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.To make the colony profitable, the French monarchy allowed John Law,a Scottish financier, to take over the Company of the West in 1717 and thenunite it with the Company of the Indies in 1719 with the hope that withproper promotion, organization, and funding, Louisiana could becomesomething like the French colonies in the Caribbean and Canada.JohnLaw conceived of a plan to sell stock of the company to the French pub-lic.The result was a speculative bubble that drove the stock price 2,000percent higher than the initial offering.Law had personally received alarge land concession near the lower Arkansas River, but he needed topopulate the colony before it could actually make some money for himselfand the company s investors.In the first 17 years of its founding, Louisiana had been plagued by ashortage of people who were willing and able to work the land.The fewcolonists who did risk everything to leave for Louisiana were mostly furLife in the Colonial Era 55traders, artisans, craftsmen, and other laborers who did not know how togrow food, let alone cash crops such as indigo, tobacco, and sugar.Chronicfood shortages plagued the colony.Trade with native tribes like the Choc-taw kept the French alive.No matter how bad the situation was in Francefor the poor, Louisiana appeared to promise only misery and prematuredeath.To counter this perception, John Law launched a media blitz inwhich he called Louisiana the  El Dorado on the Mississippi. Deceitfuladvertising about the healthy climate and large land grants convincedalmost 7,000 French and German immigrants, including 1,215 women and502 children, to leave for Louisiana between 1717 and 1721.The Frenchmonarchy also decided to force unwanted and troublesome members ofits society to migrate.Twelve hundred prostitutes, salt and tobacco smug-glers, army deserters, and criminals from prisons were shipped to thecolonies.Since the immediate vicinity of New Orleans had experienced seriousflooding in 1719, John Law decided to move many of these settlers fur-ther north.He hoped to send some of the German immigrants to workon his own track of land on the Arkansas River, but his disgrace after thestock price of his company crashed put an end to his plans.The fertile soilaround Fort Rosalie near the Natchez tribe looked enticing for companyofficials.As early as 1700, the priest Paul du Ru, who had accompaniedIberville on an expedition up the Mississippi, noted that  [t]he plains ofthe Natchez which I observed a little more attentively to-day, are evenmore beautiful than I had realized.There are peach, plum, walnut andfig trees everywhere. 6 Each variety of those trees had been brought overby the Europeans.The Natchez had already been growing a small cropof tobacco for their own uses, so the Company of the Indies decided tomake tobacco one of the cash crops that would transform Louisiana intoa thriving and prosperous colony.They hired experienced growers oftobacco from the Caribbean and began clearing land.A plantation economy required many laborers.In French Louisiana,as in the Caribbean and the English Chesapeake and Carolinas, slaverybecame the foundation of plantation systems growing staples for Atlanticmarkets.In any discussion of slavery in the Mississippi Valley it is impor-tant to understand the historical context from which this oppressive insti-tution originated.European society was extremely hierarchical.Noblesand other higher ranking members had no qualms about exploiting thelabor of those below them in fact, they expected such subservience.Theyfelt that God and the King of France had given them mastery over theland, and it was the duty of peasants, serfs, or slaves to work for them.Such was the natural order of things.As long as Christians were notenslaved, Church leaders sanctioned slavery.Before Columbus ever setsail for the New World, Europeans had been using slaves on plantationswith great financial success on islands off the coast of Europe and Africa [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]