Spanish New Orleans: An Imperial City of the American Periphery, 1766-1803 by John Eugene Rodriguez

Reviewed by: Spanish New Orleans: An Imperial City of the American Periphery, 1766-1803 by John Eugene Rodriguez John S. Sledge Spanish New Orleans: An Imperial City of the American Periphery, 1766-1803. By John Eugene Rodriguez. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2021. 256 pp. $40.00. ISBN 978-0-8071-7489-0. No French Quarter visitor can miss them, those handsome Talaveratile signs mortared onto corner buildings and walls at eye level, sporting an Iberian coat-of arms and the street's name "when the city was the capital of the Spanish province of Louisiana." Thus tourists learn that Royal Street was once the Calle Real; Decatur Street, the Calle de San Luis; and Jackson Square, the Plaza de Armas. Thanks to colorful advertising campaigns and the relentless celebration of "French" New Orleans, however, those street signs will likely be most tourists' only impression of New Orleans' eventful Spanish period. In reality, the Spanish imprint upon the Big Easy is just as profound as the Gallic, if not more so. In an important new book, John Eugene Rodriguez, department chair for regional issues at the National Intelligence University in Bethesda, Maryland, attempts to change this perception, at least among historians if not casual readers. One must begin somewhere, and as he notes in his introduction, "historians of Bourbon Spanish history have rarely focused upon the Spanish colony of Louisiana, in part because of a popular perception of it as really a French colony, albeit under Spanish rule" (1). Rodriguez is dismissive of the hyperbole so beloved of tour guides, brochures, and popular histories. "French rule in the city only lasted forty-eight mostly miserable years," he declares, referencing the period between the 1718 founding and the 1765 handover to Spanish troops (2). In fact, thanks to devastating colonial fires, only one French colonial building, the Ursuline [End Page 73] Convent (finished in 1751), survives today. The ensuing Spanish era under Carlos III's aegis was by contrast "one of dramatic demographic and economic growth" (2). Architecturally this is manifested by prominent landmarks like the Cabildo and the Presbytère, as well as abundant courtyards and balconies, all Iberian rather than Gallic bequests. Rodriguez divides his study into three parts, examining demography, trade, and political administration and discourse. He is a savvy researcher, and his sources take full advantage of the Spanish penchant for bureaucracy. They include census rolls (including a thorough "chimney census"), notarial and court documents, financial ledgers, and military records. One fact becomes starkly clear from this mountain of material. When New Orleans came under his control, Carlos III decided to "Hispanisize" the city rather than purge its existing population, as Spain had done in other colonies. This allowed the unique polyglot mixture of French, Spanish, Creoles, slaves, free Blacks, and (after 1776) American immigrants that called Louisiana home to relax and get on with business. Merchants were the key to the colony's success, of course, and the more latitude they had the better. Again, this was a break with usual Bourbon imperial policy. Even though the Spanish court might not have always approved, Madrid was a long way from New Orleans, and local officials chose to nod and wink in the interest of prosperity. Among the Spaniards who flourished within this environment was Bartolomé Bosque, who first appears in the records in 1789. Rodriguez speculates that his influential family sent him to make money, and make money he did. By the time he died Bosque owned four houses and five ships in New Orleans and several more of each in Pensacola (then part of Spanish West Florida). His New Orleans residence was filled with "crystal, silver, linen, a piano, sheet music, carriages," and his estate included twenty-two slaves (27). Impressed by this kind of achievement, no wonder local Frenchmen opted to marry Spanish women, eat Spanish food, and live in Spanish houses. [End Page 74] Surprisingly, literacy in Spanish New Orleans appears to have been fairly widespread, and not just among the rich. Rodriguez takes a fascinating tour of local library inventories, and combined with his other sources, confidently asserts, "The colony's enlightened governors found themselves managing an urban populace connected by the written...

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