John Eugene Rodriguez’s Spanish New Orleans is the first comprehensive academic analysis of how Spain governed the largest imperial city in its North American empire. Rodriguez suggests that the Spanish empire was, at least on the northern edge, slipping into economic and perhaps political independence a decade before the overthrow of its Bourbon Spanish rulers in 1808. His work questions that of earlier historians, who argued that Latin America was fundamentally conservative and complaisant under Bourbon rule. Instead, Spanish New Orleans shows that in the capital of Louisiana, Spanish rulers were slowly losing control of three interwoven aspects of the city: demography, trade, and political discourse. Rodriguez demonstrates how the multiethnic, multilingual population of the city played a central role in encouraging trans-imperial free trade and especially trade with the United States, to the point of economic dependence. This dependence in turn prompted the Bourbon governors in New Orleans to negotiate both economic and political discourse in a city that was steadily moving closer in every way to the United States. Far from being a peripheral city in a peripheral colony, by 1803 New Orleans was reshaping the Spanish empire beyond the comprehension of the Spanish king. Chapters on the city’s foundational merchants, literacy, and the judicial system all point to the unique character of this imperial city on the American periphery. This study marks new methodological paths for historians of Latin America and early U.S. history by making use of enormous data compilations on population, ethnicity, and economics. Rodriguez also analyzes previously ignored eighteenth-century Spanish-language documents, including petitions, postal records, and military rosters, and engages underutilized tools such as signature analysis. Through his use of original sources and innovative methodologies, Rodriguez makes new and intriguing comparisons between New Orleans and other contemporary Spanish imperial cities as well as cities in the then-expanding United States. In Spanish New Orleans, Rodriguez goes beyond simply positioning New Orleans within Spanish imperial history. Taking a broader view, he considers what Spanish New Orleans reveals about the challenges and opportunities faced by the Spanish Bourbon empire, and he sheds light on how a new North American empire could so quickly and easily absorb a Spanish city.

With this newly translated account, the all-too-recognized French influences of Creole and Cajun culture in Louisiana and New Orleans make way for an examination of the effects of the Spanish period, which lasted from 1763-1803. In the short span of only forty years, many illustrious Spaniards, including early governors Bernardo de Galvez (1777-1782) and Bar'n de Carondelet (1792-1797), left indelible impressions on the city that reach far beyond the streets that bear their names today. An entire chapter is devoted to the Spanish founding of modern-day parishes, cities, and towns, along with the Spanish contribution to Louisiana architecture, law, and art. The renewed traces of Spain in modern New Orleans, Baton Rouge, St. Bernard, and New Iberia are explored as well. Originally published in Spain in 1979, the author intended his book for the people of both Spain and the United States. For the citizens of New Orleans, de Pedro considered it time for the Spanish influence in and on New Orleans finally to be recognized, without delay or prejudice and for the sake of truth.

STRONGNamed one of the Top 10 Books of 2008 by The Times-Picayune. STRONGWinner of the 2009 Humanities Book of the Year award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.STRONG STRONGAwarded the New Orleans Gulf South Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award for 2008. New Orleans is the most elusive of American cities. The product of the centuries-long struggle among three mighty empires--France, Spain, and England--and among their respective American colonies and enslaved African peoples, it has always seemed like a foreign port to most Americans, baffled as they are by its complex cultural inheritance. The World That Made New Orleans offers a new perspective on this insufficiently understood city by telling the remarkable story of New Orleans's first century--a tale of imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the very different revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. It demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality at the time of Louisiana's statehood in 1812. By then, important roots of American music were firmly planted in its urban swamp--especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans appeared en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor to the city put it, &“rock the city.&” This book is a logical continuation of Ned Sublette's previous volume, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, which was highly praised for its synthesis of musical, cultural, and political history. Just as that book has become a standard resource on Cuba, so too will The World That Made New Orleans long remain essential for understanding the beautiful and tragic story of this most American of cities.

What is it about the city of New Orleans? History, location, and culture continue to link it to France while distancing it culturally and symbolically from the United States. This book explores the traces of French language, history, and artistic expression that have been present there over the last three hundred years. This volume focuses on the French, Spanish, and American colonial periods to understand the imprint that French socio-cultural dynamic left on the Crescent City. The migration of Acadians to New Orleans at the time the city became a Spanish dominion and the arrival of Haitian refugees when the city became an American territory oddly reinforced its Francophone identity. However, in the process of establishing itself as an urban space in the Antebellum South, the culture of New Orleans became a liability for New Orleans elite after the Louisiana Purchase. New Orleans and the Caribbean share numerous historical, cultural, and linguistic connections. The book analyzes these connections and the shared process of creolization occurring in New Orleans and throughout the Caribbean Basin. It suggests “French” New Orleans might be understood as a trope for unscripted “original” Creole social and cultural elements. Since being Creole came to connote African descent, the study suggests that an association with France in the minds of whites allowed for a less racially-bound and contested social order within the United States.

The Cabildo -- New Orleans' unique Spanish city government -- touched the life of every citizen of the city during its thirty-four years of existence, and its decisions often had an impact on the administration of Louisiana far beyond the confines of New Orleans itself. Moreover, its archival records, with lavish and detailed information about every aspect of life within Spanish New Orleans, are the richest of any city in the Spanish Borderlands. Yet curiously, until now there has been no thorough analysis of this influential institution.In The New Orleans Cabildo, Gilbert C. Din and John E. Harkins have filled that scholarly gap and made a significant contribution to our understanding of the Spanish hegemony in Louisiana. New Orleans, which had been a small, isolated, and insignificant town under the French grew to be a thriving center of trade, communications, and economic activity under Spanish rule. Din and Harkins examine the offices and personnel of the Cabildo and explore its vast responsibilities in the areas of justice, medicine and health, public works, land grants and building regulations, ceremonial and liaison duties, regulation of markets and food prices, and treatment of slaves and free blacks, among others. They also review the difficulties encountered by the Cabildo and the ways it responded to the city's -- and the colony's -- economic, legal, social, and military problems.Through careful and thoughtful utilization of documents from archives in Louisiana and Spain -- particularly minutes from the Cabildo meetings -- Din and Harkins have produced in The New Orleans Cabildo a model history of a complex and all-encompassing institution.

New Orleans con Sabor Latino is a documentary cookbook that draws on the rich Latino culture and history of New Orleans by focusing on thirteen New Orleanian Latinos from diverse backgrounds. Their stories are compelling and reveal what for too long has been overlooked. The book celebrates the influence of Latino cuisine on the food culture of New Orleans from the eighteenth century to the influx of Latino migration post-Katrina and up to today. From farmers' markets, finedining restaurants, street cart vendors, and home cooks, there isn't a part of the food industry that has been left untouched by this fusion of cultures. Zella Palmer Cuadra visited and interviewed each creator. Each dish is placed in historical context and is presented in full-color images, along with photographs of the cooks. Latino culture has left an indelible mark on classic New Orleans cuisine and its history, and now this contribution is celebrated and recognized in this beautifully illustrated volume. The cookbook includes a lagniappe (something extra) section of New Orleans recipes from a Latin perspective. Such creations as seafood paella with shrimp boudin, Puerto Rican po'boy (jibarito) with grillades, and Cuban chicken soup bring to life this delicious mix of traditional recipes and new flavors.