In 1718, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de la Bienville, the French Mississippi Company reclaimed "La Nouvelle Orléans" (New Orleans) from a stagnant swamp. Since then, a lot has changed.
It took a while for New Orleans to become the vibrant gumbo of a city we know today, but it played a pivotal role in American history almost from the beginning. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, French King Louis XV ceded the colony of "Louisiane" (Louisiana) to his Spanish cousin, King Charles III. Most of the surviving architecture of the French Quarter of New Orleans actually originated from this Spanish period, which lasted until about 1800. The colony reverted to French control, and Napoleon arranged the "vente de la Louisiane" (sale of Louisiana). The 828,000-square-mile territory was sold to the United States in 1803 for a mere 78 million francs (roughly $15 million) plus interest, of course. Perhaps the greatest real estate bargain in history, the Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States and changed (some say defined) the course of American history.
New Orleans has been a key military stronghold for the French, Spanish, and British empires and later the Confederate and Union armies. The most famous battle of this strategically located city took place on the morning of January 8, 1815, when a veteran force of 8,000 British troops led by Sir Edward Pakenham attempted to seize New Orleans. American Major General Andrew Jackson, with the help of legendary privateer and pirate king Jean Lafitte and his men and guns, directed a ramshackle band of 4,000 military men, frontiersmen, and former Haitian slaves (not all of whom spoke the same language) and outfought the British force at Chalmette Plantation. The British suffered in excess of 2,000 casualties, whereas the Americans had fewer than 100. Historians remember the Battle of New Orleans as the culmination of the War of 1812, but ironically, the Treaty of Ghent had officially ended the war on December 24, 1814, two weeks earlier.
The 18th and 19th centuries saw a booming river trade of sugar cane, rum, tobacco, fruit, and other island crops that transformed New Orleans into the dominant port in the Caribbean. Large plantations outside the city cultivated major commodities, such as sugar and cotton, with the help of slave labor. The arrival of thousands of refugees and "gens de couleur libres" (free people of color) from the Caribbean and Senegambia, the area in Central Africa known today as Benin, effectively doubled the size of the city. By the mid 1800s, New Orleans became the fourth largest and second wealthiest (New York was more prosperous) city in the United States.
Today, the "inevitable city on an impossible site" dazzles visitors with fabulous restaurants, eccentric architecture, hot jazz, and chic culture. And the bayou is still there too. But with more than 290 years of complex, absorbing, and occasionally bizarre history, New Orleans has as much to offer in her libraries and museums as in her streets. Take time to discover the fascinating past of this remarkable metropolis.
