Spanish New Orleans

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Author :
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807174890
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Spanish New Orleans by : John Eugene Rodriguez

Download or read book Spanish New Orleans written by John Eugene Rodriguez and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Eugene Rodriguez’s Spanish New Orleans is the first comprehensive academic analysis of how Spain governed the largest imperial city in its North American empire. Rodriguez suggests that the Spanish empire was, at least on the northern edge, slipping into economic and perhaps political independence a decade before the overthrow of its Bourbon Spanish rulers in 1808. His work questions that of earlier historians, who argued that Latin America was fundamentally conservative and complaisant under Bourbon rule. Instead, Spanish New Orleans shows that in the capital of Louisiana, Spanish rulers were slowly losing control of three interwoven aspects of the city: demography, trade, and political discourse. Rodriguez demonstrates how the multiethnic, multilingual population of the city played a central role in encouraging trans-imperial free trade and especially trade with the United States, to the point of economic dependence. This dependence in turn prompted the Bourbon governors in New Orleans to negotiate both economic and political discourse in a city that was steadily moving closer in every way to the United States. Far from being a peripheral city in a peripheral colony, by 1803 New Orleans was reshaping the Spanish empire beyond the comprehension of the Spanish king. Chapters on the city’s foundational merchants, literacy, and the judicial system all point to the unique character of this imperial city on the American periphery. This study marks new methodological paths for historians of Latin America and early U.S. history by making use of enormous data compilations on population, ethnicity, and economics. Rodriguez also analyzes previously ignored eighteenth-century Spanish-language documents, including petitions, postal records, and military rosters, and engages underutilized tools such as signature analysis. Through his use of original sources and innovative methodologies, Rodriguez makes new and intriguing comparisons between New Orleans and other contemporary Spanish imperial cities as well as cities in the then-expanding United States. In Spanish New Orleans, Rodriguez goes beyond simply positioning New Orleans within Spanish imperial history. Taking a broader view, he considers what Spanish New Orleans reveals about the challenges and opportunities faced by the Spanish Bourbon empire, and he sheds light on how a new North American empire could so quickly and easily absorb a Spanish city.

The World That Made New Orleans

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Author :
Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1569765138
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (697 download)

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Book Synopsis The World That Made New Orleans by : Ned Sublette

Download or read book The World That Made New Orleans written by Ned Sublette and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: STRONGNamed one of the Top 10 Books of 2008 by The Times-Picayune. STRONGWinner of the 2009 Humanities Book of the Year award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.STRONG STRONGAwarded the New Orleans Gulf South Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award for 2008. New Orleans is the most elusive of American cities. The product of the centuries-long struggle among three mighty empires--France, Spain, and England--and among their respective American colonies and enslaved African peoples, it has always seemed like a foreign port to most Americans, baffled as they are by its complex cultural inheritance. The World That Made New Orleans offers a new perspective on this insufficiently understood city by telling the remarkable story of New Orleans's first century--a tale of imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the very different revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. It demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality at the time of Louisiana's statehood in 1812. By then, important roots of American music were firmly planted in its urban swamp--especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans appeared en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor to the city put it, &“rock the city.&” This book is a logical continuation of Ned Sublette's previous volume, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, which was highly praised for its synthesis of musical, cultural, and political history. Just as that book has become a standard resource on Cuba, so too will The World That Made New Orleans long remain essential for understanding the beautiful and tragic story of this most American of cities.

Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift

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Author :
Publisher : UNM Press
ISBN 13 : 0826327958
Total Pages : 331 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift by : Thomas E. Chávez

Download or read book Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift written by Thomas E. Chávez and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2002-04-11 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of Spain in the birth of the United States is a little known and little understood aspect of U.S. independence. Through actual fighting, provision of supplies, and money, Spain helped the young British colonies succeed in becoming an independent nation. Soldiers were recruited from all over the Spanish empire, from Spain itself and from throughout Spanish America. Many died fighting British soldiers and their allies in Central America, the Caribbean, along the Mississippi River from New Orleans to St. Louis and as far north as Michigan, along the Gulf Coast to Mobile and Pensacola, as well as in Europe. Based on primary research in the archives of Spain, this book is about United States history at its very inception, placing the war in its broadest international context. In short, the information in this book should provide a clearer understanding of the independence of the United States, correct a longstanding omission in its history, and enrich its patrimony. It will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the Revolutionary War and in Spain's role in the development of the Americas.

New Orleans Cabildo

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807120422
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis New Orleans Cabildo by : Gilbert C. Din

Download or read book New Orleans Cabildo written by Gilbert C. Din and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1996-07-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cabildo -- New Orleans' unique Spanish city government -- touched the life of every citizen of the city during its thirty-four years of existence, and its decisions often had an impact on the administration of Louisiana far beyond the confines of New Orleans itself. Moreover, its archival records, with lavish and detailed information about every aspect of life within Spanish New Orleans, are the richest of any city in the Spanish Borderlands. Yet curiously, until now there has been no thorough analysis of this influential institution.In The New Orleans Cabildo, Gilbert C. Din and John E. Harkins have filled that scholarly gap and made a significant contribution to our understanding of the Spanish hegemony in Louisiana. New Orleans, which had been a small, isolated, and insignificant town under the French grew to be a thriving center of trade, communications, and economic activity under Spanish rule. Din and Harkins examine the offices and personnel of the Cabildo and explore its vast responsibilities in the areas of justice, medicine and health, public works, land grants and building regulations, ceremonial and liaison duties, regulation of markets and food prices, and treatment of slaves and free blacks, among others. They also review the difficulties encountered by the Cabildo and the ways it responded to the city's -- and the colony's -- economic, legal, social, and military problems.Through careful and thoughtful utilization of documents from archives in Louisiana and Spain -- particularly minutes from the Cabildo meetings -- Din and Harkins have produced in The New Orleans Cabildo a model history of a complex and all-encompassing institution.

Spanish New Orleans

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Author :
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807175005
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Spanish New Orleans by : John Eugene Rodriguez

Download or read book Spanish New Orleans written by John Eugene Rodriguez and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-03-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Eugene Rodriguez’s Spanish New Orleans is the first comprehensive academic analysis of how Spain governed the largest imperial city in its North American empire. Rodriguez suggests that the Spanish empire was, at least on the northern edge, slipping into economic and perhaps political independence a decade before the overthrow of its Bourbon Spanish rulers in 1808. His work questions that of earlier historians, who argued that Latin America was fundamentally conservative and complaisant under Bourbon rule. Instead, Spanish New Orleans shows that in the capital of Louisiana, Spanish rulers were slowly losing control of three interwoven aspects of the city: demography, trade, and political discourse. Rodriguez demonstrates how the multiethnic, multilingual population of the city played a central role in encouraging trans-imperial free trade and especially trade with the United States, to the point of economic dependence. This dependence in turn prompted the Bourbon governors in New Orleans to negotiate both economic and political discourse in a city that was steadily moving closer in every way to the United States. Far from being a peripheral city in a peripheral colony, by 1803 New Orleans was reshaping the Spanish empire beyond the comprehension of the Spanish king. Chapters on the city’s foundational merchants, literacy, and the judicial system all point to the unique character of this imperial city on the American periphery. This study marks new methodological paths for historians of Latin America and early U.S. history by making use of enormous data compilations on population, ethnicity, and economics. Rodriguez also analyzes previously ignored eighteenth-century Spanish-language documents, including petitions, postal records, and military rosters, and engages underutilized tools such as signature analysis. Through his use of original sources and innovative methodologies, Rodriguez makes new and intriguing comparisons between New Orleans and other contemporary Spanish imperial cities as well as cities in the then-expanding United States. In Spanish New Orleans, Rodriguez goes beyond simply positioning New Orleans within Spanish imperial history. Taking a broader view, he considers what Spanish New Orleans reveals about the challenges and opportunities faced by the Spanish Bourbon empire, and he sheds light on how a new North American empire could so quickly and easily absorb a Spanish city.

Bounded Lives, Bounded Places

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Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822318989
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (189 download)

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Book Synopsis Bounded Lives, Bounded Places by : Kimberly S. Hanger

Download or read book Bounded Lives, Bounded Places written by Kimberly S. Hanger and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines Louisiana's history during the Spanish colonial period of the late eighteenth century, describing economic, political, and military conditions, along with the social conditions and rights granted to the antebellum population of freed slaves that lived in New Orleans under Spanish rule.

The Story of French New Orleans

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496804872
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis The Story of French New Orleans by : Dianne Guenin-Lelle

Download or read book The Story of French New Orleans written by Dianne Guenin-Lelle and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it about the city of New Orleans? History, location, and culture continue to link it to France while distancing it culturally and symbolically from the United States. This book explores the traces of French language, history, and artistic expression that have been present there over the last three hundred years. This volume focuses on the French, Spanish, and American colonial periods to understand the imprint that French socio-cultural dynamic left on the Crescent City. The migration of Acadians to New Orleans at the time the city became a Spanish dominion and the arrival of Haitian refugees when the city became an American territory oddly reinforced its Francophone identity. However, in the process of establishing itself as an urban space in the Antebellum South, the culture of New Orleans became a liability for New Orleans elite after the Louisiana Purchase. New Orleans and the Caribbean share numerous historical, cultural, and linguistic connections. The book analyzes these connections and the shared process of creolization occurring in New Orleans and throughout the Caribbean Basin. It suggests “French” New Orleans might be understood as a trope for unscripted “original” Creole social and cultural elements. Since being Creole came to connote African descent, the study suggests that an association with France in the minds of whites allowed for a less racially-bound and contested social order within the United States.

The French Quarter of New Orleans

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 9781617034978
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (349 download)

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Book Synopsis The French Quarter of New Orleans by :

Download or read book The French Quarter of New Orleans written by and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, a native of New Orleans, displays his passion for the "French Quarter" of the city in 106 color photographs highlighting Old World architecture, style, and history that has made this section of the city famous throughout the world.

Bernardo de Gálvez

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469640805
Total Pages : 617 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Bernardo de Gálvez by : Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia

Download or read book Bernardo de Gálvez written by Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-03-23 with total page 617 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Spain was never a formal ally of the United States during the American Revolution, its entry into the war definitively tipped the balance against Britain. Led by Bernardo de Galvez, supreme commander of the Spanish forces in North America, their military campaigns against British settlements on the Mississippi River—and later against Mobile and Pensacola—were crucial in preventing Britain from concentrating all its North American military and naval forces on the fight against George Washington's Continental army. In this first comprehensive biography of Galvez (1746@–86), Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia assesses the commander's considerable historical impact and expands our understanding of Spain's contribution to the war. A man of both empire and the Enlightenment, as viceroy of New Spain (1785@–86), Galvez was also pivotal in the design and implementation of Spanish colonial reforms, which included the reorganization of Spain's Northern Frontier that brought peace to the region for the duration of the Spanish presence in North America. Extensively researched through Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. archives, Quintero Saravia's portrait of Galvez reveals him as central to the histories of the Revolution and late eighteenth-century America and offers a reinterpretation of the international factors involved in the American War for Independence.

New Orleans Con Sabor Latino

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1617038954
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis New Orleans Con Sabor Latino by : Zella Palmer Cuadra

Download or read book New Orleans Con Sabor Latino written by Zella Palmer Cuadra and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2013-07-27 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Orleans con Sabor Latino is a documentary cookbook that draws on the rich Latino culture and history of New Orleans by focusing on thirteen New Orleanian Latinos from diverse backgrounds. Their stories are compelling and reveal what for too long has been overlooked. The book celebrates the influence of Latino cuisine on the food culture of New Orleans from the eighteenth century to the influx of Latino migration post-Katrina and up to today. From farmers' markets, finedining restaurants, street cart vendors, and home cooks, there isn't a part of the food industry that has been left untouched by this fusion of cultures. Zella Palmer Cuadra visited and interviewed each creator. Each dish is placed in historical context and is presented in full-color images, along with photographs of the cooks. Latino culture has left an indelible mark on classic New Orleans cuisine and its history, and now this contribution is celebrated and recognized in this beautifully illustrated volume. The cookbook includes a lagniappe (something extra) section of New Orleans recipes from a Latin perspective. Such creations as seafood paella with shrimp boudin, Puerto Rican po'boy (jibarito) with grillades, and Cuban chicken soup bring to life this delicious mix of traditional recipes and new flavors.

The Accidental City

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674065441
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis The Accidental City by : Lawrence N. Powell

Download or read book The Accidental City written by Lawrence N. Powell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-13 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the history of the city from its being contended over as swampland through Louisiana's statehood in 1812, discussing its motley identities as a French village, African market town, Spanish fortress, and trade center.

Jacques-Felix Lelièvre's New Louisiana Gardener

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807124796
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis Jacques-Felix Lelièvre's New Louisiana Gardener by :

Download or read book Jacques-Felix Lelièvre's New Louisiana Gardener written by and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1838, Nouveau Jardinier de la Louisiane, by Jacques-Felix Lelièvre, was the first of only two books on Louisiana gardening to be written in the nineteenth century. The book drew upon the confident spirit of eighteenth-century Enlightenment France, forming a bridge from the writings of French horticulturalists to an American audience. Optimistic, ambitious, and progressive, the guide urged gardeners to manage nature by acclimating new species and constantly improving native ones through the application of innovative scientific techniques. Now available in English for the first time as New Louisiana Gardener, this charming period piece and path breaking work can be enjoyed once again by gardening enthusiasts and historians alike. An introduction by Sally Kittredge Reeves gives historical context to the translation that follows, detailing the author's reasons for coming to America and his struggles to make a new life, his employment at and eventual ownership of a bookstore in New Orleans, and his reasons for compiling Nouveau Jardinier and publishing it in Francophile New Orleans. Written over 150 years ago, New Louisiana Gardener offers today's gardener a refreshing connection with other gardening enthusiasts across time. Here, in this delightful historical gem, modern cultivators can escape their fertilizers and tillers and rediscover for a moment the joy of facing Mother Nature with little more than a well-educated pruning knife and a hoe.

Gateway to New Orleans

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Publisher : University of Southwestern Louisiana, Center for Louisiana Studies
ISBN 13 : 9781946160249
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Gateway to New Orleans by : Mary Louise Christovich

Download or read book Gateway to New Orleans written by Mary Louise Christovich and published by University of Southwestern Louisiana, Center for Louisiana Studies. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louisiana Landmarks Society's Gateway to New Orleans: Bayou St. John, 1708-2018 traces the history and architecture of the historic Faubourg St. John in New Orleans, from pre-colonial days through its evolution from a glorious semi-rural village into a popular suburban neighborhood. Published to commemorate the tricentennial anniversary of the founding of New Orleans, this trek began years ago with editor Mary Louise Christovich's inaugural research and prescient vision of recording the history and architecture of this, the future city's first European settlement. Through rich narratives, scholarly research, and gripping historical accounts, the book transcends a mere architectural survey of the neighborhood. The boundaries of the historic Faubourg St. John set the parameters for coverage from the north side of Orleans to the south side of Esplanade Avenue and from the west side of North Broad to both banks of Moss Street. Personalities, as well as geographical and economic factors and architectural trends, are explored along the way, utilizing Orleans Parish's richly abundant and unique archival resources. Exquisite full-color photographs by Robert and Jan Brantley provide contemporary views of the neighborhood, supplementing the text and pairing with notarial drawings, historical photographs, and paintings to yield a visual understanding of the landscape of this bayou neighborhood and its influence on the establishment of the city. Without it, New Orleans would not exist where it does today.

Africans In Colonial Louisiana

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807119997
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Africans In Colonial Louisiana by : Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

Download or read book Africans In Colonial Louisiana written by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1995-07-01 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although a number of important studies of American slavery have explored the formation of slave cultures in the English colonies, no book until now has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the development of the distinctive Afro-Creole culture of colonial Louisiana. This culture, based upon a separate language community with its own folkloric, musical, religious, and historical traditions, was created by slaves brought directly from Africa to Louisiana before 1731. It still survives as the acknowledged cultural heritage of tens of thousands of people of all races in the southern part of the state. In this pathbreaking work, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall studies Louisiana's creole slave community during the eighteenth century, focusing on the slaves' African origins, the evolution of their own language and culture, and the role they played in the formation of the broader society, economy, and culture of the region. Hall bases her study on research in a wide range of archival sources in Louisiana, France, and Spain and employs several disciplines--history, anthropology, linguistics, and folklore--in her analysis. Among the topics she considers are the French slave trade from Africa to Louisiana, the ethnic origins of the slaves, and relations between African slaves and native Indians. She gives special consideration to race mixture between Africans, Indians, and whites; to the role of slaves in the Natchez Uprising of 1729; to slave unrest and conspiracies, including the Pointe Coupee conspiracies of 1791 and 1795; and to the development of communities of runaway slaves in the cypress swamps around New Orleans.

Building the Devil's Empire

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226138437
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Building the Devil's Empire by : Shannon Lee Dawdy

Download or read book Building the Devil's Empire written by Shannon Lee Dawdy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building the Devil’s Empire is the first comprehensive history of New Orleans’s early years, tracing the town’s development from its origins in 1718 to its revolt against Spanish rule in 1768. Shannon Lee Dawdy’s picaresque account of New Orleans’s wild youth features a cast of strong-willed captives, thin-skinned nobles, sharp-tongued women, and carousing travelers. But she also widens her lens to reveal the port city’s global significance, examining its role in the French Empire and the Caribbean, and she concludes that by exemplifying a kind of rogue colonialism—where governments, outlaws, and capitalism become entwined—New Orleans should prompt us to reconsider our notions of how colonialism works. "[A] penetrating study of the colony's founding."—Nation “A brilliant and spirited reinterpretation of the emergence of French New Orleans. Dawdy leads us deep into the daily life of the city, and along the many paths that connected it to France, the North American interior, and the Greater Caribbean. A major contribution to our understanding of the history of the Americas and of the French Atlantic, the work is also a model of interdisciplinary research and analysis, skillfully bringing together archival research, archaeology, and literary analysis.”—Laurent Dubois, Duke University

The Spanish Regime in Missouri

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis The Spanish Regime in Missouri by : Louis Houck

Download or read book The Spanish Regime in Missouri written by Louis Houck and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Mysteries of New Orleans

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 0801877695
Total Pages : 596 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mysteries of New Orleans by : Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein

Download or read book The Mysteries of New Orleans written by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-22 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most scandalous books published in America at the time. "Reizenstein's peculiar vision of New Orleans is worth resurrecting precisely because it crossed the boundaries of acceptable taste in nineteenth-century German America and squatted firmly on the other side . . . This work makes us realize how limited our notions were of what could be conceived by a fertile American imagination in the middle of the nineteenth century."—from the Introduction by Steven Rowan A lost classic of America's neglected German-language literary tradition, The Mysteries of New Orleans by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein first appeared as a serial in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung, a New Orleans German-language newspaper, between 1854 and 1855. Inspired by the gothic "urban mysteries" serialized in France and Germany during this period, Reizenstein crafted a daring occult novel that stages a frontal assault on the ethos of the antebellum South. His plot imagines the coming of a bloody, retributive justice at the hands of Hiram the Freemason—a nightmarish, 200-year-old, proto-Nietzschean superman—for the sin of slavery. Heralded by the birth of a black messiah, the son of a mulatto prostitute and a decadent German aristocrat, this coming revolution is depicted in frankly apocalyptic terms. Yet, Reizenstein was equally concerned with setting and characters, from the mundane to the fantastic. The book is saturated with the atmosphere of nineteenth-century New Orleans, the amorous exploits of its main characters uncannily resembling those of New Orleans' leading citizens. Also of note is the author's progressively matter-of-fact portrait of the lesbian romance between his novel's only sympathetic characters, Claudine and Orleana. This edition marks the first time that The Mysteries of New Orleans has been translated into English and proves that 150 years later, this vast, strange, and important novel remains as compelling as ever.