Bonapartists in the Borderlands: French Exiles and Refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815-1835 (review)

Rafe Blaufarb has written a remarkable book. It connects the small, frontier Vine and Olive Colony of French refugees and exiles near Demopolis, Alabama (granted land by Congress in 1817), to upheavals in Latin America, which were altering the power balance in the Atlantic world. The links are ex-Napoleonic officers seeking fame and fortune in the Americas. Thus it is both local and international history—serious and deeply researched, but containing bases for a dozen other histories and tales of adventure.

Blaufarb has tapped all relevant archives and libraries, including the French Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Archives de la Guerre, and Archives Nationales: the Spanish Archivo Historico Nacional, the British National Archives (Foreign Office); and in the U.S., the Huntington Library, the American Philosophical Society, the National Archives and Records Administration, the Alabama Department of Archives and History, the Presidential Papers of John Quincy Adams, and the Lefebvre-Desnouettes papers at the University of North Carolina

Besides exiled Bonapartists, French immigrants included "Domingans," who had fled the slave revolution in the French one-third of Hispaniola (Haiti) in the 1790s, some regicides (who had voted for the death of Louis XVI), and others. Mostly resident in Philadelphia, the French formed the Society for Cultivation of the Vine and Olive and petitioned Congress for land on which to grow grapes and lay the groundwork for an American wine industry. In 1817, Congress gave them 144 square miles of land near the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior Rivers in Alabama. The government wanted a wine industry, but made the grant principally to populate the frontier and give added security to the Gulf coast—an area coveted by several great powers. What better buffer than a colony of Napoleonic soldiers?

Unfortunately, few soldiers came to the colony, and all soon left. Nevertheless, a myth persists to this day that aristocratic Napoleonic officers and their wives founded the colony, but were defeated by the frontier conditions and left for more civilized places. In fact, the only prominent Napoleonic officer to settle there was General Count Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who left after two years. The ranking Bonapartist exile, Marshal Emmanuel Grouchy, took a grant, but never visited the colony. However, for better or worse, the myth will almost surely survive, just as the images of Southern life in Gone with the Wind are imbedded in the minds of people the world over.

Blaufarb shows that the French who established the colony were mostly Domingans. Two tables (p. 145) list the leading French and Anglo-American landholders in the 1830s. The former are all either Domingans or connected to them by marriage; the latter planters who had bought up grants, and ultimately intermarried with the French. Land was available because only 61 of 285 civilian grantees came to the settlement (p. 118), and most of them left, like the soldiers, beaten by the rough terrain, lack of roads or water transport, disease, blazing summer heat, and even a hurricane. Unable to grow grapes or olives—the soil and climate made it impossible—those who remained bought slaves and grew cotton. The failure of the colony made the Congress wary of such projects, and it refused similar requests from later immigrants, e.g., the Irish (p. 174).

The author devotes a chapter to the Champ d'Asile (Field of Asylum or Refuge), in the disputed borderland between Spanish Mexico and the United States. The prime mover was the charismatic ex-cavalryman, General Charles Lallemand, who raised initial funds by persuading 33 of 65 soldier-grantees to sell their land for the benefit of his expedition. Perhaps 80 officers—French and others who had served Napoleon—Polish, Italian, German, et al.—established an armed camp in the Cayo de Gallardo, on the Trinity River. However, after a few weeks, food, water, and...