The Accidental City

by Powell, Lawrence N.

• ISBN13: 9780674059870
• ISBN10: 0674059875
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-30
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

This is the story of a city that shouldn't exist. In the seventeenth century, what is now America's most beguiling metropolis was nothing more than a swamp: prone to flooding, infested with snakes, battered by hurricanes. But through the intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, this unpromising site became a crossroads for the whole Atlantic world. Lawrence N. Powell, a decades-long resident and observer of New Orleans, gives us the full sweep of the city's history from its founding through Louisiana statehood in 1812. We see the Crescent City evolve from a French village, to an African market town, to a Spanish fortress, and finally to an Anglo-American center of trade and commerce. We hear and feel the mix of peoples, religions, and languages from four continents that make the place electric-and always on the verge of unraveling. The Accidental City is the story of land-jobbing schemes, stock market crashes, and nonstop squabbles over status, power, and position, with enough rogues, smugglers, and self-fashioners to fill a picaresque novel. Powell's tale underscores the fluidity and contingency of the past, revealing a place where people made their own history. This is a city, and a history, marked by challenges and perpetual shifts in shape and direction, like the sinuous river on which it is perched.

Table of Contents

An Impossible River	p. 1
A Landjobbing Scheme	p. 33
Utopian by Design	p. 60
Improvising a City	p. 92
Changing of the Guard	p. 129
In Contraband We Trust	p. 164
A Creole City	p. 197
Slavery and the Struggle for Mastery	p. 222
The Slaves Remake Themselves	p. 249
A New People, a New Racial Order	p. 277
The American Gateway	p. 314
Epilogue	p. 352
Notes	p. 361
Acknowledgments	p. 401
Index	p. 405
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.