Caribbean New Orleans

" ... Offers a lively portrait of the city and a probing investigation of the French colonists who established racial slavery there as well as the African slaves who were forced to toil for them. Casting early New Orleans as a Caribbean outpost of the French Empire rather than as a North American frontier town, Cécile Vidal reveals the persistent influence of the Antilles, especially Saint-Domingue, which shaped the city's development through the eighteenth century"--

Combining Atlantic and imperial perspectives, Caribbean New Orleans offers a lively portrait of the city and a probing investigation of the French colonists who established racial slavery there as well as the African slaves who were forced to toil for them. Casting early New Orleans as a Caribbean outpost of the French Empire rather than as a North American frontier town, Cecile Vidal reveals the persistent influence of the Antilles, especially Saint-Domingue, which shaped the city's development through the eighteenth century. In so doing, she urges us to rethink our usual divisions of racial systems into mainland and Caribbean categories. Drawing on New Orleans's rich court records as a way to capture the words and actions of its inhabitants, Vidal takes us into the city's streets, market, taverns, church, hospitals, barracks, and households. She explores the challenges that slow economic development, Native American proximity, imperial rivalry, and the urban environment posed to a social order that was predicated on slave labor and racial hierarchy. White domination, Vidal demonstrates, was woven into the fabric of New Orleans from its founding. This comprehensive history of urban slavery locates Louisiana's capital on a spectrum of slave societies that stretched across the Americas and provides a magisterial overview of racial discourses and practices during the formative years of North America's most intriguing city.

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

In Creole City, Nathalie Dessens opens a window onto antebellum New Orleans during a time of rapid expansion and dizzying change. The story—rooted in the Sainte-Gême Family Papers harbored at The Historic New Orleans Collection—follows the twenty-year correspondence of Jean Boze to Henri de Ste-Gême, both refugees from Saint-Domingue. Exploring parts of the city’s early nineteenth-century history that have previously been neglected, Dessens examines how New Orleans came to symbolize progress, adventure, and culture to so many. Through Boze’s letters, readers witness the convergence of new Americans and old colonial populations that sparked transformations in the economic, social, and political structures, as well as the Creolization of the city. Additionally, the letters depict transatlantic experiences at a time when New Orleans was a key hub of the Atlantic trade and so very distinct from other nineteenth-century American metropolises, such as New York and Philadelphia. Dessens’s portrayal of this seminal period is innovative and crucial to understanding of the city’s rich record and its larger role in American history.

Let the good times roll! New Orleans is a constant mosaic of color and life, and this top 10 guide puts all the fun at your fingertips. Find the best live music venues and attend colorful festivals and events. Visit must-see museums and galleries, view the city's many architectural highlights, and discover new places to shop or browse. Our insider tips help you find fun places for children and outline the top hotels and restaurants to make your trip unforgettable. True to its name, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Top 10 New Orleans covers all the major sights and attractions in easy-to-use "top 10" lists that help you plan the vacation that's right for you. • Itineraries help you plan your trip. • Top 10 lists feature off-the-beaten-track ideas, along with standbys like the top attractions, shopping, dining options, and more. • Comprehensive laminated pull-out map includes color-coded design, public transportation maps, and street indexes. • Maps of walking routes show you the best ways to maximize your time. • Additional maps marked with sights from the guidebook are shown on inside cover flaps, with selected street index and metro map. The perfect pocket-size travel companion: DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Top 10 New Orleans. Recommended: For an in-depth guidebook to New Orleans, check out DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: New Orleans, which offers the most complete cultural coverage of the city; trip-planning itineraries by interest and length of stay; 3-D cross-section illustrations of major sights and attractions; thousands of photographs, illustrations, and maps; and more. Series Overview: DK Eyewitness Travel Guide Top 10s are handy travel guides that take the work out of planning a trip. Packed with amazing ideas, informative maps, insider tips, and useful advice, DK's Top 10 guides lead you to the very best your destination has to offer. The pocket size make these the perfect guide to take on vacation. Discover the history, art, architecture, and culture of your destination through Top 10 lists, from the best museums, bars, and sights to the places to avoid.

Utterly unique and entirely irresistible, welcome to New Orleans. Whether you want to attend the world's biggest party, tour the historic architecture of the French Quarter or pay homage to the birthplace of jazz, your DK Eyewitness travel guide makes sure you experience all that New Orleans has to offer. A melting pot of African, Caribbean and European cultures, New Orleans is a place unlike any other. This heady mix of influences has culminated in a city that celebrates life on a daily basis, reflected in its infectious music, enticing cuisine and restless party spirit. Our newly updated guide brings New Orleans to life, transporting you there like no other travel guide does with expert-led insights and advice, detailed information on all the must-see sights, inspiring photography and our trademark illustrations. You'll discover: - our pick of New Orleans' must-sees, top experiences, and hidden gems - the best spots to eat, drink, shop and stay - detailed maps and walks which make navigating the city easy - easy-to-follow itineraries - expert advice: get ready, get around and stay safe - color-coded chapters to every part of New Orleans, from the French Quarter to the Garden District, Mid-City to Marigny Want the best of New Orleans in your pocket? Try our DK Eyewitness Top 10 New Orleans.

In 2015, the beautiful jazz funeral in New Orleans for composer Allen Toussaint coincided with a debate over removing four Confederate monuments. Mayor Mitch Landrieu led the ceremony, attended by living legends of jazz, music aficionados, politicians, and everyday people. The scene captured the history and culture of the city in microcosm--a city legendary for its noisy, complicated, tradition-rich splendor. In City of a Million Dreams, Jason Berry delivers a character-driven history of New Orleans at its tricentennial. Chronicling cycles of invention, struggle, death, and rebirth, Berry reveals the city's survival as a triumph of diversity, its map-of-the-world neighborhoods marked by resilience despite hurricanes, epidemics, fires, and floods. Berry orchestrates a parade of vibrant personalities, from the founder Bienville, a warrior emblazoned with snake tattoos; to Governor William C. C. Claiborne, General Andrew Jackson, and Pere Antoine, an influential priest and secret agent of the Inquisition; Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street evangelist and visionary artist of the 1960s; and Michael White, the famous clarinetist who remade his life after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina. The textured profiles of this extraordinary cast furnish a dramatic narrative of the beloved city, famous the world over for mysterious rituals as people dance when they bury their dead.