198-546: The history of the area that is now the U.S. state of Louisiana , can be traced back thousands of years to when it was occupied by indigenous peoples . The first indications of permanent settlement, ushering in the Archaic period , appear about 5,500 years ago. The area that is now Louisiana formed part of the Eastern Agricultural Complex . The Marksville culture emerged about 2,000 years ago out of
396-634: A deflationary spiral started in 1931. Farmers faced a worse outlook; declining crop prices and a Great Plains drought crippled their economic outlook. At its peak, the Great Depression saw nearly 10% of all Great Plains farms change hands despite federal assistance. At first, the decline in the U.S. economy was the factor that triggered economic downturns in most other countries due to a decline in trade, capital movement, and global business confidence. Then, internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. For example,
594-418: A silver standard , almost avoided the depression entirely. The connection between leaving the gold standard as a strong predictor of that country's severity of its depression and the length of time of its recovery has been shown to be consistent for dozens of countries, including developing countries . This partly explains why the experience and length of the depression differed between regions and states around
792-682: A slave rebellion that started during the French Revolution of Saint-Domingue in 1791. Over the next decade, thousands of refugees landed in Louisiana from the island, including Europeans, Creoles, and Africans, some of the latter brought in by each free group. They greatly increased the French-speaking population in New Orleans and Louisiana, as well as the number of Africans, and the slaves reinforced African culture in
990-618: A Spanish expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1542, Hernando de Soto 's expedition skirted to the north and west of the state (encountering Caddo and Tunica groups) and then followed the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico in 1543. Spanish interest in Louisiana faded away for a century and a half. In the late 17th century, French and French Canadian expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established
1188-424: A flourishing river port and crossroads. Sugar cane plantations were developed first. In the nineteenth century, cotton plantations were developed along the river. Over time, planters developed large plantations but also lived in fine homes in a growing town, a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places. Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts. They were concentrated along
1386-551: A foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France laid claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. In 1682, the French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor King Louis XIV of France. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (now Ocean Springs, Mississippi ),
1584-676: A foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France lay claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico through Canada. It was also establishing settlements in Canada, from the Maritimes westward along the St. Lawrence River and into the region surrounding the Great Lakes . The French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named
1782-604: A former privately run bank, bearing no relation to the U.S. government (not to be confused with the Federal Reserve ). Unable to pay out to all of its creditors, the bank failed. Among the 608 American banks that closed in November and December 1930, the Bank of United States accounted for a third of the total $ 550 million deposits lost and, with its closure, bank failures reached a critical mass. In an initial response to
1980-467: A greater reduction in credit. On 5 April 1933, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 making the private ownership of gold certificates , coins and bullion illegal, reducing the pressure on Federal Reserve gold. British economist John Maynard Keynes argued in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that lower aggregate expenditures in the economy contributed to
2178-558: A growing town. This became a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places, although the commodity crop in the south was primarily sugar cane. Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the Illinois Country , around present-day St. Louis, Missouri . The latter
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#17328018160512376-600: A modern industrial city handled shortages of money and resources. Often they updated strategies their mothers used when they were growing up in poor families. Cheap foods were used, such as soups, beans and noodles. They purchased the cheapest cuts of meat—sometimes even horse meat—and recycled the Sunday roast into sandwiches and soups. They sewed and patched clothing, traded with their neighbors for outgrown items, and made do with colder homes. New furniture and appliances were postponed until better days. Many women also worked outside
2574-402: A monetary contraction first-hand were forced to join the deflationary policy since higher interest rates in countries that performed a deflationary policy led to a gold outflow in countries with lower interest rates. Under the gold standard's price–specie flow mechanism , countries that lost gold but nevertheless wanted to maintain the gold standard had to permit their money supply to decrease and
2772-510: A more respectable and successful colony." However, clergy members encouraged French men to marry their Indian sexual partners to avoid sin, as well as convert to Christianity. Some French men would also purchase women as slaves for a brief period for "domestic chores in the woods." The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed all the land on both sides of the Mississippi River and north to French territory in Canada around
2970-708: A population increase. These factors tend to mark the Late Woodland period as an expansive period, not one of a cultural collapse. Where the Baytown peoples began to build more dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers. The type site for the culture, the Troyville Earthworks , once had the second tallest precolumbian mound in North America and
3168-527: A result of Union strategy to cut the Confederacy in two by seizing the Mississippi. Federal troops captured New Orleans on April 25, 1862. Due to a large enough portion of Louisiana's population being Southern Unionist and having Unionist leanings, (or compatible commercial interests), the Federal government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana under Federal control as a state within
3366-505: A rich southern biota , including birds such as ibises and egrets , many species of tree frogs —such as the state-recognized American green tree frog —and fish such as sturgeon and paddlefish . More elevated areas, particularly in the north, contain a wide variety of ecosystems such as tallgrass prairie , longleaf pine forest and wet savannas ; these support an exceptionally large number of plant species, including many species of terrestrial orchids and carnivorous plants . Over half
3564-567: A serious issue in the 1930s. Support for increasing welfare programs during the depression included a focus on women in the family. The Conseil Supérieur de la Natalité campaigned for provisions enacted in the Code de la Famille (1939) that increased state assistance to families with children and required employers to protect the jobs of fathers, even if they were immigrants. In rural and small-town areas, women expanded their operation of vegetable gardens to include as much food production as possible. In
3762-480: A small cadre of Labour, but the vast majority of Labour leaders denounced MacDonald as a traitor for leading the new government. Britain went off the gold standard , and suffered relatively less than other major countries in the Great Depression. In the 1931 British election, the Labour Party was virtually destroyed, leaving MacDonald as prime minister for a largely Conservative coalition. In most countries of
3960-606: A special envoy to Napoleon, to assist in obtaining New Orleans for the United States. Jefferson also raised the authorized expenditure to $ 10 million. However, on April 11, 1803, French foreign minister Talleyrand surprised Livingston by asking how much the United States was prepared to pay for the entirety of Louisiana, not just New Orleans and the surrounding area (as Livingston's instructions covered). Monroe agreed with Livingston that Napoleon might withdraw this offer at any time (leaving them with no ability to obtain
4158-713: A standstill agreement froze Germany's foreign liabilities for six months. Germany received emergency funding from private banks in New York as well as the Bank of International Settlements and the Bank of England. The funding only slowed the process. Industrial failures began in Germany, a major bank closed in July and a two-day holiday for all German banks was declared. Business failures were more frequent in July, and spread to Romania and Hungary. The crisis continued to get worse in Germany, bringing political upheaval that finally led to
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#17328018160514356-530: A war or the loss of a single American life, and set a precedent for the purchase of territory. It opened the way for the eventual expansion of the United States across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after the United States took possession, the area was divided into two territories along the 33rd parallel north on March 26, 1804, thereby organizing the Territory of Orleans to the south and
4554-689: Is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States . It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states , it ranks 20th in land area and the 25th in population , with roughly 4.6 million residents. Reflecting its French heritage , Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes , which are equivalent to counties , making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties (the other being Alaska and its boroughs ). Baton Rouge
4752-642: Is a Latin suffix that can refer to "information relating to a particular individual, subject, or place." Thus, roughly, Louis + ana carries the idea of "related to Louis." Once part of the French colonial empire , the Louisiana Territory stretched from present-day Mobile Bay to just north of the present-day Canada–United States border , including a small part of what are now the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan . The area of Louisiana
4950-658: Is a consensus that the Federal Reserve System should have cut short the process of monetary deflation and banking collapse, by expanding the money supply and acting as lender of last resort . If they had done this, the economic downturn would have been far less severe and much shorter. Modern mainstream economists see the reasons in Insufficient spending, the money supply reduction, and debt on margin led to falling prices and further bankruptcies ( Irving Fisher 's debt deflation). The monetarist explanation
5148-550: Is estimated to have had a population of more than 20,000. The Plaquemine culture is considered ancestral to the historic Natchez and Taensa peoples, whose descendants encountered Europeans in the colonial era. By 1000 in the northwestern part of the state, the Fourche Maline culture had evolved into the Caddoan Mississippian culture. The Caddoan Mississippians occupied a large territory, including what
5346-981: Is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast Texas , and northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence has demonstrated that the cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present. The Caddo and related Caddo-language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact were the direct ancestors of the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma of today. Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include Belcher Mound Site in Caddo Parish and Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish. Many current place names in Louisiana, including Atchafalaya , Natchitouches (now spelled Natchitoches ), Caddo, Houma , Tangipahoa , and Avoyel (as Avoyelles ), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages. The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528 when
5544-559: Is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity. Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period mortuary mounds. Scholars have speculated that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority. The Mississippian period in Louisiana was when the Plaquemine and the Caddoan Mississippian cultures developed, and
5742-493: Is supported by the contrast in how the crisis progressed in, e.g., Britain, Argentina and Brazil, all of which devalued their currencies early and returned to normal patterns of growth relatively rapidly and countries which stuck to the gold standard , such as France or Belgium. Frantic attempts by individual countries to shore up their economies through protectionist policies – such as the 1930 U.S. Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries – exacerbated
5940-585: Is the place of origin of the Mound Builders culture during the Middle Archaic period , in the 4th millennium BC . The sites of Caney and Frenchman's Bend have been securely dated to 5600–5000 BP (about 3700–3100 BC), demonstrating that seasonal hunter-gatherers from around this time organized to build complex earthwork constructions in what is now northern Louisiana. The Watson Brake site near present-day Monroe has an eleven-mound complex; it
6138-457: Is the state's capital, and New Orleans , a French Louisiana region, is its largest city with a population of about 383,000 people. Louisiana has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the south; a large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River . Much of Louisiana's lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp . These contain
History of Louisiana - Misplaced Pages Continue
6336-539: The 1932 election , Hoover was defeated by Franklin D. Roosevelt , who from 1933 pursued a series of " New Deal " policies and programs to provide relief and create jobs, including the Civilian Conservation Corps , Federal Emergency Relief Administration , Tennessee Valley Authority , and Works Progress Administration . Historians disagree on the effects of the New Deal, with some claiming that
6534-906: The American Revolutionary War , New Orleans Governor Bernardo de Galvez successfully led Spanish, New Orleans French, and Acadian/Cajun troops against the English in several victorious battles, including Baton Rouge . During this time, Spanish-speaking immigrants arrived such as the Canary Islanders of Spain, which are known as the Isleños and Andalusians from the south of Spain called Malagueños . The Isleños and Malagueños immigrated to Louisiana between 1778 and 1783. The Isleños settled in southeast Louisiana mainly in St. Bernard Parish, just outside of New Orleans, as well as near
6732-616: The Anna , Emerald , Winterville and Holly Bluff sites located in Mississippi. Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture at the Cahokia site near St. Louis, Missouri . By 1000 AD in the northwestern part of the state the Fourche Maline culture had evolved into the Caddoan Mississippian culture. By 1400 AD Plaquemine had started to hybridize through contact with Middle Mississippian cultures to
6930-618: The Coles Creek culture . Archaeologists have traditionally viewed the Late Woodland as a time of cultural decline after the florescence of the Hopewell peoples. Late Woodland sites, with the exception of sites along the Florida Gulf Coast, tend to be small when compared with Middle Woodland sites. Although settlement size was small, there was an increase in the number of Late Woodland sites over Middle Woodland sites, indicating
7128-761: The Creole community of New Orleans substantionally, enlarging the French-speaking community. In 1811, the largest slave revolt in American history, the German Coast Uprising , took place in the Orleans Territory. Between 64 and 500 slaves rose up on the " German Coast ," forty miles upriver of New Orleans, and marched to within 20 miles (32 km) of the city gates. All of the limited number of U.S. troops were gathered to suppress
7326-718: The District of Louisiana (subsequently formed as the Louisiana Territory ) to the north. Louisiana became the eighteenth U.S. state on April 30, 1812; the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana and the Louisiana Territory was simultaneously renamed the Missouri Territory . Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period
7524-731: The District of Louisiana , which consisted of the vast lands not included in the Orleans Territory, extending west of the Mississippi River north to Canada. The Florida Parishes were annexed from the short-lived and strategically important Republic of West Florida , by proclamation of President James Madison in 1810. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) resulted in a major emigration of refugees to Louisiana, where they settled chiefly in New Orleans. Thousands of Saint Dominican refugees arrived to Louisiana, which included Creoles of color , white Creoles , and slaves. Some refugees had earlier gone to Cuba , and were expelled from Cuba in another wave of immigration in 1809. The Saint Dominicans increased
7722-683: The Du Maine and the Aurore , arrived in New Orleans carrying more than 500 black slaves coming from Africa. Previous slaves in Louisiana had been transported from French colonies in the West Indies. By the end of 1721, New Orleans counted 1,256 inhabitants, of whom about half were slaves. In 1724, the French government issued a law called the Code Noir ("Black Code" in English) which regulated
7920-437: The Eastern Agricultural Complex . The populations began to expand, and trade with various non-local peoples also began to increase. Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the bow and arrow An increase in the hierarchical structuring of their societies began during this period, although it is not clear whether it was internally developed or borrowed from the Hopewell. The dead were treated in increasingly elaborate ways, as
8118-794: The German Coast . In 1719, two French ships arrived in New Orleans, the Duc du Maine and the Aurore , carrying the first African slaves to Louisiana for labor. From 1718 to 1750, traders transported thousands of captive Africans to Louisiana from the Senegambian coast, the west African region of the interior of modern Benin , and from the coast of modern Democratic Republic of the Congo - Angola border. French shipping records, in contrast to those of other European nations, contained extensive details of
History of Louisiana - Misplaced Pages Continue
8316-475: The Gulf of Mexico , resulting in major damages. A $ 15 billion new levee system built in New Orleans would take place from 2006 to 2011. The Dalton tradition is a Late Paleo-Indian and Early Archaic projectile point tradition, appearing in much of Southeast North America around 8500–7900 BC. During the Archaic period , Louisiana was home to the earliest mound complex in North America and one of
8514-751: The Mississippi Delta but in the present-day United States. Its people were in villages that extended for nearly 100 miles across the Mississippi River. It lasted until approximately 700 BC. The Poverty Point culture was followed by the Tchefuncte and Lake Cormorant cultures of the Tchula period , local manifestations of Early Woodland period . These descendant cultures differed from Poverty Point culture in trading over shorter distances, creating less massive public projects, completely adopting ceramics for storage and cooking. The Tchefuncte culture were
8712-582: The New York Bank of United States – which produced panic and widespread runs on local banks, and the Federal Reserve sat idly by while banks collapsed. Friedman and Schwartz argued that, if the Fed had provided emergency lending to these key banks, or simply bought government bonds on the open market to provide liquidity and increase the quantity of money after the key banks fell, all the rest of
8910-509: The Territory of Orleans , which formed what would become the boundaries of Louisiana, and the District of Louisiana . Louisiana was admitted as the 18th state of the United States on April 30, 1812. The final major battle in the War of 1812 , the Battle of New Orleans , was fought in Louisiana and resulted in a U.S. victory. Antebellum Louisiana was a leading slave state , where by 1860, 47% of
9108-518: The Treaty of San Ildefonso , an arrangement kept secret for some two years. Documents have revealed that he harbored secret ambitions to reconstruct a large colonial empire in the Americas . This notion faltered, however, after the French attempt to reconquer Saint-Domingue after its revolution ended in failure, with the loss of two-thirds of the more than 20,000 troops sent to the island to suppress
9306-539: The coming to power of Hitler's Nazi regime in January 1933. The world financial crisis now began to overwhelm Britain; investors around the world started withdrawing their gold from London at the rate of £2.5 million per day. Credits of £25 million each from the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an issue of £15 million fiduciary note slowed, but did not reverse,
9504-785: The expulsion of the Acadians . Several thousand French-speaking refugees from Acadia (now Nova Scotia , Canada) migrated to colonial Louisiana. The first group of around 200 arrived in 1765, led by Joseph Broussard (also referrerd to as "Beausoleil"). They settled chiefly in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana . The Acadian refugees were welcomed by the Spanish as additions of Catholic population. Their white descendants came to be called Cajuns and their black descendants, mixed with African ancestry came to be called Creole. Additionally, many Cajun and Creole Louisianians share Native American and/or Spanish ancestry. In 1779 during
9702-441: The "Canadian" posts in the Illinois and Wabash countries in 1761, they did not have control over Vincennes or the Mississippi River settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia until 1764, after the ratification of the peace treaty.) As part of a general report on conditions in the newly conquered lands, Gen. Thomas Gage , then commandant at Montreal , explained in 1762 that, although the boundary between Louisiana and Canada wasn't exact, it
9900-441: The 16th century, with the exception of some Natchez communities that maintained Mississippian cultural practices into the 1700s. European influence began in the 1500s, and La Louisiane (named after Louis XIV of France ) became a colony of the Kingdom of France in 1682, before passing to Spain in 1763. Louisiana became part of the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803. The U.S. would divide that area into two territories,
10098-434: The 1870s. In 1898, white Democrats in the Louisiana state legislature passed a new disfranchising constitution, whose effects were immediate and long-lasting. The disfranchisement of African Americans in the state did not end until national legislation passed during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s [explain: what about more recent voter suppression?] In the early-to-mid 20th century, many African Americans would leave
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#173280181605110296-447: The 1937 recession that interrupted it). The common view among most economists is that Roosevelt's New Deal policies either caused or accelerated the recovery, although his policies were never aggressive enough to bring the economy completely out of recession. Some economists have also called attention to the positive effects from expectations of reflation and rising nominal interest rates that Roosevelt's words and actions portended. It
10494-417: The Acadians, who became the ancestors of Louisiana's Cajuns . Spanish Canary Islanders, called Isleños , emigrated from the Canary Islands of Spain to Louisiana under the Spanish crown between 1778 and 1783. In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso , an arrangement kept secret for two years. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville brought
10692-597: The British crisis. The financial crisis now caused a major political crisis in Britain in August 1931. With deficits mounting, the bankers demanded a balanced budget; the divided cabinet of Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government agreed; it proposed to raise taxes, cut spending, and most controversially, to cut unemployment benefits 20%. The attack on welfare was unacceptable to the Labour movement. MacDonald wanted to resign, but King George V insisted he remain and form an all-party coalition " National Government ". The Conservative and Liberals parties signed on, along with
10890-406: The Creole culture in Louisiana. Peter Caron says that the geographic and perhaps linguistic connection among many African captives did not necessarily imply developing a common culture in Louisiana. They likely differed in religions. Some slaves from Senegambia were Muslims while most followed their traditional spiritual practices. Many were likely captives taken in the Islamic jihads that engulfed
11088-425: The Crown's transfer of the Illinois Country 's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of Louisiana: all land claimed by France south of the Great Lakes between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies . A generation later, trade conflicts between Canada and Louisiana led to a more defined boundary between the French colonies; in 1745, Louisiana governor general Vaudreuil set
11286-407: The Depression. Businessmen ignored the mounting national debt and heavy new taxes, redoubling their efforts for greater output to take advantage of generous government contracts. During World War I many countries suspended their gold standard in varying ways. There was high inflation from WWI, and in the 1920s in the Weimar Republic , Austria , and throughout Europe. In the late 1920s there
11484-420: The Dow returning to 294 (pre-depression levels) in April 1930, before steadily declining for years, to a low of 41 in 1932. At the beginning, governments and businesses spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut expenditures by 10%. In addition, beginning in
11682-419: The Federal Reserve did not act to limit the decline of the money supply was the gold standard . At that time, the amount of credit the Federal Reserve could issue was limited by the Federal Reserve Act , which required 40% gold backing of Federal Reserve Notes issued. By the late 1920s, the Federal Reserve had almost hit the limit of allowable credit that could be backed by the gold in its possession. This credit
11880-442: The Great Depression is right, or the traditional Keynesian explanation that a fall in autonomous spending, particularly investment, is the primary explanation for the onset of the Great Depression. Today there is also significant academic support for the debt deflation theory and the expectations hypothesis that – building on the monetary explanation of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz – add non-monetary explanations. There
12078-527: The Great Depression. According to the U.S. Senate website, the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act is among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history. Many economists have argued that the sharp decline in international trade after 1930 helped to worsen the depression, especially for countries significantly dependent on foreign trade. Most historians and economists blame the Act for worsening the depression by seriously reducing international trade and causing retaliatory tariffs in other countries. While foreign trade
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#173280181605112276-469: The Great Lakes. A royal ordinance of 1722—following the transfer of the Illinois Country 's governance from Canada to Louisiana—may have featured the broadest definition of the region: all land claimed by France south of the Great Lakes between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies A generation later, trade conflicts between Canada and Louisiana led to a more defined boundary between the French colonies; in 1745, Louisiana governor general Vaudreuil set
12474-416: The Mississippi to New Orleans, which climate could not support their cultivation. The lower country of Louisiana (modern-day Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana) depended on the Illinois French for survival through much of the eighteenth century. European settlement in the Louisiana colony was not exclusively French; in the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River in a region referred to as
12672-402: The Mississippi to the Kingdom of Great Britain after its defeat in the Seven Years' War. The area around New Orleans and the parishes around Lake Pontchartrain , along with the rest of Louisiana, became a possession of Spain after the Seven Years' War by the Treaty of Paris of 1763. Spanish rule did not affect the pace of francophone immigration to the territory, which increased due to
12870-414: The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression, as they argue that National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and National Labor Relations Act of 1935 restricted competition and established price fixing. John Maynard Keynes did not think that the New Deal under Roosevelt single-handedly ended the Great Depression: "It is, it seems, politically impossible for a capitalistic democracy to organize expenditure on
13068-413: The Pointe Coupee inventories of the late eighteenth century showed that most slaves brought by traders came directly from Africa. In 1763 settlements from New Orleans to Pointe Coupee (north of Baton Rouge) included 3,654 free persons and 4,598 slaves. By the 1800 census, which included West Florida, there were 19,852 free persons and 24,264 slaves in Lower Louisiana. Although the censuses do not always cover
13266-474: The Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, making it the oldest permanent settlement in the territory that then composed the Louisiana colony. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in Texas via the Old San Antonio Road (sometimes called El Camino Real, or Kings Highway)—which ended at Nachitoches—and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. The settlement soon became
13464-436: The Seven Years' War (generally referred to in North America as the French and Indian War ). This included the lands along the Gulf Coast and north of Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River, which became known as British West Florida. The rest of Louisiana west of the Mississippi, as well as the "isle of New Orleans", had become a colony of Spain by the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1762) . The transfer of power on either side of
13662-609: The Spanish "cimarron", meaning which means "fierce" or "unruly." In the late 18th century, the last Spanish governor of the Louisiana territory wrote: Truly, it is impossible for lower Louisiana to get along without slaves and with the use of slaves, the colony had been making great strides toward prosperity and wealth. When the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803, it was soon accepted that slaves could be brought to Louisiana as easily as they were brought to neighboring Mississippi , though it violated U.S. law to do so. Despite demands by United States Rep. James Hillhouse and by
13860-491: The U.K. economy, which experienced an economic downturn throughout most of the late 1920s, was less severely impacted by the shock of the depression than the U.S. By contrast, the German economy saw a similar decline in industrial output as that observed in the U.S. Some economic historians attribute the differences in the rates of recovery and relative severity of the economic decline to whether particular countries had been able to effectively devaluate their currencies or not. This
14058-435: The U.S. unemployment rate down below 10%. World War II had a dramatic effect on many parts of the American economy. Government-financed capital spending accounted for only 5% of the annual U.S. investment in industrial capital in 1940; by 1943, the government accounted for 67% of U.S. capital investment. The massive war spending doubled economic growth rates, either masking the effects of the Depression or essentially ending
14256-580: The Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress . In the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, many Confederates regained public office. Legislature across the South passed Black Codes that restricted the rights of freedmen, such as the right to travel, and forced them to sign year-long contracts with planters. Anyone without proof of a contract by the start of the year
14454-486: The United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, France and Spain jockeyed for control of New Orleans and the lands west of the Mississippi. In the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River, in a region referred to as the German Coast . France ceded most of its territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain in 1763, in the aftermath of Britain's victory in
14652-622: The United States, agricultural organizations sponsored programs to teach housewives how to optimize their gardens and to raise poultry for meat and eggs. Rural women made feed sack dresses and other items for themselves and their families and homes from feed sacks. In American cities, African American women quiltmakers enlarged their activities, promoted collaboration, and trained neophytes. Quilts were created for practical use from various inexpensive materials and increased social interaction for women and promoted camaraderie and personal fulfillment. Oral history provides evidence for how housewives in
14850-543: The United States, remained on the gold standard into 1932 or 1933, while a few countries in the so-called "gold bloc", led by France and including Poland, Belgium and Switzerland, stayed on the standard until 1935–36. According to later analysis, the earliness with which a country left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery. For example, The UK and Scandinavia, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which had
15048-403: The United States, was disturbed by Napoleon's plans to re-establish French colonies in North America. With the possession of New Orleans, Napoleon could close the Mississippi to U.S. commerce at any time. Jefferson authorized Robert R. Livingston , U.S. minister to France, to negotiate for the purchase of the city of New Orleans, portions of the east bank of the Mississippi, and free navigation of
15246-577: The United States. The payment was made in United States bonds , which Napoleon sold at face value to the Dutch firm of Hope and Company , and the British banking house of Baring , at a discount of 87 + 1 ⁄ 2 per each $ 100 unit. As a result, France received only $ 8,831,250 in cash for Louisiana. English banker Alexander Baring conferred with Marbois in Paris, shuttled to the United States to pick up
15444-478: The United States. The closure of this vital port to the United States caused anger and consternation. Commerce in the west was virtually blockaded. Historians believe the revocation of the right of deposit was prompted by abuses by the Americans, particularly smuggling, and not by French intrigues as was believed at the time. President Jefferson ignored public pressure for war with France, and appointed James Monroe
15642-656: The Upper South as planters shifted from tobacco to less labor-intensive mixed agriculture, planters had excess laborers. Many sold slaves to traders to take to the Deep South. Slaves were driven by traders overland from the Upper South or transported to New Orleans and other coastal markets by ship in the coastwise slave trade . After sales in New Orleans, steamboats operating on the Mississippi transported slaves upstream to markets or plantation destinations at Natchez and Memphis . With its plantation economy, Louisiana
15840-655: The Upper South or transported to New Orleans and other coastal markets by ship in the coastwise slave trade . After sales in New Orleans, steamboats operating on the Mississippi transported slaves upstream to markets or plantation destinations at Natchez and Memphis. Unusually for a slave-state, Louisiana harbored escaped Filipino slaves from the Manila Galleons . The members of the Filipino community were then commonly referred to as Manila men, or Manilamen, and later Tagalas , as they were free when they created
16038-409: The Upper South to the Deep South, two thirds of them in the slave trade. Others were transported by their owners as slaveholders moved west for new lands. With changing agriculture in the Upper South as planters shifted from tobacco to less labor-intensive mixed agriculture, planters had excess laborers. Many sold slaves to traders to take to the Deep South. Slaves were driven by traders overland from
16236-638: The Wall Street crash, after which the slide continued for three years, which was accompanied by a loss of confidence in the financial system. By 1933, the U.S. unemployment rate had risen to 25 percent, about one-third of farmers had lost their land, and about half of the country's 25,000 banks had gone out of business. Many people, unable to pay mortgages or rent, became homeless and relied on begging or charities to feed themselves. The U.S. federal government initially did little to help. President Herbert Hoover , like many of his fellow Republicans , believed in
16434-572: The West Indies, Germany, and Ireland. It experienced an agricultural boom, particularly in cotton and sugarcane, which were cultivated primarily by slaves from Africa. As a slave state, Louisiana was one of the original seven members of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War . Louisiana's unique French heritage is reflected in its toponyms, dialects, customs, demographics, and legal system. Relative to
16632-413: The area just below Baton Rouge. The Malagueños settled mainly around New Iberia, but some spread to other parts of southern Louisiana. Both free and enslaved populations increased rapidly during the years of Spanish rule, as new settlers and Creoles imported large numbers of slaves to work on plantations. Although some American settlers brought slaves with them who were native to Virginia or North Carolina,
16830-482: The banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the Illinois Country , in modern-day Indiana , Illinois and Missouri . Initially Mobile , and (briefly) Biloxi served the capital of the colony. In 1722, recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, France made New Orleans the seat of civilian and military authority. The Illinois Country exported its grain surpluses down
17028-460: The banks would not have fallen after the large ones did, and the money supply would not have fallen as far and as fast as it did. With significantly less money to go around, businesses could not get new loans and could not even get their old loans renewed, forcing many to stop investing. This interpretation blames the Federal Reserve for inaction, especially the New York branch . One reason why
17226-465: The behavior of housewives. The common view among economic historians is that the Great Depression ended with the advent of World War II . Many economists believe that government spending on the war caused or at least accelerated recovery from the Great Depression, though some consider that it did not play a very large role in the recovery, though it did help in reducing unemployment. The rearmament policies leading up to World War II helped stimulate
17424-593: The biggest slave market in the United States, which contributed greatly to the economy of the city and of the state. New Orleans had become one of the wealthiest cities, and the third largest city, in the nation. The ban on the African slave trade and importation of slaves had increased demand in the domestic market. During the decades after the American Revolutionary War, more than one million enslaved African Americans underwent forced migration from
17622-406: The bonds, took them to Britain, and returned to France with the money—which Napoleon used to wage war against Baring's own country. When news of the purchase reached the United States, Jefferson was surprised. He had authorized the expenditure of $ 10 million for a port city, and instead received treaties committing the government to spend $ 15 million on a land package which would double
17820-637: The city. Anglo-American officials initially made attempts to keep out the additional Creoles of color , but the Louisiana Creoles wanted to increase the Creole population: more than half of the refugees eventually settled in Louisiana, and the majority remained in New Orleans . Pierre Clément de Laussat ( Governor , 1803) said: "Saint-Domingue was, of all our colonies in the Antilles,
18018-462: The collapse in global trade, contributing to the depression. By 1933, the economic decline pushed world trade to one third of its level compared to four years earlier. While the precise causes for the occurrence of the Great depression are disputed and can be traced to both global and national phenomena, its immediate origins are most conveniently examined in the context of the U.S. economy, from which
18216-475: The crash was a mere symptom of more general economic trends of the time, which had already been underway in the late 1920s. A contrasting set of views, which rose to prominence in the later part of the 20th century, ascribes a more prominent role to failures of monetary policy . According to those authors, while general economic trends can explain the emergence of the downturn, they fail to account for its severity and longevity; they argue that these were caused by
18414-569: The crisis, the U.S. Congress passed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act on 17 June 1930. The Act was ostensibly aimed at protecting the American economy from foreign competition by imposing high tariffs on foreign imports. The consensus view among economists and economic historians (including Keynesians , Monetarists and Austrian economists ) is that the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff had, in fact, achieved an opposite effect to what
18612-589: The cultural continuity is unbroken from prehistory to the present, and that the direct ancestors of the Caddo and related Caddo language speakers in prehistoric times and at first European contact and the modern Caddo Nation of Oklahoma is unquestioned today. Significant Caddoan Mississippian archaeological sites in Louisiana include Belcher Mound Site in Caddo Parish and Gahagan Mounds Site in Red River Parish. The following groups are known to have inhabited
18810-841: The culture, the Atchafalaya Basin Mounds in St. Mary Parish, the Fitzhugh Mounds in Madison Parish, the Scott Place Mounds in Union Parish, and the Sims site in St. Charles Parish. Plaquemine culture was contemporaneous with the Middle Mississippian culture that is represented by its largest settlement, the Cahokia site in Illinois east of St. Louis, Missouri . At its peak Cahokia
19008-633: The decade. The Depression had devastating economic effects on both wealthy and poor countries: all experienced drops in personal income , prices ( deflation ), tax revenues, and profits. International trade fell by more than 50%, and unemployment in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities around the world , especially those dependent on heavy industry , were heavily affected. Construction virtually halted in many countries, and farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by up to 60%. Faced with plummeting demand and few job alternatives, areas dependent on primary sector industries suffered
19206-408: The depression. Not all governments enforced the same measures of protectionism. Some countries raised tariffs drastically and enforced severe restrictions on foreign exchange transactions, while other countries reduced "trade and exchange restrictions only marginally": The gold standard was the primary transmission mechanism of the Great Depression. Even countries that did not face bank failures and
19404-436: The desired New Orleans area), and that approval from President Jefferson might take months, so Livingston and Monroe decided to open negotiations immediately. By April 30, they closed a deal for the purchase of the entire Louisiana territory of 828,000 square miles (2,100,000 km ) for sixty million Francs (approximately $ 15 million). Part of this sum, $ 3.5 million, was used to forgive debts owed by France to
19602-435: The domestic price level to decline ( deflation ). There is also consensus that protectionist policies, and primarily the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act , helped to exacerbate, or even cause the Great Depression. Some economic studies have indicated that the rigidities of the gold standard not only spread the downturn worldwide, but also suspended gold convertibility (devaluing the currency in gold terms) that did
19800-402: The drop in demand. Monetarists believe that the Great Depression started as an ordinary recession, but the shrinking of the money supply greatly exacerbated the economic situation, causing a recession to descend into the Great Depression. Economists and economic historians are almost evenly split as to whether the traditional monetary explanation that monetary forces were the primary cause of
19998-679: The earlier Tchefuncte culture . It is considered ancestral to the Natchez and Taensa peoples. Around the year 800 CE, the Mississippian culture emerged from the Woodland period . The emergence of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex coincides with the adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom -level complex social organization beginning in circa 1200 CE. The Mississippian culture mostly disappeared around
20196-587: The earliest dated complex constructions in the Americas. The Watson Brake site is an arrangement of human-made mounds located in the floodplain of the Ouachita River near Monroe in northern Louisiana. It has been dated to about 3400 BC. The site appears to have been abandoned about 2800. By 2200 BC, during the Late Archaic period the Poverty Point culture occupied much of Louisiana and
20394-469: The early decades of the 19th century, trade and shipping increased markedly in New Orleans. Produce and products moved out of the Midwest down the Mississippi River for shipment overseas, and international ships docked at New Orleans with imports to send into the interior. The port was crowded with steamboats , flatboats , and sailing ships , and workers speaking languages from many nations. New Orleans
20592-482: The economies of Europe in 1937–1939. By 1937, unemployment in Britain had fallen to 1.5 million. The mobilization of manpower following the outbreak of war in 1939 ended unemployment. The American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941 moved approximately ten million people out of the civilian labor force and into the war. This finally eliminated the last effects from the Great Depression and brought
20790-533: The emergence of the Plaquemine and Caddoan Mississippian cultures . This was the period when extensive maize agriculture was adopted. The Plaquemine culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 AD and continued until about 1600 AD. Good examples of this culture are the Medora site (the type site for the culture and period), Fitzhugh Mounds , Transylvania Mounds , and Scott Place Mounds in Louisiana and
20988-576: The end of the month. A large sell-off of stocks began in mid-October. Finally, on 24 October, Black Thursday , the American stock market crashed 11% at the opening bell. Actions to stabilize the market failed, and on 28 October, Black Monday, the market crashed another 12%. The panic peaked the next day on Black Tuesday, when the market saw another 11% drop. Thousands of investors were ruined, and billions of dollars had been lost; many stocks could not be sold at any price. The market recovered 12% on Wednesday but by then significant damage had been done. Though
21186-500: The explanations of the Keynesians and monetarists. The consensus among demand-driven theories is that a large-scale loss of confidence led to a sudden reduction in consumption and investment spending. Once panic and deflation set in, many people believed they could avoid further losses by keeping clear of the markets. Holding money became profitable as prices dropped lower and a given amount of money bought ever more goods, exacerbating
21384-503: The few women in the labor force, layoffs were less common in the white-collar jobs and they were typically found in light manufacturing work. However, there was a widespread demand to limit families to one paid job, so that wives might lose employment if their husband was employed. Across Britain, there was a tendency for married women to join the labor force, competing for part-time jobs especially. In France, very slow population growth, especially in comparison to Germany continued to be
21582-549: The first burial mounds are built at this time. Political power begins to be consolidated; the first platform mounds and ritual centers were constructed as part of the development of a hereditary political and religious leadership. By 400 AD in the eastern part of the state, the Late Woodland period had begun with the Baytown and Troyville cultures (named for the Troyville Earthworks in Jonesville, Louisiana ), and later
21780-559: The first platform mounds at ritual centers were constructed for the developing hereditary political and religious leadership. By 400 the Late Woodland period had begun with the Baytown culture , Troyville culture , and Coastal Troyville during the Baytown period and were succeeded by the Coles Creek cultures . Where the Baytown peoples built dispersed settlements, the Troyville people instead continued building major earthwork centers. Population increased dramatically and there
21978-617: The first levees under planter direction. Later levees were expanded, heightened and added to mostly by Irish immigrant laborers, whom contractors hired when doing work for the state. As the 19th century progressed, the state had an interest in ensuring levee construction. By 1860, Louisiana had built 740 miles (1,190 km) of levees on the Mississippi River and another 450 miles (720 km) of levees on its outlets. These immense earthworks were built mostly by hand. They averaged six feet in height, and up to twenty feet in some areas. Enfranchised elite whites' strong economic interest in maintaining
22176-591: The first people in Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery. Ceramics from the Tchefuncte culture have been found in sites from eastern Texas to eastern Florida, and from coastal Louisiana to southern Arkansas. These cultures lasted until 200 AD. The Middle Woodland period started in Louisiana with the Marksville culture in the southern and eastern part of the state and the Fourche Maline culture in
22374-399: The first people in the area of Louisiana to make large amounts of pottery. These cultures lasted until 200 AD. The Middle Woodland period started in Louisiana with the Marksville culture in the southern and eastern part of the state, reaching across the Mississippi River to the east around Natchez, and the Fourche Maline culture in the northwestern part of the state. The Marksville culture
22572-540: The first two African slaves to Louisiana in 1708, transporting them from a French colony in the West Indies. In 1709, French financier Antoine Crozat obtained a monopoly of commerce in La Louisiane , which extended from the Gulf of Mexico to what is now Illinois . According to historian Hugh Thomas , "that concession allowed him to bring in a cargo of blacks from Africa every year". Starting in 1719, traders began to import slaves in higher numbers; two French ships,
22770-505: The first week of June, 540 million in the second, and 150 million in two days, 19–20 June. Collapse was at hand. U.S. President Herbert Hoover called for a moratorium on payment of war reparations . This angered Paris, which depended on a steady flow of German payments, but it slowed the crisis down, and the moratorium was agreed to in July 1931. An International conference in London later in July produced no agreements but on 19 August
22968-441: The formation of simple elite polities had begun. Coles Creek sites are found in present-day Arkansas , Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Texas. Many Coles Creek sites were erected over earlier Woodland period mortuary mounds, leading researchers to speculate that emerging elites were symbolically and physically appropriating dead ancestors to emphasize and project their own authority. The Mississippian period in Louisiana saw
23166-452: The free people of color were of mixed race. Many gens de couleur libre in New Orleans were middle class and educated; many were also property owners. In contrast, according to the 1860 census, 331,726 people were enslaved, nearly 47% of the state's total population of 708,002. Construction and elaboration of the levee system was critical to the state's ability to cultivate its commodity crops of cotton and sugar cane. Enslaved Africans built
23364-606: The government tried to reshape private household consumption under the Four-Year Plan of 1936 to achieve German economic self-sufficiency. The Nazi women's organizations, other propaganda agencies and the authorities all attempted to shape such consumption as economic self-sufficiency was needed to prepare for and to sustain the coming war. The organizations, propaganda agencies and authorities employed slogans that called up traditional values of thrift and healthy living. However, these efforts were only partly successful in changing
23562-519: The home, or took boarders, did laundry for trade or cash, and did sewing for neighbors in exchange for something they could offer. Extended families used mutual aid—extra food, spare rooms, repair-work, cash loans—to help cousins and in-laws. In Japan, official government policy was deflationary and the opposite of Keynesian spending. Consequently, the government launched a campaign across the country to induce households to reduce their consumption, focusing attention on spending by housewives. In Germany,
23760-474: The influence of New England Federalists in national affairs. President Jefferson was an enthusiastic supporter of westward expansion, and held firm in his support for the treaty. Despite Federalist objections, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana treaty on October 20, 1803. By statute enacted on October 31, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson was authorized to take possession of the territories ceded by France and provide for initial governance. A transfer ceremony
23958-527: The initial crisis spread to the rest of the world. In the aftermath of World War I , the Roaring Twenties brought considerable wealth to the United States and Western Europe. Initially, the year 1929 dawned with good economic prospects: despite a minor crash on 25 March 1929, the market seemed to gradually improve through September. Stock prices began to slump in September, and were volatile at
24156-475: The interaction of whites (blancs) and blacks (noirs) in its colony of Louisiana (which was much larger than the current state of Louisiana). After the Sale of Louisiana , French Law survived in the Louisiana, such as the prohibition and outlaw of any cruel punishment. Fugitive slaves, called maroons , could easily hide in the backcountry of the bayous and survive in small settlements. The word "maroon" comes from
24354-528: The islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe to the French. Napoleon looked upon Louisiana as a depot for these sugar islands, and as a buffer to U.S. settlement. In October 1801 he sent a large military force to take back Saint-Domingue, then under control of Toussaint Louverture after the Haitian Revolution . When the army led by Napoleon's brother-in-law Leclerc was defeated, Napoleon decided to sell Louisiana. Thomas Jefferson , third president of
24552-563: The lack of an adequate response to the crises of liquidity that followed the initial economic shock of 1929 and the subsequent bank failures accompanied by a general collapse of the financial markets. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 , when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped from 381 to 198 over the course of two months, optimism persisted for some time. The stock market rose in early 1930, with
24750-521: The market entered a period of recovery from 14 November until 17 April 1930, the general situation had been a prolonged slump. From 17 April 1930 until 8 July 1932, the market continued to lose 89% of its value. Despite the crash, the worst of the crisis did not reverberate around the world until after 1929. The crisis hit panic levels again in December 1930, with a bank run on the Bank of United States ,
24948-414: The mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U.S. Interest rates dropped to low levels by mid-1930, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment remained low. By May 1930, automobile sales declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices, in general, began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930. Then
25146-553: The modern state of Louisiana. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in Texas via the Old San Antonio Road, and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. The settlement soon became a flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river that were worked by imported African slaves. Over time, planters developed large plantations and built fine homes in
25344-423: The monetary base and by not injecting liquidity into the banking system to prevent it from crumbling, the Federal Reserve passively watched the transformation of a normal recession into the Great Depression. Friedman and Schwartz argued that the downward turn in the economy, starting with the stock market crash, would merely have been an ordinary recession if the Federal Reserve had taken aggressive action. This view
25542-502: The most to make recovery possible. Every major currency left the gold standard during the Great Depression. The UK was the first to do so. Facing speculative attacks on the pound and depleting gold reserves , in September 1931 the Bank of England ceased exchanging pound notes for gold and the pound was floated on foreign exchange markets. Japan and the Scandinavian countries followed in 1931. Other countries, such as Italy and
25740-486: The most. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 ended the Depression, as it stimulated factory production, providing jobs for women as militaries absorbed large numbers of young, unemployed men. The precise causes for the Great Depression are disputed. One set of historians, for example, focuses on non-monetary economic causes. Among these, some regard the Wall Street crash itself as the main cause; others consider that
25938-524: The mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1542, Hernando de Soto 's expedition skirted to the north and west of the state (encountering Caddo and Tunica groups) and then followed the Mississippi River down to the Gulf of Mexico in 1543. The expedition encountered hostile tribes all along river. Natives followed the boats in large canoes, shooting arrows at the soldiers for days on end as they drifted through their territory. The Spanish, whose crossbows had long ceased working, had no effective offensive weapons on
26136-582: The need to balance the national budget and was unwilling to implement expensive welfare spending . In 1930, Hoover signed the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act , which taxed imports with the intention of encouraging buyers to purchase American products, which worsened the Depression because foreign governments retaliated with tariffs on American exports. In 1932, Hoover established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation , which offered loans to businesses and support to local governments. In
26334-399: The north and became what archaeologist term Plaquemine Mississippian . These peoples are considered ancestral to historic groups encountered by the first Europeans in the area, the Natchez and Taensa peoples. The Caddoan Mississippians covered a large territory, including what is now eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeast Texas , and northwest Louisiana. Archaeological evidence that
26532-647: The northern and eastern bounds of his domain as the Wabash valley up to the mouth of the Vermilion River (near present-day Danville, Illinois ); from there, northwest to le Rocher on the Illinois River , and from there west to the mouth of the Rock River (at present day Rock Island, Illinois ). Thus, Vincennes and Peoria were the limit of Louisiana's reach; the outposts at Ouiatenon (on
26730-409: The northern and eastern bounds of his domain as the Wabash valley up to the mouth of the Vermilion River (near present-day Danville, Illinois ); from there, northwest to le Rocher on the Illinois River , and from there west to the mouth of the Rock River (at present day Rock Island, Illinois ). Thus, Vincennes and Peoria were the limit of Louisiana's reach; the outposts at Ouiatenon (on
26928-742: The northwestern part of the state. The Marksville culture takes its name from the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana . These cultures were contemporaneous with the Hopewell cultures of Ohio and Illinois , and participated in the Hopewell Exchange Network. At this time populations became more sedentary and began to establish semi-permanent villages and to practice agriculture , planting various cultigens of
27126-589: The oldest settlement of Asians in the United States in the village of Saint Malo, Louisiana , the inhabitants of which, even joined the United States in the War of 1812 against the British Empire while they were being led by the French-American Jean Lafitte . Spanish occupation of Louisiana lasted from 1769 to 1800. Beginning in the 1790s, waves of immigration took place from Saint-Domingue as refugees poured over following
27324-513: The one whose mentality and customs influenced Louisiana the most." When the United States won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, one of its major concerns was having a European power on its western boundary, and the need for unrestricted access to the Mississippi River. As American settlers pushed west, they found that the Appalachian Mountains provided a barrier to shipping goods eastward. The easiest way to ship produce
27522-558: The origins of enslaved Africans taken onboard slave ships . Researchers have found that approximately 2,000 persons originated from the upper West African slave ports from Saint-Louis, Senegal to Cap Appolonia (present-day Ébrié Lagoon , Côte d'Ivoire ) several hundred kilometers to the south; an additional 2,000 were exported from the port of Whydah (modern Ouidah , Benin ); and roughly 300 departed from Cabinda . Gwendolyn Midlo Hall has argued that, due to historical and administrative ties between France and Senegal , "Two-thirds of
27720-559: The pamphleteer Thomas Paine to enforce existing federal law against slavery in the newly acquired territory, slavery prevailed because it was the source of great profits and the lowest-cost labor. At the start of the 19th century, Louisiana was a small producer of sugar with a relatively small number of slaves, compared to Saint-Domingue and the West Indies. It soon thereafter became a major sugar producer as new settlers arrived to develop plantations. William C. C. Claiborne , Louisiana's first United States governor, said African slave labor
27918-538: The peoples adopted extensive maize agriculture, cultivating different strains of the plant by saving seeds, selecting for certain characteristics, etc. The Plaquemine culture in the lower Mississippi River Valley in western Mississippi and eastern Louisiana began in 1200 and continued to about 1600. Examples in Louisiana include the Medora site , the archaeological type site for the culture in West Baton Rouge Parish whose characteristics helped define
28116-483: The physical volume of exports fall, but also the prices fell by about 1 ⁄ 3 as written. Hardest hit were farm commodities such as wheat, cotton, tobacco, and lumber. Governments around the world took various steps into spending less money on foreign goods such as: "imposing tariffs, import quotas, and exchange controls". These restrictions triggered much tension among countries that had large amounts of bilateral trade, causing major export-import reductions during
28314-480: The policies prolonged the Depression instead of shortening it. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%; in the U.S., the Depression resulted in a 30% contraction in GDP. Recovery varied greatly around the world. Some economies, such as the U.S., Germany and Japan started to recover by the mid-1930s; others, like France, did not return to pre-shock growth rates until later in
28512-459: The political situation in Europe. In their book, A Monetary History of the United States , Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz also attributed the recovery to monetary factors, and contended that it was much slowed by poor management of money by the Federal Reserve System . Chairman of the Federal Reserve (2006–2014) Ben Bernanke agreed that monetary factors played important roles both in
28710-607: The population was enslaved. Louisiana seceded from the Union on January 26, 1861, joining the Confederate States of America . New Orleans , the largest city in the entire South at the time, and strategically important port city, was taken by Union troops on April 25, 1862. After the defeat of the Confederate Army in 1865, Louisiana would enter the Reconstruction era (1865–1877). During Reconstruction, Louisiana
28908-585: The pressure for Anglicization , and in 1921, English was shortly made the sole language of instruction in Louisiana schools before a policy of multilingualism was revived in 1974. Louisiana has never had an official language, and the state constitution enumerates "the right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic, linguistic, and cultural origins." Based on national averages, Louisiana frequently ranks low among U.S. states in terms of health, education, and development, with high rates of poverty and homicide . In 2018, Louisiana
29106-405: The region Louisiana in 1682 to honor France's King Louis XIV . The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at what is now Ocean Springs, Mississippi , near Biloxi ), was founded in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville , a French military officer from Canada. French leaders encouraged French men to marry French women while in Louisiana, and specifically not Native Americans, for "the purpose of
29304-462: The region from Futa Djallon to Futa Toro and Futa Bundu (modern Upper Niger River ) in the early 18th century. The inland territories of the African continent from which slaves were captured, were enormous. Commentators may have attributed more similarities to slaves taken from among these areas than the Africans recognized among themselves at the time. France ceded most of its territory east of
29502-447: The rest of the southern U.S., Louisiana is multilingual and multicultural, reflecting an admixture of Louisiana French ( Cajun , Creole ), Spanish , French Canadian , Acadian , Saint-Domingue Creole , Native American , and West African cultures (generally the descendants of slaves stolen in the 18th century); more recent migrants include Filipinos and Vietnamese. In the post–Civil War environment , Anglo-Americans increased
29700-634: The revolt, as well as citizen militias. Louisiana became a U.S. state on April 30, 1812. The western boundary of Louisiana with Spanish Texas remained in dispute until the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, which was formally ratified in 1821, The area referred to as the Sabine Free State served as a neutral buffer zone. With the growth of settlement in the Midwest (formerly the Northwest Territory) and Deep South during
29898-477: The revolution. After French withdrawal in 1803, Haiti declared its independence in 1804 as the second republic in the Western Hemisphere . As a result of his setbacks, Napoleon gave up his dreams of American empire and sold Louisiana (New France) to the United States in 1803. The U.S. divided the land into two territories: the Territory of Orleans , which became the state of Louisiana in 1812, and
30096-429: The river for U.S. commerce. Livingston was authorized to pay up to $ 2 million. An official transfer of Louisiana to French ownership had not yet taken place, and Napoleon's deal with the Spanish was a poorly kept secret on the frontier. On October 18, 1802, however, Juan Ventura Morales, acting intendant of Louisiana, made public the intention of Spain to revoke the right of deposit at New Orleans for all cargo from
30294-555: The river would be delayed until later in the decade. In 1765, during Spanish rule, several thousand Acadians from the French colony of Acadia (now Nova Scotia , New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island ) made their way to Louisiana after having been expelled from Acadia by the British government after the French and Indian War. They settled chiefly in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana . The governor Luis de Unzaga y Amézaga , eager to gain more settlers, welcomed
30492-480: The same territory, the slaves became the majority of the population during these years. Records during Spanish rule were not as well documented as with the French slave trade, making it difficult to trace African origins. The volume of slaves imported from Africa resulted in what historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hall called "the re-Africanization" of Lower Louisiana, which strongly influenced the culture. In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in
30690-434: The scale necessary to make the grand experiments which would prove my case—except in war conditions." According to Christina Romer , the money supply growth caused by huge international gold inflows was a crucial source of the recovery of the United States economy, and that the economy showed little sign of self-correction. The gold inflows were partly due to devaluation of the U.S. dollar and partly due to deterioration of
30888-557: The size of the country. Jefferson's political opponents in the Federalist Party argued the Louisiana purchase was a worthless desert, and that the U.S. constitution did not provide for the acquisition of new land or negotiating treaties without the consent of the federal legislature. What really worried the opposition was the new states which would inevitably be carved from the Louisiana territory, strengthening western and southern interests in U.S. Congress , and further reducing
31086-404: The slave system contributed to Louisiana's decision to secede from the Union in 1861. It followed other Southern states in seceding after the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States . Louisiana's secession was announced on January 26, 1861, and it became part of the Confederate States of America . The state was quickly overtaken by Union troops in the American Civil War ,
31284-597: The slaves brought to Louisiana by the French slave trade came from Senegambia." This assertion is not universally accepted. This region between the Senegal and Gambia rivers had peoples who were closely related through history: three of the principal languages, Sereer , Wolof and Pulaar were related, and Malinke , spoken by the Mande people to the east, was "mutually intelligible" with them. Hall thinks that this concentration of peoples from one region of Africa helped shape
31482-488: The state had ended [explain] In the late 20th Century, Louisiana saw rapid industrialization and rise of economic markets such as oil refineries, petrochemical plants, foundries, along with industries of produce foods, fishing, transportation equipment, and electronic equipment. Tourism also became important to the Louisiana economy, with Mardi Gras becoming a known major celebration held annually since 1838. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and surrounding areas in
31680-553: The state in the Great Migration . They moved to mainly urban areas in the North and Midwest. The Great Depression of the 1930s would hit the states economy hard, as mostly agricultural state at the time, farm prices had dropped to all-time lows. In the states urban areas such as New Orleans, many warehouses and businesses had closed, leaving many unemployed. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration would help flow money into
31878-478: The state is forested. Louisiana is situated at the confluence of the Mississippi river system and the Gulf of Mexico. Its location and biodiversity attracted various indigenous groups thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the 17th century. Louisiana has eighteen Native American tribes—the most of any southern state—of which four are federally recognized and ten are state-recognized. The French claimed
32076-715: The state's first formal bill of rights. African Americans began to live as citizens with some measure of equality before the law. Both freedmen and people of color who had been free before the war began to make more advances in education, family stability and jobs. At the same time, there was tremendous social volatility in the aftermath of war, with many whites actively resisting defeat. White insurgents mobilized to enforce white supremacy , first in Ku Klux Klan chapters. Louisiana Louisiana (French: Louisiane [lwizjan] ; Spanish: Luisiana [lwiˈsjana] ; Louisiana Creole : Lwizyàn )
32274-490: The state's territory when the Europeans began colonization: Many current place names in the state, including Atchafalaya , Natchitouches (now spelled Natchitoches ), Caddo , Houma , Tangipahoa , and Avoyel (as Avoyelles ), are transliterations of those used in various Native American languages. The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528 when a Spanish expedition led by Panfilo de Narváez located
32472-534: The state, providing employment opportunities for Louisiana projects. World War II would help accelerate the industrialization of Louisiana's economy and provide further economic growth. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights movement had started to gain national attention, and with the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 , disfranchisement of African Americans in
32670-451: The state. The city of modern–day Epps developed near it. The Poverty Point culture may have reached its peak around 1500 BC, making it the first complex culture, and possibly the first tribal culture in North America. It lasted until approximately 700 BC. The Poverty Point culture was followed by the Tchefuncte and Lake Cormorant cultures of the Tchula period , local manifestations of Early Woodland period . The Tchefuncte culture were
32868-426: The tallest in Louisiana at 82 feet (25 m) in height. The Coles Creek culture from 700 to 1200 AD marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population increased dramatically, and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political complexity, especially by the end of the Coles Creek sequence. Although many of the classic traits of chiefdom societies are not yet manifested, by 1000 CE
33066-429: The territory in 1682, and it became the political, commercial, and population center of the larger colony of New France . From 1762 to 1801 Louisiana was under Spanish rule, briefly returning to French rule before being sold by Napoleon to the U.S. in 1803. It was admitted to the Union in 1812 as the 18th state. Following statehood, Louisiana saw an influx of settlers from the eastern U.S. as well as immigrants from
33264-451: The upper Wabash near present-day Lafayette, Indiana ), Chicago , Fort Miamis (near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana ) and Prairie du Chien operated as dependencies of Canada. This boundary between Canada and Louisiana remained in effect until the Treaty of Paris in 1763, after which France ceded its remaining claims east of the Mississippi—except for New Orleans—to Great Britain . (Although British forces had established control over
33462-399: The upper Wabash near present-day Lafayette, Indiana ), Chicago, Fort Miamis (near present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana ), and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin , operated as dependencies of Canada. The settlement of Natchitoches (along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis , making it the oldest permanent European settlement in
33660-404: The water and were forced to rely on their remaining armor and sleeping mats to block the arrows. About 11 Spaniards were killed along this stretch and many more wounded. Neither of the explorations made any claims to the territory for Spain. European interest in Louisiana was dormant until the late 17th century, when French expeditions, which had imperial, religious and commercial aims, established
33858-468: The wealthiest cities and the third-largest city in the nation. The ban on importation of slaves had increased demand in the domestic market. During these decades after the American Revolutionary War, more than one million enslaved African Americans underwent forced migration from the Upper South to the Deep South , two thirds of them in the slave trade. Others were transported by slaveholders as they moved west for new lands. With changing agriculture in
34056-420: The world, recovery from the Great Depression began in 1933. In the U.S., recovery began in early 1933, but the U.S. did not return to 1929 GNP for over a decade and still had an unemployment rate of about 15% in 1940, albeit down from the high of 25% in 1933. There is no consensus among economists regarding the motive force for the U.S. economic expansion that continued through most of the Roosevelt years (and
34254-508: The world. The financial crisis escalated out of control in mid-1931, starting with the collapse of the Credit Anstalt in Vienna in May. This put heavy pressure on Germany, which was already in political turmoil. With the rise in violence of National Socialist ('Nazi') and Communist movements, as well as investor nervousness at harsh government financial policies, investors withdrew their short-term money from Germany as confidence spiraled downward. The Reichsbank lost 150 million marks in
34452-778: The worldwide economic decline and eventual recovery. Bernanke also saw a strong role for institutional factors, particularly the rebuilding and restructuring of the financial system, and pointed out that the Depression should be examined in an international perspective. Women's primary role was as housewives; without a steady flow of family income, their work became much harder in dealing with food and clothing and medical care. Birthrates fell everywhere, as children were postponed until families could financially support them. The average birthrate for 14 major countries fell 12% from 19.3 births per thousand population in 1930, to 17.0 in 1935. In Canada, half of Roman Catholic women defied Church teachings and used contraception to postpone births. Among
34650-478: Was a scramble to deflate prices to get the gold standard's conversation rates back on track to pre-WWI levels, by causing deflation and high unemployment through monetary policy. In 1933 FDR signed Executive Order 6102 and in 1934 signed the Gold Reserve Act . The two classic competing economic theories of the Great Depression are the Keynesian (demand-driven) and the Monetarist explanation. There are also various heterodox theories that downplay or reject
34848-478: Was a small part of overall economic activity in the U.S. and was concentrated in a few businesses like farming, it was a much larger factor in many other countries. The average ad valorem (value based) rate of duties on dutiable imports for 1921–1925 was 25.9% but under the new tariff it jumped to 50% during 1931–1935. In dollar terms, American exports declined over the next four years from about $ 5.2 billion in 1929 to $ 1.7 billion in 1933; so, not only did
35046-399: Was a state that generated wealth from the labor of and trade in enslaved Africans. It also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States, totaling 18,647 people in 1860. Most of the free blacks (or free people of color , as they were called in the French tradition) lived in the New Orleans region and southern part of the state. More than in other areas of the South, most of
35244-402: Was administered as the Fifth Military District . Congress dictated that for reentry into the Union, the late rebel state would have to ratify the 14th Amendment and pass new constitutions that enfranchised the freedmen. Louisiana's 1868 Constitution abolished the Black Codes, granted full civil and political equality to freedmen, disenfranchised several classes of ex-Confederates, and included
35442-421: Was built about 5400 BP (3500 BC). These discoveries overturned previous assumptions in archaeology that such complex mounds were built only by cultures of more settled peoples who were dependent on maize cultivation. The Hedgepeth Site in Lincoln Parish is more recent, dated to 5200–4500 BP (3300–2600 BC). Nearly 2,000 years later, Poverty Point was built; it is the largest and best-known Late Archaic site in
35640-423: Was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty; drastic reductions in liquidity , industrial production, and trade; and widespread bank and business failures around the world. The economic contagion began in 1929 in the United States , the largest economy in the world, with the devastating Wall Street stock market crash of October 1929 often considered the beginning of the Depression. The Depression
35838-404: Was considered a vagrant and could be arrested, imprisoned, and leased out to work through the convict leasing system that discriminated against Blacks. With the passage of the Reconstruction Acts , Congress took control of Reconstruction and the South, excluding Tennessee, was placed under the supervision of military governors under congressional control. Louisiana was grouped with Texas in what
36036-474: Was endorsed in 2002 by Federal Reserve Governor Ben Bernanke in a speech honoring Friedman and Schwartz with this statement: Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression, you're right. We did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again. The Federal Reserve allowed some large public bank failures – particularly that of
36234-403: Was founded in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville , a French military officer from New France . By then the French had also built a small fort at the mouth of the Mississippi at a settlement they named La Balise (or La Balize) , " seamark " in French. By 1721, they built a 62-foot (19 m) wooden lighthouse-type structure here to guide ships on the river. A royal ordinance of 1722—following
36432-426: Was given by American economists Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz . They argued that the Great Depression was caused by the banking crisis that caused one-third of all banks to vanish, a reduction of bank shareholder wealth and more importantly monetary contraction of 35%, which they called "The Great Contraction ". This caused a price drop of 33% ( deflation ). By not lowering interest rates, by not increasing
36630-422: Was held in New Orleans on November 29, 1803. Since the Louisiana territory had never officially been turned over to the French, the Spanish took down their flag, and the French raised theirs. The following day, General James Wilkinson accepted possession of New Orleans for the United States. The Louisiana Territory, purchased for less than three cents an acre, doubled the size of the United States overnight, without
36828-427: Was in the form of Federal Reserve demand notes. A "promise of gold" is not as good as "gold in the hand", particularly when they only had enough gold to cover 40% of the Federal Reserve Notes outstanding. During the bank panics, a portion of those demand notes was redeemed for Federal Reserve gold. Since the Federal Reserve had hit its limit on allowable credit, any reduction in gold in its vaults had to be accompanied by
37026-446: Was intended. It exacerbated the Great Depression by preventing economic recovery after domestic production recovered, hampering the volume of trade; still there is disagreement as to the precise extent of the Act's influence. In the popular view, the Smoot–Hawley Tariff was one of the leading causes of the depression. In a 1995 survey of American economic historians, two-thirds agreed that the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act at least worsened
37224-400: Was named after the Marksville Prehistoric Indian Site in Avoyelles Parish . These cultures were contemporaneous with the Hopewell cultures of present-day Ohio and Illinois , and participated in the Hopewell Exchange Network. Trade with peoples to the southwest brought the bow and arrow . The first burial mounds were built at this time. Political power began to be consolidated, as
37422-445: Was needed because white laborers "cannot be had in this unhealthy climate." Hugh Thomas wrote that Claiborne was unable to enforce the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, which the U.S. and Great Britain enacted in 1807. The United States continued to protect the domestic slave trade, including the coastwise trade—the transport of slaves by ship along the Atlantic Coast and to New Orleans and other Gulf ports. By 1840, New Orleans had
37620-523: Was preceded by a period of industrial growth and social development known as the " Roaring Twenties ". Much of the profit generated by the boom was invested in speculation , such as on the stock market , which resulted in growing wealth inequality . Banks were subject to minimal regulation under laissez-faire economic policies, resulting in loose lending and widespread debt. By 1929, declining spending had led to reductions in manufacturing output and rising unemployment . Share values continued to rise until
37818-437: Was ranked as the least healthy state in the country, with high levels of drug-related deaths . It also has had the highest homicide rate in the United States since at least the 1990s. Louisiana was named after Louis XIV , King of France from 1643 to 1715. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle claimed the territory drained by the Mississippi River for France, he named it La Louisiane . The suffix –ana (or –ane)
38016-403: Was settled by French colonists from Illinois. Initially, Mobile and then Biloxi served as the capital of La Louisiane. Recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, and wanting to protect the capital from severe coastal storms, France developed New Orleans from 1722 as the seat of civilian and military authority south of the Great Lakes. From then until
38214-404: Was spread into several surrounding states. Evidence of this culture has been found at more than 100 sites, including the Jaketown Site near Belzoni, Mississippi . The largest and best-known site is near modern-day Epps, Louisiana at Poverty Point . The Poverty Point culture may have hit its peak around 1500, making it the first complex culture, and possibly the first tribal culture, not only in
38412-630: Was subject to U.S. Army occupation , as part of the Fifth Military District . Following Reconstruction in the 1870s, white Democrats had regained political control in the state. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. The lawsuit stemmed from 1892 when Homer Plessy , a mixed-race resident of New Orleans, violated Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890, which required "equal, but separate" railroad accommodations for white and non-white passengers. This court decision upheld Jim Crow laws that had started to form in
38610-425: Was the major port for the export of cotton and sugar. The city's population grew and the region became quite wealthy. More than the rest of the Deep South, it attracted immigrants for the many jobs in the city. The richest citizens imported fine goods of wine, furnishings, and fabrics. By 1840 New Orleans had the biggest slave market in the United States , which contributed greatly to the economy. It had become one of
38808-411: Was the rollback of those same reflationary policies that led to the interruption of a recession beginning in late 1937. One contributing policy that reversed reflation was the Banking Act of 1935 , which effectively raised reserve requirements, causing a monetary contraction that helped to thwart the recovery. GDP returned to its upward trend in 1938. A revisionist view among some economists holds that
39006-452: Was to use a flatboat to float it down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the port of New Orleans, where goods could be put on ocean-going vessels. The problem with this route was that the Spanish owned both sides of the Mississippi below Natchez . Napoleon's ambitions in Louisiana involved the creation of a new empire centered on the Caribbean sugar trade . By the terms of the Treaty of Amiens of 1802, Great Britain returned control of
39204-475: Was understood the upper Mississippi above the mouth of the Illinois was in Canadian trading territory. The French established an important and lucrative fur trade in the northern areas, which became increasingly important. It competed with Dutch, and later English merchants, across the northern tier for fur trade with the Native Americans. The fur trade also helped cement alliances between Europeans and Native American tribes. The settlement of Natchitoches (along
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