Rumors of Revolution
Song, Sentiment, and Sedition in Colonial Louisiana
Jennifer Tsien
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In 1682 the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle claimed the Mississippi River basin for France, naming the region Louisiana to honor his king, Louis XIV. Until the United States acquired the territory in the Louisiana Purchase more than a century later, there had never been a revolution, per se, in Louisiana. However, as Jennifer Tsien highlights in this groundbreaking work, revolutionary sentiment clearly surfaced in the literature and discourse both in the Louisiana colony and in France with dramatic and far-reaching consequences.
In Rumors of Revolution, Tsien analyzes documented observations made in Paris and in New Orleans about the exercise of royal power over French subjects and colonial Louisiana stories that laid bare the arbitrary powers and abuses that the government could exert on its people against their will. Ultimately, Tsien establishes an implicit connection between histories of settler colonialism in the Americas and the fate of absolutism in Europe that has been largely overlooked in scholarship to date.
- Gordon Sayre, University of Oregon, co-editor of The Memoir of Lieutenant DumontClearly and concisely executed, Rumors of Revolution makes an important contribution to the study of French writing about the Louisiana colony in the 1700s. There has not been a book like this published for more than fifty years.
- H-FranceTsien’s study significantly expands our understanding of the interplay between settler colonialism in the Lower Mississippi Valley and critiques of absolutism throughout the Late Enlightenment. Beyond its geopolitical role in the clash of empires, Louisiana offers a laboratory for policy experimentation and a window onto the workings of an emerging slave society.
In a well-researched and well-written book that should appeal to specialists and general readers, Tsien . . . eloquently reminds us that Louisianians tend to know their history because they must frequently relive it.- Eighteenth-Century Studies
Jennifer Tsien is Associate Professor of French at the University of Virginia and author of The Bad Taste of Others: Judging Literary Value in Eighteenth-Century France.
Introduction
1. The Regent's Seduction
2. Enlightenment Travelers: Scientific Description as a Critique of Monarchy
3. Louisiana Finds Its Voice: The Revolt of 1768
4. The Sentimental Aftermath of the Revolt
5. In the Age of Revolutions
Conclusion
1. The Regent's Seduction
2. Enlightenment Travelers: Scientific Description as a Critique of Monarchy
3. Louisiana Finds Its Voice: The Revolt of 1768
4. The Sentimental Aftermath of the Revolt
5. In the Age of Revolutions
Conclusion
