelais, La Nouvelle-​­Orléans: Croissance démographique, intégrations urbaine et sociale (1803–1860) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012). 38. Allan Kulikoff, “Uprooted Peoples: Black Migrants in the Age of the American Revolution, 1790–1820,” in Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, ed. Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1983), 152, 162–67; for Louisiana, see also Nathalie Dessens, Myths of the Plantation Society Slavery in the American South and the West Indies (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 34–37. 39. This paragraph is informed by Stephanie Shaw’s unpublished paper presented at the forum “Creolization In and Beyond: Charles Joyner’s Down by the Riverside,” Southern Historical Association, November 6, 2009, Louisville; and Tina K. Ramnarine, The Beautiful Cosmos: Performance and Belonging in the Caribbean Diaspora (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 1–41. 40. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 13–14, 86, 223. 41. Klingler, “If I Could Turn My Tongue Like That,” 20–21, 44, 65, 108–9, 115, 119–28; Paul Lachance, “The Foreign French,” in Creole New Orleans, ed. Hirsch and Logsdon, 105, 117–120. 42. See James H. Dormon, “The Persistent Specter: Slave Rebellion in Territorial Louisiana,” Louisiana History 18, no. 4 (1977): 389–404; Robert L. Pacquette, “Revolutionary St. Domingue in the Making of Territorial Louisiana,” in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution in the Greater Caribbean, ed. David Barry Gaspar and David P. Geggus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 218–19; Junius P. Rodriguez, “ ‘Always En Garde’: The Effects of Slave Insurrection upon the Louisiana Mentality,” Louisiana History 33, no. 4 (1992): 399–416.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 270

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Contributors

Guillaume Aubert is a visiting assistant professor at the College of William and Mary and an affiliated researcher with the French Atlantic History Group based in Montreal, Quebec. He is finishing a book on constructions of race and nation in the French Atlantic and has started a new project on the transatlantic histories of Gorée and Saint-​­Louis du Sénégal from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Emily Clark is the Clement Chambers Benenson Associate Professor in American Colonial History at Tulane University. She works on early American and Atlantic world history. She is the author of Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 and The Strange History of the American Quadroon. Alexandre Dubé is L. R. Wilson Assistant Professor of Canadian History at McMaster University. He writes on political culture and the state in the French Atlantic world. His upcoming book, The Common Goods: Political Culture of French Louisiana, examines the politicization of buying, selling, and supplying in the early Mississippi Valley. Sylvia R. Frey, professor emeritus of history at Tulane University, specializes in colonial and revolutionary America, U.S. political traditions and institutions, women, and religion. Among multiple publications, she is the author of Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age and the coauthor of Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830. Sylvia L. Hilton is professor of U.S. and Latin American history at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has published many books and articles on Spanish colonial frontiers in North America and on Americanist historiography, and has coedited many collective works, including (with Gene Smith)

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 271

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

272 Contributors

Nexus of Empire: Negotiating Loyalty and Identity in the Revolutionary Borderlands, 1760s–­1820s. Jean-​­Pierre Le Glaunec, associate professor of history at Université de Sherbrooke, is a specialist in the history of slavery and slave resistance in Louisiana. His other research interests include the history of marronnage in the French Atlantic world. He is the lead historian for the online project “Le marronnage à Saint-​­Domingue: histoire, mémoire, technologie,” http://www .marronnage.info. Cécile Vidal is associate professor of history at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and director of the Center for North American Studies. She studies the creation and transformation of new societies in a colonial situation in the Americas, paying particular attention to slavery and race. She is the coauthor, with Gilles Havard, of Histoire de l’Amérique française and has published on Atlantic and Louisiana history and historiography. Sophie White, associate professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame, is a social and material culture historian with an interdisciplinary focus on encounters between Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans in early America. She is the author of Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana. Mary Williams studied history at Brown University and received a master’s degree in 1999. Her research focuses on marriage and the family in Spanish and early national Louisiana.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 272

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures and tables. Adelman, Jeremy, 68, 230 nn.3–­4 Antilles, 27, 35, 39, 62, 125–­27, 131, 140, 144–­45, 186, 188, 191, 199–­200. See also Barbados; Cuba; Dominica; Guadeloupe; Jamaica; Lesser Antilles; Martinique; Saint-­ Christophe; Saint-­Domingue; Spanish Antilles; West Indies Aranda, Pedro Pablo Abarca de Bolea, Conde de, 76, 79 Archange, Father, 137 Armitage, David, 3, 9 Atlantic: Atlantic career, 48, Atlantic history/ studies, 2–­17 passim, 145, 184–­85, 204, 205 n.5, 210 nn. 38, 43, 230 n.3; Atlantic world, 48, 68, 70, 92, 97, 101, 104–­5, 147, 182, 185, 190–­96, 206 n.15, 210 n.43, 213 n.58; Black Atlantic, 6, 14; Catholic Atlantic, 14, 23–­24, 28, 31, 34, 42, 194, 216 n.9; cis-­Atlantic perspective, 3, 47; Protestant Atlantic, 42 Bamana. See Bambara Bambara, 89, 106–­7, 238 n.1 Barbados, 115, 125, 191 Barberini, Cardinal Antonio, 26 Beaurepos, Louis, 157–­58, 259 n.28 Begin, Charles, 160–­61 Bégon, Michel (intendant), 37 Belain d’Esnambuc, Pierre, 24 Berlin, Ira, 22 Bienville, Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de (governor), 100 Billiot, Jean Louis, 129 Blénac, Louis de Courbon, Comte de (governor), 36–­37 Bodin, Jean, 25 Boisbriant, Pierre Dugué de, 95, 128, 250 n.21 Bossu, Jean-­Bernard, 139

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 273

22123

Braddick, Michael J., 9 Brazil, 24, 31, 106, 194 Breen, Timothy, 6, 106 British Atlantic, 4, 9, 17, 42, 97. See also British Empire British Empire, 8, 189, 192. See also British Atlantic British North America, 189. See also thirteen colonies Burnard, Trevor, 3 Cabildo (New Orleans), 77, 119, 153, 184, 235 n.43 Caddos, 82 California, 4 Canada, 8, 12–­13, 44, 48, 51–­56, 65–­66, 75, 96, 130, 137 Cap-­Français, 78, 126, 140 Capuchins, 16, 26–­34, 129, 137, 140–­43, 168, 193–­94 Caribbean: Caribbean perspective on American history, 16–­17; Carribean Sea, 2, 127; connections, 125, 167, 203; French, 22–­24, 27, 40, 127, 194; history, 16; islands, 112, 200; navigation in, 69; people, 173–­74, 181; world, 4, 7, 17, 106, 119, 169, 173. See also Antilles; Barbados; Cuba; Dominica; Guadeloupe; Jamaica; Lesser Antilles; Martinique; Saint-­ Christophe; Saint-­Domingue; West Indies Carlier, Alexis-­Philippe, 59–­66, 94, 96, 229 n.59 Carolinas, 116. See also North Carolina; South Carolina Catholicism; impact on French slave regimes, 16, 21–­35 passim, 41–­42, 144, 193–­94, 198–­99, 216 n.8; use of, by free blacks, 175 Cavitta (village), 129 Chambers, Douglas, 105

8/2/13 10:13 AM

274 Index Cherokees, 82, 85 Chesapeake, 146, 201 Chickasaws, 54, 56, 84 Choctaws, 12, 56, 80 Church: missionaries, 14, 16, 24–­42 passim, 55, 129, 131–­44 passim, 193, 218 n.22, 219 n.31, 252 n.43; pope and papacy, 26, 33–­34, 221 n.54; sacramental records, 126–­42 passim, 133, 135, 147–­49, 156, 163, 166–­82 passim, 199, 249 n.11. See also Capuchins; Dominicans; Jacobins; Jesuits; Ursulines Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, 28, 36, 219 n.32 Congo: African ethnicity, 106–­7, 111; kingdom of, 26, 30, 218 n.23; river, 111 Council of the Indies, 30, 221 n.54 Cuba, 4, 29, 76–­77, 111, 170, 172, 195, 200 Dagobert (father superior of the Capuchins), 136, 143 Dawdy, Shannon Lee, 12 Din, Gilbert C., 72, 83 diplomacy: European imperial, 1, 10, 84; Indian, 55–­56, 81–­84, 237 n.64; Spanish Empire and United States, 85 Dominica (island), 24, 112, 125, 195 Dominicans, 26–­27, 131 Dubois, Laurent, 22 Dutch Atlantic, 4, 42 Du Tertre, Jean-­Baptiste, 27, 35 Elliott, John, 7 empire: Catholic Empire, 16, 32–­33, 42, 186, 198, 203; imperial (central) administration, 44–­45, 47, 59, 67, 130; imperial (local) agents, 46, 69; imperial history, 9; imperialism, 45, 69, 80, 191, 214 n. 60, 230 n.4; Protestant Empire, 16, 198. See also British Empire; French Empire; Spanish Empire ethnicity, 25, 86, 105–­6, 114, 132, 134, 188, 195, 203, 209 n.29, 239 n.3, 244 nn.8–­9, 245 n.22, 268 n.11; African ethnic categories, 108, 121. See also Bambara; Congo; Madinga; Senegal; Tiamba; Wolof evangelization, 14, 24–­26, 32–­33, 137, 144, 219 n.31 Ezpeleta, Diego de, 76 Fiehrer, Thomas Marc, 125, 127 Floridas, 5, 10, 67, 69–­74, 77–­79, 81–­86

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 274

Foner, Laura, 127, 167 Fort-­Royal, 129 Foÿ, 89–­102 passim, 194, 196 free blacks: in the Caribbean, 215 n.5, 263 n.18; and church, 138, 142, 144, 193, 262 n.18; culture of, 16, 176; demography of, 23, 145, 150, 167, 200; manumission, 40; marriage and children of, 36–­38, 128, 142, 150, 168–­81 passim, 257n.9; migrants, 129; militia, 177; of New Orleans, 166–­67, 262 n.14; property, 160; re-­enslavement of, 23, 28, 190; relations with whites, 129, 142, 153, 158, 190; social networks and community, 16, 166, 173, 177, 200, 250 n.17, 249 n.14; status of, 38–­40, 96, 128, 190, 222 n.70, 254 n.81 French Antilles. See Antilles French Atlantic, 4, 9, 21–­22, 24, 39, 42, 97, 194, 204, 207 n.20. See also French Empire French Empire, 4, 6, 9, 13–­14, 22–­23, 45–­46, 143, 145, 189, 192, 224 n.7. See also French Atlantic Gaillard, Raymond, 163 Galathée (ship), 140 Gálvez, Bernardo de, 83, 153–­54 Games, Alison, 2–­3 Garrigus, John D., 22 Gaspart, Jean and Marie, 128 German Coast, 72, 129 Germans, 165, 203 Gould, Eliga H., 145 Gould, Virginia M., 117 Grenada (island), 28 Guadeloupe, 22, 24, 36, 39, 65–­66, 140, 189, 252 n.49, 254 n.81, 270 n.34 Guiana, 22, 45, 51, 127 Gulf of Mexico, 1, 4, 6, 10, 69, 85, 126, 185 Hall, Gwendolyn M., 5–­6, 105–­7, 127, 184 Havana, 2, 29, 78, 139 hemispheric history, 8, 210 n.38 Herskovits, Melville, 6 Hurson, Charles-­Martin (intendant of Martinique), 142 Iberville, Pierre Lemoyne d’, 125 Illinois Country, 12, 56, 89, 95, 128–­29, 139, 211 n.48

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Index 275

Ingersoll, Thomas N., 127, 212 n.52, 245 nn. 12, 22, 250 n.21 interracial relations: colonial policy about, 127, 144, 148–­59, 198, 250 n.21, 256 n.3; concubinage, 37, 143; in the French Empire, 6, 126; marriage, 20, 23, 127–­31, 143–­44, 148–­59; métissage, 17, 125–­39 passim, 143–­45, 153, 188–­89, 199, 215 n.73, 248 nn. 9, 11, 15, 251 n.36; plaçage, 16, 165–­67, 172, 182; representation of, 215 n.73; sexuality, 126–­27, 138, 143, 146, 148, 188, 199; silence on, 145 Jaca, Francisco Jose de, 14, 28–­32, 220 nn.37–­38 Jacobins, 41 Jamaica, 7, 110–­13, 116, 118, 121, 125, 174, 191, 195 Jenson, Deborah, 105–­6, 108 Jesuits, 26, 41, 128, 140, 221 n.53 Jupiter (slave), 97, 103 Kadohadachos, 81 Kaskaskia parish, 129 Kiamba. See Tiamba King’s Hospital, 99 Klein, Herbert, 112 Kongo. See Congo La France, Catherine, 155, 259 n.22; Jean, 155 language: African languages, 111, 116, 202; Creole, 196, 202–­3, 214 n.66, 245 n.14, 269 n.24; English, 80; French, 80, 194; and mulattoes, 36; and religion, 79–­80; Spanish, 79 Lawrence, John H., 126 Lemmon, Alfred E., 126 Lenormant de Mézy, Sebastien-­Ange, 52, 54–­ 56, 60–­61, 63–­64, 66, 226 nn.27–­28, 227 n.43, 229 n.59 Lesser Antilles, 127, 131, 145 Liljegren, Ernest R., 72 Loisel, Antoine, 25, 217 n.20 London, 83, 173, 190, 193 Louis aka Foÿ. See Foÿ Louis XIII, 24, 219 n.28 Louis XIV, 33 Louis XV, 152 Louisiana: French regime, 3, 10–­16, 11, 23, 58, 67, 102, 109, 112, 125–­36 passim, 142–­45, 159, 188–­89, 192, 199, 248 n.8; Greater Louisiana, 10; Spanish period, 5, 10, 68–­85 passim, 115, 140, 160, 163, 201–­2; territorial, 3, 106, 111–­12,

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 275

22123

116–­17, 120–­21, 168, 175, 246 n.26. See also Illinois Country; Mississipi, colony Lugar, Juan Antonio, 160, 257 n.8; Petrona, 181 Macarty, Jean-­Baptiste, 160 Machault d’Arnouville, Jean Baptiste de (governor), 40 Madiga. See Madinga Madinga, 89, 107, 115 Madrid, 14, 30–­31, 68–­80, 85, 190, 233 n.26, 235 n.41 Magdelaine (Ursuline sister), 99 Mama Comba (slave), 89, 102 Mandinga. See Madinga Manega. See Madinga manumission, 21, 23, 25, 38–­40, 131, 138, 141–­42, 148, 161–­63, 169, 199–­200 Marquez de Sonora (ship), 104 Martinique, 1, 7, 22–­40 passim, 45, 65, 112, 125–­ 29, 140–­42, 174, 189, 200, 215 n.5, 251 n.36, 252 n.49, 254 n.81, 270 n.34 McDonald, Roderick, 113 metropole: central power, 22, 33, 37–­39, 48, 68–­ 70, 74, 79, 83–­84, 86, 191–­92, 228 n.56; circulations between colonies and, 14, 23, 47, 59, 66, 125–­26, 186, 188–­89; collaboration with colonies, 13, 59, 84, 190; metropolitan ideas and customs, 35, 53, 61, 65–­66, 126, 139, 189, 267 n.5; metropolitan public opinion, 27; as origin or place of training of employees and officials, 47, 53, 55, 61–­66, 192, 229 n.65. See also empire; London; Madrid; Versailles Meuillon, Louis-­Augustin, 110, 116 Michel de Villebois de la Rouvillière, Honoré Gabriel, 44, 48, 52, 54, 56–­58, 61, 64–­66, 226 n.27, 229 n.68 migrations: Acadian, 72; Anglo-­American, 14, 71–­85 passim, 201; from the Caribbean, 126, 129, 171, 201; and circulations of ideas and practices, 189, 200; from cities, 12; effects of, 171; forced, 100–­108; from France, 9, 130, 145; hispanophone, 9, 70; and identity, 195; policy, 73, 190–­92; transatlantic, 71; variety of, 203. See also Saint-­Domingue refugees; slave trade military forces, 49, 70–­7 1, 76, 86, 141, 175–­76, 249 n. 13. See also free blacks; Navy Millini, Savo (cardinal), 30 Mintz, Sidney, 6 Miró, Esteban (governor), 73–­76, 79, 233 n.26

8/2/13 10:13 AM

276 Index Mississippi: basin, river, and valley, 4, 10, 47–­ 48, 51–­52, 59, 65–­66, 68, 70, 84, 144, 193, 232 n.22.; colony, 6, 16, 44, 64, 125–­29, 143, 145, 189; frontier, 69, 83, 211 n.48, 213 n.59; Lower, 10, 13, 60, 127, 139, 207 n.19; mouth of, 112; Spanish Mississippi frontier, 73–­85 passim; state, 201; Upper, 82–­83, 113, 233–­34, 237 n.69; west bank, 2, 10, 14, 115. See also Louisiana, French regime; Louisiana, Greater Louisiana Missouri: crisis, 179; frontier, 10, 211 n.48, 233 n.31; river, 82–­83, 230 n.6; Spanish regime in, 234 n.32; state, 201 Mobile, 10, 81, 176, 226 n.27, 242 n.34 Moirans, Epiphane de, 14, 28–­32, 220 nn.37–­38 Montreal, 54, 56–­57, 65, 67, 83, 194 Morales, Juan Ventura (intendant), 76, 78, 84 Moreau de St. Méry, Méderic-­Louis-­Elie, 136 Morgan, George, 75–­76, 79 Morgan, Jennifer, 198 Morgan, Philip D., 114, 146, 209 n.32, 240 n.15 Mpinda (African port), 26, 218 n.23 Nash, Gary, 16–­17 Natchitoches, 72, 82 Native Americans: actors of Louisiana history, 5, 12; and Atlantic history, 213 n.58; and conceptualization of race, 188; diplomacy, 4, 55–­56, 70, 80–­85; evangelization of, 29, 80, 193; mixed unions, 41, 74, 128–­40 passim, 132, 134, 143–­44, 148; New Indian history, 6; slaves, 12; trade, 55, 83–­84. See also Caddos; Cherokees; Chickasaws; Choctaws; Diplomacy; Osages; Taovayas; Tawakonis; Trade; Yatasis Navarro, Martin, 73–­74, 79, 115, 235 n.50, 245 n.24 Navy: activities of, 50, 55; careers and network, 13, 45–­52, 58–­59, 66, 226 n.25; as a centralizing imperial institution, 14, 45, 47, 48, 61–­62, 66; in the colony, 63–­65; failings of, 46; Ministry of, 33, 44–­45, 47, 63, 67, 186 New England, 5, 116 New France, 45, 54, 97, 130, 186, 188 New Grenada, 4 New Madrid, 71 New Mexico, 4 New Orleans: battle of, 177; cession of, 137; church, 140; demography, 113, 139, 200; free blacks of, 165–­84, 197–­200; interracial

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 276

relations in, 127–­45 passim, 150–­58, 165–­84 passim; municipal and ecclesiastical government, 77, 80; as port and trading post, 78, 93–­97 passim, 196, 203; as refuge, 174; rural outskirts of, 90; as seat of colonial administration, 53–­67 passim; slave market, 114; in the United States, 185, 203; as urban society, 12, 116, 201 New Spain, 69, 77, 85, 193, 200 North Carolina, 128. See also Carolinas Opelousas, 103–­4, 113 O’Reilly, Alejandro, 70, 72–­73, 77, 81 Orleans parish, 113, 246 n.34 Osages, 14, 82–­83 Paillet, Jean, 149–­50 Panton, William, 83–­84 Panton & Leslie (firm), 83 Patoulet, Jean-­Baptiste (intendant), 36–­37 Pelleprat, Pierre (father), 27 Pensacola, 81, 176 Poincy, Commandeur Blondel de Longvilliers de, 26 Pointe Coupée, 113, 142 Pontchartrain, Michel, Comte de (minister of the navy), 40 Pradel, Edouard de Lamaze, Chevalier de, 97 Pragmatic. See Royal Pragmatic on Marriage Price, Richard, 6, 15, 106 Printans, François, 141 Propaganda Fide (Sacred Congregation of), 26, 29, 30–­31, 34, 218 n.24 Protestantism, 42, 186, 193, 203. See also Atlantic, Protestant Atlantic Prudhome, Maria Juana, 160 racial categorization: in the Antilles, 35; câpre, 140; griffe (grifa, jambo, sambo), 132, 134, 136, 139–­40, 155; métis(se) (mixed blood), 130, 132, 134, 136, 138–­41; mulatto, 36–­38, 40–­41, 131, 136, 139, 179–­80, 187, 195, 251 n.40; muquadroon, 137; quadroon (quarteron), 136, 139, 155, 165, 180, 183; status of children of mixed unions, 34–­36, 158–­59 Raguet, Gilles-­Bernard, 131 Rançon, Louis, 141. See also Ranson, Luis Ranson, Luis, 77, 141 Raphaël (father), 131, 140, 143

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM



Index 277

Raphaël, Jean-­Baptiste (free black), 128, 250 n.19, 256 n.8 Rebellion of 1768, 72, 152–­53, 191, 229 n.66 revolution: American Revolution, 72, 175, 191, 200, 231 n.15, 232 n.24; in the Caribbean, 71, 175; French Revolution, 72, 78, 140, 224 n.6; Haitian revolution, 72, 171–­72, 177; in the late eighteenth century, 86, 115 Rochemore, Vincent-­Gaspard-­Pierre de, 50–­51, 57–­58, 61–­66, 226 nn.27–­28 Roguet, Pierre, 130 Rosary, Blacks and Mulattos of Our Lady of the, 30 Rousseau, Marie and Remond, 100–­101 Royal Pragmatic on Marriage, 154–­56, 180 Ruau Palu, M. de, 36 Saint Amand, Antoine (de), 103 Saint Amand, Pierre, 115 Saint-­Christophe, 24, 26, 128, 215 n.5 Saint-­Domingue: and administrative careers in the French Empire, 13, 51; circulations between Louisiana and, 16, 55, 58, 60–­62, 78, 88, 103, 116, 125–­26, 140, 195–­96, 199; comparison between Louisiana and, 7, 145–­46, 177; as a model, 55, 126, 140, 144, 199; racial regime and slavery in, 22, 41, 106, 111–­12, 118, 136, 138, 170; as slave society, 7; turbulences in, 112. See also Cap-­Français; revolution; Saint-­Domingue refugees; Superior Council Saint-­Domingue refugees, 9, 16, 71, 126, 169–­ 74, 177, 179, 181–­83, 201, 257 n.11, 263 n.24 San Andrés, 74 Scotland, 193 Scots, 83–­84 Scott, Rebecca J., 166, 171 Senegal, 107 Senegambia, 107, 111 Sevier, John, 75 Silva, Lourenço da, 28, 30 slave law: 1685 Code Noir (Caribbean), 22–­23, 33–­41; 1808 Civil Code, 178, 262 n.12; 1825 Civil Code, 178, 265 n.44; and Catholic Church, 23, 33–­34, 41, 218 n.20; Edict of 1724 (Louisiana Code Noir), 21–­23, 39–­41, 92, 95–­96, 99, 126–­31, 145, 149–­62 passim, 189, 192–­94, 198–­99, 215 n.5, 216 nn. 7, 9, 10; and free blacks, 38; Loi Municipale, 153, 262 n.12; other Atlantic slave laws, 42; Roman origins of, 22–­23; and state power, 33, 224 n.4

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 277

22123

slavery: Africanization, 15, 105–­8, 114–­17, 120–­ 21, 195, 244 n.10; Creolization, 15, 98, 103–­20 passim, 195–­97, 244 n.10, 247 n.52; master and slaves relationship, 29–­38 passim, 91–­92, 97, 100, 119, 131, 138–­42, 157, 162; in plantations, 12, 15, 34, 90–­95, 103, 107–­22 passim, 146, 168, 184, 188–­90, 195, 198, 262 n.13; slave society, 7, 126, 144–­45, 194, 246 n.31, 248 n.8; urban slavery, 12, 212 n.56 slave trade: in Africa, 27; from the Caribbean, 125, 246n.32; in the Chesapeake, 121; closing of the slave trade, 201; Code Noir and, 128, 145; defense of, 28, 194; demography, 113, 168, 269 n.29; Dutch slave trade, 25; French slave trade, 112; Norman slave trade, 25; re-­africanization and, 15, 109, 111; records, 121; religious opposition to, 24, 29–­30, 34, 194, 218 nn.22–­24, 220 n.37, 221 n.54; rhythm of the Louisiana slave trade, 115, 145–­46; role of cloth in, 92; slaves in southern France, 25; slave traders, 26, 32; Spanish slave trade, 111–­ 12, 245 n.22; studies, 6; transatlantic slave trade, 2, 26, 29, 115 Smallwood, Stephanie, 111 South Carolina, 111, 118, 121, 125–­26, 146, 188, 191, 193, 200. See also Carolinas Spanish Antilles, 186 Spanish Atlantic, 4, 17, 25, 28, 30–­31, 194. See also Spanish Empire Spanish Empire, 68, 70, 78, 119, 154, 163, 189, 230 n.5, 231 n.13, 258 n.19. See also Spanish Atlantic Spear, Jennifer M., 12, 148 St. Charles Borromeo Parish (District Saint Charles), 103–­20, 129, 194–­95, 246 n.34, 261 n.9 St. John the Baptist Parish, 113–­14, 246 n.34, 261 n.9 St. Kitts. See Saint-­Christophe St. Louis, 71, 83, 211 St. Louis Church and Cathedral, 113, 133–­35, 166–­67, 170, 177, 202 St. Louis Parish, 126, 131, 167–­68, 178 Stoler, Ann Laura, 125, 194 Superior Council: of Cap Français, 254 n.81; in the French Empire, 45, 224 n.4; of Guadeloupe, 36; of Louisiana, 22, 39, 53–­54, 71, 162; of Martinique, 40; of Port-au-­Prince, 143 Sweet, James H., 15, 105

8/2/13 10:13 AM

278 Index Tadman, Michael, 120 Tannenbaum, Frank, 16 Taovayas, 82 Tawakonis, 82 Tchapitoulas, 113 Texas, 4, 82 thirteen colonies, 106, 112, 114, 145, 191. See also British North America; Chesapeake; Carolinas; North Carolina; South Carolina; Virginia Thornton, John, 6, 111 Tiamba, 107–­8 Tinhioüen (Kadohadacho chief), 81 Tracy, Alexandre de Prouville, Marquis de (governor general), 28 trade: apparel trade, 95; with the Caribbean, 78; fur trade, 55–­57, 60, 130; imperial rivalry for, 14, 68–­69; informal (illicit) trade, 91–­ 100, 196; intercolonial trade, 125–­26, 189; Louisiana traders, 64, 101; mercantilism and trade regulations, 4, 24,33, 69, 77–­78, 112, 153; Native American trade, 80–­84; private commercial ventures, 24; second-­hand trade, 101; slave as traders, 90, 97, 119; smuggling (including tolerated illicit trade), 78, 83; transatlantic trade, 72, 78, 83–­84, 192; U.S. traders, 83–­84. See also Compagnie des Indes; Native Americans; Panton & Leslie; slave trade Trépagnier, François, 115 Turpin, Alexandre and Joseph, 129 Ugulayakabe (Chickasaw chief), 84 Ulloa, Antonio de (governor), 2, 69, 71, 149, 152, 252 n.43, 258 n.14

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 278

Unzaga, Luis de (governor), 78 Ursulines, 8, 99, 150, 193–­94, 223 n.84, 257 n.8 Usner, Daniel, 5–­6, 184 Versailles, 14, 44–­67 passim, 189 Villars Dubreuil, Joseph, 90, 94 Villeray, Catherine, 149–­50 Virginia, 3, 7, 114, 121, 128, 146, 187–­88, 191, 195, 200, 239 n.6, 246 n.31 Walsh, Lorena, 114, 246 n.32 war: Cherokee vs. U.S., 82; Chickasaw war, 56; Choctaw civil war, 56; of the French Convention, 84; inter-­Indian wars 82; just wars and slavery, 29, 33; and religion, 187; revolutionary wars, 72, 78, 82, 190; second Hundred Years’ War, 4; Seven Years War, 140, 191, 199; of U.S. independence, 70, 73. See also diplomacy; revolution Watson, Alan, 22 West Indies: British, 5, 186, 188, 246 n.32; French West Indies, 4, 7, 12, 125–­26, 128–­ 29, 140, 142–­45, 186, 201, 251 n.40. See also Antilles; Barbados; Caribbean; Cuba; Dominica; Guadeloupe; Jamaica; Lesser Antilles; Martinique; Saint-­Christophe; Saint-­Domingue White, Richard, 6 Wilson, Kathleen, 9 Wiltz, Charlotte, 157 Wolof, 110 Wood, Peter H., 125, 210 n.38 Yatasis, 81

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Acknowledgments

This book was born from workshops I organized at the Center for North American Studies, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris, and at Tulane University in New Orleans. I would like to thank very much both institutions for their financial support. The Parisian session was financed by the ACI PROSODIE Histoire atlantique from the French Ministry of Research; the workshop in New Orleans by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South. I am particularly grateful to Sylvia Frey, professor emeritus, Tulane University, and François Weil, former director of the Center for North American Studies, for their constant support, generosity, and trust. Throughout their careers, both have eagerly sought to develop an ambitious transatlantic dialogue among historians of Louisiana and North America; this book is a humble attempt to follow in their footsteps. Many thanks also to Lawrence Powell, who co-​­organized the New Orleans session with me. My gratitude goes to all the participants of the two workshops, including Shannon Lee Dawdy, Jean Hébrard, Rebecca Scott, and François Weil, who, unfortunately, were unable to participate in this book, and the commentators of the New Orleans session, Randy Sparks, Martha Jones, and Lawrence Powell. Their papers and comments greatly enriched our collective reflection, which was further enhanced by the thoughtful reports of two anonymous manuscript readers. The encouragement and support that I received at the University of Pennsylvania Press from Daniel Richter and Robert Lockhart considerably eased the editorial process. Finally, this volume has been a great intellectual adventure, and I am deeply indebted to all the authors for our rich discussions and for having rewritten their essays several times in the process. It is the magic of New Orleans that made possible this gathering of scholars from Europe and North America in a celebration of research and friendship.

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 279

22123

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 280

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 281

8/2/13 10:13 AM

Vidal_Louisiana_TX.indd 282

8/2/13 10:13 AM