AWASH IN TRANS-IMPERIAL TRADE: SPANISH NEW ORLEANS AND NATCHEZ, 1783-1803

Abstract

Spanish Louisiana (1766-1803) was probably the most prolonged and open Spanish experimentin free trade. The colony’s riverine ports of New Orleans and Natchez were awash intrans-imperial trade from France, British colonies, and especially the new North Americanempire. This trade flowed through both ports in both directions, upriver and down, constantlyrecirculating - but through the U.S. economy, and not that of metropolitan Spain.Louisiana’s riverine planters and merchants simultaneously owned plantations, stores, andships, and enjoyed access to ready capital and multiple sources of produce, goods and slaves.By the 1790s, these men and sometimes women no longer needed to see themselves as Spanish,and moved closer in their political discourse to that of the people already labeled losAmericanos. Therefore, even before 1803, riverine Louisiana was already both trans-imperialand, in the broadest sense, American.