Coastal Encounters: The Transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century

Preface

Fh[\WY[ On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into coastal Louisiana , Mississippi, and Alabama, giving rise to the greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States and bringing unprecedented—if unwanted—attention to the Gulf Coast region. A little more than three months later, on December 11, 2005, the New York Times fretted that the slow pace of the recovery efforts threatened the very existence of New Orleans and expressed alarm at the prospects of the “Death of an American City.” The anguish derived not only from a humane concern for those whose lives were so brutally disrupted by the storm and its aftermath (a group that includes many of the authors whose work appears in this book) but also from a recognition of the unique contributions that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have made to the history and culture of the United States (and to the world for that matter). This book explores the origins of this great city and its surrounding region. The chapters herein open a window onto the extraordinary world of the eighteenth-century Gulf South, a significant but heretofore relatively neglected subject. The neglect is unfortunate for many reasons. In the realm of international politics, the imperial rivalries of the Spanish, British, and French in the Gulf South (stretching from Florida to Texas) reached their peak in the eighteenth century, creating new challenges and opportunities for the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and other native peoples of the region. Throughout the century the Gulf South’s diverse inhabitants (Native American, European, and African) contested or collaborated with one another in myriad diplomatic and military arrangements. The eighteenth century saw determined efforts to incorporate the area into the expanding Atlantic economy based on the exchange of European manufactures, African peoples, and Caribbean products for animal hides, tobacco, and other Gulf South commodities, all with varying degrees of state support or, in some instances, in defiance of official dictates. The century also saw the expansion of chattel slavery, first indigenous and then African, and the beginning of plantation agriculture in a region that would come to be profoundly identified with them. This book accordingly sheds light on the origins of the Old South. Finally, the eighteenth-century Gulf South offers rich opportunities for the study of social and cultural change. Willingly or not, many of the Gulf South’s inhabitants learned to live together and came to depend on one another, forging new arrangements and defying laws, expectations, and stereotypes. The limited attention directed to the region has therefore deprived scholars of opportunities to study the encounter of European , African, and Native American peoples and the mixing and mingling of their ways and to make useful comparisons with the Atlantic Seaboard, with the American Southwest, and with Latin America and the Caribbean. Preface At the inaugural Howard Mahan Symposium, held at Mobile, Alabama, March 2003, Amy Turner Bushnell compared writings on the colonial Southeast to the tale of Sleeping Beauty, a woman who awoke only when kissed by a European man. When Spanish, French, British, or American adventurers—Ponce de León, Hernando de Soto, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Andrew Jackson—happened by, the region would come to life, or at least stray briefly into the view of European and North American authors, once more returning to slumber when the white men moved on or met their fates. This book addresses the intriguing question, “what happened while Sleeping Beauty was sleeping?” As the following essays make clear, the Gulf South region remained constantly astir even when out of sight and out of the European mind. Buffeted by “storms brewed in other men’s worlds” (to borrow the title of Elizabeth A. H. John’s work), the eighteenth -century Gulf South experienced a profound transformation. It Preface was the kind of place David Weber had in mind when he wrote in his Spanish Frontier in North America, “at those edges where cultures come into contact, friction and cross-fertilization transform local peoples and institutions, giving rise to transfrontier regions with distinctive cultures, politics and economic arrangements, and social networks that set them apart from their respective metropoli” (p. 13). The essays presented here deepen our understanding of the Gulf South transfrontier and its transformation in the eighteenth century. Collectively, they treat from a wide array of angles and approaches a complex region and its diverse inhabitants over more than...