Cultural conflicts and common interests: The making of the sugar planter class in Louisiana, 1795--1853

In this dissertation, I focus on two themes; the first being the manner in which a particular planter class emerged to dominate one of the wealthiest and most slave labor-intensive regimes in nineteenth-century North America. The second theme addresses the ways in which ethnic and cultural differences affected relations between the members of that class.;At the end of the eighteenth-century, a series of dramatic events transformed the economy and society of lower Louisiana. In 1795, a newly patented granulation process installed sugar as a profitable staple crop for the region, and created a small French Louisianian planter class. At the same time, transfer of the once French colony from Spain back to France, and violent revolutions in France and Haiti left Louisiana diversely populated with residents of French, Spanish, Caribbean, and African heritage. With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Anglo-Americans joined the mixture, installing a new government and igniting ethnic conflict between the Anglo-American politicians and the old Creole leaders. As the political leaders wrangled over rules of governance, Anglo-American migrants flocked to lower Louisiana eager to profit from the lucrative cane crop.;Although dissent emerged in the political arena in the early nineteenth century, French Louisianian planters and Anglo-American newcomers ignored their ethnic differences, those of language, religion, and custom, and found consensus in their shared efforts to build and fortify a slave-driven sugar plantation economy. At the end of the 1820s, a new group of migrants arrived in lower Louisiana, Anglo-Americans with extensive capital garnered from businesses and plantations they owned elsewhere in the United States. These newcomers sought to expand rather than build their fortunes with Louisiana sugar and created plantations and slave forces of enormous size. The planters already in residence, both Creole and Anglo, scrambled to match the scale of the new operations.;The diverse members of the sugar planter class viewed sugar cultivation as both a capitalist venture and as a means to fortify their social status. Many invested in modern technologies and labor management techniques to boost profit margins, but they used those profits to reinforce their role as masters of a pre-modern society. This dissertation examines how a planter class emerged in the Louisiana parishes of Ascension, Assumption, Iberville, St. James, and St. Mary governed by a process common to all plantation societies and yet altered by the unique circumstances of Louisiana sugar country.