New Orleans is the most elusive of American cities, the product of centuries-long struggle among France, Spain, and England, their American colonies, and enslaved African peoples, leaving it perpetually foreign to most Americans. The World That Made New Orleans tells the story of the city's first century: imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. Sublette demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality by Louisiana's statehood in 1812, with the roots of American music firmly planted in its urban swamp, especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans gathered en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor put it, "rock the city."
A companion to Sublette's acclaimed Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, this book brings the same synthesis of musical, cultural, and political history to New Orleans and remains essential reading on the city's beautiful and tragic story. Winner of the 2009 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year and the New Orleans Gulf South Booksellers Association Book of the Year for 2008.
- Ned Sublette, Author
- Published in 2009
- Paperback, 368 pages
- Published by Lawrence Hill Books
- ISBN: 978-1556529580
New Orleans is the most elusive of American cities, the product of centuries-long struggle among France, Spain, and England, their American colonies, and enslaved African peoples, leaving it perpetually foreign to most Americans. The World That Made New Orleans tells the story of the city's first century: imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. Sublette demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality by Louisiana's statehood in 1812, with the roots of American music firmly planted in its urban swamp, especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans gathered en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor put it, "rock the city."
A companion to Sublette's acclaimed Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, this book brings the same synthesis of musical, cultural, and political history to New Orleans and remains essential reading on the city's beautiful and tragic story. Winner of the 2009 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year and the New Orleans Gulf South Booksellers Association Book of the Year for 2008.
- Ned Sublette, Author
- Published in 2009
- Paperback, 368 pages
- Published by Lawrence Hill Books
- ISBN: 978-1556529580