Research Catalog

Instruments of empire : colonial elites and U.S. governance in early national Louisiana, 1803-1815

Title
Instruments of empire : colonial elites and U.S. governance in early national Louisiana, 1803-1815 / M. K. Beauchamp.
Author
Beauchamp, M. K. (Michael Kelly)
Publication
  • Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2021]
  • ©2021

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Details

Description
xii, 314 pages; 24 cm
Summary
"Michael Beauchamp's "Instruments of Empire" is an examination of the challenges posed to U.S. territorial expansion by the Louisiana Purchase, a development that transferred the sovereignty of a territory with a population who by birth, language, and religion differed substantially from the inhabitants of the United States, but who had been guaranteed the rights of full citizens. Beauchamp suggests that the subsequent process of gradual accommodation between federal officials and local elites in Louisiana served as an essential nationalizing experience as the United States expanded during the nineteenth century. After the U. S. acquired the region, federal officials failed to put the Territory of Orleans on a quick path to statehood due to doubts about the loyalty of the local population and their capacity for self-government. Instead, U.S. officials looked to other supporters, including free people of color, native Americans, and recent immigrants, all of whom found themselves ideally placed to negotiate for greater privileges from the new government. Beauchamp argues that U.S. administrators, despite claims to impartiality and equality before the law, regularly acted as agents of imperial power in applying different rules to different peoples. Most importantly, the new territorial government, in its appointment practices, strove to assign local elites to prominent positions within the parishes. Overall, the methods utilized by the United States in governing Louisiana had much in common with European colonial practices elsewhere on the North American continent. Beauchamp's study is one of the first to fully explore the interactions of U.S. officials and local elites in the territory from the perspective of the people who actually underwent this experience. He places early Louisiana in the broader national and international contexts that both shaped the early state and contoured the nation and region, revealing that Louisiana was not exceptional or outside the American mainstream. His work offers transformational insights about the interplay between class, ethnicity, and race, as well as an understanding of colonialism, the nature of republics, democracy, and empire. It also places the territorial period in early national Louisiana in an imperial context that reshapes perceptions of American expansion and manifest destiny in the nineteenth century and beyond. Beauchamp's work will be of interest not only to specialists in Louisiana and the South, but also to scholars of slavery and free people of color, nineteenth-century American history, Atlantic World and border studies, U.S. foreign relations, and the history of colonialism and empire"--
Subjects
Genre/Form
History.
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-306) and index.
Contents
Introduction -- 1. Frontiers and colonial loyalties -- 2. Natural and unnatural frontiers -- 3. Slaves and the threat of internal revolt -- 4. Free people of color and the limits of collaboration -- 5. Imperial compromises -- 6. Co-option and collaboration -- Conclusion.
Call Number
JFE 21-4616
ISBN
  • 9780807174289
  • 0807174289
LCCN
  • 2020033837
  • 40030456432
OCLC
1201695193
Author
Beauchamp, M. K. (Michael Kelly), author.
Title
Instruments of empire : colonial elites and U.S. governance in early national Louisiana, 1803-1815 / M. K. Beauchamp.
Publisher
Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2021]
Copyright Date
©2021
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-306) and index.
Chronological Term
1800-1899
Other Form:
Online version: Beauchamp, M. K. (Michael Kelly) Instruments of empire Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2021] 9780807174968 (DLC) 2020033838
Other Standard Identifier
40030456432
Research Call Number
JFE 21-4616
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