Louisiana Legacies

Showcasing the colorful, even raucous, political, social, and unique cultural qualities of Louisiana history, this new collection of essays features the finest and latest scholarship. Includes readings featuring recent scholarship that expand on traditional historical accounts Includes material on every region of Louisiana Covers a wide range of fields, including social, environmental, and economic history Detailed, focused material on different areas in Louisiana history, including women’s history as well as the state’s diverse ethnic populations

From the militia of colonial days to the National Guard of modern times, America�s citizen soldiers have symbolized the preparedness, the unselfish service, and the devotion to duty that have sustained the nation in war and peace. In times of grave national crisis, including wars, civil disorders, and natural disasters, these often unheralded patriots have served willingly, faithfully, and well. And, having contributed their special abilities to the task at hand, they returned to their citizen roles to await the next summons to duty. Here, for the first time, is the complete, detailed, documented history of the Louisiana National Guard, a facet of the state�s rich and colorful history that has never before been treated in depth. Author Evans J. Casso has woven an intricate tapestry of this continuing chronicle, drawing heavily upon extensive research from official state papers, archives, journals, narrative reports, and numerous personal interviews. With a disciplined historian�s eye, he traces the evolution of the Guard, from its forerunners of the frontier days to the highly trained, well-equipped organization of modern times. This work places in perspective the growth of the National Guard and the vital role it has played in the development of the Louisiana Territory, and later of both the state and the nation.

This book is oriented on testing and developing the neopragmatic approach of horizontal geographies, in which we follow approaches of natural sciences, social sciences, and cultural studies. Regional focus is thereby put on a rapidly changing elemental space and its social representations, characterized by unstable and not well-defined hybridities: coastal Louisiana. This region is highly dynamic: the Mississippi River in particular, with its extensive sediments, has shifted the coastal fringe of present-day Louisiana into the Gulf of Mexico. This land gain is contrasted by natural processes, but also by processes resultant of human intervention which cause marine encroachment. A complex interplay of different aspects is directly and indirectly leading to coastal land loss which makes the question of how to describe emerging hybrid spaces virulent and highlights the limits of a positivist understanding of boundaries that is also physically geographical. In the neopragmatic tradition, positivist research findings will be framed in social constructivist terms and supplemented by phenomenological approaches to Louisiana's coastal space, thus suggesting the need for and potentials of horizontal geographic integration of different theoretical and methodological approaches as well as researcher perspectives and data bases.