The State of Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. The capital of Louisiana is Baton Rouge and the most populous city is New Orleans. The largest parish by population is Jefferson Parish and largest by area is Terrebonne Parish (Louisiana is the only state divided into parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties). The New Orleans metropolitan area is Louisiana's largest.
Louisiana has a unique multicultural and multilingual heritage. Originally part of New France, Louisiana is home to many speakers of Cajun French and Louisiana Creole French. African American / Franco-African, and French / French Canadian form the two largest groups of ancestry in Louisiana's population.
French exploration and colonization (1528-1756) ~ The first European explorers to visit Louisiana came in 1528. The Spanish expedition (led by Panfilo de Narváez) located the mouth of the Mississippi River. In 1541, Hernando de Soto's expedition crossed the region. Then Spanish interest in Louisiana lay dormant. In the late 17th century, French expeditions, which included sovereign, religious and commercial aims, established a foothold on the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast. With its first settlements, France lay claim to a vast region of North America and set out to establish a commercial empire and French nation stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
The French explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle named the region Louisiana to honor France's King Louis XIV in 1682. The first permanent settlement, Fort Maurepas (at what is now Ocean Springs, Mississippi, near Biloxi), was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, a French military officer from Canada, in 1699.
The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed all the land on both sides of the Mississippi River and north to French territory in Canada. The following present day states were part of the then vast tract of Louisiana: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
The settlement of Natchitoches (along the Red River in present-day northwest Louisiana) was established in 1714 by Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, making it the oldest permanent settlement in the territory that then composed the Louisiana colony. The French settlement had two purposes: to establish trade with the Spanish in Texas, and to deter Spanish advances into Louisiana. Also, the northern terminus of the Old San Antonio Road (sometimes called El Camino Real, or Kings Highway) was at Nachitoches. The settlement soon became a flourishing river port and crossroads, giving rise to vast cotton kingdoms along the river. Over time, planters developed large plantations and built fine homes in a growing town, a pattern repeated in New Orleans and other places.
Louisiana's French settlements contributed to further exploration and outposts, concentrated along the banks of the Mississippi and its major tributaries, from Louisiana to as far north as the region called the Illinois Country, around Peoria, Illinois and present-day St. Louis, Missouri.
Initially Mobile, Alabama and Biloxi, Mississippi functioned as the capital of the colony; in 1722, recognizing the importance of the Mississippi River to trade and military interests, France made New Orleans the seat of civilian and military authority.
Settlement in the Louisiana colony was not exclusively French; in the 1720s, German immigrants settled along the Mississippi River in a region referred to as the German Coast.
Spanish interregnum (1763-1800) ~ Most of the territory to the east of the Mississippi was lost to the Kingdom of Great Britain in the French and Indian War, except for the area around New Orleans and the parishes around Lake Pontchartrain. The rest of Louisiana became a possession of Spain after the Seven Years' War by the Treaty of Paris of 1763.
Despite the fact that it was the Spanish government that now ruled Louisiana, the pace of francophone immigration to the territory increased swiftly, due to another significant after effect of the French and Indian War. Several thousand French-speaking refugees from the region of Acadia (now Nova Scotia, Canada) made their way to Louisiana after being expelled from their home territory by the newly ascendant British; settling largely in the southwestern Louisiana region now called Acadiana. The Acadian refugees were welcomed by the Spanish, and descendants came to be called Cajuns.
Some Spanish-speaking immigrants did arrive as well. Canary Islanders, called Isleños, migrated to Louisiana between 1778 and 1783.
In 1800, France's Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired Louisiana from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso, an arrangement kept secret for some two years. Documents have revealed that he harbored secret ambitions to reconstruct a large colonial empire in the Americas. This notion faltered, however, after the French attempt to reconquer Haiti after its revolution ended in failure.
Annexation and incorporation into the United States (1803-1850) ~ As a result of his setbacks in Haiti, Bonaparte gave up his dreams of American empire and sold the Louisiana to the United States, which subsequently divided it into two territories: the Orleans Territory (which became the state of Louisiana in 1812) and the District of Louisiana (which consisted of all the land not included in Orleans Territory). The Florida Parishes were annexed from the short-lived and strategically important West Florida Republic by proclamation of President James Madison in 1810.
The western boundary of Louisiana with Spanish Texas remained in dispute until the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819, with the Sabine Free State serving as a neutral buffer zone as well as a haven for criminals. Also called "No Man's Land," this part of central and southwestern Louisiana was settled in part by a mixed-race people known as Redbones, whose origins are the subject of ongoing debate.
Secession and the Civil War (1850-1865) ~ In the wake of its plantation economy, Louisiana was a slave state. It also had one of the largest free black populations in the United States. Among enfranchised whites, however, economic interest in maintaining the slave system contributed to Louisiana's decision to secede from the union, along with many other Southern states, following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. Louisiana's secession was announced on January 26, 1861, and the state became part of the secessionary Confederate States of America.
The state fell quickly in the resulting Civil War, a result of Union strategy to cut the Confederacy in two by seizing the Mississippi. New Orleans was captured by Federal troops on April 25, 1862. Because a large part of the population had Union sympathies (or compatible commercial interests), the Federal government took the unusual step of designating the areas of Louisiana under federal control as a state within the Union, with its own elected representatives to the U.S. Congress.
Reconstruction and segregation (1865-1929) ~ Following the Civil War much of the South, including Louisiana, was placed under the supervision of military governors under northern command. Louisiana was grouped with Texas in what was administered as the Fifth Military District. In this atmosphere of what came to be called Reconstruction, political and social equality for ex-slaves flourished as it would not for their descendants for another century or so.
As Reconstruction came to a close, however, forms of racial discrimination became increasingly institutionalized. The notable court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which legitimated the mantra that segregation could be legal so long as it did not (purportedly) result in inequality, originated in Louisiana.
The Great Depression (1929-1941) ~ During the Great Depression Louisiana was presided over by Governor Huey Long who, though popular for his public works projects, which promised an improvement in Louisianans' social welfare, was nonetheless criticized for his allegedly demogogic and even autocratic style, having extended his control through every branch of Louisiana's state government. Especially controversial were his plans for wealth redistribution in the state. Long's career ended in assassination in 1935.
The battle for Civil Rights (1950-1970) ~ Patterns of Jim Crow segregation against African Americans were still evident in Louisiana by the 1960s, and this changed only in the course of the national Civil Rights movement.
Katrina and its aftermath (2005-present) ~ In August, 2005 New Orleans and many other low-lying parts of the state along the Gulf of Mexico were hit by the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina, which caused widespread damage due to large scale flooding. Warnings of the hurricane prompted the evacuation of New Orleans and other areas, but many, either because they ignored warnings willingly or lacked the means to escape, were left behind, and largely stranded by the floodwaters. Cut off in many cases from healthy food or medicine, or assembled in public spaces without functioning emergency services to attend to them, many succumbed to death or disease, and the state soon faced a humanitarian crisis stemming from conditions in many locations, especially the city of New Orleans, and the large tide of refugees. Subsequent reconstruction and repatriation has so far been slow and limited to the state's wealthiest citizens.
