Empires of the Imagination

Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase

Peter J. Kastor, François Weil, Peter J. Kastor, François Weil

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780813928173
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

Empires of the Imagination takes the Louisiana Purchase as a point of departure for a compelling new discussion of the interaction between France and the United States. In addition to offering the first substantive synthesis of this transatlantic relationship, the essays collected here offer new interpretations on themes vital to the subject, ranging from political culture to intercultural contact to ethnic identity. They capture the cultural breadth of the territories encompassed by the Louisiana Purchase, exploring not only French and Anglo-American experiences, but also those of Native Americans and African Americans.

Despite differences in concerns and methods, the pieces collected share crucial ground in how they suggest new ways for thinking about empire, identity, and memory. The authors show how France and the United States set about their competing imperial projects even as residents of the North American West effectively resisted those imperial aims, creating instead their own notions of community and connection. At the same time, these essays show how the contact among peoples created new social configurations and distinct cultural identities. Moving beyond the particulars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these essays reveal how the Louisiana Purchase subsequently entered into the public consciousness on both sides of the Atlantic in ways that continue to define imperial projects, racial identities, and ethnic communities.

Delineating a unique moment in transatlantic historical conversation, Empires of the Imagination also provides important lessons in cross-disciplinary approaches to North American and Atlantic history. In addition to the multinational perspectives of the authors, individual essays deploy social science history, political culture, and ideological history, as well as social and cultural history, to create a cohesive understanding of diverse experiences.

Contributors:Emily Clark, Tulane University * Laurent Dubois, Duke University * Mark Fernandez, Loyola University, New Orleans * Peter J. Kastor, Washington University in St. Louis * Paul Lachance, University of Ottawa * Jean-Pierre Le Glaunec, Dalhousie University * James E. Lewis Jr., Kalamazoo College * Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia * Jacques Portes, Université de Paris VIII * Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, Université de Paris VII–Denis Diderot * Cécile Vidal, L' École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales * François Weil, L' École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales * Richard White, Stanford University

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Empire
• The Louisiana Purchase and the Fictions of Empire
• From Incorporation to Exclusion: Indians, Europeans, and Americans in theMississippi Valley from 1699 to 1830
• The Haitian Revolution and the Sale of Louisiana; or, Thomas Jefferson’s (Unpaid) Debt to Jean-Jacques Dessalines
• A Tornado on the Horizon: The Jefferson Administration, the Retrocession Crisis, and the Louisiana Purchase
• Identity
• The Louisiana Purchase in the Demographic Perspective of its Time
• Refracted Reformations and the Making of Republicans
• Slave Migrations and Slave Control in Spanish and Early American New Orleans
• “They Are All Frenchmen”: Background and Nation in an Age of Transformation
• Edward Livingston, America, and France: Making Law
• Memory
• The Purchase and the Making of French Louisiana
• Celebration and History: The Case of the Louisiana Purchase
• List of Contributors
• Index