Bonapartists in the borderlands [electronic resource] : French exiles and refugees on the Gulf Coast, 1815-1835 / Rafe Blaufarb.

ISBN:

9780817382612

Title:

Author:

Blaufarb, Rafe.

Personal Author:

Blaufarb, Rafe.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 302 pages) : illustrations, maps

Contents:

The new Atlantic France -- The Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive -- Double and treble treachery -- Ultra-quixotism : The Bonapartist invasion of Texas -- The Vine and Olive Colony -- The fate of Vine and Olive -- Appendix : the grantees and their allotments.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

French Americans -- Alabama -- History -- 19th century.

French Americans -- Land tenure -- Alabama -- History -- 19th century.

Agricultural colonies -- Alabama -- History -- 19th century.

Geographic Term:

Vine and Olive Colony.

Alabama -- History -- 19th century.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2005

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
976.105 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Provides an important revision of the causes of the failure of France's Vine and Olive Colony in Alabama, placing it within the context of America's westward expansion

Bonapartists in the Borderlands debunks the standard account of the Vine and Olive Colony, which stresses the failure of aristocratic, luxury-loving French to tame the wilderness. Rafe Blaufarb recounts how Napoleonic exiles and French refugees from Europe and the Caribbean joined forces with Latin American insurgents, Gulf pirates, and international adventurers to seek their fortune in the Gulf borderlands. The US Congress welcomed the French and granted them a capacious tract of rich Black Belt land near Demopolis, Alabama, on the condition that they would establish a Mediterranean-style Vine and Olive colony.

Blaufard shows that it was not a lack of grit that caused the enterprise to fail. Rather, the Napoleonic officers involved in the colony sold their land shares to speculators to finance an even more perilous adventure--invading the Texas borderlands contested by Spain and the US. Their departure left the Vine and Olive colony in the hands of French refugees from the Haitian slave revolt. They soon abandoned vine cultivation and fused with the neighboring communities of Anglo-American slaveholding cotton planters and speculators.

Rafe Blaufarb examines the underlying motivations and aims that inspired this endeavor and details the nitty-gritty politics, economics, and backroom bargaining that resulted in the settlement. He employs a wide variety of local, national, and international resources: from documents held by the Alabama State Archives, Marengo County court records, and French-language newspapers published in America to material from the War Ministry Archives at Vincennes, the Diplomatic Archives at the Quai d'Orasy, and the French National Archives.

Author Notes

Rafe Blaufarb is Associate Professor of History at Florida State University. He is author of The French Army, 1750-1820: Careers, Talent, Merit .

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

In March 1817, the US Congress granted 144 square miles of land near the confluence of the Tombigbee and Black Warrior rivers to the Society for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive, a group of French refugees who claimed that they wanted to practice viticulture in the region. This agreement created the romantic 19th-century myth of the Vine and Olive colony as an agricultural utopia and escape for aristocratic French refugees, as well as a haven for a possibly soon-to-be liberated Napoleon. Yet such was not the case. Congress granted the fertile Black Belt lands in order to establish a US presence on the southwestern lands secured during the War of 1812. Moreover, most French refugees had little intention of practicing viticulture. Many grantees immediately sold their lands to finance the 1818 Charles Lallemand invasion of the Spanish Texas borderlands, while most of the remaining soon abandoned vine cultivation for the more profitable cotton farming. By focusing on the local story of the Vine and Olive experience, Blaufarb (Auburn Univ.) illustrates how this venture became part of the much larger national and transatlantic geopolitical upheaval that defined the gulf borderlands. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. G. A. Smith Texas Christian University